In an attempt to preserve the human freedom required for people to be responsible, some have let go of the idea that God is sovereign, to varying degrees. Pelagius first promoted a strong view of free will to oppose the idea of God’s sovereignty in both salvation and good works. His opponent Augustine, demonstrated that the bible teaches that God is sovereign, especially in salvation, but the Roman Catholic church adopted a fairly weak view of God’s sovereignty in our good works. Pelagius’ view was resurrected by Arminius a thousand years later and opposed by Calvin and the early reformers. And the Roman Catholic church’s view of good works has recently be revitalised in reformed circles by the new perspective. Against Pelagius and Arminius, Augustine and Calvin argued that God saves us and keeps us. The Roman Catholic church and the new perspective affirm that it is God who saves us, but teach that it is up to us to keep ourselves in the faith.
Open theism tries to bridge the gap arguing that God is like a brilliant chess player. People are also players in the game, but God is so good that he always wins, using even his opponents moves to achieve his desired outcome. This incorporates the idea of middle knowledge: that God knows everything that there is to know, but he can’t know our choices until we make them. If our choices were known in advance, they wouldn’t be real choices. This is a logical outworking of the philosophical idea that foreknowledge contradicts freedom. If it’s possible to have foreknowledge of the future, then it’s not possible to exercise any freedom that would change that future. Therefore, if God is sovereign, then people have no choice but to do his sovereign will. Ultimately, this is another exaltation of free will at the expense of God’s sovereignty.
What exactly is at stake here? Advocates of free will argue that exalting God’s sovereignty at the expense of free will leads to a hyper-Calvinism where we don’t have to do anything because God is sovereign over everything. Calvinists argue that exalting free will at the expense of God’s sovereignty leads to a theology of salvation by works which denies God’s grace, for we are “chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works, if it were, grace would no longer be grace” (Romans 11:5-6). In the end it is a battle of wills. Is God sovereign in his will for salvation or do we exercise free will in becoming a Christian? Do we persevere as Christians because it is God’s will, or is it our will to persevere? Is human history the result of God’s sovereign will, or the result of the countless human choices that have shaped human history?
At the heart of the tension is the demand that we draw the battle lines between God’s will and our will. We demand that our will be free such that God cannot be sovereign over it, or that God’s will be sovereign such that people don’t have any freedom under it. However this is a false dichotomy that stems from an overly simplistic understanding of God’s sovereignty that’s bound by the limits of human sovereignty. Two people’s choices can easily be in a zero-sum conflict (tug of war); the more a certain decision is one person’s choice, the less it is another’s. But God’s choices and ours are not in the same “either/or” relationship that our choices are in with another person’s. God’s choices are put into effect by the choices of people, God’s will is achieved through human will, not instead of human will (Genesis 50:20, Acts 2:23).
The question then becomes, how does God’s will transcend our will? What is the relationship between God’s choices and ours? The bible describes people as free to chose and accountable for their choices (Deuteronomy 30:11-20), but compared to God’s freedom, people are like tools in the hands of the God who wields us (Isaiah 10:15). People have real agency, but when compared to God’s agency, people’s actions appear to be a mechanism for God’s agency. By analogy, computers make “decisions” all the time. A computer’s processor decides which instructions to execute and when, and its decisions sometimes depend on the “decisions” of other computer processors. The decisions of two CPU’s can easily be in a zero-sum conflict, for example, when it comes to the order and priority of sending and receiving information across a network, the more its one CPU’s decision, the less it is another’s. But when a computer’s ability to make decisions is compared to ours, it becomes negligible. People have infinity more freedom than computers, but God has infinitely more freedom than people.
If God is a chess player, then he is not playing against us, he is moving us, his pieces, to the eschatological end of human history. With sin and death already dealt with on the cross, the final move to make is to send his son a second time to bring the kingdom of God into completion. God has “mate in one”, but he continues to turn pawns into queens, or more accurately (and this is where the analogy breaks down), to turn black pieces into white pieces. It’s not as though God is somehow sovereign over people becoming Christians, but not over their perseverance as Christians. God is sovereign over everything (Romans 8:28, Ephesians 1:11), not despite the choices we make but through the choices we make. Restricting God’s sovereignty to be like the sovereignty that we have over our choices and actions is to imagine that God is playing chess against you, rather than using you as the piece he created, whether you’re black or white, towards his ultimate end of heaven.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Defending Human Freedom
To what extent are we free? When it comes to reconciling God’s sovereignty and free will, it all depends on what you mean by free will. Freedom is necessary for people to be responsible for their actions, you can destroy a machine that constitutes a threat, but you cannot punish a robot for doing what it’s programmed to do. Retributive justice requires that the perpetrators act be of their own volition. Free agents are responsible, but the mechanisms they use cannot be blamed for doing what they could not avoid doing. An agent is responsible to the extent that they were free to act, and free from blame to the extent that they were compelled by another. While some significant theologians (Augustine, Calvin, Carson) have suggested that our freedom does not include the power to contrary (the ability to avoid doing what we’re free to do), this I believe, leads to the inescapable conclusion that God punishes people with an eternity of suffering for things that they’re unable to avoid doing. God’s revelation of his justice and our responsibility drives me to defend human freedom.
Jesus says “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Does this mean that we offer ourselves willing slaves or that we are compelled to sin against our will? Romans 6 describes people as either slaves to sin or slave to righteousness without exception. Can someone who’s a slave to sin blame their sin on their slavery? Paul anticipates this question in Romans 9, if God is sovereign, “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” (Romans 9:19). Paul reminds us that we cannot blame God for our sin against God, “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, Why did you make me like this?” (Romans 9:20), and then suggests why God may have “bore with great patience the objects of his wrath” (Romans 9:22). Whatever we make of Paul’s suggestion as to the reason why, what is clear is that God bears with those who are under his wrath with great patience. It makes little sense for God to bear with them with great patience if he is actively causing them to sin. He is patient with them, not with himself. God passively allows us to sin, he doesn’t force anyone’s hand.
Some object with the observation that “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18). If we read the account in Exodus on which this is based, we find that Pharaoh hardens his own heart (Exodus 8:15) and then God hardens his heart (Exodus 9:12), Pharaoh’s officials harden their own hearts (Exodus 9:34) and then God hardens their hearts (Exodus 10:1). Paul describes this process as God giving people over to their sin (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). God doesn’t harden people who would otherwise have soft hearts, his punishes sin by giving people over to their sin, passively and without compulsion, but ultimately and eternally in hell. God chooses to save some by sheer grace, and this certainly implies that he chooses not to save others. But this doctrine, known as double predestination, sometimes carries an assumption that people are somewhat neutral before God, who chooses some to go up to heaven and others to go down to hell. However, we cannot blame God for our sin, we freely choose the path to destruction and make our own way to hell. God graciously rescues some along the way and puts them on the path to life. Jesus’ death and resurrection made the way to heaven.
If it’s impossible for sinners to avoid sinning, then in what sense are such people without excuse (Romans 1:20)? Who is Paul describing as they who “show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them”(Romans 2:15)? In Romans 3 Paul brings together a number of Old Testament passages to demonstrate that there is no one righteous, not even one, all have turned away (Romans 3:10-18). If we as a race had no option to do otherwise, then this is less of a condemnation of us, than it is a description of the power of that which has enslaved us. This passage however, has immeasurably more force if it is possible to be righteous and yet there is no one who is, if we are able to seek God and yet no one does. Left to ourselves, no one does choose God, but that doesn’t mean that no one can choose God. Jesus was fully human and he did. To say that only he can is to deny that he was tempted in every way that we are (Hebrews 4:15). I’m extremely confident that I won’t choose to murder someone today, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t. The fact that people don’t choose God on their own, doesn’t mean that they can’t.
Augustine wrote that “what our hearts desire, our will chooses and our mind justifies”. The bible tells us that “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Romans 8:5). There is a real sense is which our will is a constant slave to what our hearts desire, but this is saying nothing more than affirming that we choose to do what we want. The key issue in the discussion of free will is, how free are our hearts? We seek to be free to follow our hearts, not to subjugate our hearts to follow something else. To say that we’re not free to want whatever we want, is a misunderstanding of the word “want”. Our hearts desires are our own, to blame your choices on your heart is to blame yourself.
In Genesis 6 “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). We have no one to blame for this but ourselves, God didn’t incline our hearts that way, we did. The gospel however changes our heart so that we no longer desire sin but desire God instead. We no longer seek to be free to sin but to be free from sin. Both sin and faith are driven by the heart: sin is willful disobedience, faith is willful obedience. The bible says that “There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away” (Romans 3:11-12). It’s not that something else turned us away from God, we are the ones who turned away. It’s not that we’re unable to seek God, the force of the words is in the fact that there is no one who seeks God. God seeks us and turns us back to him, not despite our inability to do so, but despite our unwillingness to do so.
Jesus says “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Does this mean that we offer ourselves willing slaves or that we are compelled to sin against our will? Romans 6 describes people as either slaves to sin or slave to righteousness without exception. Can someone who’s a slave to sin blame their sin on their slavery? Paul anticipates this question in Romans 9, if God is sovereign, “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” (Romans 9:19). Paul reminds us that we cannot blame God for our sin against God, “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, Why did you make me like this?” (Romans 9:20), and then suggests why God may have “bore with great patience the objects of his wrath” (Romans 9:22). Whatever we make of Paul’s suggestion as to the reason why, what is clear is that God bears with those who are under his wrath with great patience. It makes little sense for God to bear with them with great patience if he is actively causing them to sin. He is patient with them, not with himself. God passively allows us to sin, he doesn’t force anyone’s hand.
Some object with the observation that “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18). If we read the account in Exodus on which this is based, we find that Pharaoh hardens his own heart (Exodus 8:15) and then God hardens his heart (Exodus 9:12), Pharaoh’s officials harden their own hearts (Exodus 9:34) and then God hardens their hearts (Exodus 10:1). Paul describes this process as God giving people over to their sin (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). God doesn’t harden people who would otherwise have soft hearts, his punishes sin by giving people over to their sin, passively and without compulsion, but ultimately and eternally in hell. God chooses to save some by sheer grace, and this certainly implies that he chooses not to save others. But this doctrine, known as double predestination, sometimes carries an assumption that people are somewhat neutral before God, who chooses some to go up to heaven and others to go down to hell. However, we cannot blame God for our sin, we freely choose the path to destruction and make our own way to hell. God graciously rescues some along the way and puts them on the path to life. Jesus’ death and resurrection made the way to heaven.
