Reformed Voluntarism

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arapahoepark

Puritan Board Professor
I am curious: where do the Reformed stand on Voluntarism? It has been awhile but I recall a conversation (via email) with a former PB member who was an Amyaldrian and yet held strange views...one of which seemed to be that God didn't define good but did what was already good and gave very bizarre examples. I believe this conundrum is voluntarism (do correct me if I am wrong). What are the Reformed views on this?
 
I am curious: where do the Reformed stand on Voluntarism? It has been awhile but I recall a conversation (via email) with a former PB member who was an Amyaldrian and yet held strange views...one of which seemed to be that God didn't define good but did what was already good and gave very bizarre examples. I believe this conundrum is voluntarism (do correct me if I am wrong). What are the Reformed views on this?

I think there is a variety of thought on this. I'm no expert by any means, but I would side with Bahnsen on this:


It is highly interesting to me that Gordon Clark, for instance, oscillated between voluntarist and necessitarian tendencies. It is actually a subject I have already written a little about and plan to more on at some point.
 
I think there is a variety of thought on this. I'm no expert by any means, but I would side with Bahnsen on this:


It is highly interesting to me that Gordon Clark, for instance, oscillated between voluntarist and necessitarian tendencies. It is actually a subject I have already written a little about and plan to more on at some point.
So is voluntarism saying that God could arbitrarily change his mind while the necessaritian says God forbid it because it is already wrong?
And Bahnsen says neither are correct but everything emerges from the goodness of God?
 
So is voluntarism saying that God could arbitrarily change his mind...

Pretty much. An absolute theological voluntarist would say the opposite of the theistic necessitarian. The former would say: "anything could have been otherwise, including the moral status any of our moral obligations, for God could have willed differently about such things." Under this scenario, the moral status of all things is solely due to what God has freely willed. God could [have] will[ed], for example, that the moral status of a idolater is good and, therefore, that one ought to commit idolatry.

There are good reasons to oppose this view. An epistemically motivated argument I made to a friend who holds (or, at least, held) this view is that it undermines the credibility of God's own self-disclosure. Has God disclosed that He cannot lie? My friend essentially said, "yes, but only because He willed it." But if our view of God is such that God could have willed to bear false witness against us, then we can have no assurance that this has not already happened in the Scriptures which are supposed to be a divine self-disclosure!

Another dilemma an absolute theological voluntarist would face is the question of whether God could [have] will[ed] to devalue or deny Himself.

Admittedly, I understand the motivations for voluntarism less than I do for necessitarianism, so I have tried to qualify the above with the modifier "absolute." But whenever I do find myself talking to someone who identifies as some variety of voluntarist, I tend to find myself disagreeing with them for reasons along the lines of the above.

...while the necessaritian says God forbid it because it is already wrong?

A necessitarian might say that, but not all necessitarians would. A necessitarian just says the opposite of the absolute voluntarist: "nothing about the world could have been otherwise" (Amy Karofsky, A Case for Necessitarianism). God's commands (if the necessitarian believes in God) could not have been otherwise. Creation could not have been otherwise. Etc.

A necessitarian might say that nothing could have been otherwise because of the necessitarian's view of God's own nature. In fact, I used to argue this way (link). As a former necessitarian, I denied that "God's will is under any external compulsion" and instead argued that "His works are intrinsically determined by His nature." However, necessitarianism is also problematic, and I have abandoned that position. If you are interested in why, I would recommend this post I wrote last year.

And Bahnsen says neither are correct but everything emerges from the goodness of God?

He is saying that there is a middle path that avoids the above extremes. For example, God's nature is not itself a result of God's free will but, rather, is necessary. God could not be otherwise. Thus, as God is Himself good by nature, the moral status of some things are necessary. On the other hand, God does have free will. While He could not be otherwise, His be-ing is such that He could have acted otherwise. He could have created (as He has) or not (contra the later views of Gordon Clark). God's natural goodness does not intrinsically pigeon-hole Him into acting one, necessitated way, for there are multiple good actions consistent with His necessarily good nature yet mutually exclusive. God saw His creation was good, true. But had God refrained from creating, divine sufficiency dictates that such action would have been good too.

Now, what God wills must be compatible with His nature: He cannot deny Himself, devalue Himself, etc. As such, given God's free choice to create, I don't think it is possible for God to command creation to commit idolatry (contra absolute voluntarism).

Yet as God did create - and given that we are, by said, created nature, morally obligated to obey God - God can command things of us that are both consistent with His nature yet contingent (contra necessitarianism). One possible example would be Adam's probation: I don't personally see any reason why a probation must, of necessity, have included a command not to eat from a certain tree rather than, say, not to sleep on a certain island (a la C. S. Lewis's Perelandra). In fact, I also don't see any reason a probation was necessitated in the first place. God did not have to create, and given that He did, I would imagine that He did not have to create the world in a particular way with particular laws. But in any case, at the very least, we are contingent (a word necessitarians cannot abide) and were, when God created us, very good.

I hope the above helped.
 
Some Reformed were voluntarists. Most weren't.
 
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