TrinJ 1NS (1980) 142-152

AND THE ATHEIST SHALL LIE DOWN WITH THE CALVINIST:

ATHEISM, CALVINISM, AND THE FREE WILL DEFENSE

JOHNS. FEINBERG
WESTERN CONSERVATIVE BAPTIST SEMINARY

Philosophy makes strange bedfellows. Occasionally one finds that even

though most of his intellectual commitments are contrary to those of another
thinker, nonetheless one may agree with an opponent on some important
point. It may initially be somewhat disconcerting to find oneself sharing the
same philosophical bed with a thinker whose views are generally widely diver-
gent from one's own; but it need not be traumatic as long as the reasons for
sharing the same philosophical resting place are not the same, and as long as
both do not draw the same conclusions from their identical commitment on
the issue in question.
I suppose that most Christian thinkers would not assume that they held any
major intellectual commitments in common with an atheist, and I imagine that
is true in many cases. However, when one considers the issues involved in
evaluating the Free Will Defense, he finds that a very interesting thing happens:
he finds that a theologian committed to Calvinism must share the same philo-
sophical bed with many atheists. As strange as this may seem, I intend to
demonstrate the truth of this claim and to explain its implications by arguing
the following two theses: l)Many atheists reject the Free Will Defense as a
viable solution to the problem of evil, because they reject the notion of
freedom presupposed by such a defense; but it is also the case that a person
who is theologically a Calvinist must reject the Free Will Defense as the
solution to his theology's problem of evil for the same reason; 2) In spite of the
Calvinista agreement with the atheist in rejecting the Free Will Defense, the
Calvinist argues neither that the Free Will" Defense does not render internally
consistent those theologies that can use it, nor that he personally cannot
answer the problem of evil which arises for his own theology.
In order to demonstrate the truth of these two theses, my procedure will be
as follows: a couple of preliminary points about the nature of the problem of
evil will first be presented. These will prove helpful in establishing the truth of
the second thesis. Then there will be a brief statement of the Free Will Defense.
Following that presentation, I shall briefly sketch the interchange in regard to
the Free Will Defense between the atheists Antony Flew and J. L. Mackie, and
the free will defender Alvin Plantinga. Having shown that the issue between
Mackie and Flew, on the one hand, and Plantinga on the other, ultimately
resolves to a debate between compatibilistic and incompatibilistic freedom, I
shall then relate the matter to Calvinism and explain why the Calvinist must
side with Flew and Mackie on this issue. In so doing, the truth of the first
thesis will be demonstrated. Finally, I shall point out the implications for both
the atheist and the Calvinist of their mutual commitment to compatibilistic
FEINBERG: ATHEISM, CALVINISM AND FREE WILL 143

freedom and consequent rejection of the Free Will Defense.

Let us turn first to the preliminary points. Philosophers and theologians,
whether they are atheists or theists, have a habit of talking about the problem
of evil. The first point to note is that there is no such thing as the problem of
evil. This is true in two dissimilar but very important respects. First, I like to
distinguish between what can be called a religious problem of evil and a
philosophical/theological problem of evil. A religious problem is a problem
about a specific evil being experienced by a specific person. The person under­
going such evil wonders about his relation to God and his desire to worship
God in view of the evil besetting him. He asks such questions as, "Why is this
evil afflicting me now?" and, "In view of the evil that is now befalling me, do I
find any desire to worship the God who is not stopping it?" 1 On the other
hand, a philosophical/theological problem focuses on the existence of evil in
general, rather than on the existence of any particular evil. The issue here is not
one's personal relation to God. Instead, the questioner wants to know why
there should be any evil in a world created by an omnipotent, omnibenevolent
creator. In fact, this kind of problem could be posed even if there were no God
and no evil. One could ask, "If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator should
exist, would his existence be consistent with the existence of evil in the world,
if such evil should exist?"2
A second sense in which there is no such thing as the problem of evil is that
there is not even one theological/philosophical problem of evil, though I fear
that many theists and atheists think there is. There are as many philosophical/
theological problems of evil as there are theological systems according to which
(1) God is said to be omnipotent, in some sense of "omnipotent," (2) God is
said to will the removal of evil, in some sense of "evil," and (3) evil, in the
sense specified by the system, is said to exist. The point is simply that not all
theists hold the same account of omnipotence and of ethics. Consequently,
there cannot be just one problem of evil that confronts all theological systems.
The second preliminary point to be made is that a problem of evil, in what­
ever system it arises, must always be a problem of internal consistency of the
system. In other words, the atheist is always claiming in regard to the theistic
systems that hold to omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and evil that such theistic
systems are self-contradictory.3 The implications of this point have not usually
been taken as seriously as they should be by either theists or atheists. Indeed,
there are implications for both, though too often such implications have been
ignored or overlooked altogether. The point for the theist is that he must so
construct his system that his God is not portrayed as both good and yet able to
remove the evil which he admits is present in the world. If the theist cannot
succeed in this matter, then his system will most assuredly be internally incon-

