Chapter One
Chapter One
Introduction
the problem
Both theology and philosophy wrestle with the tension which exists between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility (hereafter called the ‘sovereignty-responsibility tension’). Although not restricted to monotheistic religions, this tension is particularly acute there because pure monotheism excludes cosmological dualism and usually pictures God as both omnipotent and good. This monograph is concerned with the sovereignty-responsibility tension as delineated within monotheism—indeed, within the christian form of monotheism—and is more theological than philosophical.
The sovereignty-responsibility tension is almost impossibly broad. It lies at the heart of questions about the nature of God, and it poses difficult conundra about the meaning of human ‘freedom’. The most common questions it raises are well known. If God is absolutely sovereign, in what sense can we meaningfully speak of human choice, of human will? In what way are we to relate passages which stress divine transcendence and omnipotence with those which speak of divine repentance? How does the shape of the sovereignty-responsibility tension affect the problem of theodicy? Must God be reduced to accommodate the freedom of human choice? Does significant human responsibility so lean on power to the contrary that God becomes contingent?
Yet the tension is broader than the range of these standard questions. At the heart of the Christian faith lies the incarnation: God became man. What effect does this astounding notion have on the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility? Or, to reverse the question, how does this tension affect christology? Moreover, since the message Jesus preached is saturated with the theme of the reign of God, in what sense, may we ask, does an absolutely sovereign God begin to reign, or promise to reign? One might have thought that divine sovereignty already presupposes a reign of God so universal and eternal that ideas of an eschatological reign are excluded.
To ask such questions is not to promise easy answers. However, it is important at the outset to see that the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility not only embraces the well worn theme of how soteriological election is to be construed, but also stands intertwined with christology and eschatology. And because it deals comprehensively with the nature of God and the nature of man, it cannot escape questions of anthropology and of ‘theo’-logy proper.
I frankly doubt that finite human beings can cut the Gordian knot; at least, this finite human being cannot. The sovereignty-responsibility tension is not a problem to be solved; rather, it is a framework to be explored. To recognise this is already a major advance, for it rejects those easy ‘solutions’ which impose alien philosophical constructions upon the biblical data, or which dismiss those elements of the biblical data not conducive to the investigator’s system. To explore this tension is to explore the nature of God and his ways with men.
Yet although we must not too readily adopt simplistic ‘solutions’, neither must we too easily succumb to the viewpoint that the tension is intrinsically illogical. To admit we do not possess enough pieces of the puzzle to complete the picture is a far cry from saying that the pieces belong to quite different puzzles and therefore could not be related to each other even if we were given the rest of them. In other words, part of the purpose in exploring the sovereignty-responsibility tension theologically and exegetically lies in the value of a mature reflection on the problem, a reflection which deals fairly with the data and is simultaneously resistant to charges of irrationality and incoherence.
approaching the problem
Terms used in the debate do not possess the same meaning from author to author, and so preliminary definitions are in order. ‘Predestination’ in this book refers to the fore-ordination of events by God. ‘Election’ refers to soteriological predestination, with the added caveat that no judgment as to the nature of the salvation is presupposed by the terms themselves. Because predestination, by this definition, has God as the one who predestines, it is to be distinguished from ‘determinism’, which supposes that all is in principle completely predictable according to the universal laws of nature, but which does not trace such fixedness to God. ‘Responsibility’ here means a personal relationship of obligation and accountability toward (usually) God. That the relationship is personal and accountable presupposes some measure of real freedom; but possible approaches to ‘free will’ are best considered inductively. ‘Freedom’ and ‘free will’ may therefore be excluded from initial definitions.
Approaches to the biblical data have often adopted methods open to serious criticism. In the first place, the approach through systematic theology has often succumbed to the danger of constructing the ‘system’ too early and with insufficient controls, or to the danger of overlooking genuine variations of approach and emphasis within the biblical literature, or to the danger of forcing the biblical writers to respond to too many questions which do not interest them. Some writers draw every possible conclusion out of all passages which stress or presuppose God’s unconditioned sovereignty, and then construct a system to filter out and explain any other evidence. Methodologically speaking, such an approach is no different from that of writers who focus on man, his responsibilities and choices, and conclude on the basis of their system that God’s sovereignty is necessarily limited, perhaps self-limited, in some way. Not a few adopt philosophical structures essentially alien to the biblical data. For example, I. T. Ramsey uses the corollaries of process theology to render the sovereignty-responsibility tension innocuous: ‘all-powerful’ becomes a ‘qualified model’ and the tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility becomes a ‘pseudo-problem’. W. S. Towner’s book tells us more about how he wishes God would deal with evil than about the biblical data. And J. Farrelly, adopting primarily scholastic categories, ably pits the strong points of the Thomists (Banezians) against those of the Molinists, but is decidedly light-weight when it comes to the biblical text.
