This paper is co-authored with Randall Johnson
Many associate Reformed Protestantism with soft theological determinism and compatibilism. In other words, according to the Reformed, God determines all things, yet human creatures are truly free, moral agents. Richard Muller and the authors of Reformed Thought on Freedom, however, deny that the Reformed were compatibilists. Instead, they argue that the Reformed held to “dependent freedom” which cannot be categorized as either compatibilist or incompatibilist. Dependent freedom affirms the creature’s dependence upon the divine decree, contra incompatibilism, but it denies that the decree can determine a free will to one effect, contra compatibilism. If the will is determined to one effect, then the agent no longer possesses categorical alternativity which is a requisite of dependent freedom.
In this paper, we argue that Muller et al incorrectly interpret Reformed Protestantism. We demonstrate that their notion of dependent freedom is inconsistent with the Reformed understanding of the divine decree. Because the divine decree is internal to God, it entails soft theological determinism and compatibilism. We show this entailment in four steps. First, the Reformed viewed the decree as internal to God. Biblical and theological reasoning conclude that God’s decree must be immanent. Second, the divine decree ensures God’s infallible foreknowledge of future events. That which God foreknows cannot be otherwise than he eternally decreed. Third, the decree terminates ad extra as God executes in time what he decreed from eternity. God’s external and transient acts cannot differ from his intrinsic and immanent decree. Fourth, because the decree entails a hypothetical necessity, the will can be determined to one effect. For these reasons, we ought to associate the Reformed with soft theological determinism and compatibilism rather than dependent freedom.