IWhat I call a religious problem of evil coincides with what Ahern calls a specific con­
crete problem, a problem which arises from the actual world as experienced by an
individual: cf. Μ. Β. Ahern, The Problem of Evil (New York: Schocken Books, 1971) 8.
2 Ahern calls this problem the general problem (Ahern, The Problem of Evil, 4). He also
delineates what he calls specific abstract problems, problems that deal with specific kinds
(moral and physical, for example), degrees, and numbers of evils that do or might exist
(ΡΡ 7-8).
3j. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," in The Philosophy of Religion, ed. Basil
Mitchell (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) 92.
144 TRINITY JOURNAL

sistent and be rejected on the grounds of its failure to solve its problem of evil.
The point for the critic of a theological position is that he must specify a
problem which actually arises within the system he is attacking. Otherwise, it
cannot be a problem which is internal to the theist's system, and thus it cannot
be a legitimate problem of evil. It simply will not do for the atheist to attribute
some or all of his views to the theist and then tell the theist that the theist has
an insoluble problem which is internal to his views.
Both preliminary points will prove to be important as the discussion
proceeds in regard to the Free Will Defense. Before presenting the Flew-
Mackie-Plantinga interchange, let me first briefly sketch the Free Will Defense.
In that I claimed that each theological position has its own concepts of God
and evil, let me first indicate the kind of theological position which is pre-
supposed by the Free Will Defense. The position represented by the Free Will
Defense falls under the broad species of theism which I call Modified
Rationalism.4 According to a Modified Rationalist, God need not create
anything, for his own existence is the highest good. Second, creating a world is
a fitting thing for God to do, but not the only fitting thing he can do. Third,
there is an infinity of contingent possible worlds. Some are inherently evil, and
thus could not have been created by God;but more than one is a good possible
world which God could create. Finally, God is free either to create no world at
all, or to create one of the good possible worlds. Such an account of meta-
physics is presupposed by the Free Will Defender. In fact, most Jewish and
Christian philosophical theologies presuppose such a metaphysic.
In addition to the metaphysic of the defense, we need to specify the ethics
presupposed by the defense. Modified Rationalist theologies may incorporate
either a consequentialist or a nonconsequentialist account of ethics. According
to a consequentialist, the world which God created was evil as created; but that
factor indicates nothing negative about the God who created it, for he will
eventually use that world to maximize good.5 On the other hand, a nonconse-
quentialist would claim that the world as created from the hand of God was
good. The evil which has been brought into it has entered through the agency
of created beings, especially men. From this account, it should be obvious that
the Free Will Defense presupposes a Modified Rationalist theology with a
nonconsequentialist account of ethics.
Given such a theological position, how would a problem of evil arise for any
Modified Rationalist theology, and how would the free will defender solve that
problem? The question confronting any Modified Rationalist theology is, "Is
the evil (in the sense defined by the Modified Rationalist theologian) present in
this world such as to argue against the Modified Rationalist's claim that this is
one of the good possible worlds which God could have created?" If a Modified