The second methodologically weak approach to the sovereignty-responsibility tension concentrates on word studies. These can be invaluable, but they are open to serious abuse. It is well known that Hebrew has no root for ‘providence’ (perhaps the closest approximation is in some uses of pqd: e.g. Job 10:12); yet the concept itself is woven into all divisions of the Hebrew canon. In the Old Testament, election is not restricted to the roots bḥr and yḏ‘; it lurks behind such motifs as covenant, marriage, Yahweh’s people, and many more. The Gospel of John never uses the Greek word proorizein; but the concept of predestination is none the less present. Thus, even when carefully done, word studies, though an essential tool, are too restrictive for an adequate probing of the sovereignty-responsibility tension.
The third approach is the examination of some narrow theme which constitutes a part of the sovereignty-responsibility tension. For example, there are several important discussions of election in the Old Testament. Such studies can prove very helpful; but they sometimes give the impression that once the election problem is resolved (at least to the writer’s own satisfaction!) the tension has disappeared. In fact, as we have seen, election is only one aspect of the sovereignty-responsibility tension, and there are tighter connections between the whole and its part than is often realised. Moreover, the tension, precisely because it is so broad and so pervasive, can emerge in some literature which makes no reference to election or to some other particular aspect of the broader problem.
These three approaches, of course, are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and not necessarily bad. But the recognition of their limitations has prompted a rather different approach in this volume.
First, in the New Testament I have restricted myself to detailed consideration of the Gospel of John. Next to some of the Pauline literature, the fourth Gospel stands out as a New Testament focus for the sovereignty-responsibility tension. Paul has earned detailed comment and not a few monographs on the subject; but, despite the mushrooming literature on John during the last three decades, relatively little of it has been given over to this particular theme. So in a sense, this monograph is a contribution to the study of johannine theology.
Second, I have cast johannine theology against the backdrop of Jewish background, directing the attention of the first two parts of the book to the Old Testament and to the most readily available intertestamental Jewish literature. The latter include the Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls (hereafter DSS), targums and rabbinic literature, and Josephus. With regret I have excluded Samaritan sources: they do not change my main lines of argument, and appropriate consideration of them would unduly lengthen this volume.
Third, I have attempted to reflect the essence of the sovereignty-responsibility tension in each corpus of literature. Some ancient writers are interested in theodicy, others not at all. Some are captured by the prospect of God’s invading reign at the end of history, and others are more concerned about responding to him now, or about determining the significance of the gracious call that brought Abraham out of Ur and the children of Israel out of Egypt. Again, the peculiar christology and eschatology of the fourth Gospel must be understood first of all on their own terms, within the framework of the Gospel itself. Such diversity of emphasis and interest calls forth an important principle: viz., in attempting to delineate the shape of the sovereignty-responsibility tension in each corpus of literature, we cannot insist on tracing narrow themes throughout. Rather, we must let the literature itself dictate, as much as possible, the shape of the sovereignty-responsibility tension within its pages.
Two corollaries follow. (1) This study must not be construed as an attempt to find the background of John, or to contribute to history-of-religions research. In one sense, of course, the study of the sovereignty-responsibility tension in any corpus must shed light on the study of the same theme in any other corpus, if only because of suggestive parallels and contrasts. But although I am interested in the extent to which, and the manner in which, John reflects his Jewish background, I am not attempting to trace out trajectories. (2) It now becomes clearer why this monograph largely restricts itself, canonically speaking, to the treatment of the theme in the Gospel of John, with some space for the Old Testament and less for the New Testament writers. To recognise that the sovereignty-responsibility tension needs to be unpacked in each corpus before proceeding to the attempt to systematise one’s findings from the entire canon entails such a restriction—or else a very large volume!
Fourth, notwithstanding these limitations, the fourth part of this study seeks to apply the biblical data thus gleaned to the broader theological and philosophical dimensions of the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. This is done, not in the hope that some comprehensive theology of the tension may emerge, but in the hope that careful application of one strand of the biblical treatment of the subject may provide helpful parameters within which the theology of the tension may fruitfully develop.
Fifth, in an effort to gain precision, some attention is paid to the functions to which various aspects of the sovereignty-responsibility tension are put in each corpus. For example: Granted that some men are graciously chosen, in what connection does a particular writer bring up the subject? What lessons does he draw from election? Again, what deductions follow, in different texts, from the predestinarian potter-and-clay model? Does the fact that men choose become an occasion for boasting or a stimulus to choose rightly? Answering such questions is in the first instance a descriptive undertaking. It often proves misleading to govern ontology by function. Nevertheless the examination of how certain perspectives and concepts function in the writings here studied provides a useful guideline: viz., we ought to be cautious about drawing deductions from various concepts if those deductions are not explicitly or implicitly drawn by those who expound the concepts.