Gregory A. Boyd
CHAPTER THREE
GOD CONTROLS BY LIBERATING1
Our age is obsessed with freedom. We demand to make our own decisions, follow our own paths, and choose our own destinies. We stand vigilant, looking for encroaching oppression and rising tyranny. We hold it more in keeping with our dignity to make our own ruinous decisions than to be led like sheep to safe pastures by patronizing shepherds.2 We want control, and we insist that controlling ourselves and our circumstances accompanies any meaningful liberty. The thought of being controlled by any other power, however benevolent, repels us as demeaning and enslaving. What hope, then, is there for a model of providence the heart of which is the thesis that God controls by liberating and liberates by controlling? Yes, it is counterintuitive and cuts against the grain of our autonomy-bewitched culture. But should it really surprise us that the God who created the world from nothing should act in paradoxical ways? Should we be taken aback upon learning that the gospel that proclaims a cross-shaped salvation should cut across the grain of our self-absorbed culture? If not, then I hope you will be open to hearing about the all-encompassing care of God, which begins with creation, reaches its stunning apex in Jesus Christ, and culminates in the glorious liberty of the children of God.
The Decisive Issue
The Christian doctrine of providence touches on a bewildering array of issues: God’s power, freedom, and mode of action in the world; human freedom, responsibility, and dignity; sin, grace, salvation, and many more. But no question is more decisive for a doctrine of providence than “Does God accomplish his will in all things?” The great divide among views of providence falls between those who answer yes and those who answer no to this question. Lately, theologians have begun to refer to the first as the “no-risk” view and the second as the “risk” view.3 On one side stand those who affirm that God’s eternal plan will be executed perfectly, because its fulfillment depends on him alone. Looking across from the other side of the chasm are those who assert that God jeopardizes his plan in the actual history of providence, because the plan’s fulfillment requires the cooperation of some other reality.4
Whether we defend the risk or the no-risk view, we will not find an easy path in this discussion. The doctrine of providence deals with some of the knottiest problems of theology, and whatever alternative you choose, you will face mind-numbing difficulties. Those who deny that God’s will is always done will be asked to explain how this denial squares with God’s power and divinity and identity as the only Creator, LORD, and Savior. Those who affirm complete sovereignty of the divine will must face the charge that this assertion is irreconcilable with human freedom and responsibility and with the presence of evil in the world. As the title of my chapter makes clear, I stand on the no-risk side of this debate and will be offering my own distinctive defense of this view and criticisms of the risk view.
Since God’s nature and his relationship to the world are ultimately incomprehensible by human reason, I think it is defensible, even if frustrating, for advocates of complete divine sovereignty to admit they do not know a way to bring belief in God’s perfect LORDship into complete harmony with human freedom.5 And this position has much to commend it if the alternative is to allow biblically based theology to be overwhelmed by speculative metaphysics or logic or psychology or “passion for systematic consistency.”6 However, many writers, including me, believe it is possible to achieve some rational insight into this faith. Among these writers, some use metaphysical, logical, or psychological theories to show how God can be “perfectly provident” without compromising human freedom and incurring culpability for evil.7 It seems to me that Molinism, Thomism, Scotism, and certain types of determinism take this route.
