I have been working on this one for a long time… a way to conclude the paradox of God’s sovereignty and man’s freewill. Not sure if I’ve got it yet, but here goes.
I am a parent of a soon to be 5 year old boy named Luke. As a parent, I have a certain amount of control over Luke’s experience. I can offer him different choices at different times, with a certain amount of control over what choices he has presented to him. I don’t have perfect control of every situation, but I have some. And I am able to exercise this control as I see fit.
Also as a parent, I have a certain amount of knowledge about what choices Luke will make, given a set of circumstances. I know if I offer Luke a glass of orange juice after a day of running around outside, he will say "yes". I know if I ask him if he wants to eat cod liver, he will say "no".
Now let’s combine these two things, power and knowledge. As a simplified example, I have the limited power over Luke’s life to offer him a choice between behaving and punishment. And most of the time I have some knowledge of what choice he will make. For example, I might say, "Luke, would you like to go to the park, or would you like to sit in your time-out chair?" A simple choice with a fairly obvious outcome.
Given this, it can be said that I also have a certain amount of control over Luke’s actions and behaviours. I have the ability to lead and guide him in a direction or on a path of my choosing, simply by exercising what control I have over his circumstances and the choices that are laid before him. As he grows up, I will certainly have less control over these circumstances than I do now. But for right now I still have a fair amount of control over what happens in his life. And yet Luke still experiences the ability to make choices for himself, and he experiences the ramifications of those choices.
Taking this parent metaphor further, we may understand much of the character and dealings of God through the Bible’s description of him as a "heavenly father". If we assume the nature of God to be omnipotent (perfect power) and omniscient (perfect knowledge), then as God, He is a perfect parent, perfectly knowledgeable about our choices and decisions, and perfectly in control what choices we are offered. Consequently, He is perfectly in control of His children, just as an imperfect earthly father has a slightly imperfect control of his child.
Think for a minute about all the amazing things that computers can do, and remember that everything that a computer does ultimately boils down to zeroes and ones. It may be that every choice we make, every set of circumstances presented to us, no matter how complicated, can factor down to zeroes and ones, a binary world of yes/no, on/off, good/evil, 0/1.. Every word we say, every movement of our eyes across this page, a 0/1 decision at the most minute and even unconscious level.
And God may be in perfect control of all the infinite amounts of zero and one choices that we are offered. Imagine He is standing before each of us, His hands spreading out all the 0/1 options like a farmer sowing seed. And He knows each choice that we will make, each seed we will take or not. He knows I will pick 0 this time, and 1 that time, and 0 again, and then 1 again… He has perfect knowledge of this. It is not that He forces me to do it, it is that He knows me so well that He knows what I will choose. And with this combination of perfect power over my circumstances, and perfect knowledge of what choices I will make, God has perfect control over me. He may lead me where he wills, in any direction and down any path He sees fit, simply by knowing what I will do in a given situation, and then offering me that situation. And then another situation, and then another… 0/1, 0/1, 0/1…
And so to me, my experience is that of a person with freewill. I am free to make whatever decisions I choose. I see a set of choices, I pick one. I do it. I own it. And my sense of justice demands that I accept full responsibility for it. Just like my son Luke should expect to have to sit in the time-out chair if he chooses that. I must accept the results of my choices. I am not freed from this because God is in control of my circumstances. The choices are still mine to make. My will is still free.
Therefore, it can be true that God is completely sovereign and completely in control of man’s destiny, while at the same time man has freewill and is responsible for his choices and actions.
Whether this IS true or not is not for me to say. After all, this is the "Theory of God" topic. I am suggesting the possibility.
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
It sounds like this is a "middle-road" compromise between 2 extremes. Most people that believe in God’s sovereignty would reject your theory because knowing what someone will do is different that acutally controling what someone does. Your example doesn’t really illustrate control and your theory and the traditional theory of sovereignty really break down when looking at problematic(sinful) behavior.
Having said that, I am on the other end of the spectrum and don’t accept the idea of sovereignty at all. The problem I have with your view and the extreme view of sovereignty is that it paints a horrible picture of God. If God knows that a man will choose to rape a woman (selecting "1" instead of "0" in that decision) and he has the ability to stop that or to make him select "0" or "no" instead, then how could he allow that to happen? Why wouldn’t he stop action that if he could. Does he hate the woman so much that he predetermined this man to commit the rape? The same could be said if you feel he placed him at that point of decision knowing he would make the wrong choice.
The better answer is that God can’t (for whatever reason) be involved with our decisions. I’m not trying to get inside the mind of God and determining why God can’t but it is clear that God is not in control of our decisions. Another option would be that God could help but just doesn’t care. I’d prefer to believe that for some reason God can’t help rather than believe that God could help but chooses not to help.
I think some of the paradox comes from the fact that we over emphasis an anthropomophic view of God. Maybe we have so misunderstood the nature of God because we try to project our image and thought processes capablities onto him. Maybe God is more like "love" than like a person and love cannot think or act but it can be thought and be acted. I know that is "way out there" from an ontological perspective and I"m not suggesting that my view, but I’m just putting it out there for thought. Please don’t start labeling me based on that statement, I just think that possibly there are other approaches to God that should be incorporated with our traditional views to see if they help solve these difficult problems.
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
God’s sovereignty is not really something up for debate. The Bible is clear that God is sovereign. In fact, the Bible is much clearer on sovereignty than on freewill. That is the paradox. Rather than claim one is true and the other is not, as you have done. I prefer to try to wrap my mind around the idea that they both are true, as difficult as this is.
