While the Bible describes God as sovereign over everything that happens (Ephesians 1:11) and people as responsible for the choices they make (Romans 2:6), it makes no apologies for any perceived contradictions and offers no explanations of how these two truths hold together. They are essentially seen as different sides of the same coin, or better, the same events from different perspectives, that is, from different theological aspects.
In linguistics, the verbal aspect of an action performed is of great significance. A bird’s eye view of an action as a whole is called perfective aspect, and the street view of an action unfolding around the viewer is called imperfective aspect. This is the kind of difference that we see in the way that the Bible describes events in human history, with the hindsight of a bird’s eye view God’s sovereignty is clearly seen (Job 42:9-17), but from the perspective of those involved in the events as they happen, people are responsible for the choices they make (Job 42:1-8).
Therefore, from our perspective there is real evil that its perpetrators are held accountable for, a real imperative to repent and believe the gospel, and real warnings to heed against falling away. But from the perspective of God’s sovereignty (which we only catch glimpses of in his word), there is no such thing as evil (for God works all things ultimately for good), unconditional election (predestination), and irresistible grace resulting in the perseverance of the saints. From heaven we see that all of our days are written in the book of life (Psalm 139:16), but from earth we know that we are still writing our history.
Points of tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are often derived from a confusion of theological aspect. If we paint the glimpses that we have of God’s perspective over the reality that we see on the ground, there are bound to be some discrepancies. When we try to force God’s absolute sovereignty (from his perspective) onto our experience of evil (from our perspective), we create the problem of evil – how can God be good and sovereign over evil? However this is like reading an imperfective action (evil) as having perfective aspect. As stated above, from the perspective of God’s sovereignty, there is no such thing as evil – all things are achieving their created purpose and will result in God’s glory (Romans 9:17).
From the ground however, evil is very real and those who do evil must be held responsible for it. Reading God’s sovereignty into this imperfective aspect often results in vain attempts to blame God for our sin. He is sovereign over it, but we are the perpetrators of it. We are the authors of our sin, but God is the author of his grace which uses, restrains and triumphs over our sin. Christians therefore live knowing that we are responsible, and pray knowing that God is sovereign. Both perspectives are needed for a complete picture, but when you put them side by side they are clearly different perspectives.
Some scientific illustrations may help. According to Einstein, if you could travel away from a clock faster than the speed of light, you would be overtaking the light reflected from the clock and so you would see the clock ticking backwards. From the perspective of the stationary clock you would be travelling back in time, but from the perspective of your wrist watch you would be travelling forward through time as normal. From the perspective of someone else on earth I may be standing still, but from space I’m spinning around the world at 10,000 kph and from outside the solar system I’m rotating around the sun at 100,000 kph.
Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. The truth from a bird’s eye view is different from but complementary to the truth from the perspective on the ground. Tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility arises when we confuse the theological aspects of human history from God’s perfective aspect and our imperfective aspect. Now we see in part, but it’s only from the perspective of the end that one can see the whole.
