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The Knotty Subject of Free Will: Do We Have It Or Is It an Illusion? (Part Two)
Free Will
When you read “free will,” you read two words, one of which is “will.” “Will” is simple. A mind is capable of choosing, like ordering a flavor of ice cream or reaching into the candy bowl for Snickers or Reeses.
There are layers here. The will is the capability of the mind choosing, but a motive directs the will in its choice. Many different factors may or can combine to bring someone to volition. Scripture deals with them in several various instances.
The word “free” has to do with opportunity or power. Someone can and has the opportunity to do what he wants. The question arises, does anyone truly have the power and opportunity? Is anyone really free in his will?
In part one, I see in scripture that the free will of man exists by the very use of the terminology “free will” in scripture. What though goes into free will?
Concerns in the Subject of Free Will
From my vantage point, I see six main types of concerns in the subject of free will. One, God created man, wants love from man, and man needs free will to love God. Hence, God created man with free will.
Two, free will explains suffering. God allowed men a choice to sin and the consequential curse that brings suffering to men. Suffering isn’t God’s fault. It’s ours. This does not mean that God cannot allow suffering or deliver from suffering, but it rose from man’s sin.
Three, apparently if man has free will, then he becomes the deciding factor of salvation and God doesn’t then get the glory. This assumes a salvation decision makes man’s salvation by works. Scripture doesn’t read that way, but it’s a kind of logical argument for determinists.
Four, if man doesn’t have free will, then God determined sin and becomes the author of sin. God is not the author of sin according to James 1:13. His hatred of sin would also assume He’s not the author of sin. God created beings with the potential to sin, but He didn’t create sin.
Five, the Bible does not at all read deterministic. God is sovereign, but His sovereignty doesn’t contradict man’s free will. The two do not contradict. God does not cede His authority by allowing men to decide.
The Debilitation of the Sin Nature
Six, free will given to man by God is debilitated by the corruption of his sin nature, even as seen in 2 Peter 2:19:
While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
This bondage is so complete that Jesus says in John 15:5:
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
Without Jesus, man can do nothing. This is also seen in 1 Corinthians 2:14:
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
The Illusion of Free Will
Men are so darkened in their minds that they operate in bondage. This speaks of the illusion of free will. In Romans 8:8, Paul writes that man in the flesh “cannot please God.” That doesn’t sound free, does it? He cannot. In the previous verse, “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” The carnal mind cannot subject to the law of God. That also does not sound free.
I hear today especially young people about their loss of free will. They even consider this “loss” as a kind of deviance. On the other hand, they consider the choice of sin to be free. Sin isn’t freedom. Jesus said in John 8:34: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.”
Sin is not freedom. It is bondage. What I’m writing here is why the subject of free will is a knotty problem. Their freedom is illusory.
Freedom comes from God. The way out comes from God. The grace of God allows free will. God created man with free will, but sin brought bondage. God’s grace brings freedom.
Satan deceives everyone and especially young people today, that they are free because they can choose evil. That “choice” is an illusion. The exhilaration of their choosing evil is part of the deception and bondage. They find themselves in great peril in these chains of darkness. And they don’t view their new Satanic religion as deviant. It’s the same sociological pathology held by the opponents of Noah while he prepared the ark.
The Inclination of the Grace of God
On the subject of free will, confronting the knottiness, Jonathan Edwards distinguished between natural ability and moral ability. Sin does not stop a man from making choices. He makes them. Because man can and does make choices, he has responsibility before God.
Even though he chooses, moral depravity chains a man to sinfulness. Everything he does is ruined in some way, so that he makes no good choices even when he makes good choices. That sounds contradictory, but he cannot please God and that makes everything bad. Even when he’s trying to please God, his remaining rebellion and rejection of truth ruins those too. That is the moral inability of Edwards.
Edwards contrasts with ancient theologian and heretic, Pelagius. Pelagius saw inability as injustice, because God commanded man to obey. If man couldn’t, then God was unjust. God isn’t unjust, so man must be still good to a certain extent. Pelagius depended on flawed logic like determinists also do.