I think your issues with God’s sovereignty stem from trying to reconcile a short term earthly perspective of good and evil with an eternal perspective. What we understand to be ultimately good or evil is very limited.
God allowed satan to kill all of Job’s servants through the actions and choices of other people (the Sabeans and Chaldeans). Is this good?
God hardened Pharoah’s heart. He did this for His own glory, even though it meant terrible consequences for the egyptian people. Is that good?
The Israelites are commanded by God many times to kill the women and children of alien populations. Is this good?
Does God protect us? Have you ever prayed for God to protect you? How can He do this if He is unable to act upon the choices of others who may wish to harm you?
The horrible picture of God you describe is painted only by our limited understanding of His ultimate purposes. It is not at all accurate to say that God can’t intervene. The story of Job is a clear example of God choosing to allow death and destruction when He clearly had the option to stop it. He voluntarily put their lives into the hands of satan. And from this we know that all of Job’s servants were murdered. If I were one of those servant’s children, I might have trouble attributing my parent’s murder by foreigners to an act of God. If I were living in one of the cities pillaged by the Israelites, I would be hard pressed to believe that they had been commanded by a loving God to do that. And yet that is the case.
For your example of a woman being raped, I think it pales in comparison to the atrocities I have just described. Again, it is not for us to judge the goodness of God. We have no capability to do that. Our definitions and understandings are insufficient.
Ken Bussell Minister of Music & Administration Our Place Christian Church
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Why wouldn’t it be up for debate?
Why does that have to be "the case". I don’t believe that God murdered those people. I believe that poeple murdered them and the story of Job was a poetic explaination. Just as the story of Noah might be a ancient poetic explanation of why rainbows occur, or the story of "the fall" might include an explanation of why snakes crawl on the ground and women have pain during child birth.
Why must you take those things literally? Why not just see those stories as poems that tell a powerful symbolic message about our universe and relationship with God instead of something that literally happened? Do you believe that the prodigal son literally existed? What is the difference?
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
I don’t take the story of Job literally at all. I believe that the book of Job is obviously poetic and illustrative in many respects. As is much of the Bible. Whether it literally happened or not was not my point. My point is that it illustrates a relationship between God and the devil and man. And what I see in that relationship, through the illustration, is a God who has the power to intervene in our lives for our protection, or to choose not to intervene, as He sees fit.
Neither do I believe that God murdered those people. But if they were murdered at all, I believe the illustration shows that He allowed it.
I am comfortable with my own limitations of understanding. I do not require a God that meets my standards or understanding of goodness or lovingness. What is "good" anyway? Philosophically it is nothing more than a label that we create for ourselves and place upon things. This is good, that is good. It means nothing.
And man’s viewpoint on goodness is short sighted and self centered. A good God would not allow a woman to be raped. A good God would not allow cancer. A good God would not allow a tsunami to kill hundreds of thousands… so we create a God for ourselves that is neutered, that is not powerful, that is not in control, simply because we are unable to reconcile the issues in our limited minds.
Ken Bussell Minister of Music & Administration Our Place Christian Church
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Ken - I was really inspired by your description of various activities and stations which were organised during worship times in your church; also by a creative attitude to worship itself - about which I’d love to know more. I don’t think you should be let loose on the teaching though - or at any rate, your ideal teaching series wouldn’t be ‘the character of God from the Old Testament’, nor perhaps ‘the NT and the role of women in the church’.
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Thanks for the kind words. I am a little disappointed that people on here seem more likely to comment on things they disagree with, but I guess that is human nature, eh?
Ken Bussell Minister of Music & Administration Our Place Christian Church
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
The narrative of Scripture portrays God as ‘sovereign’ in both the Old and New Testaments. That much is true. But unfortunately, sovereignty is rarely properly defined. That God ‘reigns’ or is ‘in control’ is affirmed by the biblical authors repeatedly, but never is there an explanation of what that really boils down to. And that’s ok. Because the Bible isn’t a systematic theology text book.
If we are going to affirm that God is ‘in control’, we’re going to have to choose our metaphors carefully. The reformed view sees God’s relationship to creation as the relationship of a perfect programmer to a perfect machine. The control is perfect and unilateral. Scripture, however, is far more nuanced than the Enlightenment views of providence that we have inherited. The parent metaphor is one I’m glad has been picked up on. I find it unfortunate however, that you try and reduce it to the machine metaphor (for the two are fundamentally dissimilar—and danutz’s objections about what they say about the character of God are right on).
Very good parents sometimes have very bad kids. The same is true of God. He has some rebellious little hellions out there. I believe that because of who he is, he has structured the world in such a way that he cannot intervene (and so I agree with danutz on this point—although the whole ‘God is not a person’ thing strikes me as a little off) in some circumstances. Hence some of the atrocious evils we have witnessed.
There is only a ‘paradox’ of sovereignty and free will if you assume that sovereignty means a certain kind of control. For further reading on this (already well discussed) issue, I recommend John Sanders’ "The God Who Risks" or Greg Boyd’s "Satan and the Problem of Evil" for a theological perspective, or William Hasker’s "God, Time and Knowledge" for a philosophical perspective (open theists of the world unite!).
Peace brothers (and sisters!),
-Daniel-
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Awesome! Thanks for the input on this. This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to generate and benefit from.
You are right that my views incorporate aspects of reformed theology, and I AM trying to combine the two metaphors as you noted.
