The question is whether or not actual Ultimate Self-Determination exists. Is there such a thing as Libertarian Free Will? We all agree that Man makes choices. There is no question about that. We also agree that God doesn't (necessarily) coerce those choices. We're all on the same page there. Because if we didn't have the ability to make some choices or if those choices were coerced, there is no sense in which God could hold us responsible for our choices -- for our sin. So let's all agree that human beings do, in fact, make choices without external coercion.
But does this necessitate Libertarian Free Will? Is it necessary, agreeing that humans make choices, that there be no influence, no inclination, indeed, no predestination? Does that kind of free will (which would, in the end, be Free Will with capital letters) actually exist among mankind? The argument is that God has committed Himself to that kind of Free Will and does not interfere. And what I'm asking is, is that what we find in the Bible?
A very famous passage in Proverbs assures us of this:
The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will (Prov 21:1).Now, that's a problem to the Libertarian Free Will concept. If God turns the king's heart wherever He will, then it cannot be argued that, at least, the king has Ultimate Self-Determination. The text requires that God is influencing the king.
If we wanted to limit this to "the king", we'd run up against other passages:
I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps (Jer 10:23).Well, now, that puts a crimp in things, doesn't it? It appears that God influences everyone's choices. Routinely. Solomon wrote, "A man's steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way?" (Prov 20:24).
The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps (Prov 16:9).
The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations (Prov 33:10-11).
At this point you have to decide. Am I going to remain committed to Ultimate Self-Determination/Libertarian Free Will or am I going to give in to Scripture? Your choice.
Some may say, "Okay, fine, God influences choices, but is completely outside of Man's sin. He does not ordain sin." Is that so? In Revelation we read:
And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out His purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled (Rev 17:16-17).It is abundantly clear here that the efforts of "the beast" here and "the ten horns" are not godly efforts. They are sin. And yet it says here that "God has put it into their hearts to carry out His purpose", and that purpose is accomplished by their evil.
"Now, wait! Are you saying that, in some sense, God ordains evil?" Well, no, I'm not. That's what I find in the Bible. It's the Bible that says, "The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble" (Prov 16:4). I'm simply pointing it out.
But, look, we don't need to go to some obscure, future version or even guess at what some possibly odd texts mean. How about the singularly worst sin in all the history of mankind -- the murder of the Son of God? There is no worse sin than that. What does the Bible say about that?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against His Anointed -- for truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and your plan had predestined to take place (Acts 4:26-28).It is abundantly clear here -- irrefutably clear -- that God "predestined to take place" the murder of His Son and that He planned for "both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel" to carry out His predestined plan. If that isn't a plan for sin, I don't know what is.
The Bible isn't vague on the Sovereignty of God. While there is not doubt that humans have the ability to make choices without coercion, nothing happens without God's permission and ultimate will. Thus, the only being that actually has Ultimate Self-Determination -- Libertarian Free Will -- is God. He allows humans free choices within His plan, choices for which we are responsible either for good or bad, but we do not possess that form of Free Will that is so highly prized among sinful Man. God will even intervene in our choice to sin when it is required. So He told Abimelech, "Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against Me. Therefore I did not let you touch her" (Gen 20:6). That is not Ultimate Free Will.
If you're going to have a biblical worldview, you're going to have to work out in your mind some version of free will that allows humans to make choices, but only within the bounds of God's Sovereign Will and not without His permission. On the other hand, if you're going to remain committed to Man's Free Will as an ultimate good and a requirement on God, you're going to have to do so against the pages of Scripture.
8 comments:
You continually say on your blog that it is not what you believe, it is what the Bible says. You act as though there is no interpretation needed, just read it and that's that. But what about verses like Jeremiah 18:1-10.
1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
Or Deuteronomy 30:14-20
14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
It seems that both of these verses demonstrate a God that responds to the actions of his creation. He may even change his mind, based on the actions of people. A person with no hermeneutic framework would read these and truly believe that their choices are free and affect Gods response. My point in all of this is maybe you should make light of the fact that you carry your hermeneutic interpretation to every text. Another person who takes the Bible completely seriously, can have a different interpretation based on the their hermeneutical method.
It appears that you are unwilling or unable to explain your definition of "free will". It also appears that you are perfectly content to argue in favor of a Bible that contradicts itself. You're bold and certain that God is both sovereign and not sovereign and that He certainly changes His mind (despite His own claim that He does not) (1 Sam 15:29; Psa 110:4; Heb 7:21). You are happy to show me passages in which people make choices (and which I affirm since I've explained my definition of free will) but cannot give an explanation for the biblical claim that God works all things after the counsel of His will (Eph 1:11). I'm happy to agree with you that free will exists, but can't find your definition anywhere, either in Scripture or in your assertions, so I'm at a loss.