God can hold man responsible for choices, because he has the ability to choose. The freedom of choice, however, is an illusion to all except those who encounter the inclination of the grace of God. God’s grace exerts its power in the means God chooses for the reality of free will. The lost have free will in their natural ability and potential for moral ability, ability only experienced by true believers through the grace of God. They are free indeed (John 8:36).
Eras of Miracles and Divine Interventionism
Where my wife and I are staying, we have waited at one spot four different times for someone to pick us up and every time there on the top of a short brick wall sat a tiny toy figure. Three different days and four rides the same toy person was there. I guessed it was a Star Wars figure. Looking more closely, it seemed a young woman in a Star Wars-like outfit. In what I know of the Star Wars story, it was probably a jedi and maybe the one the story calls “the last jedi.”
If you don’t know the Star Wars story, because you’ve seen none of it, good for you, but let me explain. In a fictional cosmos, the jedi are warriors with supernatural power, who fight for what is called the light side of the force as opposed to the dark side. This fiction hearkens to God on the light side and Satan on the dark side. According to the fiction, the force connotes to something like a pantheistic view of God in which he is not a person, but some kind of mystical power. The fiction speaks of an existence of God, albeit a false one. This supernaturalism is crucial to the explanation of everything that happens in Star Wars fiction.
In the Star Wars story, only a few characters possess supernatural power to use either for evil or for good. Those without that power find themselves often in need of the abilities or gifts of those special individuals. Over aeons of time, certain ones through the story uniquely, even more greatly tap into the light side or the dark side of this supernatural force. These individuals come along once in a very long time with very special significance and they are usually prophesied. The needy natural ones place their hope in the coming of those to deliver them.
Fictional prophet-like characters predict the coming of the few supernatural characters, very often just one, with very special power. These prophets receive revelations from the same supernatural power, which is apparently God, and they know what will happen in the future. The spread of these prophesies over a fictional cosmos results in its people looking for the coming of these superior, supernatural figures, which will change the course of history.
I write all this to say that in general people who know the Star Wars story accept eras of supernatural intervention in their fictional cosmos. It makes sense to them. They agree both with the existence of supernatural power that works through men and that once in a great while this same supernatural power raises up a prophesied person who can use the power. In other words, they accept eras of miracles. They recognize the continuity of a natural world accompanied by rare times, moments, periods, or ages of supernatural intervention.
In a fictional Star Wars world, the divine always works to maintain and sustain, but also intervenes in a unique way. An unprecedented person comes along, who is not normal. He is far from normal and no one has been seen like him in ages. The maintaining and sustaining are continuity. They are normative. The rare one, however, is not. This is discontinuity.
Scripture gives (see especially 2 Peter) as a major reason for apostasy, a departure from the faith and the truth, the scarcity of evidence of divine intervention. God gives every good thing. He always intervenes in a providential manner, His good graces seen everywhere and at all times. God also though intervenes at times in unique ways. Men say because of the sparsity of the latter, they can’t receive the Lord. He must show Himself more to their liking. I call these showings, crown performances. If God doesn’t bring them a crown performance, they have their excuse for not believing.
God has intervened in a special, unique, and miraculous way throughout history. However, this kind of dealing is far less frequent. The word “miracle” is most often the same Greek word translated “sign.” Something isn’t a sign if it is the same as anything else that occurs on an everyday basis.
Through scripture, you can see eras of miracles. They mark extraordinary times and people, and these occasions, which are very rare through history, make a unique point, one that stands out very much. Certain names are associated in the Bible with these eras, including Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the Apostles.
One figure stands out above all of those functioning with supernatural power in an era of miracles: the Lord Jesus Christ. If these operations were normal occurrences, they would not stand out, and neither would Jesus. Jesus must stand out and He does stand out. He will show Himself in even greater glory when He comes the second time and in fulfillment of further prophecy. He is the greatest figure in all of world history.
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