² Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1977), p. 1.Google Scholar

³ This was first pointed out to me (in conversation) by Professor T. F. Torrance. The phrase ‘twin heresies’ is his. In describing predestinationism as a heresy, I want to emphasize that I am singling out a particular interpretation of the doctrine of predestination. This is to make clear that the understanding of predestination which I will argue against is not the only way of construing the doctrine, and that many Christians affirm a different interpretation of it. Even though the term predestinationism is somewhat cumbersome, I have chosen to use it in order to highlight this distinction.

⁴ Evil and the God of Love (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 378.Google Scholar

⁵ ‘Evil and Omnipotence,’ in Brody, Baruch A., ed. Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 158.Google Scholar

⁶ Evil and the God of Love, p. 311.

⁷ Mackie, , in Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Brody, , pp. 164–165Google Scholar. Hick does not accept this argument, for he thinks the freedom Mackie describes is mere psychological freedom, such as a hypnotized person experiences. If our relationship to God were like that of a patient to a hypnotist, we would be free from our own point of view, but from Cod's point of view we would not be free. Thus, our relationship to God would not be real. It is in opposition to such a view of freedom that Hick insists upon ‘genuine freedom and independence’. See Evil and the God of Love, pp. 307–13 for Hick's critique of both Mackie and Antony Flew, from whom he borrowed the illustration of the hypnotist. Plantinga, on the other hand, takes Mackie to mean genuine freedom, and deals with him on those terms.

⁸ Plantinga, Alvin, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 34.Google Scholar

⁹ This whole paragraph relies heavily on Plantinga. For his own, more detailed discussion of these points, see God, Freedom, and Evil, pp. 29–55.

¹⁰ Evil and the God of Love, p. 379.

¹¹ Evil and the God of Love, p. 381.

¹² Evil and the God of Love, pp. 379–81 (My emphasis).

¹³ Providence and Evil, p. 5.

¹⁴ Evil and the God of Love, pp. 325–6.

¹⁵ My argument here assumes that human freedom is compatible with God's foreknowledge. This is an important philosophical issue in its own right and I cannot engage it here. For a defense of the position I have assumed, see God, Freedom, and Evil, pp. 66–73.

¹⁶ ‘The First Principles’ in Vol. IV, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976)Google Scholar. Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition, p. 226.

¹⁷ Works (London: 1872), VII, 382Google Scholar. He goes on to say the doctrine ‘represents the most holy God as worse than the devil’.

¹⁸ Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T., trans. Battles, Ford Lewis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), Vol. II, p. 974Google Scholar. Cf. also Vol. I, pp. 555–6.

¹⁹ Institutes, Vol. I, p. 303.

²⁰ Institutes, Vol. II, p. 949. Calvin goes on to say, ‘God does not convert the obstinate because he does not manifest that more powerful grace, which is not lacking if he should please to offer it.’

²¹ ‘Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom’, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, eds. Flew, Antony and Maclntyre, Alasdair (New York: Macmillan, 1955), p. 151.Google Scholar

²² Flew, , in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 161–162Google Scholar. See also pp. 163–4; 166–8.

²³ It might be argued that choosing to do something is compatible with being unwilling to do it. Therefore, a person who was made willing to receive Christ would, in fact, be able to reject him, and a sinner who cannot will to do good may still choose to do it. However, such choices sould not be free choices, at least according to the Confession. For it is clearly affirmed that God's sovereignty does no violence to the will of creatures. This surely means that free choices are those which are made in accordance with one's own will, not in spite of it. So freedom consists of choosing to do what God has made one willing to do, not in the ability to choose otherwise. For if a person can choose not to do something which God has made him willing to do, and he so chooses, then God does violence to his will by making him willing to do what he chooses not to do. Conclusions like this suggest that perhaps it is not even coherent to suppose that a person could choose not to do something which God made him willing to do.

²⁴ I do not mean to imply by this that the Westminster Divines were intentionally confusing or deceptive. Rather, I would suggest that this was the almost inevitable outcome of their effort to reconcile predestinationism with their own moral intuitions.