Our God is a sovreign God. He is all-powerful, and is capable of total control. The question, however, arises.... does He utilize that total control? Or does He, in His infinite wisdom, allow us to make a choice in response to His leading, His prompting, and His calling? Does He pre-ordain his "elect", or allow His children free-will in choosing Him?
The problem starts with the idea of the Total Depravity of Man... utter and complete. Man is a creation of the Father, and made in His image. Man is a recipient of His love. "And God saw that it was good". From the beginning, however, we chose to move away from that perfect love, through our disobedience. The Great Fall separated us from intimate union with God. Did Adam and Eve's decision rid all future generations of any worth? I look at an unwanted child, whom our society has deemed "worthless". We intrinsically base that child's worth on whether or not it is loved and wanted by it's parents - we base that child's right to LIFE on whether or not it is loved and wanted by it's parents. So we inherently and subconciously base WORTH on love. What we, in our short-sightedness, fail to remember, is that even that unwanted child is loved by the Father of creation, and therefore has worth. Our worth stems not from ourselves, but from God. A canvas and paint is of no value in and of itself. Only through the mastery of the Artist does it become priceless.
Evil is the opposite of Good. Sin moves us away from God, as Love draws us toward Him. Can God love what is the opposite of Himself? That which propels away from Him? Yet he loves us repeatedly and completely. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16) God IS love. And our worth as recipients of that love comes not of our inherent selves, but only as a consequence of Him, and being His created being.
This idea of Utter Depravity leads to the concept that we are not CAPABLE of doing anything in our relationship to God, and not WORTHY of being an active participant. Thus the idea of pre-destination... that God chooses only those whom He wants beforehand, controls them to His purposes, and elects them for salvation. But is the opposite also true, then? Would an all-loving God predestine His own child to Hell? Would God purposely give up a SINGLE one of His children? Would a loving father or mother condemn one of their children from its first breath out of the womb? Would an Artist create a masterpiece for the sole purpose of burning it? Could we believe even for one moment that Jesus died for the atonement of only a few, and not for the many? What parent would give up his life for one of his children, and not the others?
Without worth, there can be no free will. And without free will there is no merit (nothing we do can be deemed "good", because it is God controlling us for His purposes). On the same token, though, without free-will there is no GUILT. If I am merely a pawn, then those choices I make that are disobedient are also not of my doing. Without guilt there is no REPENTENCE, and without repentence there is no SALVATION. The inherent worth of a man given to us by God our Father makes us capable of responding to His touch, makes us able to make a choice to obey Him, have faith in Him. We are worthy of taking responsibility for the wrong choices we make, and that responsibility grants us our NEED for God and salavation. Read Genesis 1:31. "God looked at everything He had made, and found it very good." Now read Genesis 6:5-7. "When the Lord saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, He regretted that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was grieved." How do you get from "very good" to "ever anything but evil"? Free will. How do you explain the fall of man? Free will. God's heart was grieved, because it was not HIS plan for us to fail as miserably as we did. Not that He couldn't have made things differently. But He chose not to.
God is infintiley wise, and knows us better than we know ourselves. Predestination is not the same as preknowledge. God is omnipotent and outside of time, and knows which decisions we will make before we make them. But they are still OUR decisions to make, right or wrong - towards God or away from Him. He chooses NOT to control us. We humans, as pitiful as we are, constantly put God on the judgement seat, to see if He is worthy of our faith in Him. We creatures put the God of All Creation on the "dock", when, in reality, it is we who are being judged on how we live our life for HIM. He prompts us through the Spirit, and then allows us the choice to obey that call, because the fufillment of the law is LOVE, and love cannot be compelled. Love is a choice, not a feeling. God wants us to love Him, but He would never compel us to do so. Would God deny anyone who comes to the foot of the cross with a sincere desire and true repentence? As John 3:16 states so succinctly, God LOVES US. It is WE who choose to reject HIM through our unbelief- never the other way around. And our choice is our Free Will. For good or bad. Not that God CAN'T control us, but that He chooses not to. For Love's sake.
C.S. Lewis states it far more eloquently than I ever could....
"(God) could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaires. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will. 'God', said Pascal, 'instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.' But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God's mind - that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.... He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly in the twinkling of an eye. We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either priveleged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work, to weild our little tridents."