If it’s impossible for sinners to avoid sinning, then in what sense are such people without excuse (Romans 1:20)? Who is Paul describing as they who “show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them”(Romans 2:15)? In Romans 3 Paul brings together a number of Old Testament passages to demonstrate that there is no one righteous, not even one, all have turned away (Romans 3:10-18). If we as a race had no option to do otherwise, then this is less of a condemnation of us, than it is a description of the power of that which has enslaved us. This passage however, has immeasurably more force if it is possible to be righteous and yet there is no one who is, if we are able to seek God and yet no one does. Left to ourselves, no one does choose God, but that doesn’t mean that no one can choose God. Jesus was fully human and he did. To say that only he can is to deny that he was tempted in every way that we are (Hebrews 4:15). I’m extremely confident that I won’t choose to murder someone today, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t. The fact that people don’t choose God on their own, doesn’t mean that they can’t.
Augustine wrote that “what our hearts desire, our will chooses and our mind justifies”. The bible tells us that “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Romans 8:5). There is a real sense is which our will is a constant slave to what our hearts desire, but this is saying nothing more than affirming that we choose to do what we want. The key issue in the discussion of free will is, how free are our hearts? We seek to be free to follow our hearts, not to subjugate our hearts to follow something else. To say that we’re not free to want whatever we want, is a misunderstanding of the word “want”. Our hearts desires are our own, to blame your choices on your heart is to blame yourself.
In Genesis 6 “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). We have no one to blame for this but ourselves, God didn’t incline our hearts that way, we did. The gospel however changes our heart so that we no longer desire sin but desire God instead. We no longer seek to be free to sin but to be free from sin. Both sin and faith are driven by the heart: sin is willful disobedience, faith is willful obedience. The bible says that “There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away” (Romans 3:11-12). It’s not that something else turned us away from God, we are the ones who turned away. It’s not that we’re unable to seek God, the force of the words is in the fact that there is no one who seeks God. God seeks us and turns us back to him, not despite our inability to do so, but despite our unwillingness to do so.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Agency and Mechanism
In demonstrating the harmony between Genesis 1 and the Big Bang theory, John Lennox distinguishes between explanations of agency and explanations of mechanism: ‘Now the idea of a “Big Bang” is a point of concern for some people who have been influenced by Richard Dawkins’ simplistic insistence on our choosing either science or God. However, these are false alternatives, on the same foolish level as insisting that we choose between Henry Ford and a car-production line to explain the origin of a Ford Galaxy. The fact is that both of these explanations are necessary: they do not contradict but complement each other. Henry Ford is the agent who designed the car; the car-production line is the mechanism by which it is manufactured. Similarly, we do not have to choose between God and the Big Bang. They are different kinds of explanation – one in terms of God’s creational agency and the other in terms of mechanisms and laws’ (John Lennox, Seven Days that Divided the World, p153).
This is an extremely helpful distinction to maintain in describing how God works through his invisible hand of providence. The explanation that God sends the rain (Matthew 5:45) is not in competition with the scientific explanations of the cause of rain which we can now predict (Luke 12:54). God the agent, uses his creation as the mechanism to cause it to rain. The creator of the universe doesn’t have to work against his creation in order to be sovereign over it, he often works in, though and by his creation. God is of course free to use his visible hand of miracles to achieve his purpose, but he is also free to use his invisible hand of providence. The scientific explanation of what caused the rain explains the mechanism, but the theological explanation of God sending the rain explains the agent. Both agent and mechanism are required for it to rain.
It gets a bit harder when God’s mechanisms also have agency. God uses not only clouds and winds as instruments, but people as well. And people are agents in and of themselves; unlike the clouds and the wind, we make choices and are responsible for them. Isaiah describes the Lord wielding the king of Assyria like an axe (Isaiah 10:15). On the macro level, God is the agent, the king of Assyria is his mechanism. Compared to God’s agency, our agency is mechanistic (Proverbs 21:1). But if we zoom in to the micro level, the king of Assyria is the agent of Israel’s exile and his army was the mechanism that brought it about. Like everyone else, the king makes real choices that he is held accountable for.
Ultimately, God holds the king of Assyria accountable because of his evil intent (Isaiah 10:7). God is not concerned about what we do with our hands, but the intentions of our hearts (Matthew 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23), for the Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). God can achieve his good purposes in and through the harmful purposes of his instruments. God is glorified as good and those with evil intent are condemned as wicked in the same event with the same consequences (Genesis 50:20). The ultimate example of this is demonstrated in the cross, where the most wicked act of humanity is the most gracious act of God (Acts 2:23).
Forgetting God’s sovereignty or pitting his sovereignty against ours can be a tragic mistake. The king of Assyria is judged because his arrogance led him to believe that he was the ultimate agent of the Assyrian conquest (Isaiah 10:12). This is precisely what happens to Nebuchadnezzar who declares “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power?” Nebuchadnezzar is then judged because he does not “acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes” (Daniel 4:28-32). Understanding the place of our will in God’s sovereign will is crucial if we are to let God be God. Knowing who we are before the creator of the universe is the essence of the fear of the Lord, and denying it is the essence of sin. As James so powerfully warns: ‘What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil’ (James 4:14-16).
Thinking of God’s sovereignty in terms of human sovereignty is a very natural thing to do because we can relate to human sovereignty, but it is something that the bible expressly forbids. As Paul wrestles with God’s sovereignty in election, anticipating the question “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” Paul makes it very clear that God is the potter and we are his clay (Romans 9:19-21). Instead of acknowledging God’s sovereignty over everything, we can too easily reduce God to one who is sovereign in the same way that we are sovereign, working for or against the will of others, as opposed to through the will of everyone. Either our will is raised to the level of God’s or his will is reduced to the level of ours. Either way, we can too easily view the achievements of our will as something that God didn’t bring about (Assyria and Nebuchadnezzar) and/or viewing any tension between our will and God’s as something that we can put God on the witness stand for and call him to account (Job and his three friends). This is the nature of God’s rebuke to Job, how can the one who was created talk back to the one who created him? Are we in the place of God?
This is an extremely helpful distinction to maintain in describing how God works through his invisible hand of providence. The explanation that God sends the rain (Matthew 5:45) is not in competition with the scientific explanations of the cause of rain which we can now predict (Luke 12:54). God the agent, uses his creation as the mechanism to cause it to rain. The creator of the universe doesn’t have to work against his creation in order to be sovereign over it, he often works in, though and by his creation. God is of course free to use his visible hand of miracles to achieve his purpose, but he is also free to use his invisible hand of providence. The scientific explanation of what caused the rain explains the mechanism, but the theological explanation of God sending the rain explains the agent. Both agent and mechanism are required for it to rain.
It gets a bit harder when God’s mechanisms also have agency. God uses not only clouds and winds as instruments, but people as well. And people are agents in and of themselves; unlike the clouds and the wind, we make choices and are responsible for them. Isaiah describes the Lord wielding the king of Assyria like an axe (Isaiah 10:15). On the macro level, God is the agent, the king of Assyria is his mechanism. Compared to God’s agency, our agency is mechanistic (Proverbs 21:1). But if we zoom in to the micro level, the king of Assyria is the agent of Israel’s exile and his army was the mechanism that brought it about. Like everyone else, the king makes real choices that he is held accountable for.
Ultimately, God holds the king of Assyria accountable because of his evil intent (Isaiah 10:7). God is not concerned about what we do with our hands, but the intentions of our hearts (Matthew 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23), for the Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). God can achieve his good purposes in and through the harmful purposes of his instruments. God is glorified as good and those with evil intent are condemned as wicked in the same event with the same consequences (Genesis 50:20). The ultimate example of this is demonstrated in the cross, where the most wicked act of humanity is the most gracious act of God (Acts 2:23).
Forgetting God’s sovereignty or pitting his sovereignty against ours can be a tragic mistake. The king of Assyria is judged because his arrogance led him to believe that he was the ultimate agent of the Assyrian conquest (Isaiah 10:12). This is precisely what happens to Nebuchadnezzar who declares “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power?” Nebuchadnezzar is then judged because he does not “acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes” (Daniel 4:28-32). Understanding the place of our will in God’s sovereign will is crucial if we are to let God be God. Knowing who we are before the creator of the universe is the essence of the fear of the Lord, and denying it is the essence of sin. As James so powerfully warns: ‘What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil’ (James 4:14-16).
Thinking of God’s sovereignty in terms of human sovereignty is a very natural thing to do because we can relate to human sovereignty, but it is something that the bible expressly forbids. As Paul wrestles with God’s sovereignty in election, anticipating the question “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” Paul makes it very clear that God is the potter and we are his clay (Romans 9:19-21). Instead of acknowledging God’s sovereignty over everything, we can too easily reduce God to one who is sovereign in the same way that we are sovereign, working for or against the will of others, as opposed to through the will of everyone. Either our will is raised to the level of God’s or his will is reduced to the level of ours. Either way, we can too easily view the achievements of our will as something that God didn’t bring about (Assyria and Nebuchadnezzar) and/or viewing any tension between our will and God’s as something that we can put God on the witness stand for and call him to account (Job and his three friends). This is the nature of God’s rebuke to Job, how can the one who was created talk back to the one who created him? Are we in the place of God?
Sunday, September 23, 2012
The Complexity of Causality
Historical events almost never come about solely through the actions of one person. At the beginning of WW1, the proximate trigger for the war appeared to have been the assignation of the heir to Austria-Hungry. At the end of WW1, if you had of asked the allies what caused the war many would have said that it was the Germans greed for power. But historical hindsight has exposed a plethora of contributing factors such as the arms race, imperialistic foreign policies, political agendas and superiority complexes (some scientists have even suggested the selfish gene theory as an underlying factor of conflict and racism). Causality is often irreducibly complex: removing any one of an event’s contributing factors would have stopped the event from happening. Just think of how many things had to happen for you to have been born, if any one of the events that led to your parents (or their parents) meeting each other had not have happened then you wouldn’t exist.
