A God Who Defers
At the rutted, muddy impasse between between theological determinism and theological deferentialism — whether God determines every event in history or has created other determining agents besides himself — I choose the latter rut. Though perhaps I could do other, here I stand because of the many threads in the biblical tapestry of metaphors, archetypes, roles, themes, parables, and stories that God reveals to explain His relationship to humanity. The debate about the way in which God exercises His sovereignty or rightful authority over His creation often centers upon the interpretation of a handful of contested texts, from the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus to the Potter’s prerogative in Romans. Through these peepholes, the proof texts can seem ambivalent. But a wider gaze at all the ways God acts and speaks makes it overwhelmingly clear that God has made our relationship with Him voluntary, mutual, and interactive.
I mean to challenge a very specific and widely held view: theological determinism. Sometimes called “meticulous sovereignty”, theological determinism is at odds with the overwhelming thrust of biblical revelation and human experience. On this view, God is the determinant (i.e. the determiner, the decisive factor) of every event ever. God is the final answer to every question that asks, “Who determined that such and such would be so?” There is not, to my knowledge, a symmetrical term for the opposing view. With respect to salvation specifically, monergism versus synergism is precise. I’ll be using theological deferentialism to denote the view that God is not the determinant of every event, most especially of all those events that are against His will. Rather, God created other agents (determiners) and freely chooses to defer the determination of many events to them. God allows — No! He urges, expects, and commands — them to act and to determine many aspects and the ultimate end of their own lives. Indeed, in that capacity, God expects them to willingly yield to His calling and commands.
What is it to have a will, to be a determiner? For our biblical exegesis, the crucial issue is: who is the determinant of an action. When we ask, why did Persephone choose x over y, I say a full accounting amounts to, Persephone (the determiner) determined a (one option amongst others) for the sake of y (the reason/s). For example, Persephone determined to eat the fruit loops(a) for their crunchy, sugary taste(y) instead of eating the fruit salad(b) for its nutritious vitamins(z). Here a and b are two options and y and z are ends or reasons. No additional or prior desires, influences, or persons were the deciding factor or determinant between a or b. She had reasons for both, neither of which, in itself, was determinative. Persephone — not God, not an ineluctable chain of events — was the decider, the agent, the determiner. Of course, many things beyond her control had to exist and persist to occasion this decision point, but she herself was the determinant of a over b.
We are all directly and constantly aware of what I am describing. Every day we are presented with thousands of choices, each with upsides and downsides. We feel the force of desires and habits pressing upon our will. We also feel that the force is resistible, that we can go either way (1 Cor. 10:13). We are inclined, but not compelled, as Aquinas put it. We feel this will power, and sometimes, at momentous junctures, we even feel that Kierkegaardian “dread” at holding a slice of the future in our hands (Deuteronomy 30:15), or the Frostian regret at roads we could have traveled, but did not. Our direct awareness of our wills is so ever present that the determinist’s claim — that it is an illusion — is radical in the extreme. It is on a par with reductive claims that seeing, hearing, and thinking are illusory. The pre-theoretical and pre-theological view that it is we who determine many of our acts is rightly our presumption. Though the ocean currents pull east or west, that I am the captain of my soul is as evident to me as that the water is wet.
This determinative will is the awesome privilege and responsibility that God grants his human (and apparently angelic) creatures. God defers by allowing others to participate in determining the course of events. By contrast, for the theological determinist, Persephone chose a because God determined that she would do so before time, according to his good pleasure, for His own ends. Persephone may have been instrumental in bringing it about, but God is the answer to who determined it and why. God is the determinant of a, and of b, c, d, and e. Hence, theological determinism. God determines all.
To test the biblical concordance of theological determinism, a full explanatory theory of free will or agency is unnecessary. We need only to read scripture attentive to whether it treats others beside God as the determiners of events. And indeed, it would be hard to find a question more plentifully answered in the biblical drama. The will, and whether it will choose God’s way or its own, is central from Genesis to Revelation. In histories, parables, prophecies, revelations, and songs it recurs on every page. Will persons and peoples obey? Will they cooperate? Will they return or run off, defy or submit, run after other gods or be faithful, cover up or confess? Commands, obedience, rewards, temptation, self-denial, self-discipline, obedience, repentance, love, judgment, Satan, persistence, and on and on. The history the Bible records is populated throughout with wills who are either in keeping or at odds with God’s will. God’s goodness, glory, and preeminence is paramount in the biblical story and He is the protagonist. The human response to God is also central to the story. Volition extends its branches into virtually every chapter. But let us get specific, comparing theological determinism with the record of God’s self-revelation and involvement in history in the Bible.
