For centuries theologians have wrestled with the “tension” that God is sovereign (in control) over everything and that people are responsible for the choices that they make. How can people be responsible for their actions if God is in control? Surely if God is in control then he is responsible and the individual isn’t, or by contrast, if an individual is responsible then God can’t be sovereign over that particular action (at least).
However this “antinomy” (perceived paradox) carries the assumption that only one will is responsible for any given event. In order to point the finger of blame we look for a single person to place the responsibility on. Unfortunately, cause and effect is not that simple. Every action, event and outcome has a sum of causes interacting with each other, and often effects a series of other actions, events and outcomes. Just as the surface of the sea is shaped by every breath of wind, wave, fish and rain drop; so too are the things that we do shaped by countless causes, influences, circumstances and situations.
Mutual (and even shared) responsibility is acknowledged in our legal system by recognising accomplices and accessories to crime. Several people (each with individual wills) often carry the weight of responsibility of an action, and very rarely do they carry it equally. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is rarely culprit we would assign blame to, and so should we blame the first weight, the heaviest weight, or a weight that allowed others to be added?
It gets a bit more complicated when mutually responsible people do things for different reasons. If an employee is told to fire a co-worker they don’t like, they may do it for spiteful reasons, but if it was ordained by the employer to release the co-worker from a contract they we’re hoping to get out of with financial compensation, it’s done for good reasons. Similarly if I told you to punch your enemy in the back you might do it with evil intent, but if that punch caused them to regurgitate a piece of food that was choking them then it would be the result of good intent.
And therein lies the rub. If actions are deemed to be good or evil based on their intent (as suggested above in defining right and wrong) and actions can be attributed to multiple wills with differing intentions, then there is no need for a tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Every event in history attributes responsibility to God, for without him no one would be created let alone do anything, and also to individuals, for we all have individual wills. Our wills may operate inside or outside God’s moral will (as revealed in the bible), but never outside his sovereign will (as revealed by history). We can do things with or without God, but never instead of God.
The bible says that God is sovereign over all things for good (Rom 8:28, Eph 1:11), but we know that people are capable of evil. In all such cases, the perpetrators intend it for harm while God intends it for good (Gen 50:20). And so the perpetrators are responsible to the extent that the event brings harm and God is responsible to the extent that the event brings good. This is not a tug of war of responsibility where the more responsible the perpetrator is the less responsible God is, rather the responsibility attributed to God transcends the responsibility attributed to the human agents. Both are responsible for all that they have done.
And so in a sense, we’re all accomplices in demonstrating God’s justice and God’s grace. When we do things that lead to God’s deserved punishment we’re accomplices in demonstrating God’s justice, and when we do things that lead to repentance and God’s undeserved grace we’re accomplices in demonstrating God’s grace. As an accomplice, we all have wills that make us 100% responsible for our actions, and as the principle (one who has an accomplice), God is 100% responsible for the events that he ordains (everything). Since all of these culminate in God’s perfect justice and God’s saving grace, God is shown to be just and good, while we may be culpably unjust and evil.
This is nowhere more evident than in Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus was handed over to men by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, who, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross (Acts 2:23). Those who killed him are wicked because they killed him out of envy, pride and hatred, but God’s set purpose was the forgiveness and salvation on all who would accept it. In this event, as it is with every event, God uses human (and often evil) wills to bring about his good will, for God is so sovereign that he uses our will to accomplish his.