4
In my book {Theologies and Evil [Washington: University of America Press, 1979])
I have distinguished Modified Rationalism from extreme Leibnizian Rationalism, on the
one hand, and from theonomy as represented in the writings of such thinkers as William of
Ockham, Descartes, and Peter T. Geach, on the other.
5 For an example of a Modified Rationalist theology with a consequentialist account of
ethics, see John Hick's soul-building theodicy. Hick's eschatological dimension to that
theodicy, according to which everyone makes it to the Kingdom of God, clearly indicates
that he is operating with a consequentialist account of ethics.
FEINBERG: ATHEISM, CALVINISM AND FREE WILL 145

Rationalist must answer this question affirmatively, then his particular

theology succumbs to its problem of evil; but if he can give a reason why the
evil in the world does not negate his claim that this world is one of the good
worlds God could have created, then his theology does not succumb to a
problem of evil. As for the free will defender, his response is obvious. This is
one of those good possible worlds, despite its evil, because it contains free will,
a good of the highest order which counterbalances and overbalances the evil
which is present in the world.
Flew has argued that there are four basic moves in the Free Will Defense,
and his analysis gives us a good brief statement of the defense. According to
Flew, the first move is to claim that God's omnipotence does not mean that he
can do anything that is logically contradictory.6 The second move is to claim
that God gave men free will and that such free will implies the possibility of
doing evil as well as good.7 The third move is to "point out that certain good
things, viz. certain virtues, logically presuppose: not merely beings with
freedom of choice (which alone are capable of either virtue or vice), and
consequently the possibility of evil; but also the actual occurrence of certain
evils."8 The final move is basically an empirical premise. Unfortunately, says
the free will defender, man has used his freedom to choose evil; but neverthe-
less, all the evil that is chosen is "more than offset by the actually achieved
sum of those higher goods of which the capacity to choose is the logically
necessary condition."9
In contemporary discussions of the Free Will Defense, those attacking the
defense have been led primarily by Antony Flew and J. L. Mackie, and
defenders of the Free Will Defense have looked to the work of Alvin Plantinga.
Let me now turn to the interchange between those thinkers in order to see
where the issues lie between proponents and opponents of the Free Will
Defense. I begin with the attack of Flew, though it essentially amounts to the
same objection as Mackie's, as we shall see. Flew claims that there is an
essential notion underlying the whole Free Will Defense, an assumption he
wants to attack. As Flew phrases it, the issue at stake is:
. . . the idea that there is a contradiction involved in saying that
God might have made people so that they always in fact freely
choose the right. If there is no contradiction here then
Omnipotence might have made a world inhabited by wholly vir-
tuous people; the Free-will Defence is broken-backed; and we are
back again with the original intractable antinomy. 10
Flew's attack on the Free Will Defense rests on the notion that there is no
contradiction in saying that the statement "God made people so that they

6 Antony Flew, "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom," New Essays in Philo-
sophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1973) 145. Consult also Antony Flew, "Compatibilism, Free Will and God,"
PMosophy 48 (1973) 231-32.
?Flew, "Omnipotence and Freedom," 145. This is the third move in Flew, "Com-
patibilism."
8
Flew, "Omnipotence and Freedom," 14546. This is the second and part of the third
move as expressed in Flew, "Compatibilism."
^Flew, "Compatibilism," 232; idem, "Omnipotence and Freedom," 146.
10
Flew, "Omnipotence and Freedom," 149; idem, "Compatibilism," 233.
146 TRINITY JOURNAL