Acts 2:23, excellent, on what God did, and what we did.
Naming
Right out of the Garden, in the first chapter of Genesis, we see God deferring and delegating to Adam. “God brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” (Genesis 2:20 | NIV) I think of how eagerly my wife and I seized at the name our two-year-old daughter gave to the orphan cat we adopted; “Mr. Wires” she dubbed him, for his very pronounced whiskers. My wife also had a clever name: “Mr. Meowgi”. But there was a particular delight in delegating that honor of naming to our young daughter. How beautiful to see that our delight is an echo of God’s fatherly delight in his creature’s first creative acts. But this story in Genesis loses its resonance and significance if Adam is merely a mouthpiece for the names God has already chosen. Adam determines their names, using his God given creativity and calling. As a good father and out of a capacious will, God defers to Adam’s whim.
Stewarding
Through the process of naming the animals, Adam comes to see the lack of a suitable partner for himself. God intended a helpmate for Adam that — unlike the mute, subservient relationship with the animals — would be equal, reciprocal, mutual. As Adam’s wife, she would be his ally and partner, a collaborator in the mission God gives them to multiply. God also gives the responsibility to take care of — “to rule over” and “cultivate” — the world they inhabit. Their calling is to be God’s stewards, executors, viceroys. My wife and I have taught our daughters to feed Mr. Wires, the cat, and soon they were cleaning the litter box and the chicken coop too. We want them to feel responsible for the well-being of these housemates, and for the home they inhabit. We are always on the hunt for new responsibilities they can take up. As they grow, our goal is that they would have learned how to do so whether we are there or not; that they will develop a character that chooses obedience even in our absence, that prefers the good of their own accord.
“What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.
Psalm 8:5-6
It is right to marvel with David that God endowed us with the weight of glory and of responsibility for making this or that like so. It is a mistake, even out of humility, to minimize that commission God has given us. From the start, God lays the groundwork for human persons whose raison d’etre is participating in and contributing to the flowering and flourishing of creation.
Two Trees
In the Garden, God plants a Tree of Life and a forbidden tree, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Though I’m sure we do not fully understand their significance, planted right there in the garden at the beginning, and written of millennia before our modern debates, is a momentous choice. On the one hand is life, and on the other, death (Gen. 2:17). These two trees reveal God’s intention to enable Adam and Eve to choose to obey or disobey, to live according to his rule, or to reject it. God lavishes Adam and Eve with a garden of delights, a Tree of Life and a thousand yeses. But to the fruit of one tree, he says: “thou shalt not”. It is God’s very first negative command to man. It is a mistake to think that Adam and Eve did not understand the difference between good and evil, that they did not know they had a choice between obedience and disobedience before succumbing to the serpent’s temptation. Eve initially rebuffs the serpent, explaining that to eat its fruit is forbidden. So, from the start, God gifts a garden of earthly delights to enjoy forever. But, significantly, he also makes a point of making it possible to knowingly reject God’s command.
Testing Hearts
The Bible centers the will, the locus of decision making, in the human heart. And testing and winnowing human hearts is a recurrent theme from Eden since.
After their liberation by God from their Egyptian masters and their disobedient grumbling and faithlessness, the Hebrews’ sojourn in the wilderness was such a test. “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.” (Deuteronomy 8:2) God allows the Hebrews to be hemmed in by Philistines and Canaanites to this end. “They were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the Lord’s commands, which he had given their ancestors through Moses.” (Judges 3:4) King David writes, “Test me, Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; (Psalm 26:2). Jeremiah records on God’s behalf, “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:10. See also Zechariah 13:9, Job 23:10, Jeremiah 12:3, Proverbs 17:3, 1 Corinthians 3:13, Luke 6:45.)
Notice how clearly these verses distinguish between the acts of God, such as leading them in to the wilderness, and the acts of each Israelite, the decisions whether to keep God’s command. God puts his people to the test. But if it is God who has determined all the machinations of their hearts, it is God’s will that is in question. Surely not.