I think both metaphors are attempts to explain the same things, using the same Bible for guidance, yet coming to different conclusions. And these differences are evidence of the paradox, not evidence that one group is interpreting things wrongly and the other has figured out the truth.
A very large body of Christians hold to the machine metaphor, and have plenty of scriptural precedent to back them up. And just as many more hold to the parent metaphor. Another simplification of this is the division between Calvinism and Arminianism, a huge division between Christians based in part on this issue. I mean, just look at the few comments already posted here and we can clearly see that people get very heated up and divided about this.
I am VERY MUCH interested in embracing this paradox, and looking for ways to explain how BOTH metaphors can be true. I am not interested in picking one side and calling the other wrong, which is what Christians have done for hundreds of years.
Ken Bussell Minister of Music & Administration Our Place Christian Church
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
I didn’t wish to appear dismissive of ken’s comments in an earlier response. The issue (of God’s sovereignty/man’s free will) is not an academic one. It appears every time we seek to provide some sort of explanation of the faith to an unbelieving enquirer. The fact that God seeks a relationship with us at all raises the issue. The existence of pain and suffering in the world canot be discussed without recourse to the issue. It is also a key issue in the formation of the kind of image we carry of God, either helping us or deterring us from pursuing a relationship with him.
It is also part of an issue which has formed the subject of a voluminous conversation which I have been having behind the scenes with kingjames1. I don’t quite know how the conversation started, but we seem to have done the circuit of the usual kinds of arguments between the Calvinist/Arminian sorts of positions. These would be too lengthy to summarise simply, and too tedious to repeat on this forum.
Does the bible seek to address the extent and boundaries of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will - and is it legitimate to organise the material into some sort of systematic grid through which we may view the two areas under consideration?
Perhaps even more pertinently one might ask why Calvin and the reformers thought it necessary to organise a perspective on the bible in the way they did - in the context of their times. What does it tell us about the historical and sociological background of the times, and are the questions they were seeking to answer the kinds of questions that are being asked today?
As is often the case, the answer may be yes and no. I have found that wrestling with issues raised by the question of the extent of God’s will and man’s will has opened up ways of perceiving God that have been very beneficial to me, and I have no doubt that this particular area of debate will not cease to engage people.
At the same time, the background, cultural issues which mould and shape the way people think about God are changing all the time, and the apologetic approach of one era, especially that which relied on certain types of proof and argument, may not be the one which enagages the hearts and minds of this contemporary era, which may be much more to do with where a faith system rests in a smorgasbord of spiritualities on offer, and a resistance to a spirituality which comes with pretensions of exclusiveness. Not that Christianity does not contain, at its heart, a call to an exclusive allegiance as central to its story. But this call may not be the front door to a faith in an age which is brainwashed with pluralism, choice, and consumerism. Somehow, the Christian faith will have to set up its stall in this kind of marketplace.
But the issue of the kind of God to whom we are being called into relationship will still be an issue - and the interest in ‘openness’ theology may be a transmogrification of an older debate, but it shows the issues are still very much alive and relevant to today’s culture.
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
a couple thoughts…
Re: this comment: "God hardened Pharoah’s heart. He did this for His own glory, even though it meant terrible consequences for the egyptian people. Is that good?"
I have always found it interesting that the passage in Exodus goes back and forth between "God hardened pharoah’s heart" and "Pharoah hardened his heart"… perhaps it indicates that the process somehow involves the freedom of both parties (God and humanity) to affect the human will? I apologize for my lack of knowledge concerning both process and open theologies, but isn’t there an understanding in both of those that the human will can affect God’s will?
I think the difference is, while God can somehow affect the human will, human beings cannot affect God’s will — we can only appeal to God for a greater revelation of His will. I realize that there are passages that describe God "changing His mind", but I think this is less a description of God actually being affected by us, and instead describes, in a way we can understand, our own realizaton of God’s will as He reveals it to us. Of course, I’m not sold on any perspective, as I also think it makes sense to say that God does somehow reveal Himself to us in a way that allows for genuine interaction, which would mean we do affect God in some way.
I wonder if I’m making sense here… Maybe I should just say I don’t know :-)
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
As an open theist, I cannot help but reply…
My biggest thought on this is that as the emerging church grows in its emphasis on love and relationality, it will be harder and harder to ‘explain away’ the passages in Scripture where God is portrayed as being affected by humans. Only certain presuppositions about how God’s providence operates cause us to claim that these images of God are ‘anthropomorphisms’. If God doesn’t in fact change his mind, then what are the passages which claim he does trying to say???
For a list of such passages, I refer you to one of my favorite theologians: Greg Boyd.
The beauty of the openness portrayal of God is that it embraces God’s plan for the trinification of reality. Genuine love relationships among humans and between humans and God at the very least points to a mutual ability to affect the other. For more on this, I refer you to Brueggemann’s works on Genesis and Fretheim’s work on Exodus (in the New Interpreter’s Commentary, I believe).For a layperson’s introduction to openness views, I recommend Boyd’s “God of the Possible.”
Clark Pinnock’s classic statement that the Bible is pretheoretical in its approach to the reconciliation of sovereignty and freewill remains deeply insightful (and points to the need for thorough philosophical examination—already provided by Hasker I would argue).
Cheers!
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
thanks for the link, book suggestion, etc.
I agree with your comment re: genuine love relationships, that is the main reason why I can’t wholeheartedly leap into Reform theology. However, I would ask (and perhaps this might be answered by one of the authors you mentioned) why the acceptance of a genuine love relationship between God and humanity necessarily negates God’s sovereignty and omniscience? Isn’t the goal of a love relationship to be "fully known", as Paul alludes to? I fail to see why genuine freedom and God’s sovereignty must be mutually exclusive.