always choose the right" is compatible with the claim "Man has free choice." If
these two claims are compatible, then one could say without contradiction that
God could make people so that they always in fact freely choose the right. In
order to make the issue clearer, Flew, in his article, "Compatibilism, Free Will
and God," distinguishes two senses of freedom which are crucial to an under-
standing of the debate between Flew and Plantinga. One sense of the term
"free" means "unconstrained," while the other means "libertarian," according
to Flew. The distinction is simply the following: To say that someone acted
freely in the unconstrained sense, as Flew uses the expression, means that
"there are contingently sufficient non-subsequent conditions for a person's
being such that he chooses to act, and acts, in one particular way and not
another."! ! However, those conditions did not constrain the individual so that
he acted against his will or without any willing at all, as if he were a robot.
Again, Flew explains the sense of libertarian free will when he writes:
This is the sense in which the point of saying that someone
acted freely is: not to bring out that he did not do what he did
under constraint; but to imply that there were no contingently suf-
ficient non-subsequent conditions for his choosing to act in this
particular way and no other. 12
Flew calls the person who holds to the first sense of "free will" a compatibilist,
for such a person claims that human freedom is compatible with certain non-
constraining conditions that determine his actions. It is the compatibilist who
claims that there is no contradiction in claiming that God might have made
people so that they always in fact freely choose the right. On the other hand,
the person who holds to the libertarian sense of "free will" is called an incom-
patibilist, for he claims that human freedom is incompatible with any contin-
gently sufficient non-subsequent conditions of an action. It is just this person
who claims that it is a contradiction to assert that God could have made man
so that he would freely do one thing or another, for God's making man in a
certain way is a contingently sufficient non-subsequent condition of his
actions. But such conditions, according to the incompatibilist's definition of
freedom, must be incompatible with the notion of freedom.13 Flew, then,
rejects the Free Will Defense because it presupposes incompatibilistic freedom,
whereas Flew holds that compatibilistic freedom is the correct account of
freedom. I 4
When one turns to Mackie, he apparently finds a different objection to the
Free Will Defense, but actually his objection rests again on the difference
between compatibilism and incompatibilism. Mackie argues the same com-
patibilist line against the Free Will Defense as does Flew, but he states the
argument a bit differently. Mackie's argument has been called the "good
choosing argument."15 He states his objection as follows:

^Flew, "Compatibilism," 233.

12
Ibid.
13lbid. 233-34.
l^Flew presents his argumentation in favor of compatibilism in Flew, "Com-
patibilism," 234.
15Bennett refers to Mackie's argument as such in Philip W. Bennett, "Evil, God, and
the Free Will Defense," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 51 (1973) 39-50.
FEINBERG: ATHEISM, CALVINISM AND FREE WILL 147

I should ask this: if God has made men such that in their free
choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is
evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely
choose the good! If there is no logical impossibility in a man's
freely choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there
cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on
every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between
making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting
freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the
obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely
but always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this
possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and
wholly good.16 (Italics mine.)
From this quote it should be obvious that Mackie is arguing the same com-
patibilist line which Flew does. Mackie makes this even clearer when he draws
out a further objection to the Free Will Defense. Mackie states that some may
reply that his objection is absurd, because the making of some wrong choices is
logically necessary for freedom. However, Mackie claims, they are thinking of
freedom as meaning complete randomness or indeterminacy, including random-
ness with regard to the alternatives good and evil. Mackie states that this means
that men's choices can be free, then, in this sense only if they are not deter-
mined by their characters; but then if freedom is randomness, it cannot be a
characteristic of will. Moreover, if it is mere randomness, it cannot be the most
important good, a good worth having at the expense of evil that is produced;
for what value could there be in such free choices, if they were random actions
and thus not determined by the nature of the agent?17
Having heard the objections of both Mackie and Flew, Alvin Plantinga
responds in defense of the Free Will Defense: and as we shall see, his basic line
is to argue that Mackie and Flew hold to compatibilism, but that is a wrong
view of freedom. He and other free will defenders hold to incompatibilism
upon which the Free Will Defense rests. Since incompatibilism is the correct
account of freedom, according to Plantinga, the Free Will Defense is not to be
rejected. One can indeed tell that Plantinga holds to incompatibilism just by
the way he states the Free Will Defense. He argues:
. . . we can make a preliminary statement of the Free Will
Defense as follows. A world containing creatures who are
significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions)
is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no
free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He
can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He
does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do
what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good,
therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He
can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the
same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly
enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the
exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact
that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither
l^Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," 100-101.
17ibid. 101.
148 TRINITY JOURNAL