And yet when it comes to the contributing factors of human decisions, people often demand that we put causality down to the will of a single person. To a degree, this is necessary so that we can hold people responsible for their actions, but every decision is influenced by an uncountable number of factors and influences, some from our genetic makeup (nature), and some from our past experience (nurture). Some philosophers press this point too far and conclude that people are basically robots who can only do what our nature and nurture has programmed us to do, denying the unpredictable human factor of conscious decisions. Others however swing too far the other way in reducing causality to the choices of one, often in order to have someone to blame or reward.
The bible introduces another agent of causality, namely God. In the bible God is consistently referred to as the sovereign Lord. He is the ultimate cause of everything in the sense that if he had not of created the universe nothing would ever have happened, ever. God began and is sovereign over human history, nothing happens outside of his sovereign control; “who resists his will?” (Romans 9:19). God does however, stand behind good and evil asymmetrically; goodness comes from the hand of God (Gen 1:31, 1 Tim 4:4), evil from the desires of our hearts (Matthew 15:18-19 // Mark 7:21-22, James 1:15). When it comes to sin and evil, God allows what he hates in order to achieve what he loves. Thomas Aquinas described God as the first cause (or the uncaused cause). Human decisions cannot be viewed as being made behind God’s back as if he is completely removed from them. We cannot draw a dichotomy between God’s will and our will as if it’s one or the other. If God is truly sovereign then his sovereign will is achieved through human will, not despite human will.
The transcendency of God’s sovereign will is often a stumbling block for Christians. We would much prefer to reduce causality to human decision, but this is an over simplification. Consider the causality of rain, as our knowledge of weather patterns has increased we have been able to understand more and more of the natural processes that cause it to rain. Water evaporates from an ocean or lake, the sun heats up the air over the land causing it to rise, the cooler air containing water vapour rushes in to take its place, and when these clouds gather and cool down the water condensates into rain drops and gravity pulls it down to us as rain. However, Christians don’t see this as in any way detracting from the fact that God sends the rain (Matt 5:45). God’s sovereign will transcends the processes that we observe on earth, whether they are scientific processes controlling the weather, or the processes of human will controlling our decisions.
Consider also what people describe as random chance. If God is sovereign over all things, then everything that we perceive as random or chance or luck is under God’s sovereign control. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Prov 16:33). A dice roll is about as random as you can get, and most Christians don’t have any qualms with God controlling dice. But even without considering the sovereignty of God, it isn’t too difficult to see that “chance” and “luck” have nothing to do with determining the roll of the dice. It all depends on the height from which the dice is thrown, its three dimensional angular velocity (spin), and the surface on which it bounces. If these values are known then the roll of the dice can by predicted by mathematical equations (fairly quickly using computers). To make it easier to visualise, think about tossing a coin, most people consider a coin toss to be random but if you knew its vertical speed then you can calculate its time in the air, if you also knew how quickly the coin was spinning then it’s not too difficult to calculate whether it will be heads or tails (time in the air × speed the coin is spinning = number of spins). When the math gets too complicated (like the three dimensional angular velocity of the dice, and then subsequent trajectories as it bounces on the surface), we call it “chance”. I submit that “chance” and “luck” are terms we use when we don’t know the cause; they are not causes in and of themselves.
Causality is often irreducibly complex, whether we are talking about dice or rain or people. To a certain degree we can often explain the causality of each in terms of natural causes and/or human causes, but God’s sovereign will transcends them all. Being able to explain how things happen scientifically doesn’t undermine why they happen theologically. God is the uncaused cause who is not affected or influenced by anything except his own character. Nothing happens outside of his sovereign will, God’s sovereignty transcends the sovereignty human decisions just as it transcends the decisions of the lot and the weather. God doesn’t need to work against his creation to bring about his sovereign plan, God works in and through his creation to liberate it from its bondage to decay and bring it into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom 8:21).
And yet when it comes to the contributing factors of human decisions, people often demand that we put causality down to the will of a single person. To a degree, this is necessary so that we can hold people responsible for their actions, but every decision is influenced by an uncountable number of factors and influences, some from our genetic makeup (nature), and some from our past experience (nurture). Some philosophers press this point too far and conclude that people are basically robots who can only do what our nature and nurture has programmed us to do, denying the unpredictable human factor of conscious decisions. Others however swing too far the other way in reducing causality to the choices of one, often in order to have someone to blame or reward.
The bible introduces another agent of causality, namely God. In the bible God is consistently referred to as the sovereign Lord. He is the ultimate cause of everything in the sense that if he had not of created the universe nothing would ever have happened, ever. God began and is sovereign over human history, nothing happens outside of his sovereign control; “who resists his will?” (Romans 9:19). God does however, stand behind good and evil asymmetrically; goodness comes from the hand of God (Gen 1:31, 1 Tim 4:4), evil from the desires of our hearts (Matthew 15:18-19 // Mark 7:21-22, James 1:15). When it comes to sin and evil, God allows what he hates in order to achieve what he loves. Thomas Aquinas described God as the first cause (or the uncaused cause). Human decisions cannot be viewed as being made behind God’s back as if he is completely removed from them. We cannot draw a dichotomy between God’s will and our will as if it’s one or the other. If God is truly sovereign then his sovereign will is achieved through human will, not despite human will.
The transcendency of God’s sovereign will is often a stumbling block for Christians. We would much prefer to reduce causality to human decision, but this is an over simplification. Consider the causality of rain, as our knowledge of weather patterns has increased we have been able to understand more and more of the natural processes that cause it to rain. Water evaporates from an ocean or lake, the sun heats up the air over the land causing it to rise, the cooler air containing water vapour rushes in to take its place, and when these clouds gather and cool down the water condensates into rain drops and gravity pulls it down to us as rain. However, Christians don’t see this as in any way detracting from the fact that God sends the rain (Matt 5:45). God’s sovereign will transcends the processes that we observe on earth, whether they are scientific processes controlling the weather, or the processes of human will controlling our decisions.
Consider also what people describe as random chance. If God is sovereign over all things, then everything that we perceive as random or chance or luck is under God’s sovereign control. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Prov 16:33). A dice roll is about as random as you can get, and most Christians don’t have any qualms with God controlling dice. But even without considering the sovereignty of God, it isn’t too difficult to see that “chance” and “luck” have nothing to do with determining the roll of the dice. It all depends on the height from which the dice is thrown, its three dimensional angular velocity (spin), and the surface on which it bounces. If these values are known then the roll of the dice can by predicted by mathematical equations (fairly quickly using computers). To make it easier to visualise, think about tossing a coin, most people consider a coin toss to be random but if you knew its vertical speed then you can calculate its time in the air, if you also knew how quickly the coin was spinning then it’s not too difficult to calculate whether it will be heads or tails (time in the air × speed the coin is spinning = number of spins). When the math gets too complicated (like the three dimensional angular velocity of the dice, and then subsequent trajectories as it bounces on the surface), we call it “chance”. I submit that “chance” and “luck” are terms we use when we don’t know the cause; they are not causes in and of themselves.
Causality is often irreducibly complex, whether we are talking about dice or rain or people. To a certain degree we can often explain the causality of each in terms of natural causes and/or human causes, but God’s sovereign will transcends them all. Being able to explain how things happen scientifically doesn’t undermine why they happen theologically. God is the uncaused cause who is not affected or influenced by anything except his own character. Nothing happens outside of his sovereign will, God’s sovereignty transcends the sovereignty human decisions just as it transcends the decisions of the lot and the weather. God doesn’t need to work against his creation to bring about his sovereign plan, God works in and through his creation to liberate it from its bondage to decay and bring it into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom 8:21).
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Active and Passive Sovereignty
In understanding God’s sovereign reign over everything, Christians have often pointed out that God stands behind good and evil asymmetrically. That is, the way that he stands behind good is different from the way that he stands behind evil. Indeed, God created everything good (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25 and especially 31), “for everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). This however, still leaves us with the question of who created evil. The problem with this question is that evil is not something that’s created, it’s something that’s chosen. Everything that God created was good, but good things (like tools) can be used for evil (like murder).
The account in Genesis describes God creating people with the ability to choose between good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). For many this doesn’t solve the problem at all, it only moves it to another place. We are still left with the question of why God would put a forbidden tree in the garden. The most satisfactory answer that Christians have suggested, is that one needs to be free in order to love. The tree itself isn’t evil (Genesis 1:31), evil comes through Adam’s choice to sin against God (Romans 5:12). God tells Adam and Eve to obey him because it’s him, not because it will help them in their marriage or their work, but because of who God is and because of their relationship with him. God gives them the freedom to love him and the freedom to turn against him.
Moreover, the bible tells us that God didn’t just create humanity with the ability to sin, but that he created them knowing that they would sin (Romans 11:30-32). However the bible goes out of its way to say that we are responsible for our sin. We cannot blame our rejection of God on God, he never forces anyone’s hand to sin. Our sin doesn’t take God by surprise (Genesis 6:5; 8:21), Jesus was not plan B following the fall (1 Peter 1:20, Ephesians 1:4). God is sovereign over our sin, but he is passive over our execution of it, that is, God allows us to sin. Some people think that this is enough to condemn God; if sin is the cause of suffering and death and God has the power to stop it then he is evil for allowing it to continue. However, our sin is not so easily divorced from us, in the parable of the weeds, God’s angels ask him if they can put an end to sin but God allows the evil to grow up with the good because he is merciful (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). Putting an end to all sin, suffering and death would mean putting an end to all of its causes, namely us.
God is extremely patient in allowing us to continue to rebel against him in order to give us more time for more people to repent. God doesn’t make it impossible for people to rebel against him, instead he uses our rebellion to display his awesome justice and mercy (Romans 9:22-23). God allows people to do evil, but he uses even evil to achieve his good purpose (Genesis 50:20, Acts 2:23). Evil wasn’t created by God, it sprang from our desire (James 1:15), specifically, our desire to take God’s place, being like God, knowing and deciding good and evil (Genesis 3:5-6). We are actively sovereign over our sin, that is, we are the perpetrators responsible for it. God is passively sovereign over our sin; in control, allowing us to sin and even using it to magnify his grace towards us (Romans 5:20-21).
The gospel brings a beautiful symmetry to an otherwise dark and gloomy picture. While we are active and God is passive in our sin, God is active and we are passive in his grace. We actively author our sin and God actively authors his grace. God passively receives our sin and we passively receive his grace. Just as sin sprang from our desire to climb our way up to God, God’s grace to us in Christ sprang from his desire to come down to us to save us (Ephesians 1:5-6). The role that we play in accepting his free gift of forgiveness is passive, faith is coming to God with empty hands, the only thing that we bring to the table is the sin that we need to be saved from.
