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.
Sovereignty doesn't mean micromanagement of everything in your realm. Micromanages micromanage because they have a boss above them breathing down their necks. Micromanages are always afraid if they don't completely control all their people, their people will screw up, and then their boss will have their head. A boss who is truly on top, and secure in his position, does NOT micromanage but allows the peons some freedom. If the Calvinist god must micromanage everything, it is only because he's a subdeity of a bigger God, because Calvinism is a sort of neo-Gnosticism and apparently operated on a Valentinian model (predestination was a big thing in Valentinianism too) in which there is a hierarchy of heavenly 'aeons' and their god is one of the lower ones, insecure in his position and making sure to micromanage because he's afraid the bigger God will have his hide.
ReplyDeleteStupid atheists complain that science education in the US is the worst in the world, and then use this as an excuse to gut all the real science from the classroom and replace it with MORE evolutionary brainwashing. Newsflash stupid atheists: the reason science learning in the US is so bad to begin with is because for years all that's been taught in science class IS evolution. No practical knowledge is taught. The science classroom is just a propaganda mill for evolutionary theory.
ReplyDeleteCalvinism is very much the same. They complain at how hypocritical Christians are and how immoral, and how they're not good enough. Yada yada yada. And what solution do they propose? More teaching to the effect that there is no free will. Yes, of course, spending more time trying to prove we have no ability to live morally will help make us more moral. Idiots.
Hi Jose,
DeleteThanks for your comments. I agree, sovereignty doesn't mean micromanagement. I've tried to demonstrate that God's sovereignty is decisively different from human sovereignty (such as micromanagement). I've also tried to demonstrate that a Calvinist view of God’s sovereignty does not contradict free will (though hyper-Calvinism does). I think that the solution to immorality amongst Christians is a deeper understanding and appreciation of the gospel. As John Owen wrote: "Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not a lack of effort, but a lack of acquaintance with our privileges in Christ." Comprehension of the benefits God has secured for us in Christ should stimulate a life of sacrificial obedience.
In Christ
John
"Thanks for your comments. I agree, sovereignty doesn't mean micromanagement. I've tried to demonstrate that God's sovereignty is decisively different from human sovereignty (such as micromanagement)."
DeleteIn other words, you failed to understand the point. Even human sovereignty is not micromanagement. Micromanagement is always the opposite of sovereignty.
" I think that the solution to immorality amongst Christians is a deeper understanding and appreciation of the gospel."
Coming from a Calvinist "the gospel" is always nothing more than code for "you have no free will and therefore you shouldn't even bother trying to be moral, because you can't." A deeper appreciation of "the gospel" will lead to more immorality.
If on the other hand, by "the gospel" you have in mind a particular text called the gospel, especially the gospel of Matthew, maybe you are right. The cause of Christian immorality I fear is that Paul has been trumped up to the heavens and used as a blunt instrument to beat the risen Christ to death a second time. A few strained snippets from Paul (which Paul modifies or corrects in other places in his epistles) are taken in an absolute sense and used to destroy the message of Jesus himself, especially as the message is found in Matthew's gospel.
Nobody can say "hey that's a sin" or "a Christian should not do that" without the tiresome retort "I'm justified by faith alone; na na na boo boo." But that attitude is clearly not the attitude that Jesus taught! What ever happened to that passages in Matthew about he who breaks the least commandment or teaches others to do so will be the LEAST in the kingdom. We consider Paul the greatest apostle because he dismisses us from the commandments (or so we interpret it) but by Jesus' statement here it would make him the least (he admits to being the least anyway, because he persecuted the church) and it will make us the least if we avail ourselves of this attitude that rabid Paulinism puts in people, a sort of pride in their laziness and willful disobedience. They think that because they trump up justification by faith alone to the heavens and then wilfully break ALL of God's commands saying "I'm justified by faith alone and I'm better than you because I don't trust in my works but only in faith" they are the best in the kindgom! Jesus says they are the least.
Hi again,
DeleteI'm sorry if I failed to understand your point. My understanding is that micromanagement is controlling every part (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/micromanage?q=micromanage), where control is central to the idea of sovereignty. I'm not convinced that they're opposites.
I'm not sure what experience of Calvinists you've had, but none of the hundreds of Calvinists that I know would describe the gospel as nothing more than a code for "you have no free will and therefore you shouldn't bother trying to be moral". By the gospel I mean the message that though we are more wicked than we dared believe, we are more loved than we dared hope, and so Jesus lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died.
Paul outlines how the gospel of justification by faith alone should motivate Christians to sacrificial obedience in Romans 6, and Romans 12-15. If we were justified by our works then one could say that they were better than someone else, but being justified by faith means that we're not better but rather trust in Jesus who is.