against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could

have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the
possibility of moral good. 18
In view of Plantinga's claims about freedom in general and the Free Will
Defense in particular, it is not hard to imagine what he says in response to Flew
and Mackie. Plantinga's basic response to both, though he takes Mackie more
seriously, is that it is not possible for all of a person's actions to be causally
determined while some of them are free. Causal determinism and freedom are
incompatible.19
I think we can see clearly enough that the issue is incompatibilism against
compatibilism by hearing Plantinga's response to Mackie. Plantinga gives
Mackie's argument a logical reconstruction,20 and the key premise in that
reconstruction is the one he labels (5) which states that "God can create men
such that they always do what is right."21 Plantinga claims that premise (5) is
true only if "(5a) God creates free men such that they always do what is right
is consistent."22 A problem arises, however, in that there are two ways to
interpret (5a). Either (5a) is equivalent to (5b) "God creates free men and
brings it about that they always freely do what is right," or it may be used to
express (5 c) "God creates free men and these free men always do what is
right."23 Plantinga's handling of these two interpretations is most revealing.
Interpretation (5b) rests on compatibilism, and interpretation (5c) rests on
incompatibilism. In regard to interpretation (5b), Plantinga claims that the
statement is self-contradictory, because "if God brings it about that the men
He creates always do what isright,then they do not do what is right freely"2*
In spite of Plantinga's claims, it should be obvious that the only reason he
thinks that (5b) is self-contradictory is that it assumes the accuracy of
compatibilism, whereas Plantinga is committed to incompatibilism. Thus, the
argument between Plantinga and Mackie reduces ultimately to Plantinga's
incompatibilism against Mackie's compatibilism. As for (5c), Hantinga claims
that it is consistent, but that it leads to premises that are false.25 The
important thing here to note is why Plantinga thinks that (5c) is consistent,
when he rejects as inconsistent (5b) which appears to be quite similar to (5c).
The reason, of course, is that (5c) is consistent with incompatibilism; and
Plantinga, as do all free will defenders who must be committed to incom-
patibilism, must admit that (5c) is not self-contradictory, whereas he cannot
agree that (5b), which rests on compatibilism, is consistent.
In sum, then, the argument between atheists such as Flew and Mackie and
free will defenders (Plantinga being typical of the group) reduces to the issue
of compatibilism versus incompatibilism. Mackie and Flew reject the Free
18
Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) 30.
i^Ibid. 31.
2
^Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press,
1967) 136-38.
21
Ibid. 138.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid.
2
5lbid. 137-39.
FEINBERG: ATHEISM, CALVINISM AND FREE WILL 149

