Doubting the Answers 49
vision of Christianity, I have to say. In part, this is because
I know it to be based on a notoriously confused reading of
scripture, one whose history goes all the way back to the late
Augustine-a towering genius whose inability to read Greek
and consequent reliance on defective Latin translations turned
out to be the single most tragically consequential case of lin-
guistic incompetence in Christian history. In equal part, how-
ever, it is because I regard the picture of God thus produced
to be a metaphysical absurdity: a God who is at once suppos-
edly the source of all things, and yet also one whose nature is
necessarily thoroughly polluted by arbitrariness ( and, no mat-
ter how orthodox Calvinists might protest, there is no other
way to understand the story of election and dereliction that
Calvin tells), which would mean that in some sense he is a
finite being, in whom possibility exceeds actuality and the
irrational exceeds the rational. There is no need to dilate on
that here, however; it touches upon technical philosophical
issues that are not directly relevant to this book's topic, and
I am not interested in pursuing the debate just now because,
frankly, it is all of somewhat subordinate importance to me.
Of far greater concern than either of these theological de-
fects-either the deeply misguided scriptural exegesis or the
inept metaphysics of the divine-is the moral horror in such
language. In one sense, this is a quality I sometimes almost
admire. True, the Calvinist account of predestination is un -
questionably the most terrifying and severe expression of the
late Augustinian heritage; but it is at least bracing in its consis-
tency, in a way that other expressions of that tradition are not.
Of course, that is also its principal vice; but there is no hint of
duplicity in it. Calvin makes no effort to deceive either us or
himself that there is some deeper kindness in the doctrine he
proclaims, hidden from our sinful eyes only by our own de-