Of course, I have no solid theory to propose… although I will say that Scripture clearly states (here are even verses in the same chapter) both that God changes his mind (1 Sam. 15:10) and that God does not change his mind (1 Sam. 15:28-29)! So we are left with three choices: Either a) God didn’t say those things, b) God is lying, or c) we do not understand what God meant. I’m going to go with "C", and as long as I’m not sure what God meant, I will neither assume that somehow these paradoxes automatically negate God’s sovereignty. That seems wise to me… at least it does today! :-)
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
I find this subject fascinating. Open Theology, particularly the Boyd stuff, asks some very interesting questions on this. I believe that God can change His mind, that He can change His plans. The Bible teaches us over and over again that we are to be in conversation with God. The prophets and the judges and the kings and the patriarchs all begged for God’s mercy, as if what they asked might make a difference in what God would do. Did they do so in ignorance, or in wisdom?
I feel very strongly and agree wholeheartedly with gdargan on the point that we don’t understand God. I would go even further and suggest that the word paradox is just a way for us to avoid the word contradiction. I use the word paradox all the time. But I see it as nearly a synonym for contradiction. Part of me feels that it is not very useful to try to develop a new "ism" (like calvinism, arminianism, or openism) that explains everything. Why create another thought system for Christians to choose and then call other Christians wrong for not choosing it?? I am much more open to the idea that we are not capable of understanding God, and much of what God has told us through the Bible can seem contradictory to us because we are not able to understand it, and even more, not meant to understand it. God asks for our faith, not our understanding.
As people and churches trying to engage those with an increasingly postmodern mindset, we have to get beyond these ideas of explaining everything and being confident that we hold the "truth" on a subject like this. We need to be willing to admit that the Bible is contradictory on the topic, or use paradox if that word is more comfortable for us, and get on to the more important business of sharing a spiritual journey together with Christ. NT Wright has some similar things to say about the authority of scripture and how we define authority and all of that. I am looking forward to the new book…
Ken Bussell Minister of Music & Administration Our Place Christian Church
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Ken—I think you are right to acknowledge that Scripture contradicts itself on this issue. I wouldn’t state it quite so boldly (it’s easier for a series of propositions to be self-contradictory than it is for a story to be so—Scripture being the latter, of course), but there is an odd tension that arises from the text itself.
Gdargan—you are correct in observing that love and freedom need not be mutually exclusive. For open theists like myself (and this is Boyd’s view as well), freedom of the will is merely a means to a divine end (that end being love). When we use our freedom in the way that it was meant to be used, we become slaves of Christ—thereby losing the ability to be slaves of anything else. And this is salvation! I whole-heartedly affirm that when we lose our freedom to Christ, we are truly free (in the meaningful sense). Boyd uses an analogy from marriage to draw this out further. During the dating and engagement phase, the individuals in the relationship are still ‘free’ in the technical sense; but the more they choose to love one another (forsaking all others), the less they are capable of choosing anything else. The end of freedom is love (and the loss of freedom to do anything but love). I hope this helps paint a clearer picture for you.
The only sense in which freedom is a ‘problem’ for divine foreknowledge is when someone’s character is not settled and the future is consequently open-ended. Most people are at least partially settled in most areas in life, but some have some areas where our character is not fully resolved (or our ideas for that matter—6 months ago, that was very much true of me and my views on homosexuality). The work of the Spirit is to encourage us to solidify our character (through the choices we make) by submitting to Christ.
Am I making sense?
Cheers,
-Daniel-
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Scripture only contradicts itself because we try to read all these hundreds of writings as one book with one author. If we see them all in context of their authors (to the best of our ability) then the we realize they are not contradictions but just views from a different perspecctive.
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
wow — change that sentence just a little bit and you’d almost have a fundamentalist view of scripture! hehe! ;-)
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
I agree with your points, but I guess I need to read the book(s) because I still don’t see how any of this negates God’s sovereignty or foreknowledge, and that may not be what you are saying anyway.
It is one thing for a perfect being to allow such freedom and love while remaining omniscient as to the final outcome; it is another to say that allowing such freedom and love hinders that omniscience. It seems that the issue really does hinge on just *how* we affect God. Not at all? I don’t think that’s Scriptural or logical. In a way that lessens His "God-ness"? That’s not Scriptural or logical either. So we are left somewhere in between… and here we struggle :-)
Obviously, the Reform tradition would say that even our abilities to love, have faith, freedom, etc. are all gifts from God, so it’s all His work anyway. But Scripture continally attests to our role in the relationship, and God has chosen to have relationships with humans, as you say, none of which have a character that is "fully resolved." I am fascinated by this dilemma (which, of course, is only a dilemma from our perspective, God’s fine with it!). Thanks for the topic!
Pharaoh and 'hardening'
The record says that Pharaoh’s heart was ‘hardened’ ten times. But of these, the first seven hardenings were from his own refusal to listen to God. The last three were the work of God.
Re: Pharaoh and 'hardening'
I agree that we should not neuter God’s sovereignty as a result of our inability to understand it. Totally onboard with that one!
Interesting thing about Pharoah. Why did God have to do the hardening the last three times? Was Pharoah trying to change his mind and God wasn’t letting him? Wierd?
