Something I’m learning is that when you question things that are usually just taken for granted, it’s easy for people to assume the reason that you are asking the question. From there you can either be shortly entertained with answers that don’t address your question, or you are dismissed because you’re assumed to be just like all the others before you that asked the same question but for the wrong reasons.
As I continue to explore the idea of evil in regards to God’s sovereignty and His eternal will, let me just say the following:
- I am NOT trying to prove that God shouldn’t be worshipped
- I am NOT trying to prove that God is guilty of sin
- I am NOT trying to prove contradiction in the Scriptures
- I am NOT trying to prove that God is not sovereign
- I am NOT trying to prove that humanity is not responsible for its actions and motives
So now let me give you some background on where I’m coming from.
I spent a good part of my life assuming things about why things are the way they are. I was taught that God was in complete control of everything except for humanity’s free will — otherwise God wouldn’t be fair and a “true relationship” could not exist between God and humanity. Yet at the same time, I firmly believed that everything happens for a reason. I never stopped to realize that if God won’t violate humanity’s free-will then He’s not really in control of much of anything — not to mention that He can’t claim eternal purpose or reason in anything involving people.
I’ve sense been introduced to the Doctrines of Grace which made sense out of so many things that were avoided by my spiritual leaders growing up. I’ve come to realize that in the process of justification, God doesn’t “try” or “attempt” — the words themselves imply “failure”. In my earlier days I would say that God was desperately trying to get my lost friends to believe in Him (and also claim that He has a plan and is in control). But now and even though I don’t like it, the idea of unconditional election explains what I observe in Scripture and in the real world.
So here’s the rub, as I listen to teaching that embraces the Doctrines of Grace, I see inconsistency when it comes to applying the same idea to the process of sanctification. It is often said that “justification is monergistic (all God) while sanctification is synergistic (both you and God). The God that is sovereign and never failing in salvation is all of a sudden doing His best to try to get His children to be more like Christ — sanctification.
Which leads me to another rub. What does sanctification involve? Trials. And what do trials involve? Temptation and evil. For someone to be refined by a trial or persecution, someone else has to be in a situation to be tempted and actually commit the sin. We are quick to acknowledge God’s purpose of refinement in trials but when it comes to the other parties involved and their sin, we say that God no longer “purposes” or “causes” that, but merely “allows” or “permits” it.
For the martyrs to endure their trials, someone had to persecute them. For God to show you that you were putting your music above Him, someone had to break into your car and steal your iPod. Was God fortunate that the opportunity arose to make you more like Christ? If we are going to assign Divine purpose to the good effect of someone’s sin then we must also assign Divine purpose to the act itself. Otherwise God is just a cosmic fortune teller that plagiarizes the will of all humanity — merely predicting the future and taking credit for all the residual good that occurs from the evil that He has nothing to do with.
This is essentially the question of, “Did God create/cause sin?” This is where you’ll Google and get the Augustinian argument that sin is like darkness or cold, it is not a thing but the absence or light and heat. It sounds good at first but if you are going to accept that then you also have to accept that God didn’t create/cause darkness or cold — they just happened as some cosmic side-effect that God had to accept as if He was under the law of nature.
I think the more accurate question is, “Did God purpose sin in His eternal-mind?” I have no other answer but yes. On day three as God was creating plants, Christ was already crucified and a remnant was already preserved in the mind of God. Which also means Adam and Eve had already rebelled, and Judas had already betrayed Jesus in the mind of God. Making it a bit more personal, let’s say you have a Christian friend that was conceived out of wed-lock. That means that your friend’s parents’ fornication was already in the eternal mind of God as God was creating the plants.
If you are a professing Calvinist, this is where the “God looked down through the corridors of time and knew that humanity would sin” answer is tempting, but if it doesn’t work for salvation then why should it work for the fall as it makes the eternal will and purpose of God contingent on an external agent?
Psalm 139:16
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.Acts 4:27-28
…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.
Those are my thoughts, what are yours?
I’m with you Guiroo.
On Sanctification, I think there is a misunderstanding of what sanctification is. The practice of becoming sanctified is confused with actually being sanctified. What I think happens is God graces some of us with a love studying his word, or being disciplined in prayer, or ministering to the poor, or what ever spiritual discipline you may like in order to show that person, personally, a piece of him. And, through this process he grows us to be more like him in the Holy Spirit. You don’t grow through effort, but by his good grace.
So in my opinion you must either be synergistic or monergistic in the whole work of God in order to be consistent. It is either you working with God through faith and repentance in justification or God is working in you through faith and repentance; the same follows in sanctification, and glorification.
