Many metaphors have been employed in the epic debate between determinists and indeterminists, compatibilists and incompatibilists, Calvinists and Arminians. Years ago I began conceiving of these two pictures of volition and responsibility as analogous to the difference between a game of foosball and football. If you imagine that the foosmen are conscious, foosball is an apt picture of the compatibilist picture. The foosmen are controlled by forces beyond them — “their feet can’t touch the ground” —, but their desires pass through them and move them. Like foosball, football is also constrained by rules, boundaries, and conditions beyond the players’ control. But, by contrast, within those bounds, the players have the freedom to dig in their cleats, to dribble or pass, to turn right or left. Most important to the comparison, I take it as revelatory that God chose to win the “game” by descending and playing amongst us. The incarnation, and God’s direct appeal to us as fellow sons of men, makes so much more sense if we are not controlled from outside. In honor of the 2026 World Cup, for your consideration, “Foosball or Football“.
To the Voters of the Seventh Congressional District.
FELLOW CITIZENS: A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity, I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life I was inclined to believe in what I understand is called the “Doctrine of Necessity” — that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control; and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years. And I add here, I have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.
I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, or the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me.
It’s true that I do not belong to a Christian church, and it’s true that I have never made any profession of Christian belief, but I’ve never scorned Christians. I’ve never criticized Christian churches. I’ve never been an open scoffer at Christianity. And what’s more, I believe in this doctrine of necessity. But isn’t it true that there are some religious denominations that also believe in a doctrine of necessity?