(And, by the way, you yourself indicate that these verses seem to demonstrate that God responds to the actions of His creation. I would agree that this is the appearance, but I also affirm Omniscience, something you explicitly deny.)
(1 Sam 15:29; Psa 110:4; Heb 7:21) These verses do not say that God never changes his mind. They say that in these specific circumstances God will not change his mind. For example, God will not undo the oath of priesthood he made with Melchizedek.On top of that if you continue to read to the end of 1 Samuel 15 it clearly states that God regretted making Saul king of Israel. How can God regret making Saul king if he always felt the same way about him being King? Since he became King, God must have willed it to happen, but now he regrets it. Did he regret for all time, or did he only regret it after Saul made choices contradictory to His will?
The verses I eluded to before says very plainly that God will change his mind. How do you explain them? "I will not inflict the disaster I had planned" In my view God could plan something, and adjust based on free choices by his people. In your view this is a contradiction.
You say my definition of free will isn't found in scripture and yet I say Deuteronomy 30:14-20 clearly expresses it.
"I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him."
This shows a true choice, and through it is the only way to love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. The Holy Spirit enables this to happen, but the choice is true in the sense that we can reject the Holy Spirit or we can listen and be led by Him.
Also, I do not deny Omniscience, we just define it differently. You define it as God knowing past, present, and future as exhaustively settled. I understand it as God know past and present as settled, but knowing all things that could possibly happen in the future.
Offering contradictions (especially by themselves) doesn't solve the dilemma. I say, "Scripture says this here, here, here, and here." You say, "Well, it says the opposite here." You have managed to either prove that the Bible is contradictory and, therefore, unreliable, or you need to demonstrate how they are not contradictory. Not me; them.
Note: Deut 30 does not contain a definition of Free Will since I concur with the passage, agree that free will (lowercase) exists, and can see no contradiction to the definition I've offered. And "It says He does and does not change His mind" is no less a contradiction, is it?
And you argue that Man can make choices (with which I concur) but have not offered a biblical or rational reason that the biblical version I've offered or the explanations I've given contradict the position that Man can make choices. (Nor have you managed to correlate biblical Sovereignty or Omniscience with your view.)
Yes, I define Omniscience different from you. I define it like, you know, the dictionary does:
Dictionary.com: having infinite knowledge or understanding
Bing: all-knowing; knowing everything
Merriam-Webster: having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
The Free Dictionary.com: Having total knowledge; knowing everything (to name a few)
I define it as the Church has always historically defined it. I define it based on Scripture (which includes future events). See, for instance, Jer 1:5, 1 John 3:20, Psa 139:16, Rom 8:29-30. If God does not know the future, the answer to Isaiah's rhetorical, "Who made God understand?" (Isa 40:13-14) is "We did when we did what hadn't been done yet!" Indeed, if God does not know future events, He cannot be relied upon to accurately foretell anything or to produce on His future promises since it is entirely possible (and, in all honesty, fairly certain) that Man's Free Will will certainly contravene God's plans. Your version is new on the theological scene and is a denial of historical, biblical, or even English Omniscience.
As to your point of me offering opposite "contradictions." My point is that when you say things like:
"At this point you have to decide. Am I going to remain committed to Ultimate Self-Determination/ Libertarian Free Will or am I going to give in to Scripture? Your choice."
I could say something like:
"At this point you have to decide. Am I going to remain committed to a God that doesn't change his mind or regret, or am I going to give in to Scripture? Your choice."
I ask you.
How can God regret?
How can it appear that God changes his mind, when he apparently doesn't?
How can God be grieved by man's actions?
How can God ordain evil, when he is completely good?
Excellent answer. Kind of like, "Oh, yeah? So's your ol' man." You didn't offer an explanation to my question -- Doesn't your view make a contradiction of Scripture? -- but simply asked the same one back. Now, I would think it's obvious that I have thought through the paradox (by which I mean an apparent but not actual contradiction) and concluded that my understanding of Scripture contains no actual contradiction. And your unwillingness or inability to answer my question suggests you haven't.
How can God regret? He does things that aren't "thrilling" to Him. He would prefer it if X happened, but His glory and His ultimate plan demands Y.