We all choose to sin (Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8) and are therefore deserving of death (Romans 6:23). God allows us to sin because he is patient, giving us more time to repent, and he even uses our evil deeds for his good purpose (Acts 4:27-28). God is sovereign over his grace and mercy, calling those whom he wills to receive his forgiveness in Christ. Those who accept God’s grace accept it with empty hands in humble thanks. For we are the active agents in our sin which God passively allows, he is the active agent in his grace which we passively receive.
The account in Genesis describes God creating people with the ability to choose between good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). For many this doesn’t solve the problem at all, it only moves it to another place. We are still left with the question of why God would put a forbidden tree in the garden. The most satisfactory answer that Christians have suggested, is that one needs to be free in order to love. The tree itself isn’t evil (Genesis 1:31), evil comes through Adam’s choice to sin against God (Romans 5:12). God tells Adam and Eve to obey him because it’s him, not because it will help them in their marriage or their work, but because of who God is and because of their relationship with him. God gives them the freedom to love him and the freedom to turn against him.
Moreover, the bible tells us that God didn’t just create humanity with the ability to sin, but that he created them knowing that they would sin (Romans 11:30-32). However the bible goes out of its way to say that we are responsible for our sin. We cannot blame our rejection of God on God, he never forces anyone’s hand to sin. Our sin doesn’t take God by surprise (Genesis 6:5; 8:21), Jesus was not plan B following the fall (1 Peter 1:20, Ephesians 1:4). God is sovereign over our sin, but he is passive over our execution of it, that is, God allows us to sin. Some people think that this is enough to condemn God; if sin is the cause of suffering and death and God has the power to stop it then he is evil for allowing it to continue. However, our sin is not so easily divorced from us, in the parable of the weeds, God’s angels ask him if they can put an end to sin but God allows the evil to grow up with the good because he is merciful (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). Putting an end to all sin, suffering and death would mean putting an end to all of its causes, namely us.
God is extremely patient in allowing us to continue to rebel against him in order to give us more time for more people to repent. God doesn’t make it impossible for people to rebel against him, instead he uses our rebellion to display his awesome justice and mercy (Romans 9:22-23). God allows people to do evil, but he uses even evil to achieve his good purpose (Genesis 50:20, Acts 2:23). Evil wasn’t created by God, it sprang from our desire (James 1:15), specifically, our desire to take God’s place, being like God, knowing and deciding good and evil (Genesis 3:5-6). We are actively sovereign over our sin, that is, we are the perpetrators responsible for it. God is passively sovereign over our sin; in control, allowing us to sin and even using it to magnify his grace towards us (Romans 5:20-21).
The gospel brings a beautiful symmetry to an otherwise dark and gloomy picture. While we are active and God is passive in our sin, God is active and we are passive in his grace. We actively author our sin and God actively authors his grace. God passively receives our sin and we passively receive his grace. Just as sin sprang from our desire to climb our way up to God, God’s grace to us in Christ sprang from his desire to come down to us to save us (Ephesians 1:5-6). The role that we play in accepting his free gift of forgiveness is passive, faith is coming to God with empty hands, the only thing that we bring to the table is the sin that we need to be saved from.
We all choose to sin (Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8) and are therefore deserving of death (Romans 6:23). God allows us to sin because he is patient, giving us more time to repent, and he even uses our evil deeds for his good purpose (Acts 4:27-28). God is sovereign over his grace and mercy, calling those whom he wills to receive his forgiveness in Christ. Those who accept God’s grace accept it with empty hands in humble thanks. For we are the active agents in our sin which God passively allows, he is the active agent in his grace which we passively receive.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The Duality of Authorship
We often struggle to understand the relationship of divine causality and human causality. When you do something, did you freely choose to do it or did God sovereignly cause you to do it? Several reconciliations involve God’s primary causality and our secondary causality, like God primarily sending the rain and the secondary scientific explanation of condensation. However, framing the two as one after the other reduces our decisions to be like that of a pre-programmed machine. Ironically, several secular philosophers have pursued this line of determinism, but the bible’s portrait of humanity is not at all robotic. We make free choices for good and for evil and bear the consequences. People are not robots but have real agency to which they are held accountable. People ponder the decisions they face and often change their mind after they have taken some action in one direction. Moreover, good is to be rewarded and encouraged and evil is to be punished and condemned.
How then do we reconcile God’s agency in his providence with our agency in our choices? One example that can help us is the dual authorship of the bible. The bible is very much a human text and has human fingerprints all over it, and yet “prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). This does not mean that the bible is one long dictation from God like the Quran (though some parts of the bible include dictations: “This is what the Lord says...”). Each book of the bible has distinct characteristics of its author, but the bible as a whole has the distinctive characteristic of being authored by God, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16).
The transcendence of God’s authorship in parallel with the bible’s human authorship can help us to understand the transcendence of God’s providence in parallel with human decisions. Just as we can understand the inspiration of scripture as the dual authorship of the bible, we can understand God’s sovereignty and human responsibility as the dual authorship of history. At one level, human history is a composition resulting from free human decisions, but none of it is outside of God’s sovereign will and plan. “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). God’s sovereignty is not on the same existential plain (or in the same ball park) as our sovereignty (i.e. in a tug of war between primary and secondary causality), God’s is sovereign over our sovereignty. That is, God’s plan transcends our plans, it’s not an either or between God’s choice and our choice or even a one after the other, but one (God’s) through the other (ours).
Further parallels can be drawn between God’s dictation in the bible and his intervention in history. Just as the bible is made up of God’s invisible inspiration of the prophets and his visible inspiration in his dictation: “this is what the Lord says...”, so too God works in human history using an invisible hand of providence and a visible hand of miracles. Sometimes God achieves his purposes despite his creation (people or nature), though often he achieves his purposes through his creation. This does not reduce people to God’s puppets, for God brings good out of evil (Genesis 50:20; Acts 2:23) and even uses sin to achieve his glory (Proverbs 16:4; Isaiah 10:12-15; Romans 9:17). God cannot disown himself (2 Timothy 2:13) but he can and does use those who disown him to execute his justice (Romans 13:1-5).
Parallels can also be drawn between God using our evil to achieve his good and his word tearing down in order to build up. One of the most developed theologies of the word of God is in the book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah’s call to ministry, God puts his words in Jeremiah’s mouth “to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9-10). This dual intention of tearing down and building up shapes the rest of the book as the word of the Lord becomes a double edged sword that comes to many as the stench of death, before it is received as the fragrance of life. The canonical shape of the book thus makes clear that God “watches over” the sovereign word of God, first to pluck up and tear down, then to plant and to build. The dual theme of judgment and promise is reflected in the shaping of the canonical text. In Jeremiah we see a story arc of the word of the Lord to tear down (Jeremiah 1-25) and to build up (Jeremiah 30-52), pivoting on a narrative of sin and grace (Jeremiah 26-29).
Similarly, God has been sovereign over the narrative of human history which has taken the shape of fall (a tearing down) and redemption (a building up). This is not the best possible world, the best possible world is heaven, but we can only get there by going through earth. Only then will we be able to taste and see how good God’s grace really is, having experienced how devastating our sin really is. “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (Romans 11:32). “Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe” (Galatians 3:22). Both human history and our understanding of God’s word have been darkened by our choice to live without God, and yet in history Jesus came as “the light of all mankind, the light shines in the darkness” (John 1:4-5), and illuminated our understanding of God’s eternal word, “for God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (Galatians 3:22).
How then do we reconcile God’s agency in his providence with our agency in our choices? One example that can help us is the dual authorship of the bible. The bible is very much a human text and has human fingerprints all over it, and yet “prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). This does not mean that the bible is one long dictation from God like the Quran (though some parts of the bible include dictations: “This is what the Lord says...”). Each book of the bible has distinct characteristics of its author, but the bible as a whole has the distinctive characteristic of being authored by God, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16).
The transcendence of God’s authorship in parallel with the bible’s human authorship can help us to understand the transcendence of God’s providence in parallel with human decisions. Just as we can understand the inspiration of scripture as the dual authorship of the bible, we can understand God’s sovereignty and human responsibility as the dual authorship of history. At one level, human history is a composition resulting from free human decisions, but none of it is outside of God’s sovereign will and plan. “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). God’s sovereignty is not on the same existential plain (or in the same ball park) as our sovereignty (i.e. in a tug of war between primary and secondary causality), God’s is sovereign over our sovereignty. That is, God’s plan transcends our plans, it’s not an either or between God’s choice and our choice or even a one after the other, but one (God’s) through the other (ours).
Further parallels can be drawn between God’s dictation in the bible and his intervention in history. Just as the bible is made up of God’s invisible inspiration of the prophets and his visible inspiration in his dictation: “this is what the Lord says...”, so too God works in human history using an invisible hand of providence and a visible hand of miracles. Sometimes God achieves his purposes despite his creation (people or nature), though often he achieves his purposes through his creation. This does not reduce people to God’s puppets, for God brings good out of evil (Genesis 50:20; Acts 2:23) and even uses sin to achieve his glory (Proverbs 16:4; Isaiah 10:12-15; Romans 9:17). God cannot disown himself (2 Timothy 2:13) but he can and does use those who disown him to execute his justice (Romans 13:1-5).
Parallels can also be drawn between God using our evil to achieve his good and his word tearing down in order to build up. One of the most developed theologies of the word of God is in the book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah’s call to ministry, God puts his words in Jeremiah’s mouth “to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9-10). This dual intention of tearing down and building up shapes the rest of the book as the word of the Lord becomes a double edged sword that comes to many as the stench of death, before it is received as the fragrance of life. The canonical shape of the book thus makes clear that God “watches over” the sovereign word of God, first to pluck up and tear down, then to plant and to build. The dual theme of judgment and promise is reflected in the shaping of the canonical text. In Jeremiah we see a story arc of the word of the Lord to tear down (Jeremiah 1-25) and to build up (Jeremiah 30-52), pivoting on a narrative of sin and grace (Jeremiah 26-29).
Similarly, God has been sovereign over the narrative of human history which has taken the shape of fall (a tearing down) and redemption (a building up). This is not the best possible world, the best possible world is heaven, but we can only get there by going through earth. Only then will we be able to taste and see how good God’s grace really is, having experienced how devastating our sin really is. “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (Romans 11:32). “Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe” (Galatians 3:22). Both human history and our understanding of God’s word have been darkened by our choice to live without God, and yet in history Jesus came as “the light of all mankind, the light shines in the darkness” (John 1:4-5), and illuminated our understanding of God’s eternal word, “for God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (Galatians 3:22).
