jmarkbertrand.com - Essays - Freedom from God?

God hath Decreed in himself from all Eternity, by the most wise and holy Councel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to passe; yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the Creature, nor yet is the liberty, or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power, and faithfulness in accomplishing his Decree.

Christians today, myself included, talk about “free will” as if it were the first article in some spiritual Bill of Rights, a document protecting sinners from unwarranted interference in their lives. But the Bible doesn’t speak in terms of man’s freedom from God. Instead, Scripture describes man’s will as fallen, not free. It is in bondage to sin. None are righteous and no unregenerate man seeks after God. Left to his own devices, sinful man will never choose God’s salvation because he is at enmity with Christ and the Father who sent Him.

The only freedom is the freedom of obedience to God’s commandments, which is only possible following the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. The work of salvation was foreordained before the founding of the world and finished at the cross. In one sense, you were saved before you were born. You chose Christ because He first chose you. How else can you account for the fact that some repent and believe while others remain hard and unrepentant? Is it merit that frees one man to choose Christ while another continues on the path to destruction? Scripture says it is grace—i.e., God’s mercy.

In Romans 8, Paul tells us that “whom he [God] did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” This is a problem passage if you’re arguing for man’s freedom from God. Paul places justification in the middle of a chain of events, each of which is attributed to God’s agency. And the chain begins before the foundation of the world with God’s foreknowledge.

Some people interpret this to mean that God knew in advance what choices man (in his freedom) would make, and then God ‘ratified’ them via predestination. Aside from the fact that such a reading would render the use of words like predestinate ironic in this context, it is also a misreading of the text. Paul did not say that God predestinates what He foreknows—i.e., choices that will be made in the future. Rather, God predestinates whom He foreknows. He predestinates specific people.

For Paul, these truths are a source of assurance to the believer. In Philippians 1:6, he insists that “he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ….” Our security comes from the knowledge that, as the author of Hebrews puts it, Christ is both the author and finisher of our faith. Introduce man’s freedom into the equation, and you introduce doubt: “I know that God will do His part, but have I done mine?”

Free will is an argument used against Paul in the New Testament, the argument used by the Roman Catholics against the Reformers, the argument of the Enlightenment against the Puritans. Free will was the instrument the enemies of Jonathan Edwards used against him, and one of the many darts launched at Charles Spurgeon. It is incredible to think how far Christians have gone in the defense of man’s freedom from his Creator.

And yet, the question remains: If man does not exercise free will, how can God hold him responsible for his actions? Paul answers this objection in Romans 9 with a rebuke of the questioner[i], but modern Christians are rarely content to stop at the threshold of mystery as Paul defined it. The resulting dispute within the church has led to the development of a highly refined theory of man’s will.

Man chooses according to his greatest desire at the moment of choice. Sometimes this desire is in harmony with the individual’s beliefs, sometimes in conflict, but when man acts, he does so in accordance with his natural inclination. In this sense, man is indeed a free agent, making free choices. However, his will is not free. It is in bondage to sin, and as a result of the fall what man desires is unrighteousness. He does not always choose the most wicked of his options, but he never chooses righteousness. If his inclinations were to change, his choices would change—but the power to change man’s inclination lies beyond him. It resides only in God’s hand. God puts a new heart into regenerate man, and regenerate man’s desires change. He continues to sin, but he is now on a path of repentance and sanctification.

But if the desire for God only comes after regeneration, that means its source is God. To the free will advocate, this is a violation of man’s right to non-interference. Also, it raises the question, how can man’s choice of Christ be meritorious if it is the Spirit who draws man in the first place?[ii] In his Cur Deus Homo[iii], Anselm addresses the question of whether there is any merit in goodness that does not result from a free will. His interlocutor, Boso, asserts that one could hardly consider goodness good if it is ‘enforced’ by God, to which Anselm replies that God himself is good, and yet has no “free will” to sin—are we to relegate God’s righteousness to a lower station than that arrived at by man’s will? As R.L. Dabney says in summarizing the argument, “if there were any force in Boso's cavil, that a morally necessitated righteousness would not be free and approvable in the creature, it would be far stronger against God, whose holiness is the most strictly necessitated of all, being absolutely eternal.”