I have made you a tester of metals and my people the ore, that you may observe and test their ways. They are all hardened rebels, going about to slander. They are bronze and iron, they all act corruptly.
Jeremiah 7:27-28
As the center of our will, and the source of sin (Matthew 12:34), we must guard our heart (Proverbs 4:23). It is the human heart, the will, that is put to the test by these commands, trials, and tribulations?
In view of all the ways in which hearts are tested and face a day of final reckoning and judgment, it seems that one of God’s principal purposes for our lives is the winnowing, threshing, and refining of the human heart. But this only makes sense if human hearts, human wills are not merely God’s own will.
[Determinists often enlist Proverbs 16:9 as an expression of God’s , but notice that therein that plans begin in the human heart.]
mark 7:21-23 For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly. 23 All these evils come from withinand defile a person.”
James 4:7-8 So submit to God. But resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw nearto God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you double-minded.
Proverbs 16:9,
wellspring
call and response
James 4:8
He said, “What comes out of a person defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly. 23 All these evils comefrom within and defile a person.”
add
“But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.”
-Luke 7:30
Calvinism’s take on this verse must be: God purposely decreed for them to reject His own purpose for the
Freed Slaves
and the Egyptians lorded it over them defer Paul echoes this sentiment in his letter to the Galatians. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Notice “don’t let yourselves“
Football or foosball
Not all Israel
5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: Jeremiah 19:5
Sowing and Reaping
Your own ways, your own deeds have brought all this upon you; this is your punishment, and all this comes of your rebellion. (Jer 4:18 NEB) Obadiah underscored the same lesson: For soon the day of the LORD will come on all the nations: you shall be treated as you have treated others, and your deeds will recoil on your own head. (Obad 1:15 NEB)
What you sow, you will reap. What is crucial to see when God sets out the rewards of a particular course of action is that the decider will be making their choice on the basis of the ends which they seek. It is not the past or the present that informs their choice but the pursuit of future outcomes.
Also implicit in the principle of sowing and reaping is that the consequences we are tied to the choices we sowed. Who sowed? And who, thereby determined our outcome? We did.
Giving Them Over
A king, Saul. Obey the voice of the people in relation to all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but Me they have rejected from reigning over them.”
The question is, is life more like which. Jesus used imperfect analogies.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another. In this passage
Law
“Rules are made to be broken.” That popular rebel spirit is antithetical to the Spirit of God. Still, the saying has it right that rules and laws can be broken. As in the Garden, where Eve and then Adam disobeyed the prohibition against the Tree, we have excelled at breaking God’s commandments. What is a
Laws that can be broken imply at least that the lawgiver knows the law can be broken and that those under the law have the capacity to both obey and disobey the law. Though there are consequences, God’s law is resistible.
- unrequited love (Hosea), Israel prostituting itself
- initiator and responder, Hosea
- From slavery and bondage to freedom
- Law, commandments, and obedience
- The Law as tutor, as preparation for self-directed virtue
- The Freewill Offering (maybe, the obligatory offering was also free)
- The law of tit for tat, blessing and reward and consequence
- Covenant,
- obedience
- Israel (wrestled with God), love, Hosea, invitation to the wedding, stand at the door and knock,
- Groom and bride (helper), the church as the bride of Christ
Covenant
A covenant is a contract or commitment between two or more parties. Yes, the very nature of covenant, of one of the most overarching aspects of our relationship to God, As such, a covenant can be fragile if one of the parties to the covenant is unreliable, inconstant, unfaithful.
in one of the most exotic metaphors in scripture,
Israel
In the book of Genesis, we find a mysterious episode where Jacob wrestles through the night with a man who is an incarnation of God. At daybreak, the “man” tells him: “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” (Genesis 32:22-32) Henceforth, “Israel”, the namesake of the people of God, means to struggle with God. To wrestle. Is there any more poignant picture of a contest of wills. And, of course, Israelites live up to their name in subsequent history, wrestling with God for generations, sometimes obeying, more often rebelling. Notice that God allows Jacob to wrestle instead of overpowering Him, as He could have. as illustrated by throwing out his socket with a touch. Here again we see God’s desire to gift strength and self-determination to Jacob. Like a father who allows his child to win the wrestling match on the living room carpet.