Ken Bussell Minister of Music & Administration Our Place Christian Church
Re: Pharaoh and 'hardening'
This conversation is really pretty bad deja vu for me. I spent my first two years in college reading up on this stuff, so I feel like I’m having flashbacks…
Anyway, long story boring, open theists deny that we should throw out ‘sovereignty’. In fact, most open theists argue that we have a better understanding (viz. more scriptural and philosophically plausible) of sovereignty than those in the reformed tradition. The question is not whether God reigns, but rather, how he chooses to reign.
As for pharoah, the argument goes that what God does to the human will, he does not do coercively. And so pharoah freely chose to say no to God and to the israelites 7 times. As a result of this, God said, fine, if you choose to be this kind of a person, I will use your hardened personality in thus and such a way. The point is that Pharoah is being dealt with according to his free choices, and not against his will (it’s not like he wanted to set the israelites free, but God hardened him so that he couldn’t). This is the traditional openness explanation. Throw in a little bit of Scriptural nuance, and you might realize that the Hebrew authors of Exodus might simply have been trying to emphasize the role of Yahweh in delivering them and in making an example out of Pharoah. What God actually did in that circumstance (as opposed to what the Hebrew Scriptures say he did) is unavailable to us—though we can be sure that whatever he did, it didn’t violate his character or the law of non-contradiction.
Am I making sense? And so sovereignty is good, and Scriptural for that matter—it simply needs to be redefined (scripturally) so that the Calvinists don’t have the monopoly on the word (kind of like complementarianism—good word, bad doctrine). As for foreknowledge, the issue is more philosophical than Scriptural, but it goes along the line of saying that when human choices are previously undetermined, the future exists only as possibilities (vs. actualities—note that not all choices fulfill this requirement). Because God is omniscient (viz. his knowledge of the world and the world as it is are mutually coextensive), God knows the future as partially open and partially settled. It is only when a human (or angelic) will settles what the future will be with a choice that the future becomes settled for God to know about. Philosophically pretty complex, but the point is that there are echoes of this in Scripture (God changing his mind is one example of this).
I recommend reading Isaiah 5:1-7. Granted, readers of Brueggemann and Heschel will recognize typical prophetic hyperbole, but the point remains: God’s expectations about the future were disappointed (it is therefore not so ludicrous to think that certain aspects of the future must have been unsettled).
Cheers!
-Daniel-
Re: Pharaoh and 'hardening'
I agree with Daniel on this but of course I am going to take it a step further (sorry I’m an extremist) and still say that no person (or God for that matter) can know something that hasn’t happened. It has nothing to do with lack of power or soveriegnty, it is just that it hasn’t happened so you can’t know it. You can however know a person’s character and tendencies well enough to make a guess with a high probability. That is much different than "knowing the future".
Is it possible that we missunderstand control? For example, wouldn’t you say that a drug addict is controled by his craving for drugs? Can love (God) also control us by changing our desires rather than physically manipulating us? I would say that having our minds filled (hearts if you prefer that metaphor) with compassion (the "spirit" of God), our desires are transformed and those feelings control us the same way that bad habits could control us. I would definately say that my love for my wife controls everything that I do. It changes where I live, where I work, how I dress, what I do on the weekends, etc. I think that this is how God controls me also. That is why I feel compelled to have discussions on this site. I couldn’t stop thinking about God no matter how hard I tried. God consumes my mind.
The idea of control and soveriegnty is skewed by our traditional anthropomophic trancendental view of God. If we understand God’s nature as "being" rather than "a being" then we see that God has incredible control over us but it is from the inside out.
Re: Pharaoh and 'hardening'
But isn’t making a generalized statement about God, like "[No God] can know something that hasn’t happened", just as anthropomorphic as any other absolute statement about God’s sovereignty?
Re: Pharaoh and 'hardening'
Yes, you are right! I use that language intentionally when conversing with people that have that view of God. Otherwise we really couldn’t talk about God. Plus I’m from a very traditional Christian background so I feel comfortable (like an old shoe) using anthropomorphic language. However I see it as only language and it is not true to my underlying thoughts about ontology.
Re: Pharaoh and 'hardening'
So let me make sure I understand, your underlying thoughts are NOT that God can’t know the future? I’m not trying to be a smart-aleck, I just want to make sure I’m hearing what you’re saying, and it appears that you just made an absolute statement you don’t really agree with, for the sake of debate.
What I don’t understand is why it’s so difficult to imagine that God does know the future? Why does God’s allowance for our free will automatically mean that some aspect of His character is lessened?
Re: Pharaoh and 'hardening'
no, that isnt’ what I said. I said that you were right when you said I was using anthropomorphic language. I did that for the purpose of making conversation, but I DO NOT have an anthropomophic view of God.
Back to the future (he he), I don’t think the future has happened yet, so it can’t be known. That says more about how I see "time" rather than how I see God.
freeing the will
I guess each of us has spent years trying to crack this one! It’s a natural nutcracker of a problem for our little minds to try to puzzle out.
I have an idea that God is in control of every little ‘bit’ of this universe. And I think that that is precisely what guarantees free will. Without God we have (it appears to me) two choices, chaos that sometimes appears to have order or order that sometimes appears chaotic. In either of these, free will or even just will is a myth.
if the will is to be free to choose, it is my assumption that for the choice to be truly free, there should at the point of choosing, be no force pushing in one direction. That is, the ‘forces’ whatever they may be, must be exactly balanced and in this instant of being literally on the knife’s edge, my choice is inherently free.