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Pneumatological Key
The integration of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility has always been a difficult one for Christians, however the transcendence of the work of the Holy Spirit has been easier for many to grasp. Christians understand that the Holy Spirit dwells in believers to point us to Christ and help us follow him, without reducing the imperative for us to focus on Christ and follow him. The Son and the Holy Spirit have been said to be the two hands of God. Just as God’s sovereignty and human responsibility meet in the person of Jesus, so here God sovereignly works through the Holy Spirit without reducing our responsibility to do that which the Spirit moves us to do.
The primary role of the Holy Spirit is one of sanctification (Romans 15:16, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, 1 Peter 1:2). The Spirit dwells in believers to make us holy (set apart), that we would be less like the world and more like the one in heaven – God’s will being done on earth (in us) as it is in heaven. This is the very thing that we pray for in the Lord’s prayer, and that we work towards in the Christian life – to be holy because God is holy (1 Peter 1:13-16). The bible describes sanctification as Christians purifying themselves (1 Peter 1:22), and as Christians being born again through the work of God (1 Peter 1:23) side by side. According to the New Testament, God sets us apart for himself and so we are to live lives set apart for God.
In Romans 8, Paul contrasts the man whose mind is “controlled” by the Spirit (Romans 8:6), with the man who is “controlled” by the sinful nature (Romans 8:8). Despite such strong language of God’s sovereign work through the Spirit, Paul’s conclusion is that we therefore have an “obligation”, not to the sinful nature but to the Spirit. How can we have an obligation when we are controlled? Augustine said “What the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” Paul is saying that our hearts desire sin and so our wills chose sin (in Adam). But God has sanctified us by his Spirit so that we desire him, and our wills now choose righteousness (in Christ). The beginning of both of the two ways to live lie in our desire (in Adam or in Christ), but we all bear the responsibility for whichever path our will chooses.
Christian experience testifies to the work of the Holy Spirit in believers. God, through his Holy Spirit, radically transforms lives of those who follow Christ, despite the observation that many have made that “people don’t change”. Some have said that the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you. The bible certainly teaches that Jesus doesn’t change (Hebrews 13:8), Jesus changes us (Romans 8:10-11). The heart wants what the heart wants. We’re never free from the desires of our heart, true freedom is the freedom to follow your heart’s desires. Our desire gives birth to sin (James 1:15) as our will chooses it, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their mind set on what the Spirit desires (Romans 8:5) as our will chooses righteousness. Whichever path your will takes you, your mind will always justify following the desires of your heart, so that even the worst criminals can justify their actions (Proverbs 14:12).
Whether we are following the sinful nature or the Spirit of God, we realise the freedom that we have and the responsibility that comes with it. No one ever pleads “the sinful nature made me do it.” We instinctively know that it is our will that chooses to follow the sinful nature. We all follow our desires, whether they are “in Adam” or “in Christ”, and we are responsible for our wilful choices to follow these desires. Righteousness is wilful obedience, sin is wilful disobedience (Romans 1:18-23). As humans, we are sovereign over our sin; this is what we chose in Adam and we bear the responsibility for it. God is sovereign over his grace; changing people’s hearts is what God chose to do in Christ through the Spirit.
The difficulty comes if we draw a false dichotomy between our will and the work of the Holy Spirit, as if he works in us despite our will and/or against our will. When we choose to follow Christ the Spirit works with our will; transforming our hearts to desire good instead of evil, but never contrary to our will. As Christians, we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because God works in us to will and act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:12-13), not instead of God working in us. God’s sovereign will is achieved by the Holy Spirit transforming our will to be aligned with God’s moral will. This doesn’t happen behind our back or without our knowledge, but as we seek to be transformed by the renewing of our mind to seek God’s good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2).
The Lord works out everything for his own ends, even the wicked for a day of disaster (Proverbs 16:4). Just as God is sovereign over our wilful obedience (righteousness), so he is sovereign over our wilful disobedience (sin). God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and hardens whom he wants to harden (Romans 9:18), but their hardening is never against their will, it is their will unleashed as God hands them over to their sin – the sinful desires of the heart (Romans 1:24-32). In the book of Exodus, we see the paradigmatic example of Pharaoh hardening his heart (Exodus 8:15) and then the Lord hardening his heart (Exodus 9:12), of Pharaoh and his officials hardening their hearts (Exodus 9:34) and then this event being described as God hardening their hearts (Exodus 10:1). Whether it is by the sinful nature or by the Holy Spirit, God is sovereign over the choices that we make. Whether it is through our wilful obedience or our wilful disobedience, God’s sovereign will is achieved through our will, not instead of our will.
The primary role of the Holy Spirit is one of sanctification (Romans 15:16, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, 1 Peter 1:2). The Spirit dwells in believers to make us holy (set apart), that we would be less like the world and more like the one in heaven – God’s will being done on earth (in us) as it is in heaven. This is the very thing that we pray for in the Lord’s prayer, and that we work towards in the Christian life – to be holy because God is holy (1 Peter 1:13-16). The bible describes sanctification as Christians purifying themselves (1 Peter 1:22), and as Christians being born again through the work of God (1 Peter 1:23) side by side. According to the New Testament, God sets us apart for himself and so we are to live lives set apart for God.
In Romans 8, Paul contrasts the man whose mind is “controlled” by the Spirit (Romans 8:6), with the man who is “controlled” by the sinful nature (Romans 8:8). Despite such strong language of God’s sovereign work through the Spirit, Paul’s conclusion is that we therefore have an “obligation”, not to the sinful nature but to the Spirit. How can we have an obligation when we are controlled? Augustine said “What the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” Paul is saying that our hearts desire sin and so our wills chose sin (in Adam). But God has sanctified us by his Spirit so that we desire him, and our wills now choose righteousness (in Christ). The beginning of both of the two ways to live lie in our desire (in Adam or in Christ), but we all bear the responsibility for whichever path our will chooses.
Christian experience testifies to the work of the Holy Spirit in believers. God, through his Holy Spirit, radically transforms lives of those who follow Christ, despite the observation that many have made that “people don’t change”. Some have said that the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you. The bible certainly teaches that Jesus doesn’t change (Hebrews 13:8), Jesus changes us (Romans 8:10-11). The heart wants what the heart wants. We’re never free from the desires of our heart, true freedom is the freedom to follow your heart’s desires. Our desire gives birth to sin (James 1:15) as our will chooses it, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their mind set on what the Spirit desires (Romans 8:5) as our will chooses righteousness. Whichever path your will takes you, your mind will always justify following the desires of your heart, so that even the worst criminals can justify their actions (Proverbs 14:12).
Whether we are following the sinful nature or the Spirit of God, we realise the freedom that we have and the responsibility that comes with it. No one ever pleads “the sinful nature made me do it.” We instinctively know that it is our will that chooses to follow the sinful nature. We all follow our desires, whether they are “in Adam” or “in Christ”, and we are responsible for our wilful choices to follow these desires. Righteousness is wilful obedience, sin is wilful disobedience (Romans 1:18-23). As humans, we are sovereign over our sin; this is what we chose in Adam and we bear the responsibility for it. God is sovereign over his grace; changing people’s hearts is what God chose to do in Christ through the Spirit.
The difficulty comes if we draw a false dichotomy between our will and the work of the Holy Spirit, as if he works in us despite our will and/or against our will. When we choose to follow Christ the Spirit works with our will; transforming our hearts to desire good instead of evil, but never contrary to our will. As Christians, we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because God works in us to will and act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:12-13), not instead of God working in us. God’s sovereign will is achieved by the Holy Spirit transforming our will to be aligned with God’s moral will. This doesn’t happen behind our back or without our knowledge, but as we seek to be transformed by the renewing of our mind to seek God’s good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2).
The Lord works out everything for his own ends, even the wicked for a day of disaster (Proverbs 16:4). Just as God is sovereign over our wilful obedience (righteousness), so he is sovereign over our wilful disobedience (sin). God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and hardens whom he wants to harden (Romans 9:18), but their hardening is never against their will, it is their will unleashed as God hands them over to their sin – the sinful desires of the heart (Romans 1:24-32). In the book of Exodus, we see the paradigmatic example of Pharaoh hardening his heart (Exodus 8:15) and then the Lord hardening his heart (Exodus 9:12), of Pharaoh and his officials hardening their hearts (Exodus 9:34) and then this event being described as God hardening their hearts (Exodus 10:1). Whether it is by the sinful nature or by the Holy Spirit, God is sovereign over the choices that we make. Whether it is through our wilful obedience or our wilful disobedience, God’s sovereign will is achieved through our will, not instead of our will.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The Christological Key
When it comes to formulating the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, one of the greatest difficulties lies in the giant chasm between God and man. The perceived tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility is often formulated as a battle of wills (actions and events are achieved by either God’s will or human will), and part of our difficulty in synthesising both truths comes in imposing the relationship between two human wills onto the relationship between a person’s will and God’s will. While humanity is made in the image of God, there are fundamental differences between the divine and the non-divine, between the creator and what is created. (e.g. transcendence, omnipotence, perfection etc.)
Is this a bridge to far? How can we begin to understand a divine will that’s unlike any will that we know? Fortunately we do not have to speculate in the dark, for God has revealed himself to us in his son Jesus Christ, he is the one who bridges the gap between God and man. According to the orthodox articulation of Christology, Jesus is fully God and fully man in such a way that his divinity does not compromise his humanity and vice versa. Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being (Hebrews 1:3) and yet made like his brothers in every way (Hebrews 2:17). And therein lies the rub, we can begin to understand the relationship between God’s will and human will by understanding the will of Christ, for he is both human and divine.
The will of Christ never departs from the will of God the father, Jesus himself states that his work is to do the will of the father (John 4:34, 6:38). Even as he approaches the horror of the cross Jesus prays for his father’s will to be done (Mark 14:36 // Luke 22:42). Here we see the sovereign will of God embodied in a man who like us, is held responsible for the exercise of his will, Jesus bears the responsibility and consequences of his choice to go to the cross, and God is sovereign in bringing about this awesome act of salvation. God’s will is realised through human will, not instead of it.
