Throughout history Christians have debated the questions surrounding God’s sovereignty and human freedom and especially how these concepts relate to one another. As David Basinger has succinctly pointed out, Christians have normally wished to affirm both of the following tenets:

The problem of affirming both tenets simultaneously, however, creates a prima facie conflict. If one first assumes T1 (i.e., that humans are causally and therefore morally responsible for certain states of affairs), it is difficult to see how God can bring about the exact state of affairs he desires in every case, and therefore difficult to affirm that he is totally in control of everything in any meaningful sense (as T2 affirms). A similar dilemma occurs in relation to human freedom if one first assumes T2.²

To frame this problem interrogatively, if God is sovereignly in control of creation and knows the future accurately and exhaustively, is it possible for a person be free or responsible in any meaningful way? David Ciocchi puts the difficulty this way:

Given that the Biblical texts do imply the sovereignty/freedom tension and that Christian thinkers have taken these texts as normative for theology, it comes as no surprise that the Christian theological tradition uses concepts that express the tension. This tradition presents God as the omniscient, omnipotent Creator and human beings as free creatures who are responsible to their Creator for the conduct of their lives. The tension becomes apparent as soon any attempt is made to develop a coherent explanation of the connections between these concepts.³

Various answers have been suggested in response to this problem throughout the history of the church and even various definitions have been suggested with regard to what precisely constitutes divine sovereignty and human freedom. Indeed, the debate often turns depending on how one defines the very concepts of sovereignty and freedom.

One author has helpfully suggested that responses to this apparent dilemma fall into one of two categories: (1) an appeal to paradox, in which it is asserted that a reconciliation of divine sovereignty and human freedom is beyond our intellectual competence;⁴ and (2) an appeal to reason, in which attempts are made to effect a reconciliation between divine sovereignty and human freedom.⁵

Among those who believe that (1) the concepts of divine sovereignty and human freedom truly reflect biblical teaching, and (2) a solution lies in an appeal to reason rather than paradox, two distinct perspectives have emerged that attempt to answer the vexing relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom. Specifically, there are those who endorse the libertarian reconciliation project (LRP) and those who endorse the compatibilist reconciliation project (CRP).

The LRP includes those attempts at reconciliation which employ the popular account of free will (i.e., that the free agent has the categorical ability to choose and do otherwise than he/she actually does), whereas the CRP includes those attempts at reconciliation which employ a compatibilist account of free will (i.e., that the free agent has the hypothetical [but not categorical] ability to choose and do otherwise than he/she actually does).⁶

Those who affirm a more deterministic view of God’s sovereignty and omniscience (i.e., advocates of the CRP) often prefer to frame the discussion of human freedom in terms of man’s innate responsibility rather than man’s freedom, which they believe is constrained by God’s will and man’s innate nature (i.e., they argue that a free agent will always make choices in accord with what matters most to him/her at the time of the choice). The chief difficulty for this perspective often lies in finding a reasonable ground for human responsibility, especially since responsibility is usually most often tied to a robust account of freedom of some sort.

Those who prefer a less deterministic view of God’s sovereignty and omniscience (i.e., advocates of the LRP) often prefer to frame this discussion in terms of humanity’s freedom, which they believe operates with some degree of autonomy. The chief difficulty for this perspective often lies in providing a strong account of God’s sovereign control of the universe that is consistent with the sweeping claims often made in Scripture.

The questions that must be answered in order to move toward a solution in this recurrent debate are: 1) “What degree of sovereignty does God exercise over creation (including His creatures)?” and 2) “What degree of freedom do sinful humans have?” In addition, and as David Ciocchi also suggests, any successful reconciliation of these concepts must pass at least 2 tests: (1) the test of internal consistency (i.e., the statements that make up the reconciliation must form a self-consistent set), and (2) the exegetical test (i.e., the statements that make up the reconciliation must be externally consistent with biblical teaching).⁷

The purpose of this series of posts is to attempt to provide an answer to these questions in a self-consistent way and from the perspective of Scripture in order to demonstrate that the Bible portrays 1) a more deterministic view of God’s sovereignty, and 2) a somewhat more restricted view of human freedom than what is typically thought of by advocates of the libertarian reconciliation project.

DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY & HUMAN FREEDOM
Advocates of the different reconciliation projects have given different accounts of divine omnipotence/sovereignty/providence.⁸ Although Christians from both reconciliation projects will normally affirm God’s “omnipotence,” they have different conceptions of what this attribute actually means.⁹

According to many Libertarian thinkers, God has chosen to create a world that is “relatively independent” of Him but that is nevertheless a world that He exercises “total control” over.¹⁰ Therefore, they conclude that God’s involvement in history cannot include control of every single detail of every event that happens. Rather they believe that God chooses to respond to human choices and actions in such a way that His purposes are ultimately accomplished in the world.

