The Therapeutic Appeal of Calvinism

I listened to a debate yesterday between a calvinist James White and a molinist William Lane Craig on the Unbelievable? podcast. I, like many millennial christians, have gone through a phase where I discovered calvinism/reformed theology, then had to decide whether to adopt it or not. I went back and forth for a while (my college roommates would attest to this while rolling their eyes), but have ended up coming out believing that calvinism is theologically and biblically incorrect as well as morally worrisome. However I go to a church with many people who hold to reformed theology that I respect and admire immensely, some of whom are my friends. While the angst on the questions of calvinism is now a thing of the past for me, I still think it's important to understand the best arguments that such a position has to offer, especially if I disagree with it. Enter James White. 

The debate between the two men was stimulating, fascinating, intense, and also civil. At one point, James White made the point that in a calvinist understanding, evil has meaning, whereas in the molinist perspective it does not (this would also apply to other more open systems like process theology and open theism). I found this to be a striking point that demonstrates the therapeutic appeal of calvinism. If you believe, as reformed theology posits, that the future is closed and predetermined, then you likely believe that any tragedy or moral evil that happens to you is all part of God's plan - that it's part of his will that was decreed from eternity past. For me this causes serious questions about God's goodness, but the calvinist will say that God's goodness shouldn't and needn't come into question here. If one believes that God is good, and so his will and plan are good, one would then believe that whatever evil experienced in life was intended by God to happen for good, rather than by coincidence (not that you have to be a calvinist to believe something like "all things happen for a reason").

I have learned to appreciate that rational reasons aren't the only good type of reason for believing something. There are other  reasons pertaining to identity, values, experience, history, etc. For example, a primary argument for why we shouldn't try socialism is often "look at how it worked in the 20th century". That's a historical argument, not one dealing with the rationality of socialism conceptually. But it's still a good reason. So the argument that says calvinism gives suffering meaning is a valid one, even if it's appeal is therapeutic rather than rational (unless you first give a rational argument to why suffering must have meaning, which was not done in this debate). A therapeutic argument seems especially compelling because it's more accessible to people who aren't interested or proficient in this type of theological discussion. To say "calvinism is right because look Romans 9 and Ephesians 1, St. Augustine and John Calvin made these great arguments, but God changing his mind or regretting something is an anthropomorphism" is much more likely to get a blank stare than "calvinism is right because it means your suffering and experiences with evil have meaning and are purposed for good". That has punch.

Now, I feel a need to say that while I understand the compelling nature of such an argument, my opinion on calvinism remains unchanged. For a variety of reasons that I'll undoubtedly delve into in another post, I'm stuck between a kind of molinism and sort-of-almost open theism. But I also have to recognize the logical and experiential problems that I have that a calvinist doesn't. How do I know rationally when to attribute an event, good or bad, to God? If God doesn't determine all things, but merely allows bad things to happen, do I assume that he has nothing to do with causing things that seem bad to us? Do I just assume that anything that seems good to me is caused by God? In some sense, choosing an indeterminist view of the future over a calvinist predeterminist view is just trading one set of problems over the other. At which point the question might may well become, which set of questions do I feel more comfortable with?