On the nature of evil; I believe the nature of evil to be the not the absence of good but a perversion of good. This leads to a more satisfactory account of how God could purpose good things for us but for them to still go horribly wrong because of our rebellion and not outside his sovereignty. This also makes us wholly culpable in our sin, allows for God to preordain sin with our him sinning.
Those are my thoughts.
On synergistic sanctification, I think you’re taking the function of human responsibility too far. As D.A. Carson put it, there are two poles the Bible sets forth for this discussion: (paraphrasing now) “God is utterly sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions to mitigate human responsibility. Human beings are fully responsible, but their responsibility never functions to mitigate God’s sovereignty.”
The way you posed your final question (“it makes the eternal will and purpose of God contingent on an external agent”) runs foul of Carson’s second pole. I think the distinction between monergistic justification and synergistic sanctification addresses whether we play any part in the matter, not whether we rise to God’s level of omnipotence.
No, God still holds us responsible. Paul makes that clear. Using the definition of:
In our existence in the physical and spiritual worlds, we are responsible. But similarly to how irresistible grace works, many different external factors influence our ultimate decision and more importantly, the intention behind the decision. None of those factors are out of God’s control and are related to the ultimate cause — God Himself.
So how does God hold us responsible if He’s the ultimate cause of it all? Paul answers that. He doesn’t go into Adam’s free will and how we freely sin due to our sin nature. He specifically addresses the topic of God’s free will and purpose for His creations.
I think for traditional Calvinists, this messes with the firmly held analogy of God as a judge — just like Calvinism messes with the Arminians’ firmly held analogy of God as a warrior.
@Hugh, maybe I misread your point.
My last paragraph presents the common explanation from traditional Calvinists explaining how God never intended/caused sin and isn’t responsible for sinners’ eternal punishment, but merely allowed/permitted it due to Adam’s free will rebellion. (Words like “decreed” and “pre-ordained” aren’t specific in defining intent — Arminians will agree that God pre-ordained everything … after looking down the corridors of course.)
This is where Calvinists start using Arminian ideas (but only applied to Adam) to keep God’s hands clean of people being in Hell. (God is love but He is also just. He is only giving them what they deserve because of Adam.) I don’t buy it for the reason you stated — it makes God’s eternal will and purpose contingent on Adam’s free will.
It also begs the question, “If God knew that Adam would sin, why did He make a universal system where sin would poison the nature of all of humanity — which without God’s grace leads to eternal punishment?”
I agree that God is not sinful and does not sin, but if God created knowing that sin would exist and He claims to have an eternal purpose in everything that happens then He intended sin and it’s effects — be it eternal punishment, food during a famine, or the elect’s glimpse of grace.
Yet at the same time, humanity — being creatures of space and time — is indeed responsible for its actions and intentions in the physical and spiritual existence that has been created for it.
Piper shows that he thinks past the “free will” of the garden and boils the question down nicely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazlhAyVXPA
I sure wish he had an answer though.
Just catching up on your blogs….This is a sticky discussion, and one I could really look foolish in discussing, but I have a few thoughts.
I have a hard time explaining the doctrine of election, but I am thankful I don’t have to explain it as a part of the Gospel when witnessing. And yet I know from my own personal experience and upbringing, it was all God that brought me to Him. I seriously can’t and won’t take any credit for it. It makes perfect sense to me that He called me from the dead.
There are times I have spoken the Gospel to people and they have received it like fertile soil and times I have spoken it and literally had a person give me a blank face as if I’m speaking a foreign language. I remember one such instance a sister of mine looked at me after my clear explanation of the Gospel and said…”It seems as if some people get it and others don’t…I just don’t”. I was so confused! I kept trying to reword it and felt like a failure for Christ.
Now I rest in knowing that God sees each person’s heart and where they are spiritually; I still witness-because I’m commanded to..and when the word falls on someone really ready to receive it, it’s as if I found a jewel. I don’t take credit for their understanding it, but I share in God’s joy.
I find so much rest in God’s sovereignty when it comes to witnessing or living out the Christian walk, and if I’m to error, may it be on the point that God is more in control of things than not. While some have a hard time receiving it because it may make God appear mean or unloving to some, I see it as a means of comfort resting in the moving of His Spirit and not my ability. I think when we get to heaven and see the bigger picture, like Jesus communicated, we will be in awe of how much He truly loved the world..even those who believed in complete free will.
BTW this is a down to earth view…If you want more theological talk, sorry…I fall short on the big words.