Moreover, Christians are transformed so that their will aligns with God’s, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:13). However, far from becoming like robots, we are called to be active participants in this transformation: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2). God achieves the purposes of his will through the transforming our wills to be like his, and even through the will of evil men to bring about the good purposes of God, most clearly seen in the cross (Acts 2:23). In both cases God works through the will of people, it isn’t a battle of wills but a realisation of wills where God’s sovereign will is achieved in, by and through human will.
While this is only beginning to scratch the surface of the so called antinomy between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, it’s an important entry point into the theological synthesis. For understanding the dual authorship of Christ’s will (and the dual authorship of the bible) can and should help us to understand the dual authorship of history – the synthesis of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. The actions of the man Jesus are never explained as arising from either his divinity or humanity, but always arising from both. So too when it comes to God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, the shape of history (and the shape of the bible) cannot be explained by one at the expense of another, but only by one (God’s sovereignty) being realised in, by and through the other (human responsibility).
There is a certain transcendence about this duality of causation that we need to appreciate, for in his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps (Proverbs 16:9). But there is also a certain immanence to appreciate as well, for Moses says to Israel that God will drive out your enemy before you, saying ‘Destroy him!’ (Deuteronomy 33:27). God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are held together even when there is an emphasis on either one of them in the Bible. They cannot be used to water down one another or explain the other away, it would be like saying God sends the rain and so trying to understand and predict the weather is futile. Only a one dimensional view of history demands that we pin events on God or people, but the Bible gives us the horizontal dimension of human responsibility and the vertical dimension of God’s sovereignty. The point of intersection between these two dimensions is perfectly revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
Is this a bridge to far? How can we begin to understand a divine will that’s unlike any will that we know? Fortunately we do not have to speculate in the dark, for God has revealed himself to us in his son Jesus Christ, he is the one who bridges the gap between God and man. According to the orthodox articulation of Christology, Jesus is fully God and fully man in such a way that his divinity does not compromise his humanity and vice versa. Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being (Hebrews 1:3) and yet made like his brothers in every way (Hebrews 2:17). And therein lies the rub, we can begin to understand the relationship between God’s will and human will by understanding the will of Christ, for he is both human and divine.
The will of Christ never departs from the will of God the father, Jesus himself states that his work is to do the will of the father (John 4:34, 6:38). Even as he approaches the horror of the cross Jesus prays for his father’s will to be done (Mark 14:36 // Luke 22:42). Here we see the sovereign will of God embodied in a man who like us, is held responsible for the exercise of his will, Jesus bears the responsibility and consequences of his choice to go to the cross, and God is sovereign in bringing about this awesome act of salvation. God’s will is realised through human will, not instead of it.
Moreover, Christians are transformed so that their will aligns with God’s, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:13). However, far from becoming like robots, we are called to be active participants in this transformation: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2). God achieves the purposes of his will through the transforming our wills to be like his, and even through the will of evil men to bring about the good purposes of God, most clearly seen in the cross (Acts 2:23). In both cases God works through the will of people, it isn’t a battle of wills but a realisation of wills where God’s sovereign will is achieved in, by and through human will.
While this is only beginning to scratch the surface of the so called antinomy between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, it’s an important entry point into the theological synthesis. For understanding the dual authorship of Christ’s will (and the dual authorship of the bible) can and should help us to understand the dual authorship of history – the synthesis of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. The actions of the man Jesus are never explained as arising from either his divinity or humanity, but always arising from both. So too when it comes to God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, the shape of history (and the shape of the bible) cannot be explained by one at the expense of another, but only by one (God’s sovereignty) being realised in, by and through the other (human responsibility).
There is a certain transcendence about this duality of causation that we need to appreciate, for in his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps (Proverbs 16:9). But there is also a certain immanence to appreciate as well, for Moses says to Israel that God will drive out your enemy before you, saying ‘Destroy him!’ (Deuteronomy 33:27). God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are held together even when there is an emphasis on either one of them in the Bible. They cannot be used to water down one another or explain the other away, it would be like saying God sends the rain and so trying to understand and predict the weather is futile. Only a one dimensional view of history demands that we pin events on God or people, but the Bible gives us the horizontal dimension of human responsibility and the vertical dimension of God’s sovereignty. The point of intersection between these two dimensions is perfectly revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Necessity of God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
When it comes to the perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, our minds are often consumed with finding a solution or at least a juxtaposition however uncomfortable it is to avoid hyper Calvinism on the one hand and Arminianism on the other. However, we seldom reflect on why such a tension exists. At one level the answer is simply that the Bible (and the Christian experience) portrays God as sovereign over everything and humans as responsible for the choices that they make. But we can press the point further by reflecting on why the Bible does this.
What is the Bible about? Many have followed the champions of biblical theology in seeing the Bible as a being about the kingdom of God. While there is a great deal of truth to this, it often pushes us to look for “purple passages” to determine a skeletal structure for the unfolding narrative of salvation history. In the end, the kingdom of God is only half the story, for the kingdom of light is constantly juxtaposed with the kingdom of darkness. From the beginning of the story we see enmity placed between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). These are portrayed in the lines of Cain (which means I have acquired - works) and Seth (I have been granted - grace). Throughout the unfolding narrative of the Bible these two “kingdoms” are essentially made up of the elect and the non-elect (if you believe in God’s sovereign choice) and are expressed in Jerusalem and Babylon in the Old Testament and personified in Jesus and the world in the New Testament. The Bible is a tale of two kingdoms where the wheat is constantly growing up with the weeds.
To expand our understanding of what the Bible is about to the point that we’re not forced to look for purple passages (which are about what we’re trying to say the whole Bible is about), we can broaden our thematic categories to that of sin and grace. Indeed, I am arguing that every chapter of the Bible is about sin or grace or both. This is not denying that the Bible is about the kingdom of God, for that is the ultimate expression of grace, but it is to add that it’s also about the kingdom of the world, for that is the expression of sin. All good love stories have an obstacle to overcome, and sin the all encompassing obstacle of salvation history, which is finally overcome by grace alone. Where some have advocated that there are two ways of reading the Bible, as all about you or all about God, the themes of sin and grace pick up the truth in both, for the message of the Bible (the gospel) is one of how our sin is overcome by God’s grace. “Though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him (sin). He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (grace) – John 1:10-12.
What does this have to do with the necessity of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? The two have to be held together because the Bible is all about sin and grace where sin requires human responsibility and grace requires God’s sovereignty. For sin to be a genuine rebellion against God it must be “of humanity”, God does not force our hand to sin and we cannot blame him for our willful disobedience that sin is. For grace to be an undeserved gift it must be “of God”, for it is undeserved by definition and so it cannot come from anything that we do. And therein lies the dilemma, the twin themes of sin and grace that run through every chapter of the Bible require human responsibility and God’s sovereignty respectively. Humans are responsible in that our sin is ours and we cannot blame God for it, and God is sovereign in that his grace is his and it is not merited by us. In short, we are responsible for our sin and God is sovereign over his grace.
But where do we go from here? Does this kind of reflection on the problem help us move towards a solution of the perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? In one sense it doesn’t because it’s just establishing (or restating) the problem, but in another sense it does simply by acknowledging the agents of sin (us) and grace (God). While God is sovereign even over our sin and we are responsible for how we respond to God’s grace, the origin of sin lies in the will of man and the origin of grace lies in the will of God. While the transcendence of God’s sovereignty complicates the relationship between God’s will and our will because God achieves his will not only against evil but through evil, at least we have two distinct starting points. However complicated the manifestation of the relationship between sin and grace becomes, they remain separate in whose will they come from and by whose agency they are expressed. This is indeed the glory of the gospel, for while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
What is the Bible about? Many have followed the champions of biblical theology in seeing the Bible as a being about the kingdom of God. While there is a great deal of truth to this, it often pushes us to look for “purple passages” to determine a skeletal structure for the unfolding narrative of salvation history. In the end, the kingdom of God is only half the story, for the kingdom of light is constantly juxtaposed with the kingdom of darkness. From the beginning of the story we see enmity placed between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). These are portrayed in the lines of Cain (which means I have acquired - works) and Seth (I have been granted - grace). Throughout the unfolding narrative of the Bible these two “kingdoms” are essentially made up of the elect and the non-elect (if you believe in God’s sovereign choice) and are expressed in Jerusalem and Babylon in the Old Testament and personified in Jesus and the world in the New Testament. The Bible is a tale of two kingdoms where the wheat is constantly growing up with the weeds.
To expand our understanding of what the Bible is about to the point that we’re not forced to look for purple passages (which are about what we’re trying to say the whole Bible is about), we can broaden our thematic categories to that of sin and grace. Indeed, I am arguing that every chapter of the Bible is about sin or grace or both. This is not denying that the Bible is about the kingdom of God, for that is the ultimate expression of grace, but it is to add that it’s also about the kingdom of the world, for that is the expression of sin. All good love stories have an obstacle to overcome, and sin the all encompassing obstacle of salvation history, which is finally overcome by grace alone. Where some have advocated that there are two ways of reading the Bible, as all about you or all about God, the themes of sin and grace pick up the truth in both, for the message of the Bible (the gospel) is one of how our sin is overcome by God’s grace. “Though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him (sin). He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (grace) – John 1:10-12.
What does this have to do with the necessity of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? The two have to be held together because the Bible is all about sin and grace where sin requires human responsibility and grace requires God’s sovereignty. For sin to be a genuine rebellion against God it must be “of humanity”, God does not force our hand to sin and we cannot blame him for our willful disobedience that sin is. For grace to be an undeserved gift it must be “of God”, for it is undeserved by definition and so it cannot come from anything that we do. And therein lies the dilemma, the twin themes of sin and grace that run through every chapter of the Bible require human responsibility and God’s sovereignty respectively. Humans are responsible in that our sin is ours and we cannot blame God for it, and God is sovereign in that his grace is his and it is not merited by us. In short, we are responsible for our sin and God is sovereign over his grace.