How can it appear that He changes His mind but does not? Oh, that's the simplest question -- a "softball". He appears to. He says, "If you will do this then I will do that" knowing what you will or will not do and, therefore, what He will or will not do. Here, imagine a football coach standing on a blocking sled. He tells his linesmen, "Push!" And they push. Oh, how they push. They drive this this thing for 20 yards with the coach yelling, "Push!" Now, the coach knows that when they reach the 30 yard line he's planning to stop them. They don't. So when they reach the line he determined, he says, "Stop!" And the linesmen say, "Oh, look, he changed his mind about pushing." And he did, but not by way of regret, new information, a change of heart or mind, but simply by plan.
I've already answered how God can be grieved by Man's actions. (You appear to believe that God cannot by any means be allowed to intervene in Man's actions and, assuming that God actually ordains things, is the motive force for them. I don't.)
On your last question, you'll have to figure that one out since Scripture explicitly says that He does (as I've pointed out multiple times). (See, for instance, Gen 50:20 and Acts 4:27-28.)
Now you're going to have to figure out, given all the Scripture I've offered and all the biblical, historical, and logical reasons for my position, how yours is not a contradiction to Scripture, Church history, or logic. You might start with a single attempt -- just one -- at a rational definition of "free will" that doesn't agree with mine or shows why mine is not "free will". Then you might move on to "How can God be Sovereign but not Sovereign?" Good start, at least.
First I will acknowledge that my view is not the historically orthodox view of the Church. The argument that a lot of other people in the past have thought something, doesn't mean it is right. There for Church tradition has some authority, but not so much that we can't debate their stance.
Secondly, my view of Sovereignty(which is directly tied to my view of free will). The classical view quite frequently equates sovereignty to control, but I will attempt to show why I think this is misguided. Sovereignty is the way in which God chooses to rule. I believe that God has given free agents the ability to choose or reject him. In doing this God has temporarily given away his ability to always get his way. God also has not given so much power to creation that he can not handle it, so he is also not at the "mercy" of his creation. In this view God can actually regret, and actually grieve for his creation as he does in the Bible.
As an analogy, we would consider a person that attempts to control everything in their life insecure. While a person that is self-confident is able to make themselves vulnerable. God is completely self-confident and is willing to make himself vulnerable, even to the point of becoming a human.
True sovereignty must be evidenced in the Cross, as the fullness of God was put on display through Jesus. Jesus shows us the "upside down" power and Sovereignty of God, as he exercises power by dying to redeem his creation. The most powerful act, seemed foolish to the logical thinking of the wold. This is one of the main reasons I think a Sovereignty=Control conforms too easily to the human view of power and sovereignty.
I certainly agree that "They thought this way in the past" is not authoritative. The question you have to ask yourself is "Did they always think this way?" That is, if Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would lead His disciples into all truth and that "all truth" has always included a view that Omniscience includes all past, present, and future, and they have the Scripture to believe this, and only now do you come on the scene with a new version, you have to ask what happened? What was the failure of the Holy Spirit? How did everyone for all time get it wrong ... and you finally got it right? You see, when I can trace my view on anything from the pages of the Bible straight through Church history to today, I can be pretty confident it's right. When I can't, I have to wonder. Apparently you don't.
Your view of sovereignty (lowercase "s") is certainly derived from your a priori view of Man's Free Will (capital letters necessary). But you have yet to offer a biblical definition of free will (any case). I believe in the ability of humans to make choices without being coerced and you tell me it's not free will. I believe in the Absolute Sovereignty of God and you tell me that's not sovereignty. I tell you why I believe these things from Scripture and you simply tell me that Sovereignty does not equal Control. I've offered a lot of Scripture on the subject. You've assured me that your version is right and mine is wrong, but you've never addressed the bulk of Scripture I've offered. And you've never given me a biblical version of your view.
I agree that God, even as the Sovereign in whom I believe, allows humans to make choices without coercion. I agree that God is grieved by human choices (that He didn't coerce). I believe that God wishes for things He doesn't get. None of this contradicts my view -- the biblical view, the historical view, the orthodox view -- of God's Sovereignty. What I have not seen from you is a way to correlate your view with any sense that God can accomplish His future promises, a way to correlate your view with the Scriptures I've given that appear to contradict your view, or any biblical reason that your view is right and mine is wrong. Without any biblical backing, all I've got is your highly touted but unsubstantiated view of the glory of Man's Free Will to which God has submitted Himself without any apparent, biblically supported reason, and you'd like me to switch from the view I've found in Scripture to your opinion. It frankly makes no sense to me.
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