Libertarian thinkers also tend to conceive of God’s purpose for the world in more general terms that could be accomplished through many different kinds of specific events.¹¹ How does God maintain “total control” over a world which includes the choices of free moral agents according to advocates of the LRP? Many suggest that God maintains his control over a relatively free world “through his foreknowledge and through His intervention in creaturely affairs whenever this is necessary to accomplish his purposes.”¹²

Some even admit that God’s intervention may at times even include the domain of the free choices of human agents.¹³ However, even in this, God’s influence is nondeterminative, since “the manipulated circumstances do not infallibly produce the desired result [of God]; because the individual’s will is truly free, he can resist and act to the contrary.”¹⁴

Finally, libertarian thinkers believe that God’s will cannot include evil. Clark Pinnock categorically states, “The fall of man is an eloquent refutation to the theory that God’s will is always done.”¹⁵ I. Howard Marshall states: “It is not true that everything that happens is what God desires.”¹⁶

On the other hand, compatibilist thinkers tend to have a more deterministic view of God’s sovereignty.¹⁷ They normatively argue that God’s will ultimately governs all things, and that the basis for his sovereign choices is not his foreknowledge of what others will do or anything else external to his will.¹⁸

Nothing, according to some compatibilist thinkers, can thwart God’s preordained plan – not even human freedom. God does not rely on luck or take risks, but as David Basinger has stated,

“…freely made decisions simply function as desired building blocks in God’s preordained creative plan, a plan that is always working itself out in the exact manner God intended.”¹⁹

Compatibilist advocate Wayne Grudem defines God’s providence in the following way:

We may define God’s providence as follows: God is continually involved with all created things in such a way that he (1) keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them; (2) cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do; and (3) directs them to fulfill his purposes.²⁰

But what is one to make of human freedom according to this account of divine sovereignty? According to most compatibilists, God directs and works through the distinctive properties of each created thing, so that these things themselves bring about the results we see. God, therefore, is the primary cause that plans and initiates, while the created agent (acting as the secondary cause) actually brings about the choices and actions in a way that is consistent with the agent’s character and desires.²¹

Compatibilists feel comfortable attributing events equally to both God (the author) and the agents themselves (the actor(s) who actually bring the events about). In other words, God’s decrees include the means that God envisions as well as the end he intends to accomplish and he does this in a way that avoids constraining the agent to do what has been decreed. Human activity is thus causally determined but free as well.²²

Finally, compatibilist thinkers believe that God’s will even includes the evil that we see throughout the world, although they often make a very careful distinction between God’s decretive will (i.e., God’s secret will of eternal decree), and his preceptive will (i.e., God’s revealed will for the moral life of his creatures).²³ They assign the ultimate cause of evil to the decretive will of God (which actually conflicts with His preceptive will), although the evil is actually brought about through the willing actions of moral creatures.

As the preceding analysis illustrates, it is clear that advocates of the CRP and LRP have different accounts of divine sovereignty and human freedom. How should one who is committed to reconciling divine sovereignty with human freedom from a rational standpoint²⁴ determine which project holds the most promise?

As suggested earlier, the proposal that is internally consistent (i.e., the statements that constitute the reconciliation make up a self-consistent set) and externally consistent with the biblical data. In the view of this author, the proposals suggested by the CRP offer the most promise for a true reconciliation of divine sovereignty and human freedom, while the proposals suggested by the LRP face seemingly insurmountable difficulties as the following post will attempt to illustrate.²⁵

