What does God's sovereignty really mean and does it take precedence over his love? Does everything happen according to God's will?
The Sovereignty of God is a cornerstone doctrine for Conservative Evangelicals (CEs) like J.I. Packer and John Piper. In my view though, they both misinterpret God's sovereignty and over-emphasise it at the expense of other more important aspects of his divine nature and being.
Extreme Sovereignty
In very over-simplified terms, the conservative view of Sovereignty is roughly:a) God, to be God, must be utterly Sovereign and in control of everything. (Omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence are implied by divine sovereignty; some would also add impassibility - that God cannot be changed or moved.)
b) God can - and does - do exactly whatever he wills and whatever pleases him.
c) God's Will and rule are ultimate, absolute, eternal, immutable, fixed, unfailing, inescapable. He does not repent or change his mind.
d) Everything that happens is God's will - whatever happens is according to or as a result of God's perfect Will and sovereign purpose. (If it is not his direct will, it is his indirect will; if it is not his active will, it is his passive or permissive will.)
e) God's ways, will and words are perfect and cannot be questioned by us.
Predestination and Inerrancy follow logically from the conservative view of Sovereignty
Also following directly and logically from this view of divine sovereignty are two further key CE doctrines:i) Scriptural Inerrancy: God's Word is perfect, fixed and eternal.
ii) Predestination: God has chosen from before time those people who he will - and will not - save and redeem; those whose ultimate destiny is joy in the Kingdom of Heaven and those who will be eternally lost and punished in Hell. This choice is fixed and has nothing to do with the merit or faith of the people involved; it is purely a matter of God's unsearchable grace towards the undeserving.
Self-limited Sovereignty
To me, the CE view of sovereignty feels like a kind of spiritualised Determinism, more akin to the Islamic views of Allah and the Qu'ran than to the uniquely Christian view of God. It also seems to me to derive more from Hellenistic philosophy and logic than from Hebrew or New Testament thought and experience.Taking the same points (a)-(e) as above, I would make the following definition of God's sovereignty:
God's sovereignty includes the right to limit the exercise and expression of his own omnipotence
a) God is Sovereign and in control; but to be in control is not the same as to be controlling. God's sovereignty includes the right and ability to limit the exercise and expression of his own omnipotence and omniscience under particular circumstances as his purposes require it. (For example, Jesus was neither omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent during his life on Earth.) So instead of the absolute rule of a benign divine dictator, there is a complex interplay between God's sovereignty, creaturely freedom and - enabling these otherwise conflicting factors to mesh - divine grace.b) Following on from this, God can of course do whatsoever he wills, but he may not. For example, if his will for a specific situation or person conflicts with the general laws he has laid down for how the world works, including creaturely choice and moral responsibility, he may choose to forego his primary will in that situation. In other words, God may choose (by his perfect will!) to self-limit his sovereignty, subjecting it to other principles or aspects of the divine nature such as love and mercy.
c) While God's overall will may remain fixed, his specific will in the current imperfect world is often provisional, flexible and dynamic. The created world and its inhabitants have the freedom not to obey God's will, and also sometimes his perfect will is not compatible with the constraints and imperfections of this world. In such cases, God's purposes are not defeated but have to go by longer and more circuitous routes. God is more than creative enough to have contingency plans for circumstances in which his primary and even secondary or tertiary will is not done.
Only in God's fully-realised Kingdom will God's will always be perfectly done
d) Again, far from all that happens in this world is what God wills, whether directly or indirectly, actively or passively. Much of what happens is in direct conflict with or opposition to God's will. Only in God's fully-realised Kingdom will God's will always be perfectly done. Why else does Jesus urge us to pray 'Your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven'? e) God's will is indeed perfect - whatever God wills must be good and right. Nonetheless, I believe God is usually very happy for us to question his will - if that means active engagement rather than submitting passively to whatever happens. And certainly we need to question whether particular events and circumstances are God's will simply to be accepted or instead something we need to battle against and overcome.
Secondary Sovereignty
God's sovereignty and omnipotence take second place to his love and goodness
I don't have any problem with God being Sovereign, only with the primacy of Sovereignty over other aspects of his nature and character. In my view his sovereignty and omnipotence take second place to some of his other qualities, primarily his love and goodness. Therefore where his sovereignty is in conflict with his love, it is his love that wins.
Some good observations, methinks, but:
ReplyDelete(a) You have a hierarchy of 'will' (primary, secondary, tertiary, perfect, etc.) - is God's will really so diverse?
(b) Your final sentence, I think, is theologically problematic, for it suggests that God's 'qualities' (as you put it) are 'things' that can be moved around and arranged as God sees fit. It's especially problematic, in my view, to say that when God's sovereignty is 'in conflict with his love, it is his love that wins.' If God is undivided (the old doctrine of divine simplicity), how can we say that any of God's attributes are in conflict with one another? Isn't it better to say that God's sovereignty is a loving sovereignty, or that God's love is a sovereign love?
Ooh, good stuff. Will give it some thought!! By the way, I'm not sure if you get to see my replies to your comments?
ReplyDeleteTalking of primary and secondary will etc, I really just meant that if what God most wants to happen doesn't, he puts in place another plan, and if that doesn't work out, he has another, etc. In other words, God is infinitely creative.
Incidentally, why should God be simple? His creation certainly isn't, and it's odd that he would be less complex than what he's made.
Yeah, I can read your comments with no problems.
ReplyDeleteDivine simplicity is an old doctrine that effectively says that God can't be reduced to 'parts', whereas creatures can. (It comes in handy in denying unnuanced accounts of penal substitution: 'Hang on, you're saying that God in his love wants to forgive and to save, but that God in his wrath requires appeasement?') So your comment about creation not being simple actually supports this in one way: If God is unlike creation, which is complex, then God is most likely simple, rather than more complex.
Aah, I see: in the words of the infallible Wikipedia, 'God is described as undivisible [surely indivisible?]; God is simple, not composite... Because God is simple, his properties are identical with himself, and therefore God does not have goodness, but simply is goodness.' Will clearly need to think about this further!
ReplyDeleteI think I still think what I thought(!), but would word it slightly differently in light of this idea.
So I wouldn't see sovereignty - or indeed simplicity - as one of God's qualities in the same way as love is; to say God is love is a different kind of statement than to say that God is sovereign.
To say that God is sovereign is almost just another way of saying that God is God, whereas to say that God is love is to give content to the idea of God. What do you reckon?
As for a hierarchy in God's will, the more I think about this, the more confused I become!
:-)
I repeat that I'm not too knowledgeable on the idea of divine simplicity, but it strikes me that the point of the doctrine isn't to enale one to say:
ReplyDeleteGod is sovereign is almost just another way of saying that God is God, whereas to say that God is love is to give content to the idea of God
as you have, but to say:
God is sovereign is almost just another way of saying God is God, [b]just[/b] as to say God is love is just another way of saying God is God.
Or something! The people to read on this, from memory, are Aquinas and Barth. I've read Aquinas on it (though a few years back), but not read Barth on it (apart from his stuff on divine omnipresence).
Fair point (sorry, only just found your last comment!). I do still think that 'God is love' is somehow more deeply true or important than 'God is sovereign' or 'God is omnipotent'. If that sins against the doctrine of divine simplicity, I shall happily be a heretic!
ReplyDelete