Man makes free choices despite the bondage of his will, and he is responsible for those choices. God’s condemnation is just and well-deserved, because man not only sins but longs to sin. In the whole history of mankind, no one has freely chosen not to sin. Only the incarnate Christ, who was fully God and fully man, lived the perfect, righteous life that made him worthy of the atoning sacrifice. And His righteousness is imputed to us not by choice but by grace.

In a discussion of free agency in class, I referred to today’s free will theism, which casts God as an often-thwarted cosmic gambler and makes His will subject to man’s cooperation (and improvement!), as the result of free will’s ‘slippery slope.’ When challenged on this association of the simple belief in free will and the theological error of free will theism, I replied that systems make themselves consistent over time.

In No Place for Sovereignty, R.K. McGregor Wright explains this dynamic. “Compromised systems are unstable and tend without powerful restraint to slip into modes of greater consistency.” The teacher’s intention might be to limit God’s sovereignty in a negligible way, but “for every inconsistent teacher there are several…students who are quite willing to drive the truck of heresy through the holes the master has left in the semi-orthodox fence.”

If you introduce error into a system of truth in one generation, expect the entire system to be made consistent with the error during the next one. The assertion of man’s free will begins with the desire to frame a tiny section of autonomy for man within the realm of God’s sovereignty.

No advocate of free will intends to undermine the notion of a wholly sovereign, all-powerful God. But (the next generation reasons) if there is a small patch of territory where God leaves man alone, then God must be in some sense limited. If God is limited in this way, there must be other limits we don’t know about. Today, we have a God who takes chances, a God who doesn’t know, a God who works with man and even learns from man. This is certainly not the position of most orthodox Christians who promote the notion of free will, but it is the logical outcome of the assertion.

The Bible has a lot to say about the power of God. It has a lot to say about His redemptive plan, His divine election, His foreknowledge and His predestination. Most of what Scripture tells us about these things is intended to give us comfort—but perversely, these are the ‘problem passages’ of modern Christianity. The argument between grace and works that raged in Paul’s day is alive and well today, though the terms have changed and the point of division often seems subtle (and to many, semantic). The answer to our division on doctrine is still the same that Paul prescribed: Christian unity. But I cannot help thinking that if we conceived of God in the fullness of His power and might, we would not waste a single breath defending man’s freedom from Him.

[i] In Romans 9:18-20a, Paul writes, “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, ‘Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?’ Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” The objection is, if God shows mercy where He wills, and if He hardens where He wills, then no one ‘resists’ His will and, therefore, God is not just in finding fault. Many Christians today who cling to the philosophy of free will do so under the mistaken assumption that only with free will can man be held responsible for sin—that God has no right to punish people unless they acted without His interference. Paul’s response to this heresy, echoed by Martin Luther in his rebuke of Erasmus, is, “Who are you to question the ways of God?” It is the classic response to those who challenge the inscrutable ways of the Creator, dating back to the book of Job.

[ii] Free will is ultimately an argument about merit. Its advocates seem to think of grace as a transaction that God begins and man finishes. God’s agency in salvation is unacceptable because it precludes merit on man’s part—although most people are savvy enough these days not to frame their argument in terms of merit and grace.

[iii] Cur Deus Homo (Why the God-Man?) was written by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) to explain “for what cause or necessity, in sooth, God became man, and by his own death, as we believe and affirm, restored life to the world; when he might have done this, by means of some other being, angelic or human, or merely by his will.” The book is written in the form of a dialogue between Anselm and an interlocutor named Boso. Anselm is quoted by R.L. Dabney in Lecture 11 of his Systematic Theology concerning free agency and the will. Dabney’s is the best and most thorough discussion of this topic I have encountered.