Will Defense because on a compatibilistic account of freedom, the Free Will

Defense does not assume compatibilism but incompatibilism, and on an
incompatibilistic account of freedom, the Free Will Defense does solve its
theology's problem of evil.
At this point, it should also be noted that compatibilism and incom-
patibilism are both philosophically viable options. There are good arguments
for both kinds of freedom, and the state of the debate between philosophers
on both sides of the issue is such that both views are equally viable options.
Thus, it will not do for the compatibilist to say that he knows that the Free
Will Defense is wrong because incompatibilism is not at all a viable account of
freedom; nor, on the other hand, can the incompatibilist claim that
compatibilism is philosophically invalid.
But what does all of this have to do with Calvinism? The answer is simply
that just as the atheist rejects the Free Will Defense because of his commitment
to compatibilism, so the Calvinist must reject the Free Will Defense, because he
too must be committed to compatibilistic freedom.
Anyone committed to the absolute sovereignty of God (as the Calvinist is),
and who defines such sovereignty (as the Calvinist does) in terms of biblical
statements like Dan 4:35 and Eph 1:11 (which claims that believers are pre-
destined unto salvation "according to the purpose of him who worketh all
things after the counsel of his own will") cannot possibly hold any other
account of freedom than compatibilism. So long as one claims that the decree
and working of God are causally involved in everything that happens, it is
impossible to hold to incompatibilism; and consequently, it is impossible for a
Calvinist to accept the Free Will Defense as his answer to his problem of evil
and remain consistent with his Calvinism. Lest any should wonder whether
Calvin himself held to such a notion of sovereignty, let me quote him:
And truly God claims, and would have us grant him, omni-
potence-not the empty, idle, and almost unconscious sort that the
Sophists imagine, but a watchful, effective, active sort, engaged in
ceaseless activity. Not, indeed, an omnipotence that is only a
general principle of confused motion, as if he were to command a
river to flow through its once-appointed channels, but one that is
directed toward individual and particular motions. For he is
deemed omnipotent, not because he can indeed act, yet sometimes
ceases and sits in idleness, or continues by a general impulse that
order of nature which he previously appointed; but because,
governing heaven and earth by his providence, he so regulates all
things that nothing takes place without his deliberation. For when,
in the Psalms, it is said that "he does whatever he wills" (Ps 115:3;
cf. Ps 113(b):3, Vg.), a certain and deliberate will is meant. For it
would be senseless to interpret the words of the prophet after the
manner of the philosophers, that God is the first agent because he
is the beginning and cause of all motion; for in times of adversity
believers comfort themselves with the solace that they suffer
nothing except by God's ordinance and command, for they are
under his hand.26
26
John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. XX of The Library of
Christian Ckssics, ed. John T. McNeill and Ford L. Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster
Press, 1954) 200 (I. xvi. 3).
150 TRINITY JOURNAL

Someone might object, "But cannot God give man freedom of choice and
determine only events and not actions and still retain his sovereignty?" The
answer is, "Absolutely not!" Suppose an agent is confronted with decision x,
and suppose he is incompatibilistically free to choose either good or evil with
respect to x. Now, imagine further that if he chooses good, then his choice will
lead to event y and y to z. On the other hand, if he chooses evil, then his
choice will lead to event ρ and ρ to q. Now, if God is supposed to leave
decisions concerning actions indeterminate but can decree events, as the objec­
tion suggests, it should be obvious that God cannot even decree the events in­
volved. If, indeed, a good choice in regard to χ leads to y and z, and an evil
choice leads to ρ and q, then if God should determine beforehand that events y
and ζ must happen, then the agent has no incompatibilistic freedom with
respect to x. If y and ζ must happen, then the agent must choose the good at
point x, since χ leads to y and z, and God has already locked in y and ζ as
having to occur. The same problem arises with choosing evil, if God pre­
determines that ρ and q must happen. Thus, the only way for the agent to be
incompatibilistically free with respect to χ is for God to decree no causal ante­
cedents to it nor any of the actions or events consequent upon the decision to
be made at x. But since in the course of things there are countless decisions
such as χ that agents confront, what we are saying is that much of what
happens, if not all of it, must be left indeterminate, if one is to include incom­
patibilistic freedom in his account of the world; and the ultimate upshot of
that state of affairs is that God's absolute sovereignty cannot be maintained as
the Calvinist wants, if incompatibilistic freedom is included in one's system
even in the way suggested by the objection.
It might be responded that it is possible for either good or evil to lead to y
and z, so God can leave decision χ open but determine that events y and ζ will
happen. This, of course, is true; but it is beside the point, for so long as there is
even one such case of a decision χ such as I have mentioned above (and, of
course, there are countless such cases), the problem I have sketched must arise.
Consequently, the only way for God to remain absolutely sovereign is to elimi­
nate the notion of incompatibilistic freedom from one's system.
So, an interesting thing has happened. The atheist and the Calvinist must lie
down together in the same philosophical bed, because both must hold to com­
patibilistic freedom. Any theist committed to Arminianism will make his
philosophical bed comfortably with the incompatibilists and can use the Free
Will Defense, but a Calvinist must at this point rest, even if uneasily, with the
atheist. The Calvinist cannot hold to compatibilism in order to uphold his view
of God's decree and sovereignty and then hold to incompatibilism in order to
solve his problem of evil. Such a move would create for him an internally
inconsistent Theology Proper, and no Calvinist who is concerned about holding
to a system of theology would make such a move. So, the atheist lies down
with the Calvinist.
But that is not the end of the matter. To think it is, is to misconstrue the
implications of what has been demonstrated. Let me turn to those implications
and conclude this study.
What has been demonstrated has implications for both the atheist and the
Calvinist. According to such atheists as Mackie and Flew, the Free Will Defense
is to be rejected as inconsistent and incapable of solving the problem of evil,
FEINBERG: ATHEISM, CALVINISM AND FREE WILL 151