If Jacob and the angel are each facets of God’s will, how does one make sense of this clash? It reads like a foreshowing of Fight Club, where the narrator has had a psychotic break and is left wrestling with his own shadow, that is, with himself.
Jonah
Jonah famously did not want to obey the calling of God on his life. He hated the Ninevites and when called by God, he ran the other direction. To accomplish his will, God could have knit Jonah together differently in the womb. God could have determined that his irresistible desires would be to conform from ages past. Instead, God softens Jonah’s heart by being an agent in the story, shaping events . This is the kind of . Like a family intervention to implore a wayward daughter to choose differently, this is the kind of influence we see as
Every Knee
Whenever persons in the Bible encounter the living God
Sin and Temptation
Two Paths
Like Robert Frosts famous two paths that diverge in a wood, God sets out two paths before his people. And there he implored them, choose life!
These paths recur throughout scripture and on judgment day, goats and sheep, wheat and chaff, . Jesus in particular uses this metaphor
Within the sixty-six books of the Bible spanning millennia, we find hundreds of names, stories metaphors, similes, and actions attributed to God. Overwhelmingly they paint a portrait of an interactive, synergistic relationship between God and his creatures. And they portray people as both contending and cooperating with God. At almost every turn, God invites us to take up the mantle, to participate in the work he is doing, to respond to him in obedience, to invest and grow our gifts in his absence, . Instead of determining our actions, God defers to us. You choose. I have not chosen for you.
The will of man in opposition or submission, broken or reconciled.
Deuternomoy 5:29
Choose Life
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.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
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.
Repent!
Throughout the Bible, but especially in the prophets and reinstated with John the Baptist and then Jesus, the call goes out, “repent!”, “turn away”, “return”. To repent is to choose otherwise. It is a direct and bold appeal to the will. God initiates, often through a prophet, reminding His people of acts of gracious love, and exhorts us to respond. Consider Zechariah, one of many such examples.
3 Tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Return to me”, declares the Lord Almighty, “and I will return to you”, says the Lord Almighty. 4 Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.” But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5 Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6 But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors? “Then they repented and said, ‘The Lord Almighty has done to us what our ways and practices deserve, just as he determined to do.’”
Notice the back and forth. God says, turn. The ancestors do not turn. Zechariah’s audience does turn. One generation repents, the other does not. And there is reciprocity. If you return to me, I will return to you.
Having chosen a wayward path, God beseeches people to choose to reverse course. Principally, he uses prophets and consequences to nudge people back to the narrow gate
‘This is what the Lord says:
Jeremiah 8:4-6
“‘When people fall down, do they not get up?
When someone turns away, do they not return?
5 Why then have these people turned away?
Why does Jerusalem always turn away?
They cling to deceit;
they refuse to return.
6 I have listened attentively,
but they do not say what is right.
None of them repent of their wickedness,
saying, “What have I done?”
Each pursues their own course
like a horse charging into battle.
“Do not let your heart turn to her ways or stray into her paths.” (Prover 7:25 | NIV)
The Invitation
In several parables, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a wedding and to its guests as those who said yes to the invitation.
The Sower and the Seed
Similar to the invitation, Jesus uses the metaphor of a sower
Prayer
We are encouraged by God to make appeals to Him, and assured that he will answer them. Abraham (Gen. 18:16-32), Moses (Ex. 32:9-14), and Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:1-11) each reason with God. Jesus tells us to “pray and not lose heart”, since even an unjust judge will accede the request. By contrast, how much more will our good Father in Heaven. “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?” (Luke 18: 7) As if to make the point clearer, later in the same chapter, Luke tells us Jesus heals a persistent blind man whom he asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” Yes, it is incredible that the Lord of the all would take our desires and requests into account, but Scripture gives us every indication that He does.
Not God’s Will
Perhaps the most compelling rebuke to theological determinism in scripture is the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, where he prayed that God’s will would be done on earth as it is heaven. Here Jesus himself states that much of what occurs under the sun is at odds with God’s will, whether secret or explicit. There is no hint of a “but actually, in God’s secret will”.
After creating, God declared his world good.