9 comments:
AWESOME. A very deep thought for me to be reading late at night, but so right. Thanks you for sharing your insights!
Wow, one of my favorite topics... I don't have time to delve into it too far, but I would challenge this to a certain degree:
"Would an Artist create a masterpiece for the sole purpose of burning it?"
A sculptor carves away a lot of material in order to make his masterpiece. Often times we see a sculptor will intricately make a mold in order to make a beautiful piece of art. The mold is of great value, and masterful workmanship, but in the end, it is discarded.
I think it is important to understand that God is building his Church.. Westerners tend to be very individualistic. But the Bride of Christ is the Church Corporate, not the individual believer. So God may very well allow many folks to follow their sin nature in order to sanctify the believers that will create the Church.. Molding and shaping us through our sufferings imposed on us by man's following of hiss sinful nature.
God could stop all evil, but he prefers to weave it together for redemption. (Romans 8:28)
If God is worried only about the collective church and not the individual - why the parables about the lost sheep and the prodigal son? He leaves the 99 to find the 1. He rejoices at the return of the sinful son, despite the "good son" remaining. God's not willing to lose ANY of His creatures. It's WE who chose to leave HIM. He shapes His church, but I firmly disagree about Him not being interested in the individual soul of every child on the planet.
Think if YOU were creating a masterpiece. Would you intentionally make the clay too soft to shape? Make the marble of your sculpture fissured? Would you, with fore-thought and according to plan, make your canvas rip and tear from weakness? Sabotage your own purposes from the beginning? Humans have repeatedly failed God and His purposes, broke His covenants through disobedience. But He didn't give up on us - he used our imperfections to continue shaping His "masterpiece" - used that crack in the marble we created to make the sculpture all the more beautiful. The Old and New Testament ONLY makes sense through the eyes of Free Will. God is not only logical - He IS logic (logos), and putting stumbling blocks into your own path for no apparent reason is not logical. Look at nature - the work of His hand that has no free will. It is PERFECT in it's delicate balance. An ecosystem is intricate and precise, and if we weren't here to mess it up, it would survive and thrive in exactly the way He intended. Or not survive in the way He intended. But NEVER did He purposefully make "mistakes" in nature. If there's one thing we can learn about the world around us, is that everything has a purpose, a function. It is all "logical". And we humans aren't - as much as we pride ourselves to be.
Romans 8:28 - "He chooses to weave it" - he takes OUR sinful nature, and uses it to His purposes. He does not CAUSE the evil. So, if there is no free will, where does the evil come from? Where does sin come from? Are we pawns of the devil just as much pawns of God? How did Satan leave Heaven if not for free will? Was he not also a creation of God?
One last thought, because you got me going :)... It occurs to me that Jesus wept over Jerusalem - because He wanted the people's belief, but they "would not".
Luke 13:34
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!"
The divine Jesus wished something of the people, but they CHOSE, of their own free will, not to heed His call, and it saddened Him to the point of tears. Not that He couldn't MAKE them believe - but that He left it up to them to choose, and they chose against Him. He did not gloat, or say "my church is stronger without you anyhow". He wept.
It is an uncomfortable topic I know (Especially for us Americans). But we just have to clip too many verses out of the bible to say that predestination is not true. I don't see how Ephesians 2:1-10 or Romans 9:10-18 can mean anything other than what they say. We don't have to like it, but they say what they say. It takes faith to trust that God is just.
I do believe that God cares for every one of his creations, and that he calls each and every one of us to repentance. It grieves him that we rebel. Barring his intervention every one of us will get what we deserve and what we choose. The wages of Sin is death, and we all choose sin. So there is no injustice except for the scandal that he chooses to rescue some ill deserving folks and adopt them into his family and give them a new heart.
Mostly this comes down to a chicken and egg argument- Did I choose God because he planted the desire? Or did I choose God of my own free will. I tend to see human will as being selfish and fickle. If somebody chooses to follow God for selfish motives they really aren't following God. I think this seems to be the recurring theme on the Sermon on the mount. Moreover, I don't believe it is possible for humans to make unselfish choices. We need a new heart. A heart that God gives us.
I have asked a lot of believers "Did God change your heart?" Unanimously they have said "yes". Salvation is a miracle that we can praise God for..