In Christ
John
I would not agree that 'control' is is central to the idea of sovereignty. Independence and reign are central to it. The idea behind sovereignty is that of a ruler who has no authority above him. So, prior to ceding power to the UN, countries were called 'sovereign states.' The idea being they have no authority above them (on this earth anyway). Did it mean they controlled every aspect of their citizens' lives? No. It means they can make whatever laws they want without a higher power saying 'hey, you can't do that.' Once the UN is above them, they lose their sovereignty and now a higher power can say 'hey, stop that.'
ReplyDeleteA sovereign, like say an emperor, could very well decide to control nothing directly and leave everything in the hands of vassals, so long as he maintained control over a powerful enough army to keep the vassals from killing him and taking over. A human sovereign is limited in that way, in the sense that too much freedom given to those below could lead to him being toppled. But God doesn't have to worry about that. If he were to give everyone below him even ABSOLUTE freedom, none would be powerful enough to topple him, not even the devil.
Now reign, I suppose, should be taken mostly to mean legislation, not control. God governs more as judge, and this is the most common image of him in scripture, not so much that of an executive who is controlling things. He is more sovereign judge than sovereign executive. Some rulers decide to reign that way, rather than to try and control everything, exercise less control but more oversight. Less 'you do this now' and more 'why did you do that? now you must pay.'
"Paul outlines how the gospel of justification by faith alone should motivate Christians to sacrificial obedience in Romans 6" that part is always left out, and anyone who dares bring it up is labelled a Pelagian and burned in effigy.
"If we were justified by our works then one could say that they were better than someone else, but being justified by faith means that we're not better but rather trust in Jesus who is."
ReplyDeleteBut the great irony is, people boast so much more about how they don't work, how they trust in their faith. All the boasting I hear is "I trust in faith alone; I'm not trusting in works like you; I have more faith than you; I add nothing to the finished work of Christ on the cross...I...I...I...I..." Its boasting, and the boast is your own ability to trust in faith alone. I've yet to hear anyone say "Look at me! I saved myself by my works!" Even those who clearly think their works are part of the process of their salvation do not say that. Its a caricature and nothing more. Generally they are the more humble, and never do they say "I'm better than you" but rather "You can do it too." The motto of these "Pelagians" as Calvinists call them, after all, is not that only a select caste of special people can do it, but that everyone can. Their message is that everyone has the ability to live a moral life; if that is so, they have actually eliminated boasting by declaring that everyone is equal on this front. So instead of hearing the "Pelagian" say to the drunk "I am better than you because I'm not a drunk" I hear him say "You can put the booze behind you. God gave you free will, and Jesus will help you by his grace; you can do it. Think like Paul 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.'" It is the Calvinists who trusts in faith alone who says "I am better than you" namely "I am better than you because I'm elect and you are not; you have no choice but to go to hell, because God hates the non-elect; but God loves me!" Oh, the shameful boasting!
Hi Jose,
DeleteThe Oxford dictionary's definition of control is "the power to influence or direct people’s behaviour or the course of events" (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/control?q=control). It sounds like you want to define "reign" as having that power but not using it, and "micromanagement" as using that power. I believe that God is in control of all things (Romans 8:28; Ephesians 1:11), regardless of his level of interference. Do you really think Calvinists ignore Romans 6 and label anyone who brings it up as Pelagian? Given the confidence with which you're making assertions about Calvinism, I assume you've read a fair bit of Calvin. Which of Calvin's writings have led you to form your view of Calvinism?
It sounds like you're confusing justification by faith alone with having faith in faith. Four times you wrote about trusting in faith (faith in faith), but Calvinists trust (have faith) in Christ alone. Are you saying that you hear people boast that they don't work or contribute to their salvation? Boasting in the fact that they add nothing to the finished work of Christ on the cross? If so, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:31).
I agree that people have the ability to live a moral life (Romans 2:6-16), but I don't think that anyone does (Romans 3:9-20) and therefore God justifies us by our faith in Christ (Romans 3:21-26) which eliminates boasting (Romans 3:27-31). It sounds like 'the motto of these "Pelagians" as Calvinists call them' is essentially salvation by works, and not just a caricature, evidenced by their emphasis on "you can". When you say "you can... Jesus will help you by his grace", it sounds like you're working with a different definition of grace: "if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace" (Romans 11:6).
I'm a Calvinist and so I don't look down on drunks or atheists as stupid (as you did in your second comment) because I believe that the only difference between them and myself is that I've received God's grace where they haven't yet received it. How could I boast when the only difference is that God has given me his undeserved favour? Therefore I don't look down on people that disagree with me (whether its on Calvinism or atheism) and call them "stupid" or "idiots", but rather I mourn for those whom God has yet to reveal the truth to, pray for them, and try to help them as best I can. How can a Calvinist possibly know who's elect and who's not? We're not trying to win against them, we're trying to win them.
In Christ
John