God being completely in control has the unique ability to place before me a choice that is exactly 50/50 for me at that moment. Whether He does or does not know what I will do can’t take away from the fact that the choice is exactly balanced for me at that point in time. He is the only one who can and does do this…
Live to serve : Serve to live
50/50 free?
I see no reason to define ‘freedom’ as a 50/50 choice. Plenty of choices are 60/40, 90/10, etc. (and that’s only when there’s two clear cut choices!! often there are many more). Trying to cash out the concept of possibility in terms of a binary pair of statistical probabilities, I think, oversimplifies the issue. It may be better to speak of a degree of indeterminacy about (some) unmade choices. To the degree that an outcome isn’t determined by it’s preceding causes, that outcome isn’t knowable (as certain—though it may be known as ‘probable’). I see no (philosophical or biblical) reason to assume that God values our ‘free will’ enough to be constantly intervening so that it can be exercised. It may be enough to say that God has created genuine ‘others’. To be an ‘other’ is (at the very least) to have a will other than God’s. I think that says most of what needs to be said.
My two cents…
oversimplification
Thanks, Daniel, yes that is a gross oversimplification on my part. I did not mean for 50/50 to be taken statistically or even to imply that choice means a choice between only two options.
The essence of my point is that only God in His sovereignty can give me a “free” will and this does not contradict His sovereignty but rather is an active application of His Sovereignty
Live to serve : Serve to live
Why?
I for one have always struggled with why this is a problem. Why should God’s sovereignty, which is absolute, and my free will, which is finite, conflict? I’ve never understood the Calvinist/Arminiast thing simply because they are attempts to quantify which is, by its very nature, a mystery.
This is modernist problem which I, as a postmodernist, don’t need an answer to because there really isn’t one. To understand God (which seems to be the purpose of both of these schools) is to be God, and therein lies the impossibility.
Because! :-)
Just a note on terminology, it’s Calvinist and Arminian. Nothing personal, it’s just that I’ve heard too many people say Armenian, Arminianist, etc. in my short short lifetime. It’s like if someone talking U.S. politics referred to the Republication and Democratizer parties… it kind of hurts the ears…
Moving on.
To wave the post-modern wand and hope the contradiction goes away is, I think, a little too optimistic. We have a problem of definition. If we define sovereignty to mean that God has chosen the world (in all its details) to be one way and not another (a fairly straightforward paraphrase of the Reformed view of predestination), then (that definition of) sovereignty is in direct conflict with the view that God has NOT chosen the world to be one way or another, but rather leaves it (to a certain extent) open-ended (a fairly straightforward paraphrase of the ‘openness’ or Arminian view of predestination). To say that this is only a ‘modernist problem’ is to say that the incompatibility of squareness and circleness is a ‘modernist problem’. Even in our ‘post-modern’ world, a square circle is still a contradiction in terms. What most people who claim to be beyond that debate (or at least to be somewhere between the two poles) in fact do is redefine either free will (so that it works with exhaustive predestination) or sovereignty (so that it doesn’t entail meticulous control). Little do they realize that plenty of Calvinists and Arminians have gone before them doing the same thing—the difference is real (and, I would argue, fairly important).
I think a better approach to this entire question, from an ‘emerging church’ perspective, is to look at how ‘sovereignty’ is cashed out, concretely, in the Biblical narrative. Far from a monolithic reign of omni-control (that’s what’s ‘modernistic’!), YHWH’s rule over Creation is portrayed in dynamic terms, sometimes unilaterally damning nations, other times graciously being swayed by the fervent prayer of his people (who “stand in the gap”)—and (almost?) always, there is an unstated conditionality to God’s announced ‘destinies’ (declared ahead of time, hence ‘pre-destination’): a genuine falling away, or a genuine repentance may change the outcome after all. Walter Brueggemann’s work (and I may also cite Terence Fretheim and even Abraham Heschel) in this area is crucial.
All this to say, I don’t think we’ve managed to make any real headway on this problem. I still keep hearing the same things I heard in college when this issue was still red hot (and causing turmoil in my denomination). I still have hope though, that we’ll let the biblical narrative continue to reform (all of) our definitions (‘freedom’, ‘sovereignty’, etc.).
My two cents.
All the best.
-Daniel-
But That's My Point...
The division is one of human creation, not God’s. Contradictions are all over the place in this debate because it is what the Bible calls “a mystery” and “a secret thing.”
Does the Father draw or do we decide?
The answer is YES.
Hmm...
“Does the Father draw or do we decide?” My understanding is that the traditional Reformed view would say that God draws in such a way that we (necessarily) will decide. The traditional Reformed view also says (and this makes good logical sense if you affirm the above) that God only draws some (not all). I can’t see how a human distinction would make it so that the Father draws either A. Everyone or B. Not everyone, to himself. Again, everyone (almost) agrees that God is sovereign and human wills are more or less free. However, the details of how this is cashed out matter.
For instance: Does God specifically will everything that comes to pass? or rephrased, (and pardon my French) does the old saying “shit happens” convey theological truth? If you think it does, you can’t be Reformed. I for one, think bad things do happen. Bad things not willed by God. Bad things, in fact, that God willed NOT to happen (but they happened anyway). A Calvinist friend of mine would say that God specifically chooses who is ‘saved’ and (by consequence) who isn’t. I staunchly disagree. My question to you is this: how can you answer questions like the one above, within your ‘postmodern’ framework, without denying the law of non-contradiction?
I think the only constructive thing a post-modern theology can do is say “those aren’t the right questions” (rather than trying to say both are true). Given the ruts this debate usually get stuck in, that may be the wisest approach.