While I do not reject these approaches completely and feel more sympathy with some than with others, I would argue that they have too long dominated this discussion and have led to many fruitless impasses. I insist that before Christian theologians take up the role of metaphysicians or logicians or psychologists, they should exhaust the method evangelicals ought to hold nearest to their hearts: the analogy of the faith.8 With this method, obscure elements of the faith are laid beside clearer parts. And each scriptural teaching is understood in the light of every other. Only after this method has been exhaustively applied should we feel free to make cautious use of speculative methods to probe the inherent rationality of the faith.9
An Assertion of God’s Comprehensive Control
Attempting to demonstrate that Scripture teaches God’s comprehensive control of all things would require writing a large book. I cannot do justice to this task here; nevertheless, I cannot remain completely silent since Scripture is the material norm of theology. The following line of thought indicates how I think we should approach Scripture’s teaching on providence. Scripture contains many confessional and doxological texts that generalize ideas of God’s sovereign control or almighty power or unlimited knowledge. Typical are Job 42:2: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted"; Isaiah 46:10 – 11: “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come I say: ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please’.… What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do"; Ephesians 1:11: God “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will"; Philippians 3:20 – 21: “The LORD Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body"; and 1 John 3:20: “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”
When Israel or the church praises God, it stretches to find words worthy of God’s greatness. When the writer of Psalm 106 asks, “Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the LORD or fully declare his praise?” (v. 2), he expects us to answer confidently, “No one!” The psalmist of Psalm 145 strains to articulate God’s praiseworthiness: “I will exalt you, my God the King …. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever” (vv. 1 – 3, 21). Listen to Paul praise God’s inscrutable providence in Romans 11:33 – 36: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! ‘Who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. “ And who can refrain from joining in the praise arising from around the throne of God in Revelation 4? The four living creatures around God’s throne never stop proclaiming, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (v. 8). Then the twenty-four elders lay their crowns before the throne and say, “You are worthy, our LORD and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” (v. 11).
I admit that some narrative texts seem to imply limitations in God’s control or power or knowledge. These texts play a central role in open theists’ arguments for a risk view of divine providence. John Sanders surveys these texts in two extensive chapters, totaling over a hundred pages, in his book The God Who Risks.10 Sanders and others emphasize how these narratives portray God as acting in time, responding to human actions, changing plans, learning new information, expressing uncertainty about the future, and experiencing emotions such as surprise, anger, regret, sorrow, and grief.11 According to Sanders, if there are no compelling reasons to do otherwise, we should take them “as disclosing to us the very nature of God.”12
Though I believe the open view of biblical interpretation is vulnerable on several fronts, I cannot pursue all those criticisms here.13 I will make but one point: Whereas scores of texts in Scripture heighten God’s transcendence, I know of no texts that generalize divine risk and limits. No text confesses, “God cannot do all things,” or “God does not know all things,” or “God cannot work out all things in conformity with his will. “ Can anyone imagine a canonical psalm or a Christian hymn saying, “LORD, we praise you, for you are greater than any other being. You can do all things that are under your control, and when your plans fail, it is never your fault! We extol you for doing what you can with what you have at your disposal. We give you thanks for doing your best to protect us. We know that you wish us well and will do what you can to help us achieve eternal life. Praise to your name!”
I do not hear this kind of “praise” in Scripture. The tendency of Scripture is clear: to magnify God’s power, control, and knowledge and all his other attributes to the absolute maximum.
What clinches my belief in God’s comprehensive sovereignty, however, is its coherence with a Scripture-based, God-honoring doctrine of God. I do not believe one can deny that God accomplishes his will in all things while affirming that God created all things from nothing, that he sustains all things by his “powerful word” (Heb. 1:3), that he knows all things, and that he “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). How can we proclaim that God is our only LORD and Savior, that his grace in Jesus Christ is completely gratuitous, that Christ will “reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25), or that “God [will] be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28) if at the same time we assert that God’s plans can be thwarted and his will made ineffective? Denying God’s comprehensive control requires placing creation’s destiny partly in the hands of chance, or necessity, or the Devil, or humanity. And it requires revising the doctrine of God to be consistent with the assertion that God cannot create whatever he wants or accomplish whatever he chooses. You will have to limit God’s power, knowledge, presence, freedom, and wisdom; you will have to make God subject to time and space and change. And these moves will sooner or later lead to the conclusion that God is limited in his eternal being, his very essence. I do not believe we should take one step down this road.14
How, Then, Does God Work in Providence?
