First, both Calvinists and Arminians are striving to defend something good. Calvinists want to defend the doctrine of grace, and Arminians want to defend God’s moral reputation.
Second, problems arise in this debate because we impose explanations, often mechanistic explanations, upon mysteries. Calvinists speak of providence and predestination. But nobody knows how that works. Arminians appeal to things like free will. But nobody knows how that works either. The debate is interminable because Bible verses are aggressively exchanged, yet the Scriptural veneer masks a deep ignorance on both sides. Ultimately, no side in the debate knows what they are talking about.
Given this situation, as I mentioned in the first post, I would like to offer a conciliatory reflection. Not that I think it will settle the matter.
First, I have no idea what free will is or how it works. Personally, I do not think liberationist visions of free will are coherent. My view of human volition is more Augustinian. That is to say, freedom is a capacity we develop over time through the grace of God. Regardless, for the purposes of the Calvinism-Arminianism debate, all I think we need to assert is that our “yes” to God is experienced as one of self-authorship. I feel my “yes” to be mine. I experience in my “yes” volitional and psychological integrity. That is to say, I do not feel coerced or compelled, either externally or internally. My “yes” is not experienced as alien or disjunctive. In saying “yes,” I feel like myself.
Second, when I reflect back upon this yes, and all the yeses since, I experience it all as grace. While the yes was mine, as an integral act of my selfhood, my response is one of praise and thanksgiving. I view my yes doxologically. My yes was my yes, but I also know my yes was a gift of God.
And finally, we should stop right here, with this phenomenological account. I experience my yes as both mine and as grace. This is what I feel, self-authorship and thankfulness held together in simultaneity. Was this yes fully and completely my own? Yes, it was. Was this yes the grace and gift of God? Yes, it was.
Now, how can that be so? Well, I have no idea. And neither do you. The problem comes when we try to impose mechanistic explanations upon this mystery, parsing divine and human action or adjudicating between predestination and free will. I think all of that is a mess. So let me make this appeal: Refuse to replace the experience with a mechanism. Embrace the phenomenological mystery and refuse to impose explanations on things that cannot be explained.
