Here’s the irony: even though they seem to be diametrically opposite each other, Arminianism and hyper-Calvinism are related to each other in their opposition to evangelical Calvinism. Unable to hold on to both ends of the compatibilism spectrum, they deny one end in favor of the other. The results in both cases are devastating: Scripture does not give us leeway to believe one truth and to deny another. We must hold both even if we feel the tension.

John Calvin alerted us on the first page of his Institutes of the Christian Religion that “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves” (1.1.1). For both theological and practical reasons, I think Calvin was right. We must know God to know ourselves, and vice versa.

And when it comes to our understanding of salvation, we need to know how God’s sovereignty and human action relate to one another. That’s why Calvinism matters. It is important because at its foundation Calvinism is not about five points, or about debates regarding predestination or the extent of Christ’s atonement. It is driven by a much more basic and fundamental purpose: to understand God and ourselves correctly.

Evangelical Calvinism

Compatibilism serves as a most helpful way of seeing the relationship between God and humans when it comes to an individual’s salvation. Don’t let the term “compatibilism” throw you off just because it sounds like something in a philosophy textbook. It’s really not hard to understand. Consider Jesus’ words: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. . . . All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:35, 37). Who’s responsible in a person’s salvation? Human beings are truly responsible; God is completely sovereign. That’s what compatibilism highlights.

D.A. Carson usefully defines compatibilism in this way: On the one hand, “God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in such a way that human responsibility is curtailed, minimized, or mitigated.” On the other hand, “Human beings are morally responsible creatures—they significantly choose, rebel, obey, believe, defy, make decisions, and so forth, and they are rightly held accountable for such actions; but this characteristic never functions so as to make God absolutely contingent [i.e., dependent on something outside himself].[1]

Or, as Bruce Ware has noted: “God’s determination of what people do is compatible with their carrying out those those determined actions with genuine human freedom and responsibility.”[2] “Compatibilism,” as I use it, is just shorthand for “evangelical Calvinism,” because it defines the heart of a biblical Calvinist’s understanding of salvation.

A Necessary Paradox

We should be compatibilists because the Bible everywhere assumes compatibilism. Scripture never uses the word “compatibilism,” but we see it everywhere—just like we see the truth of the divine “Trinity” and biblical “inerrancy” even though those specific terms are not employed. In fact, compatibilism is assumed on just about every page of the biblical text. Think about it. From beginning to end, God presents himself as the sovereign King who creates, who rules, who works all things according to his plan, and who does everything he does so that he would be glorified. This grand metanarrative of Scripture is explicitly taught or assumed throughout the Bible. Likewise all throughout the Bible God gives people commands and both holds them accountable when they fail to meet them (“don’t eat from this tree,” “circumcise your hearts,” “he who does not believe [in Jesus] is condemned already”) and grants them the promised reward when they meet the condition (“Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness,” “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters,” “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”).

God is absolutely sovereign. At the same time, people are truly responsible. That’s compatibilism. That’s evangelical Calvinism.

These two biblical truths may be hard for us to hold together at the same time with our finite minds. That’s probably why various theologians prefer to call this compatibilistic reality an “antinomy” or “paradox”[3] Whatever we label this reality, we’re not allowed to pick one side of the equation and run with it or even to emphasize one side over the other. Scripture won’t let us do that. In fact, two equally grievous errors result when Christians have lost the balance.

The Errors of Arminians and Hyper-Calvinism

Neither Arminians nor hyper-Calvinists preserve the duality of Scripture’s witness. Instead of holding God’s sovereignty and human responsibility together in tension, they prioritize one of them and in the process deny the force of the other. In order to prioritize human responsibility (in the guise of “free will,” an undefined reality assumed but not proved from Scripture), Arminians teach that God limits his sovereignty. Their logic is this: since God requires faith from individuals for salvation, he limits his intervention in their activity of faith, and he gives them all the ability that they lost in Adam (called “prevenient grace”) so that they all have the ability and the opportunity to trust Christ. Otherwise it would be unjust for God to hold persons accountable for things they couldn’t do themselves. God’s sovereignty, then, acts by his gift of prevenient grace to persons. He does not intervene in his sovereignty to cause them to be born again. In this sense, then, Arminians prioritize human ability over divine sovereignty when it comes to salvation.[4]

Hyper-Calvinists make the opposite error. Holding, as they do, that God is truly sovereign in people’s salvation, they wrongly deny real human responsibility. One of their central tenets is that one’s ability limits one’s responsibility. Since sinners outside of Christ are dead in sin (a biblical truth), hyper-Calvinists aver, they are not responsible for not responding to the gospel summons (an untruth). Dead people don’t do anything, after all. We shouldn’t preach the gospel indiscriminately to all persons since we’re telling non-elect people to do something—repent and believe—that they can’t do. We need to wait until we can tell who the elect are by the effect that sitting under the factual teaching about Jesus brings on them (these are so-called “sensible” sinners); when they start to squirm as they contemplate being outside of Christ, then we can press the claims of Christ on them. And only then.[5]

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