I see a lot of hope in the doctrine of election. There are a lot of folks who I am nearly certain will never come to the Lord of their own free will. But God transforms hearts, so I can still hold out hope. God answers prayers, and their salvation is in his hands. God is good.
As far as the source of evil. Many things can be both evil and good. Look at Joseph being sold into slavery.. What his brothers intended for evil, God intended for good.. I think that is the whole story of the bible. Man does evil, and God works all of these things for the good of those who love him. One day, he will make all things new again, and Sin and pain and suffering will be no more.
A group of us have had a lot of really interesting discussion on a forum I run.
http://liferoads.reighley.net/SNTforum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16
I would love your input on any of the discussions there. I used to be in the minority on this issue on that board, but I don't think so anymore. Really I think both need to be true to a certain degree.
I think there are two different interpretations of what "free will" means here.... YOU are saying that God calls us, and then we respond to His will, (which I believe also), but since God calls us first we have no choice in the matter. God calls ALL of us, and we heed or ignore His call. The choice of heeding or ignoring is what I call Free Will - never the approach to God. We are not able to approach Him first - He's already beat us to the punch. My understanding of Calvinism is that God CAUSES our choice to heed His call - because we don't have worth enough to choose on our own. Your own argument presupposes our acceptance or rejection of His calling,taking responsibility for the choice, and THAT is what I consider Free Will. I'm understanding that you think Free Will is us searching for God on our own, without the movement of the Holy Spirit, like a skeptic entering a house to see if a ghost is there or not. That's not accurate. My understanding of Calvinism is that God chooses some ahead of time for salvation and not others, which negates our participation in accepting or rejecting His gift of salvation. This is not just my interpretation, or American culture's "rugged individualist" interpretation - but the interpretation of the entire Christian church for the first 1500 years of it's existence, until it was splintered.
JUSTIN MARTYR c.100-165 A.D.
"But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully, unless we repent beforehand. "
IRENAEUS of Gaul c.130-200. Against Heresies XXXVII
"This expression, 'How often would I have gathered thy children together, and thou wouldst not,' set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free (agent) from the beginning, possessing his own soul to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will (toward us) is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. And in man as well as in angels, He has placed the power of choice (for angels are rational beings), so that those who had yielded obedience might justly possess what is good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves . . ."
"If then it were not in our power to do or not to do these things, what reason had the apostle, and much more the Lord Himself, to give counsel to do some things and to abstain from others? But because man is possessed of free-will from the beginning, and God is possessed of free-will in whose likeness man was created, advice is always given to him to keep fast the good, which thing is done by means of obedience to God."
I'll check out the board! Thanks!
I do believe in "free will" as to weather to follow the law or not.. I believe that our Will leads us to Romans 3:23... All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. or Romans 3:10-12 No one seeks after God.. No one does good, not one.. After that it is all God.
I am tending to think that "free will" is an illusion for the most part. Based on whatever I know, I cannot, for unselfish reasons choose anything that I would not choose. Somebody may bribe me with a higher desire, but if I choose to take the bribe and decide differently, I still am making the choice.
So our will, while on the surface seems to portray freedom, it is actually our prison. "The Bondage of the Will" as Martin Luther calls it. I believe it is this prison that Jesus came to set the captives free.. These are the chains that we are freed from.. We are no longer slaves to Sin. (But we are Slaves to Christ)
I see scriptures that fit both the Arminian and the Calvinist view. I am not willing to clip either out of my bible. God Chooses. We Choose.. Both views have an element of truth in them. The Bible does not contradict itself. What I see is that the Arminian verses can usually be quite true under an all Sovereign God, but the Calvinist verses tend to fall apart if Man holds the trump card on what God is going to do. So basically you have two models that are both somewhat inadequate describing the same thing. I see the Calvinist view as being more detailed and nuanced, while the Arminian view is a bit easier to grasp, but leaves out some of the difficult philosophical conundrums.
Kinda Newton and Bernoulli have competing explanations to how an airplane works. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/fluids/airfoil.html Physicist will tell us both are more or less right.
I think the bulk of our misunderstanding comes from our perception of how time flows. We think cause and effect.. God is outside of time and does not perceive it like we perceive it.. The effect may often come before the cause. My sin tomorrow may be the reason that God made my mentor in faith suffer through trials 30 years ago -- So that he would be prepared to mentor me..
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