because it assumes incompatibilism, and Mackie and Flew are convinced that
compatibilism is the correct account of freedom. However, several things need
to be said in response. First, as noted previously, incompatibilistic freedom is
as intellectually viable as is compatibilistic freedom. Therefore, the Free Will
Defense cannot be shown conclusively to rest on a defective account of
freedom. Second, Mackie and Flew's claims that the Free Will Defense is to be
rejected as incapable of solving the problem of evil is false. The fundamental
error here is their unwillingness to take seriously enough the fact that any
problem of evil must always be a problem of internal consistency of a theo-
logical system. Obviously, if the free will defender holds to compatibilistic
freedom, then he cannot solve his problem of evil; but the free will defender
does not hold to such freedom. It simply will not do for Mackie and Flew to
attribute their account of freedom to the free will defender and then tell him
that he has an insoluble problem of evil.
The final implication of all this is that the free will defender can solve the
problem of evil which confronts his essentially Arminian theology. If one
begins with incompatibilistic freedom, there is no contradiction in using the
Free Will Defense to solve one's problem of evil. The claim of such atheists as
Mackie that there is no rational way for any theist to solve a problem of evil is
simply false.27 Any Arminian can solve his problem of evil by means of the
Free Will Defense. It is not a solution that will satisfy the atheist; but then, the
atheist is not likely going to be satisfied with any answer to any problem of
evil. The atheist rejects the Free Will Defense and the theology that goes with
it; but he must recognize that such a rejection cannot come on grounds of an
insoluble problem of evil (a problem internal to the system) but on grounds
external to the system, viz. he simply cannot accept the Free Will Defense's
account of freedom.
As for the Calvinist, he must reject the Free Will Defense (and the Arminian
theology that goes with it) as a solution to his problem of evil; but he, too,
must admit that the free will defender's theology is rendered internally con-
sistent by the Free Will Defense. While such a state of affairs may be upsetting
to the atheist, it should not be disturbing to the Calvinist, for he can point to
the Arminian's theology as one example of the falsity of the atheist's claim
that no theist can solve his problem of evil. On the other hand, one should not
take this discussion to indicate that a Calvinist with his commitment to com-
patibilistic freedom has no way to solve the problem of evil which confronts
his theology. As mentioned previously, each theological position has its own
problem of evil and needs its own answer. I have shown elsewhere how a
Calvinist can be committed to a Modified Rationalist theology with a noncon-
sequentialist account of ethics and a commitment to compatibilistic freedom
and still solve the problem of evil that confronts his theology.28 Indeed, the
Calvinist does not draw the same conclusions as does the atheist from his
rejection of the Free Will Defense.
In this paper, I have shown that the atheist and the Calvinist must agree to
reject the Free Will Defense because of a common commitment to com-
patibilism. They must share the same philosophical resting place, but not for
2
?Mackie makes such a claim in "Evil and Omnipotence," 92.
28
See my Theologies and Evil, chapter 6.
152 TRINITY JOURNAL

the same reason. However, the necessity to share the same bed does not mean
that either one rests easy with the other. Ultimately, the atheist will rise to
reject the Free Will Defense and all other attempts to solve problems of evil
which confront all theological systems. The Calvinist will rise pleased that the
free will defender can solve his problem of evil, and he will then present his
own solution to his own theology's problem of evil.
 ^ s
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