The Prince of this World
One of the most troubling aspects of biblical revelation is that in some sense, Satan is the prince of this world. Satan has some level of jurisdiction over the affairs of this world. The Devil is active, prowling and — He is a determiner of events. This poses a difficult dilemma for the theological determinist. Is Satan acting out God’s will or is he another determiner, fighting against God and his Kingdom.
Ask, Knock, Seek, Choose
In His great mountain side sermon, Jesus bids his listeners to ask, to seek, to knock, to do (unto others), to enter (the narrow gate), to watch out (for false prophets), and to put His words into practice. Jesus warns that, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Here multiple threads are interwoven. the appeal to our wills is a steady drumbeat.
Matthew 7:21 NIV
https://www.bible.com/111/mat.7.21.niv
““Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Matthew 7:7 NIV
https://www.bible.com/111/mat.7.7.niv
This exhortation to seek God, to choose the narrow road, is entirely in keeping with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere. Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow him, but to count the cost. These calls bear all the hallmarks of and informed and a willful decision
Gethsemane
In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see perhaps the most momentous act of will since the Garden of Eden. Standing in contrast to Adam’s and Eve’s ill-advised disobedience, Jesus falls before his Father, anticipating his imminent suffering and death with fear and dread. With his “spirit willing, but flesh weak”, Jesus pleads, face to the ground, with God the Father for another way. But with a resolve that is the antithesis of his forbears, Jesus utters, “yet not as I will, but as you will”.
When we repent of going outside of the boundaries that God has set is an act of submission. Probably the central act of will in scripture\
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Matthew 26:39 New International Version (NIV)
Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God. May Your gracious Spirit lead me on level ground. (Psalm 143:10)
“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mathew 26:41).
Golgotha
“This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”
Acts 2:23 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/act.2.23.NIV
Unrequited Love
It is sometimes said that the Bible is Gods love letter to his people. It is also a tragic story of unrequited love. One of the most remarkable but recurrent descriptions of God is as one who laments and longs for the ones he loves. Indeed, unrequited love is an overarching theme of the biblical story. God loves, pursues, rescues, and chastens a people whose love is, in return, fleeting and fickle. Indeed, instead of love, often there is hate. It is odd to think of God as having unmet desires, but so we read, again and again. Confronting the pharisees Jesus says:
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I have longed to gatheryour children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would have none of it!
Jesus, Matthew 27: 37
Father
Those who trust in Jesus join his family as adopted children of God. Astonishing. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1a) Jesus in particular appeals to the picture of a good Father to reveal God’s nature to us. “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11) God’s goodness and generosity as a Father is oft remembered (James 1:17).
Romans 8:14-17 – For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”)
This picture of God as father is at odds with a God who determines every story beat of His children’s lives.
The idea that a controlling sovereignty redounds to the glory of God is perplexing. We would never confer extra honor to a domineering father who treated his children thusly.
My four year old daughter has a rare form of liver disease called Caroli. While we awaited surgery, she had nearly daily bouts with extreme pain and emotions. In these traumatized states, she refused pain meds, even though it was the thing that could relieve her pain and restore her to herself. Reasoning with her became impossible, and sometimes my wife or I have to force the medicine into her mouth. It is awful enduring her writhing pain with her. And yet, it was worse still to force these meds on her over her clenched fist protests as she screamed: “Don’t force, don’t force!” In these heart-wrenching episodes, two things came into focus: the powerful human drive to not have our wills violated, and my own horror, as a father, to have to do so.
Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth! For the LORD has spoken: “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. (Isaiah 1:2)
Groom
Call and Response
Ambassadors
“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”
2 Corinthians 5:20 NIV
http://bible.com/111/2co.5.20.niv
Ambassador is one of the most beautiful characterizations of the missionary call in
Temptation
In the Garden, it is the serpent — God’s and humanity’s arch nemesis — who tempts Eve and then Adam. And ever since,
No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
1 Corinthians 10:13 | NIV
Sin
Sin is to cross the line or to miss the mark. It is to trespass, to fall short.
“If it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.”
Here we see a faculty over and above desire. “Do not to let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey it in its lust.”
The Holiness of God
God has nothing to do with the unrighteous acts of man. He opposes them. He casts it out. The biblical authors are exceedingly concerned to underscore that God is not evil and has nothing to do with evil.
If it is God who determined our wicked acts, it requires him to be intimately involved in the contemplating and planning of the most wicked and perverse of human deeds. This is unthinkable.