Do you see what I’m getting at?
Cheers,
-Daniel-
Pretty Much...
So we avoid the ruts altogether.
See to me, two things that “contradict” each other do not have to be resolved. Contradiction can exist and be truth in itself.
It is a rationalist assumption that God always make sense. Most of the time, he doesn’t. Just because logic works for us doesn’t mean God operates by it.
the rut of logic...
“It is a rationalist assumption that God always make sense”—perhaps, but I don’t think you can say it’s a ‘rationalist assumption’ that God can’t do things that don’t make sense (in the strong logical sense). Not because God is ‘limited’, but rather because something that can’t be logically described is not a ‘thing’ for God to do. Hence, God can’t draw a square circle, God can’t create a male vixen, and God can’t predestine the outcome of a (libertarian) free choice.
If you want to say that God isn’t bound by logic—that’s your choice, but then you plant God’s feet solidly into midair. If the law of non-contradiction doesn’t apply to God, then God is not something that can matter to us. Because hey, God exists, but that doesn’t mean he can’t not exist either… see what I mean? Throwing logic out the door seems like a very bad idea to me. No matter how far ‘beyond’ modernism you’ve moved (perhaps I’m misunderstanding you?).
Anyone else want to cash in on this issue? I feel like pastorerik and I may go back and forth on this for a while…
Cheers,
-Daniel-
Fools rush in
There are practical as well as philosophical reasons why the subject of God’s sovereignty/man’s free will is worth discussing. I have reams of print-outs of an extended conversation with KingJames1 on the same through the messaging service of this site, and in a theological sense, Calvinism (of one kind or another) has plugged all the loopholes. But I’m still left with questions!
I don’t think the bible tries to explain why some believe and others don’t (Romans 9-11 notwithstanding) - though I take a somewhat reformed view on how belief works through the hearing of the gospel. I am fairly content to live with the tension of the unexplained, since the practice of reformed and unreformed seems to be the same when it comes to the urgency of persuading the non-believing to believe. But that is not the end of the issue.
As a theologically untutored observer, it seems to me that God does not know, in an absolute sense, the choices which will will be made by creatures to whom he has given a measure of free will. Otherwise the emotions which are attributed to God of surprise, disappointment, frustration, joy, pleasure, perplexity, grief, anger at our obedience or disobedience, in the OT especially, are fictions. Otherwise much of the early part of Jeremiah, for instance, is couched in literary irony - God knew all along that the Israel addressed by Jeremiah would disobey, and he did not really think, as he said he did, that “After she has done all this she will return to me - but she did not return” - Jeremiah 3:7.
Likewise the God who “looked for a man who would stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so that I would not have to destroy it” - Ezekiel 22:30, presumably had not planned in advance that there would be no such man, otherwise he would not have asked the question.
The significance of this is practical and personal - our responses to God matter to him, and are as much a part of a relationship as they would be in any other relationship, and are also crucial to the furthering of his plans for the world. Furthermore, He has vested in us a unique creativity of response, using which (under the tutelage of His Spirit) is part of our God-given humanity.
It is not only in the area of God’s sovereignty/man’s free will that such issues become significant; our understanding of God’s ontology also affects how we see and respond to him. Hence the discussion which rumbles behind this one of the inner relationship of God’s being - a static, formulaic relationship, or a relationship alive with interaction and creativity?
If you say so...
You’re applying Western logic to the situation.
God can make a square circle or a male vixen. The bounds of your reason do not limit him.
Logic
Can God admit an unredeemed sinner into heaven?
He Makes Direct Statements About That...
That is not a matter of seeming contradictions. there is no logic involved.
male vixens
If God can draw a square circle, what would it look like? If God can create a male vixen, how would that work? The phrase “square circle” is a linguistic mirage. There can be no such thing, but because we can talk about it, it seems like it has some sort of existence—that existence is only linguistic, fortunately. Similarly a male vixen would probably look something like a hermaphropite fox—but then it wouldn’t be male, and it wouldn’t be female—so then it wouldn’t be a male vixen—such a thing is not a thing that it could exist. To say that God can’t do the logically incoherent is not to limit God in any meaningful way.
In your original post, you asked “Why should God’s sovereignty, which is absolute, and my free will, which is finite, conflict?” Here you attempt to bypass the contradiction (and it is a contradiction, not a mystery) by using the qualifiers “finite” and “infinite”. So you yourself implicitly acknowledge that logic must apply to God.
“Contradiction can exist and be truth in itself”—what? How can something which is not a thing (because it is inherently contradictory) exist? When you speak of ‘predestined free choices’ you haven’t in fact described anything that could or could not exist. Until you resolve the contradiction, you cannot make claims about existence. I really can’t see how saying “we’re postmodern!” will do anything to help you there…
I think I’m reaching my point of exhaustion. If no new ground is covered, I think I’ll be done for the day.
All the best,
-Daniel-
So...
You’re trying to get me to admit that you have to resolve apparent contradictions, and I just don’t believe you have to.
You’re trying to convince me that infinite is logically definable, which it isn’t and therefore it is illogical. Only finite sets may be defined.
The simple fact is that you are working in a framework that demands the resolution of a “logic problem” with an appropriate syllogism. You just cannot accept that thesis and antithesis do not always produce synthesis. They simply are.
Human reason is not the standard of God’s nature, and therefore our inability to reconcile differences in OPINION about something so trivial (and despite what you guys say, this truly is TRIVIAL) should be evidence that one definitive, logical answer cannot be arrived at.