1. David Basinger, “Divine Control and Human Freedom: Is Middle Knowledge the Answer?,” JETS 36/1 (March 1993): 54.↩
2. Ibid., 54↩
3. David M. Ciocchi, “Reconciling Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom,” JETS 37/3 (September 1994): 396. ↩
4. The “paradox” typically argued for is an epistemic paradox rather than a strictly logical or semantic paradox. C. S. Evans describes this type of paradox in the following way: “A paradox is an apparent contradiction. In general the discovery of a paradox is the result of an encounter with a reality which our concepts are inadequate to deal with, a reality that ties us in a conceptual knot. When we try to understand it we find ourselves saying self-contradictory things, but of course this does not mean that the reality we have encountered is itself self-contradictory. It means there is a problem with our conceptual equipment.” C. S. Evans, “Is Kierkegaard An Irrationalist? Reason, Paradox, and Faith,” RelS 25 (Spring 1989): 353. Therefore, those who argue for an epistemic paradox believe that the theological claim in question is true but that finite human minds cannot understand it well enough to formulate it in a logically consistent way.↩
5. Ciocchi, “Reconciling Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom,” 395. Ciocchi believes the appeal to paradox probably fails, and he is more favorable to the idea that a solution may lie in an appeal to reason (although he does not believe a convincing solution has yet been found). Ibid., 395, 412.↩
6. Hypothetical ability means that a free agent would have done otherwise than he/she actually did if he/she had wanted to. Therefore, the free agent’s choice is determined by his/her character and circumstances and the agent does not have the ability to refrain from choosing a particular choice since it expressed the agent’s actual preference at the time of the choice. In other words, the free agent always makes choices according to a hierarchy of highest preference and never against that/those preference(s). This is obviously distinct from a categorical ability to choose, which posits that a free agent could in fact have actually chosen otherwise than he/she did in fact choose. ↩
7. Ciocchi actually proposes 3 tests: 1) internal consistency; 2) external consistency [with Scripture], and 3) consistency with our most deeply held intuitions about right and wrong. Ibid., 401. The problem with the third test, however seems to be the lack of consensus with regard to what exactly constitutes “right” and “wrong.” Additionally, our own moral and ethical prerogatives may in fact run contrary to (they at the least may be distinct from) God’s standard (who is the ultimate standard of “right” and “wrong”), and therefore, Ciocchi’s third test seems untenable and unnecessary in light of the second test (i.e., the exegetical test).↩
8. Indeed the very term that is chosen to describe God’s control of the universe is under dispute by many. In fact, in light of the many complications that arise from actually attempting to define what omnipotence actually means, some philosophers have suggested that the concept must either be denied or replaced by a different concept. See, for example, Anthony Kenny, The God of The Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 95-96.↩
9. A general and broad concept of omnipotence would emphasize that 1) God can do anything He pleases and 2) that nothing is too hard for God. However, the “anything” here must be qualified. God cannot do logically contradictory actions (like making a round square), immoral actions (like lying, stealing, breaking his promises), actions appropriate only to finite creatures (like celebrating one’s birthday), actions denying His own nature as God (such as making another god equal to himself), or such things as “making a stone so large he cannot lift it.” None of these inabilities, however, come from weakness, but rather from strength(s). See the helpful discussion in John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, N.j.:P & R Publishing, 2002), 515-21.↩
10. Ciocchi, “Reconciling Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom,” 403.↩
11. Clark Pinnock argues along these lines by saying that God’s purpose for the world “is not a blueprint encompassing all future contingencies” but “a dynamic program for the world, the outworking of which depends in part on man.” Clark Pinnock, “Responsible Freedom in the Flow of Biblical History,” in Grace Unlimited, ed. by Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 18.↩
12. J. W. Cottrell, “The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty,” in The Grace of God, The Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism, ed. by Clark H. Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 111. I. Howard Marshall makes similar claims in I. Howard Marshall, “Predestination in the New Testament, “ Grace Unlimited, 127-43.↩
13. Cottrell states, “Still, through the subtle manipulation of such laws and of mental states, God is able to produce variations in nature and bring about free-will decisions that would not have occurred otherwise. The result is something similar to determinism’s redefined notion of free will, as discussed above and dismissed as not being truly free. That is, I am granting here that through his special providence God brings about sets of circumstances calculated to influence people to make particular decisions that will serve His purposes.” Cottrell, “The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty,” 112.↩
14. Ibid., 112.↩
15. Pinnock, “Responsible Freedom in the Flow of Biblical History,” 102↩
16. Marshall, “Predestination and the New Testament,” 139.↩
17. Most compatibilist’s would probably prefer the description “soft determinism” in order to distinguish their position from that of “hard determinism” or fatalism. “Hard determinists” hold to inherent necessity in the way things are so that even God had no choice but to create the world in the way in which he did. In contrast to this, “soft determinists” hold to consequent necessity in the way things are so that God’s free choice(s) produced certain results as consequences. But before these choices were made, no inherent necessity dictated what must be chosen. See John S. Feinberg, “God Ordains All Things,” in Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, ed. by David Basinger and Randall Basinger (Downers Grove, Il: Intervarsity Press, 1986), 23-24.↩
18. Ibid., 29.↩
19. Basinger, “Divine Control and Human Freedom: Is Middle Knowledge the Answer?,” 56.↩
20. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 315.↩
21. Ibid., 319.↩
22. Feinberg, “God Ordains All Things,” 29.↩
23. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 4th revised and enlarged edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941), 76-77.↩
24. There are non-rational accounts of human freedom, but these have no utility for those committed to a rational reconciliation of divine sovereignty and human freedom. See Christian Perspectives on being Human, ed. by J. P. Moreland and D. M. Ciocchi (Grand Rapids: baker, 1993), 88-91.↩
25. Obviously, the LRP (as well as the CRP) can be instanced by an indefinite number of proposals, so the failure of a given reconciliation attempt does not by itself discredit its project type. I have used the proposals set forth by Cottrell, Marshall, and Pinnock (and I have cited them above) since I believe them to be generally representative of many of the standard arguments put forth by other advocates of the LRP. Nevertheless, even if their specific arguments can be discredited, this would not fatally damage the LRP since other proposals from this project might be able to overcome the problems noted in this series of posts.↩