When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
James 1:13-17 | NIV
Relationship
One of the most stunning of God’s revelations is that He is a God who created us in a relationship to himself and seeks to restore the rift in that relationship. From the Garden where the relationship was poisoned to its ages long restoration through Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. At the crux of the story is Jesus, who comes to restore the restore the rift and, astonishingly, calls His disciples and followers not just servants, but friends. In this central biblical theme lies the profound incomprehensibility of theological determinism. All of the thousands of relational words and stories God uses to reveal himself — love, friendship, adultery, reconciliation, the prodigal, the bride, etcetera — are analogies from human relationships. And human relationships are always bilateral, reciprocal, interactive. The meaning of these terms is not preserved when there is but one will on both sides of the relation. a ⟷ b, a ⟷ a
Collaborators
From the start, God hands work and the honor of participation in the story to His creatures. Adam is given the
In perhaps the most compelling gesture of deference, Jesus chooses to leave his work in the hands of his people, the church.
- Invitation to the wedding
- Ambassadors of reconciliation
- The story of Jonah, god doesn’t just change his heart, but uses events to lead to a heart change
- Seek and you will find, ask and it will be given
Locating the Mystery
Because the ability to will and choose freely is sui generis, the use of analogies and metaphors in this conversation is inevitable. Every analogy is imperfect, and none will capture our subject . Nevertheless, if Jesus spoke of us seeds and lambs, surely there is some possibility for to be gained.
more like the making of the movie than the writing of the screenplay. It’s more like football than foosball.
And yet, for reasons I cannot fathom, theological determinism is ascendant in many quarters. Many Reformed theologians apply their monocausal (“monergistic”) accounting not only to salvation, but to every human happening. God, of course, is inconceivably transcendent and independent, and humans are lowly and utterly dependent for every breath. That is a given.
Often, the intentions driving theological determinism are of the noblest sort. First, there is a desire to give all due to God. You sometimes hear this view expressed as, “it’s not about man, it’s all God”. And second, there is a desire to construe God’s power in the strongest terms, and therefore as complete control. We ought to marvel with David at the realization that God chose to clothe us in glory, honor, and responsibility.
“What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:
Psalm 8:5-6
Dan Wolgemuth’s anecdote of Home Depot.A battle over the meaning of terms is right at the
To bring the distinction into focus, the most helpful parallel is the way in which interlocutors have used the terms monergism and synergism with respect to regeneration and salvation. As R.C. Sproul explains:
Monergism is the opposite of synergism. … Synergism is a cooperative venture, a working together of two or more parties. … Monergistic regeneration is exclusively a divine act. … A corpse cannot revive itself. It cannot even assist in the effort. It offers no help in reviving itself, though once revived it is empowered to act and respond.
R.C. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology? Understanding the Basics
Reformed theologians like Sproul describe salvation as a “monergistic” event, wherein God is the “exclusive” agent who effects the outcome, with no “assistance”, no “help”. That is a conversation for another day.2 Of concern here is that the theological determinist extends this monocausal accounting to all human events, the will of God being the sufficient, 100% cause of every event, every effect. There is one player in this game, and many pieces; many characters, but one writer ; one will, and many conduits. By contrast, the deferentialist sees God choosing to have a “synergistic” relationship with his creatures, wherein God gifts humans with the privilege and responsibility of being a component cause of many events. On this multicausal view, God incorporates many causal agents, giving a small writing role to each of us. We are coauthors, collaborators, contenders. God is the creator, but we his stewards. God is the initiator, but we the respondents. God is the hero, but we are his allies, or his enemies. God is the conductor, but we play our notes, following the rhythm, or not. God is the director, and as actors we follow the script, or not, with room, even, for improvisation. He calls, we respond. One way – or another.
Notes
Perhaps synergism is the best counterpart to determinism, though it is perhaps more specific, as the antipode to monergism. Libertarian free will is not an apt term because it is a term for a view about human the human will, not about God.
Because we are directly acquainted with our wills, it is not special pleading when so called “libertarians” insist that free will is, de facto, libertarian. We could be mistaken, but our knowledge of the will is based on the tangible and repeated experience of desires and pressures being irresistible and of the determination of imminent events being in our hands.