Deconstruct the problem and it dissolves into its components. do not attempt to reconstruct the components into a new hypothesis because you will simply reproduce another (or the same) inadequate solution.
You want so badly to make this sound as if my LOGIC is faulty, but of course it is! It’s not a logical matter. You want me to admit that A+B=C, but I see no reason why A and B cannot exist without resolution.
YHWH is sovereign, and man is free to choose any path he wishes. God both controls and does not control. I both choose and do not choose. I am both immaterial and physical and yet I am a single being - not composed of both but in truth both. God is three, but he is one. To say he is three is to miss that he is one. To say he is one is to miss that he is three. Neither occludes the other, and neither contradicts the other.
The matter is relational, which is inherently non-logical. We are dealing with relationship between beings which we do not understand - both God and ourselves. We cannot comprehend our own natures, even with all of the revelation we have received. We cannot control what we do not understand and we cannot make syllogisms about that which we cannot control.
You must understand that I am not disagreeing with you nor am I agreeing. My understanding is that this entire debate dives into something that is entirely other. Paradox, contradiction - they do not exist in other. They only exist in our finite little comprehensions of other. The framework we construct is insubstantial in comparison.
I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I doubt you can enlighten me with anything in the sovereignty/free will argument that I have not already heard. After college and two seminaries, I’ve heard the debate rage incessantly and it is a non-issue to me. It is best understood only in the context of the conflicts it creates, and therein is the reason I find it negligible since I do not have any reason to participate in the conflict.
Sorry that I see it that way, and I am sure this matters a great deal to you, but the fact is that I just have no reason to accept one side or the other. Both are equally valid, but how valid are they? Deconstructively, we are dividing over two (or perhaps three or four) halves of the whole, which itself may only be a part of the whole.
Again, my answer to this…well, it’s probably 42.
I'm keeping out of this
Daniel D.F. did ask if anyone else had anything to say. Didn’t God say: “Come now, let us reason together.”? Which is quite interesting - an infinite intelligence invites a peanut-sized intelligence to sit down and have a reasonable discussion.
Anyway, I refer you to my previous post: ‘Fools rush in’. There are issues of practical significance at stake - which have no minor bearing on how a relationship with God works out - and in fact on how we perceive God’s character.
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Ken, I am a bit late on the scene with this, but why does this have to be an either/or question? I don’t see the need to reconcile the two. What am I missing?
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Hi Virgil,
I guess the need for reconcilliation depends on how you define each side. I agree that it is not an either/or question. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians don’t see it that way. Many self identify with either reformed/calvinist theology or with arminian theology, and deny the truth of the other side, or redefine the other side to match their own thoughts. I don’t think I am posing a solution here, just some of my own ideas.
For example, I believe that God has choosen who is to be saved and who is not. That is what I believe predestination is. I also believe that God does not wish for anyone to perish, and that He is patiently waiting for everyone to choose Him. I believe that people have freewill to choose God or reject Him. Yet I believe that our salvation or damnation is predetermined before we are ever born.
Some would say that those beliefs contradict each other. I say that it is beyond me to understand how they can both be true, but I still believe that they are. My original post here is mostly my own attempt to reconcile my own beliefs. Not that I need to have them reconciled. But it is an engaging endeavor that draws me closer to our amazing God. And if doing so somehow helps others to reconcile their own beliefs, or to at least be more accepting of the beliefs of "the other side" (the calvin/arminian division in our shared faith), then all the better.
Ken Bussell Minister of Music & Administration Our Place Christian Church
Re: The Paradox of Sovereignty and Freewill, how I explain it...
Ken,
Have you considered the possibility that "predestination" was a matter limited to only first-century Christians, who were the first-fruits of the harvest which happened in AD 70? I will send you a private message with more information on this, perhaps we can both learn more from each other. :)
time as a dot?
could it be that god views time as a dot instead of a line therefore freewill vs. determinism isn’t an issue with him?
Time
AsenDURE. What does that even mean? How can you say that sequence, change, and cause and effect simply don’t factor into God’s interaction with the world? To say that ‘time is a dot for God’ seems to me to be nothing more than linguistic sleight of hand in order to cover up an obvious contradiction. I mean no offense, but that’s how it feels.
Given that many in the emerging church seem to draw from Tom Wright’s work on the apostle Paul, which casts into doubt more ‘reformed’ understandings of Romans 8 and 9-11 in particular, the supposed scriptural basis for an individualistic view of ‘predestination’ seems profoundly undermined.
If you feel that Scripture in fact teaches both ‘free will’ (which I would argue it assumes rather than teaches—unless you read Ben Sirach who clearly teaches it) and ‘predestination’ (in that narrow Reformed sense), then by all means, try to reconcile them—but it may be hard (I say this as a philosopher who sees the two, properly defined, as utterly unreconcilable). If however, you understand Romans in a more ‘fresh perspective’ kind of way, you’re less likely to view individual predestination as the center of Paul’s thought, in which case themes such as divine covenant faithfulness, human responsibility, and dynamic interchange between the two will take centerstage.
I’ll conclude with this: most attempts at ‘squishing time’ in some sense or another (by saying things like ‘time is a dot’—a move used by Augustine, mind you, so you’re in good company) fail to take seriously the biblical portrayal of the Incarnation as an Event in divine history. God exists now in a way that God has not always existed. If you add all sorts of caveats to that profoundly biblical picture, I think you end up with some very big problems.
My two cents.
Cheers,
-Daniel-