But where do we go from here? Does this kind of reflection on the problem help us move towards a solution of the perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? In one sense it doesn’t because it’s just establishing (or restating) the problem, but in another sense it does simply by acknowledging the agents of sin (us) and grace (God). While God is sovereign even over our sin and we are responsible for how we respond to God’s grace, the origin of sin lies in the will of man and the origin of grace lies in the will of God. While the transcendence of God’s sovereignty complicates the relationship between God’s will and our will because God achieves his will not only against evil but through evil, at least we have two distinct starting points. However complicated the manifestation of the relationship between sin and grace becomes, they remain separate in whose will they come from and by whose agency they are expressed. This is indeed the glory of the gospel, for while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The Transcendence of God's Sovereignty
When it comes to creation, a number of Christians have sought to reconcile God’s creation in Genesis 1 with scientific observations about evolution, i.e. God creates a process of evolution which he sovereignly controls to bring about his intended creation ‘according to their kinds’. Whether you agree with evolution or not, the principle of God’s transcendence over nature can be accepted. How does God ‘send the rain’? By his sovereign control of a natural weather process. Natural processes in nature are not miraculous, but God is still sovereign over them. A number of Christians have also applied this principle to the ten plagues: whatever changed the Nile to blood brought a plague of frogs, this imbalance in the ecosystem brought a plague of gnats, which in turn brought a plague of flies etc. This doesn’t deny God’s agency (especially because it was predicted through Moses), but can even lead us to appreciate God’s sovereignty through the natural rather than the supernatural.
God’s hands are not tied, he is free to work by a visible hand of miracles or an invisible hand of providence. Only a belief in the god of the gaps (that science can’t explain) seeks to contain the works of God to the miraculous. If this is the case then God has been quite silent for a number of centuries, despite the claim of so many that God has worked in their lives. Of course God can and does do miracles, but he is not limited to only doing miracles. God can work through ordinary people and events to do the extraordinary e.g. reveal himself to someone by their reading of the Bible. Many Old Testament narratives (e.g. Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther) reveal God’s work in salvation history through people without supernatural intervention. God works out everything (both natural and supernatural) in conformity with the purpose of his will (Ephesians 1:11).
In this understanding of God’s transcendence, we can begin to approach the problem of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. How can people be held responsible if God is sovereign over everything (including people)? Because his sovereignty is transcendent to our responsibility, it’s not that the more sovereign he is the less responsible we are, but that he uses our choices (for which we are responsible) to bring about his sovereign will. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are not in tension but in parallel. God’s will is achieved not instead of human will or because of human will, but through human will, i.e. God is sovereignty is achieved through the very thing that makes us responsible, our will. As people we can do things for God or against God, but never instead of God. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are parallel such that they never meet in a point of tension where one must trump the other, but rather one (God’s sovereignty) is realised through the other (human responsibility).
At this point, many will be starting to feel uncomfortable with describing human will and responsibility in such mechanistic terms. If God uses our will to achieve his, doesn’t that mean that he is the agent and we’re the mechanisms? It’s starting to sound like an emphasis on God’s sovereignty at the expense of human responsibility i.e. that we’re just robots and therefore should be held accountable for the things that we do. However, this understanding comes from an oversimplification of the complexities of freedom. To have free will is not necessarily the same thing as being free. The Bible describes humanity as having free will (in that we’re responsible for our actions), but as slaves to sin (in that left to ourselves, no one would choose to obey God).
Augustine first distinguished between the freedom of humanity before the fall and their freedom (or lack thereof) after the fall. As a result of the first sin, man lost his liberty but not his free will. Fallen man is in the bondage of sin. He still has the faculty of choosing, a will free from coercion, but now is free only to sin, because his desires are inclined only toward sin and away from God. Viewed in this way, sin is wilful disobedience and therefore we are responsible for it. God is sovereign over our will in that he can move our will to obey (wilful obedience), or hand it over to its desire (wilful disobedience). Either way, God’s will transcends ours. It’s never God’s will or our will, but God’s will through our will.
Confusion often comes because we describe both God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in terms of will (God’s sovereign will and our free will). This often leads to a tug of war between God’s sovereign will and human free will, but this is an oversimplification of God’s sovereignty. Augustine wrote that what the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies. Our choices and our will begin in our heart, but even the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases (Proverbs 21:1). Why does the heart want what the heart want? Do we have any control over the desires of our heart? Free will is often understood as being able to follow the desires of your heart. To be free is to be free to follow our heart, what we delight in. In this, we are quite different from robots following pre-programmed instructions. We have desires in our hearts that move our will. This I think, is what God transforms in us. He removes our hearts of stone and gives us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26), but also tells us to set our hearts on things above (Colossians 3:1) and that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, then he will give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4).
God’s hands are not tied, he is free to work by a visible hand of miracles or an invisible hand of providence. Only a belief in the god of the gaps (that science can’t explain) seeks to contain the works of God to the miraculous. If this is the case then God has been quite silent for a number of centuries, despite the claim of so many that God has worked in their lives. Of course God can and does do miracles, but he is not limited to only doing miracles. God can work through ordinary people and events to do the extraordinary e.g. reveal himself to someone by their reading of the Bible. Many Old Testament narratives (e.g. Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther) reveal God’s work in salvation history through people without supernatural intervention. God works out everything (both natural and supernatural) in conformity with the purpose of his will (Ephesians 1:11).
In this understanding of God’s transcendence, we can begin to approach the problem of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. How can people be held responsible if God is sovereign over everything (including people)? Because his sovereignty is transcendent to our responsibility, it’s not that the more sovereign he is the less responsible we are, but that he uses our choices (for which we are responsible) to bring about his sovereign will. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are not in tension but in parallel. God’s will is achieved not instead of human will or because of human will, but through human will, i.e. God is sovereignty is achieved through the very thing that makes us responsible, our will. As people we can do things for God or against God, but never instead of God. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are parallel such that they never meet in a point of tension where one must trump the other, but rather one (God’s sovereignty) is realised through the other (human responsibility).
At this point, many will be starting to feel uncomfortable with describing human will and responsibility in such mechanistic terms. If God uses our will to achieve his, doesn’t that mean that he is the agent and we’re the mechanisms? It’s starting to sound like an emphasis on God’s sovereignty at the expense of human responsibility i.e. that we’re just robots and therefore should be held accountable for the things that we do. However, this understanding comes from an oversimplification of the complexities of freedom. To have free will is not necessarily the same thing as being free. The Bible describes humanity as having free will (in that we’re responsible for our actions), but as slaves to sin (in that left to ourselves, no one would choose to obey God).
Augustine first distinguished between the freedom of humanity before the fall and their freedom (or lack thereof) after the fall. As a result of the first sin, man lost his liberty but not his free will. Fallen man is in the bondage of sin. He still has the faculty of choosing, a will free from coercion, but now is free only to sin, because his desires are inclined only toward sin and away from God. Viewed in this way, sin is wilful disobedience and therefore we are responsible for it. God is sovereign over our will in that he can move our will to obey (wilful obedience), or hand it over to its desire (wilful disobedience). Either way, God’s will transcends ours. It’s never God’s will or our will, but God’s will through our will.
Confusion often comes because we describe both God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in terms of will (God’s sovereign will and our free will). This often leads to a tug of war between God’s sovereign will and human free will, but this is an oversimplification of God’s sovereignty. Augustine wrote that what the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies. Our choices and our will begin in our heart, but even the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases (Proverbs 21:1). Why does the heart want what the heart want? Do we have any control over the desires of our heart? Free will is often understood as being able to follow the desires of your heart. To be free is to be free to follow our heart, what we delight in. In this, we are quite different from robots following pre-programmed instructions. We have desires in our hearts that move our will. This I think, is what God transforms in us. He removes our hearts of stone and gives us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26), but also tells us to set our hearts on things above (Colossians 3:1) and that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, then he will give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4).
Thursday, February 9, 2012
God's Will Against Evil and Through Evil
Recently I was reading about some different views on creation (the first thing) and eschatology (the last things). In the Triune Creator, Colin Gunton identifies three views on how these two doctrines relate: eschatology as a return to the good creation, as perfection of creation, and as the completion of God’s creation (Gunton, The Triune Creator p11-12). While I struggle to see the tension in these views, Gunton distinguishes the first view (eschatology as a return) in seeing the fall as a step backwards that redemption overcomes, whereas the other two (eschatology as a perfection/completion) as seeing the fall as a step forwards towards God’s new creation. Which one is it? Is the fall a step in the wrong direction that God overcomes, or a step in the right direction towards a better new creation?
An emphasis on the first view (the fall is a step backwards) leads to a weakening of God’s sovereignty, as if a good creation is plan A but our sin necessitates plan B – redemption. However an emphasis on the second (the fall as a step forwards in God’s plan) leads to a weakening of God’s benevolence, as if God is the orchestrator of evil. Or does it? It all depends on how active or passive God was in the fall. If God forced Adam’s hand dooming humanity to sin, evil and eternal condemnation then his benevolence is hard to maintain. But if Adam (and humanity in Adam) freely chose sin then the consequences are on his (and our) own head. Thus the question becomes whose choice was Adam’s sin, Adam’s or God’s?
This leads us to the heart of the perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. The Bible portrays God as sovereign over everything, he works out everything (including evil) in conformity with the purpose of his will (Eph 1:11) and that in all things God works for the good of those who love him (Rom 8:28). But at the same time people are held responsible for what we do and will be judged according to what we have done (Matt 16:27, Rom 2:6, Rev 22:12). How can these be held without drawing a dichotomy between these biblical truths? I think it all depends on how you understand God’s will and our will – where they intersect/overlap and where God’s will transcends our will.
Obviously our wills are our own and we’re responsible for how we exercise them (otherwise you couldn’t hold anybody accountable for anything). In this, our wills can be aligned with God’s will or opposed to it. The commands given in the Bible presuppose that we are able to do them (Deut 30:11-15). Ought implies can, on hearing God’s word it’s up to us to put it into practice (Matt 7:24-27). However while religion might restrain your heart, the gospel changes your heart. Christians don’t obey in order to be saved, but because we’ve been saved. Our actions don’t change despite an unchanged will, but because of what God has done for us our wills are changed. Christians are those who offer their lives in view of God’s mercy to be transformed so that our will is to do God’s good, perfect and pleasing will (Rom 12:2). In this, God’s will transcends ours. God softens our hearts (Ezk 11:19; 36:26) and moves our will, even the kings heart is in the hands of the Lord (Prov 21:1).
