Articles
Is Free Will an Illusion? - 3
Under the heading of “God Has Something to Do with Everything,” which we discussed in our last article, theologian Jack Cottrell notes four related concepts that define the works of God in the realm of His earthly creation.
1. God created a world with relative independence. “God made the world with two distinct forces or self-contained ‘energy packs’ that have an inherent power to initiate action and cause things to happen. One is impersonal, the other personal” (The Faith Once for All 115). The impersonal causal force is “the physical laws of nature such as gravity, electromagnetism, chemical reactions, animal instincts, and the laws of motion. These natural laws are self-contained forces that are part of the very essence of matter as created by God. Material stuff is designed by the Creator to operate in certain constant, uniform, and predictable ways, without the need for constant input ... These laws work the way they do because of the way atoms were put together by God in the initial creation” (ibid).
The personal causal force is free will, “the ability to assess situations where choices must be made, and initiate specific courses of action in accordance with our own personal and unforced decisions. We are free to act without our acts having been predetermined by God and without constant input from a divine remote control apparatus. We have a truly free will, or the power to choose between options and opposites, with the ability to actualize more than one choice. Being made in God’s image, we thus have an ability to … create events” (ibid 116). God can intervene directly in either of these realms, and we see this in many different episodes throughout scripture:
Laws of nature: The Egyptian plagues; parting the Red Sea; drought; extending daylight; wind; insect invasions; light refraction; restoring life; lions not attacking Daniel; lion killing the disobedient young prophet, etc.
Free will: Protecting Sarah from Abimelech; the preservation of Joseph; humbling Nebuchadnezzar via insanity; repatriation of Israelites by Cyrus; Haman’s genocide against the Jews via Queen Esther, etc.
It is only by God’s grace and patience that He allows suffering via misused free will to give men full opportunity to be saved (2 Pet 3:9).
2. God created the cosmos according to the principle of divine self-limitation. That means that God’s sovereignty is not infringed upon by the operation of natural law and human self-will. By such things God voluntarily restricts Himself to their existence. Consider Cottrell’s analogy: “(God does this) in the same way human beings limit themselves when they choose to get a pet, buy a house, get married, or have children. When we make such decisions we accept certain responsibilities and commit ourselves to act in certain ways. Such choices are self-limiting, however, since we do not have to make any of them. The decision to create was such a choice for God … When God made such a world, he committed himself to honor his own decision” (ibid 116).
This answers the Calvinist’s charge that any act of free will necessarily negates God’s sovereignty. But the free will that man exercises is only that which God permits him to have, and God reserves the right to intervene when the integrity of His overarching will for man is jeopardized. For example, it never turned out well for any king/nation who threatened to extinguish Abraham’s descendants or the church (again, see Pharaoh, Haman, the Roman Empire, etc.). God is never pushed into a corner or forced into a dilemma by man’s rebellious scheming. This actually highlights God’s sovereign power and brings Him greater glory.
3. God retains sovereign control over His creation. Cottrell: “Whereas the Calvinist interprets sovereignty in terms of total causation, in biblical perspective the key word is control. Some think control is the same as causation, as if it means something akin to sitting at a control panel and pushing all the buttons, and in that way actually causing events to happen. But that is not the sense in which we are using this word. To say that God has sovereign control over his universe means that he is in control of everything that happens, even though he does not cause everything. That God exercises sovereign control in his providence means that his hand is indeed in everything that happens, in one of two ways. That is, whatever happens is either caused or permitted by God” (ibid 117).
Paul remained aware of the “hand of God” in his apostolic work, and he repeatedly submitted his plans to God’s will: “For I do not wish to see you now on the way; but I hope to stay a while with you, if the Lord permits” (1 Cor 16:7; cf. Heb 6:3; Ac 16:7; 18:21; 1 Cor 4:19). James counsels all to have this same awareness of God’s will: “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that’” (Jas 4:15).
4. God allows for the principle of conditionality. “The Calvinist idea that everything God does must be unconditioned, i.e., that God cannot react or respond to anything outside himself and be sovereign at the same time, is an unwarranted presupposition” (ibid 118). Calvinism is so extremist on this point that it flies in the face of what we actually read occurring in Scripture. God is constantly issuing to men laws, ultimatums, options, threats, contingencies – “if/then” propositions. It simply begs the question to assert that these involve impulses and motives that God has already deposited into the heart of man.
This is why many Calvinist-influenced people can read the book of Acts and not see the role of baptism in salvation. The notion of fulfilling any condition whatsoever is seen as either an infringement upon God’s sovereignty or an attempt to merit salvation. This is a flawed dichotomy. The third option is that God issues conditions that we may choose to obey or disobey. We can defy Him, or we can defer to Him. This is a test of our love and respect for God. To deny actual free will is to place the blame for the existence of evil on God’s shoulders, a consequence Calvinists vehemently deny in self-contradictory, convoluted language. Mankind commits sin by free will, and man can escape its guilt and consequences by free will, but only in accord with the provision for salvation that God, Himself, unilaterally instituted on our behalf. Salvation is a result of our free will and God’s grace working together.
