The Sovereignty of God

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.

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Redefining salvation

...along with a bunch of other words. An attempt to rethink some core aspects of evangelical faith.

Imaginary regular readers of this blog (hello to my wife) may have noticed a bit of a chip on my shoulder about evangelical Christianity recently. I must be fair and acknowledge that there are many wonderful evangelicals, much that is good about evangelicalism, and much that is valuable that I've learnt from it. And I must also note that it has many and varied manifestations and not all my criticisms apply equally to all types of evangelical faith. And finally, there is much wrong with other streams and types of Christian belief - I just don't know so much about them.

I suppose the reason for my criticisms is that I have struggled to fit within mainstream evangelicalism for the past 15 years and have increasingly found that I'm not in accord with some of its core doctrines, priorities and methods - scriptural inerrancy, penal substitionary atonement, particular methods of evangelism etc. Rather than jettisoning the whole thing though, I'm trying to find ways of redefining the faith that work for me.

In the next post or two, I want to look at some key terms held dear by evangelicals and defined by them in very specific ways, and see if I can come up with re-definitions that fit better - for me at least. In no particular order...

1. Evangelicals

Evangelical definition: Proper Christians, who believe God's Word and the doctrines contained in it; who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour by faith through grace; who believe and preach the Gospel of Christ, and aspire to a life of personal holiness, good works and mission. They hold particular doctrines as of central importance - inerrancy and centrality of Scripture; the absolute Sovereignty of God; utter depravity of humans; penal substitionary atonement; exclusivity of Christ as the way to God; future judgement and hell for non-believers. Particular views of God, church, mission etc are also implied.

Re-definition: A particular type of Christian, but neither the only valid variety nor necessarily the best. Strong on theology, doctrine, teaching and a particular style of mission/evangelism, but often weak on creativity, beauty, contemplation, mystery and social justice. Negative tendencies include literalism/fundamentalism, puritanism and pharisaism, dogmatism, and over-formulaic approaches to life and faith.

2. Liberals

Evangelical definition: The opposite of evangelicals; often seen as the enemies of true Christianity. Liberals are wishy-washy and half-saved at best; they don't really believe anything, don't take the Bible literally, have lax morality and have compromised with the world.

Re-definition: As 'liber' means 'free', the positive meaning of liberal is one who has embraced the freedom of Christ and eschewed or shed the straitjacketing doctrinal rigidity of many brands of evangelical orthodoxy. Liberals are often much stronger than evangelicals on love, creativity and social justice. I've said in a previous post that I'm starting to see myself as an Evangelical Liberal.

3. The Bible

Evangelical definition: Holy Scripture; God's Word - eternal, inerrant, all-sufficient and self-interpreting, and from which can be mined doctrines to be believed, commands to be obeyed and promises to be claimed. The Bible is the believer's supreme guide and authority in life and in all matters of faith, morality, doctrine etc. If the Bible says something, it is to be taken literally if possible and to be accepted without criticism. Though notionally valuing all parts of scripture equally, evangelicals tend to place particular emphasis on the theological and doctrinal letters of Paul.

Re-definition: The Bible is a complex, multi-genre library of texts arising from the community of faith and their unfolding relationship with God. It can be seen as 'breathed' through its human authors by God, who continues to breathe afresh through the texts, bringing out new meanings, interpretations and emphases. The Bible is therefore not a fixed, static stone tablet but a living, breathing, dynamic text to be ongoingly engaged and wrestled with. Nor is it inerrant or 'perfect' in a modern historical or scientific sense; but it is nonetheless chosen and used by God for his purposes. Many non-evangelicals prefer to see the Bible as 'the Witness to the Word' rather than 'the Word of God', a title they (and the Bible) reserve for Jesus.

4. Truth

Evangelical definition: Correct ('sound') Christian doctrine as read from the Bible and expounded in propositional, expository preaching. Christian Truth is absolute, eternally fixed and unchanging. It is the opposite of error and false doctrine. Other forms of Christianity are generally deemed to have less of the truth than evangelicalism.

Re-definition: Jesus alone is the Truth - the truth about God and the truth about humanity. Truth is therefore not primarily propositional or doctrinal, but personal (the person of Christ) and relational. It is also not necessarily simple, systematic and fixed, but rather dynamic, paradoxical and often deeply counter-intuitive.

In the next post: Redefining the Gospel, evangelism, mission, grace, holiness...

"But the Bible says...!"

An unprovoked rant against knee-jerk proof-texting and a particular way of viewing the Bible.

God said it, that settles it?

When presented with any new idea, particularly in the fields of theology, ethics, church practice or morality, in my experience many evangelical Christians will respond with a cry of "But the Bible says...". I say this as a recovering evangelical, having used this approach many times myself.

There's even a mantra that used to be popular in more fundamentalist circles which goes "God said it, I believe it, that settles it".

The trouble is that this is, quite frankly, trite and facile. Sorry if I'm causing offence.

A complex Bible

The Bible can be used to make almost any point you wish

Unfortunately by its very nature the Bible, like statistics, can be used to make almost any point you wish. It can be (and has been) used in support of both slavery and its abolition, of both chauvinism and feminism, of racist apartheid and the civil rights movement, of capitalism and communism. This doesn't mean that there isn't a truth to be reached and that we should just give up. What it does mean is that we can't just find a bunch of verses that seem to agree with our position and say "But the Bible says".

For what the Bible says on any subject is invariably varied, nuanced, complex and contextual, requiring careful (and prayerful) interpretation. The Bible is not a simple divine textbook from which neat answers can be read for all given situations that will arise. Neither is it a fixed stone tablet from which universally applicable and eternally valid truths, commands or divine promises can be mined to order.

Sadly for those who crave certainty there is no holy grail of once-for-all, one-size-fits-all truth that can be applied directly to any and every time and circumstance.

For this reason "what does the Bible say?" is not to my mind a particularly useful question. Far better to ask "what does the Bible mean when it says that?" and "what is the Holy Spirit speaking to us today through these words?"

Avoiding pitfalls

we need to be open to engaging with opposing viewpoints

Of course, there are dangers in this approach as well. We can quite easily persuade ourselves that the Bible means pretty much anything we want it to, even when it appears to be saying the exact opposite. We need safeguards against our own inevitable prejudices and blind spots, and it seems to me the best ones are humility, openness and prayer.

We need to be open to the Spirit, open to our being wrong and needing to rethink, and open to engaging with other and opposing viewpoints in humility and charity. We need to discover what our own blind spots and preconceptions are so that we can learn to counter them. And we need to read each biblical passage as far as possible in its historical, literary and theological context, in light of the whole Bible, and with reference to what other Christians through the ages have understood by the passage. Only then can we hope to be as free as possible from personal prejudice, partisan polemic and pointless proof-texting.

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