Just as the account of creation is given from a heavenly perspective (Gen 2:4a – this is the account of the heavens and the earth) and an earthly perspective (Gen 2:4b – when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens), so too the Bible portrays our will and actions from the vantage points of God’s heavenly perspective and our earthly perspective (Prov 16:9). These are not two different things to draw a dichotomy between but rather the same thing from two different perspectives. From our perspective on the ground we have real agency, but the Bible also gives us glimpses of God’s perspective in which he uses our agency as a mechanism for his agency. God is so sovereign that his plans are worked out through our plans, not despite them. For example, how does God keep his people from being snatched out of his hand (John 10:28-29)? Is it by his warnings in the Bible, or by his Spirit changing our hearts, or by the people and circumstances that he puts in our lives, or by our decision to persevere? God can (and does) use any and every means to achieve his purposes, even evil to achieve good (Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23).
And so from our perspective evil is a real hindrance to good and the fall is a definite step backwards. But there are two parts to God’s will, God’s command will was (and is) for us to avoid sin and to worship him, but God’s plan will is to use both our obedience and even our disobedience to the praise of his glorious grace (Rom 5:18-21; 11:30-32). God created us with the ability to choose between good and evil knowing that we would choose evil, but also knowing how his good might be displayed in and through our actions. God’s sovereignty is such that he uses both good and evil as steps forward in his good plan. As Augustine puts it, the God and Lord of all things, who created all things exceedingly good and foreknew that evil things would rise out of good, and also knew that it pertained to his most omnipotent goodness to bring good out of evil things rather than not to permit evil things to be (Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace 10.27).
An emphasis on the first view (the fall is a step backwards) leads to a weakening of God’s sovereignty, as if a good creation is plan A but our sin necessitates plan B – redemption. However an emphasis on the second (the fall as a step forwards in God’s plan) leads to a weakening of God’s benevolence, as if God is the orchestrator of evil. Or does it? It all depends on how active or passive God was in the fall. If God forced Adam’s hand dooming humanity to sin, evil and eternal condemnation then his benevolence is hard to maintain. But if Adam (and humanity in Adam) freely chose sin then the consequences are on his (and our) own head. Thus the question becomes whose choice was Adam’s sin, Adam’s or God’s?
This leads us to the heart of the perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. The Bible portrays God as sovereign over everything, he works out everything (including evil) in conformity with the purpose of his will (Eph 1:11) and that in all things God works for the good of those who love him (Rom 8:28). But at the same time people are held responsible for what we do and will be judged according to what we have done (Matt 16:27, Rom 2:6, Rev 22:12). How can these be held without drawing a dichotomy between these biblical truths? I think it all depends on how you understand God’s will and our will – where they intersect/overlap and where God’s will transcends our will.
Obviously our wills are our own and we’re responsible for how we exercise them (otherwise you couldn’t hold anybody accountable for anything). In this, our wills can be aligned with God’s will or opposed to it. The commands given in the Bible presuppose that we are able to do them (Deut 30:11-15). Ought implies can, on hearing God’s word it’s up to us to put it into practice (Matt 7:24-27). However while religion might restrain your heart, the gospel changes your heart. Christians don’t obey in order to be saved, but because we’ve been saved. Our actions don’t change despite an unchanged will, but because of what God has done for us our wills are changed. Christians are those who offer their lives in view of God’s mercy to be transformed so that our will is to do God’s good, perfect and pleasing will (Rom 12:2). In this, God’s will transcends ours. God softens our hearts (Ezk 11:19; 36:26) and moves our will, even the kings heart is in the hands of the Lord (Prov 21:1).
Just as the account of creation is given from a heavenly perspective (Gen 2:4a – this is the account of the heavens and the earth) and an earthly perspective (Gen 2:4b – when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens), so too the Bible portrays our will and actions from the vantage points of God’s heavenly perspective and our earthly perspective (Prov 16:9). These are not two different things to draw a dichotomy between but rather the same thing from two different perspectives. From our perspective on the ground we have real agency, but the Bible also gives us glimpses of God’s perspective in which he uses our agency as a mechanism for his agency. God is so sovereign that his plans are worked out through our plans, not despite them. For example, how does God keep his people from being snatched out of his hand (John 10:28-29)? Is it by his warnings in the Bible, or by his Spirit changing our hearts, or by the people and circumstances that he puts in our lives, or by our decision to persevere? God can (and does) use any and every means to achieve his purposes, even evil to achieve good (Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23).
And so from our perspective evil is a real hindrance to good and the fall is a definite step backwards. But there are two parts to God’s will, God’s command will was (and is) for us to avoid sin and to worship him, but God’s plan will is to use both our obedience and even our disobedience to the praise of his glorious grace (Rom 5:18-21; 11:30-32). God created us with the ability to choose between good and evil knowing that we would choose evil, but also knowing how his good might be displayed in and through our actions. God’s sovereignty is such that he uses both good and evil as steps forward in his good plan. As Augustine puts it, the God and Lord of all things, who created all things exceedingly good and foreknew that evil things would rise out of good, and also knew that it pertained to his most omnipotent goodness to bring good out of evil things rather than not to permit evil things to be (Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace 10.27).
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Problem of Good
Having written on the problem of evil and then recently on the origin of evil and the origin of good, I feel, for the sake of completeness, the need to discuss the problem of good, or as it’s commonly known, the problem of grace. The problem of grace flows from a rigid theology of recompense – that God only gives people what they deserve all the time. While it’s true that people reap what they sow (Galatians 6:7) and that we’re responsible for our actions (Romans 2:6), this doesn’t mean that God can’t (or doesn’t) give people good things that they don’t deserve (grace), even though God doesn’t give people bad things that they don’t deserve (unjust punishment).
The two (grace and unjust punishment) are often confused when the problem of grace is posed. For if God gives good things to one, isn’t he unjust in withholding them from another? How can God bless first world countries with so much while there are so many third world countries in poverty? When phrased like this, the problem of good becomes the problem of evil “how can God allow evil?” with the addition of “while God is good to some”. Those who pose the problem want God to either judge universally or forgive universally, but forbid him to judge one and forgive another, unless of course the one posing the question is (for whatever reason) against the one being judged and for the one being forgiven.
This is well articulated in the Bible in the book of Jonah, when Jonah (finally) gets to Ninevah and preaches, the people repent and God forgives them. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity (Jonah 4:1-2). In Jonah’s eyes the people didn’t deserve God’s grace, however this is a contradiction in terms, for grace itself means undeserved favour. No one deserves grace by definition, if something is given by grace, then it is not by works (and therefore deserved), if it were, grace would no longer be grace (Romans 11:6).
It is from this misunderstanding that the problem is posed, for it only becomes a problem when the one posing it feels that the good that is given to them and withheld from others is deserved. That is, that those who are without are getting what they don’t deserve (unjust punishment) rather than the case being that the beneficiary is getting what they don’t deserve (grace). By this rationale its quiet unfair that God creates dogs as dogs and beetles as beetles. Why does God bestow the intelligence, reason, creativity, relational nature, ability to communicate (and so much more) on you, but not on fluffy the sheep? How unjust!
Jesus illustrates this well in the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). When those who work for the last hour receive the same (previously agreed upon) amount as those who worked for the whole day, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? (Matthew 20:11-15).
This parable overcomes the objection to predestination (that God chooses whom his grace falls on) and its corollary double predestination (that God chooses whom his justice falls on). For if God’s justice is deserved and his grace is undeserved, then God never gives to anyone worse than they deserve, though he does save some from the treacherous fate that we make for ourselves. Jesus explains this to some people who tell him about some others who suffered injustice. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:2-5).
God’s justice is not unfair, what’s undeserved is God’s grace. Once you see everything as being given to you rather than being owed to you, the problem of grace disappears. You see God’s grace as it really is – undeserved favour, and God’s justice as it really is – deserved judgment. Knowing this we rightly fear God’s justice but rejoice at his grace, freely bestowed on all who call on the name of the Lord (Acts 2:2, Romans 10:13). Once we see the truth of Jesus’ words, that unless we repent, we too will perish, we see that far from God’s grace being a problem, it’s the only solution to the biggest problem that we have – death.
The two (grace and unjust punishment) are often confused when the problem of grace is posed. For if God gives good things to one, isn’t he unjust in withholding them from another? How can God bless first world countries with so much while there are so many third world countries in poverty? When phrased like this, the problem of good becomes the problem of evil “how can God allow evil?” with the addition of “while God is good to some”. Those who pose the problem want God to either judge universally or forgive universally, but forbid him to judge one and forgive another, unless of course the one posing the question is (for whatever reason) against the one being judged and for the one being forgiven.
This is well articulated in the Bible in the book of Jonah, when Jonah (finally) gets to Ninevah and preaches, the people repent and God forgives them. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity (Jonah 4:1-2). In Jonah’s eyes the people didn’t deserve God’s grace, however this is a contradiction in terms, for grace itself means undeserved favour. No one deserves grace by definition, if something is given by grace, then it is not by works (and therefore deserved), if it were, grace would no longer be grace (Romans 11:6).
It is from this misunderstanding that the problem is posed, for it only becomes a problem when the one posing it feels that the good that is given to them and withheld from others is deserved. That is, that those who are without are getting what they don’t deserve (unjust punishment) rather than the case being that the beneficiary is getting what they don’t deserve (grace). By this rationale its quiet unfair that God creates dogs as dogs and beetles as beetles. Why does God bestow the intelligence, reason, creativity, relational nature, ability to communicate (and so much more) on you, but not on fluffy the sheep? How unjust!
Jesus illustrates this well in the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). When those who work for the last hour receive the same (previously agreed upon) amount as those who worked for the whole day, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? (Matthew 20:11-15).
This parable overcomes the objection to predestination (that God chooses whom his grace falls on) and its corollary double predestination (that God chooses whom his justice falls on). For if God’s justice is deserved and his grace is undeserved, then God never gives to anyone worse than they deserve, though he does save some from the treacherous fate that we make for ourselves. Jesus explains this to some people who tell him about some others who suffered injustice. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:2-5).
God’s justice is not unfair, what’s undeserved is God’s grace. Once you see everything as being given to you rather than being owed to you, the problem of grace disappears. You see God’s grace as it really is – undeserved favour, and God’s justice as it really is – deserved judgment. Knowing this we rightly fear God’s justice but rejoice at his grace, freely bestowed on all who call on the name of the Lord (Acts 2:2, Romans 10:13). Once we see the truth of Jesus’ words, that unless we repent, we too will perish, we see that far from God’s grace being a problem, it’s the only solution to the biggest problem that we have – death.
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