The question “How?” asks about a means that enables an agent to interact with an object in a certain way. When we watch a magic act in which the magician appears to be sawing his assistant in half, we might ask in amazement, “How did he do that?” “How?” is one of those questions we need to answer if we are to understand an agent’s action. Many discussions of divine providence get off track at this point by adopting a careless analogy between human and divine ways of acting. Do we really think we can understand how God created the world, how the Son of God became incarnate, how God raised Jesus from the dead, or how God controls the world comprehensively?15 Gregory of Nyssa speaks for the church fathers when he warns: “We have no doubt … that God underwent birth in human nature. But how this happened we decline to investigate as a matter beyond the scope of reason …The fact of creation we accept; but we renounce a curious investigation of the way the universe was framed as a matter altogether ineffable and inexplicable.”16 Lacking Gregory’s caution, some writers propose philosophical or logical or psychological theories of how God controls the world without sacrificing human freedom. Other writers, finding these theories implausible, argue that since the “how” project fails, a robust view of divine sovereignty is not compatible with genuine human freedom. Thus we reach an impasse.
These theories overlook Scripture’s answer to the question of means. According to Scripture, the one God acts through the Word and the Spirit to create, guide, govern, reconcile, and redeem the world—without diluting his Godhead or displacing creation. In Scripture, the Word becomes incarnate and is raised from the dead through the Spirit. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, and the Spirit sanctifies us and gives life to our “mortal bodies” (Rom. 8:11). Hence, God’s power to give being to something not himself, to unite himself to a full human nature without sacrificing his deity, to indwell his creation without displacing it, and to work concurrently with intelligent beings without compromising their freedom — all are rooted in God’s immanent and eternal triune life Attempting to explain God’s relationship to the world in philosophical, logical, or psychological terms transforms a revealed mystery into a speculative obscurity. It revives a fundamental mistake of second-century Gnosticism — seeking semidivine mediators to span the gap between the transcendent God and the material universe—a heresy that Irenaeus so ably refuted with his doctrine of the economic Trinity. Irenaeus asserts, “For this is a peculiarity of the pre-eminence of God, not to stand in need of other instruments for the creation of those things which are summoned into existence. His own Word is both suitable and sufficient for the formation of all things”17
Divine Action in Creation, Incarnation, and Salvation
Now, let us allow the analogy of faith to inform our thinking about the way God acts in the world by comparing the acts of creation, incarnation, and salvation with that of providence. In creation, God gave the world its total being through the Word and the Spirit, so that the triune God is the only “cause” of creation. Creatures did not exist to participate in their creation, so God acted unilaterally for their benefit before and apart from their own choice and action. God made this choice for them. Yet, as a result of God’s unilateral act of creation, creatures possess their own distinct and real being, with all its properties and powers—including the power of freedom. Let us underline this point: Human freedom comes into being through a sovereign divine act. In the case of creation, at least, divine sovereignty and human freedom do not conflict; indeed, human freedom depends absolutely on divine power.
The incarnation was not merited or caused by the goodness of the Virgin Mary or of the man Jesus. It was pure grace. Nevertheless, the incarnation did not diminish the human nature in any respect. And just as the human and divine natures are united in the person of the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit—without confusion or change or division or separation—the human and divine wills are likewise united.18 The Spirit enabled Jesus’ human will to affirm the divine will perfectly. He triumphed over sin, not because his human freedom was overpowered by divine grace, but because divine grace empowered him for genuine freedom. Human freedom was not restricted by the divine decision and direction involved in the incarnation any more than it was by divine creation. Quite the opposite: God’s abundant grace given in the incarnation enabled human freedom to achieve the goal for which it was created.
In its teaching about salvation, Christian orthodoxy rejects Pelagianism, which says human beings do not need grace, and Semipelagianism, which says human beings can merit grace by their free openness to grace.19 Instead, drawing on Paul’s letters, orthodoxy asserts that prevenient grace enables the free reception of more grace.20 The Spirit enables us to believe the gospel, gives us new birth, sanctifies us, and pours God’s love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5). Our freedom to live for God is always a Spirit-empowered response to his grace freely bestowed on us. God’s grace creates and empowers human freedom for God, for faith, love, and good works. Again, we find it to be a principle that in his sovereign freedom God acts first to cause, empower, and liberate human freedom. The notion that God’s sovereign action toward us in creation, incarnation, and salvation somehow threatens our freedom is completely foreign to Scripture.
Divine Action in Providence
Many evangelical theologians would agree that God works through the Word and the Spirit in complete gratuity in creation, incarnation, and salvation. They would not argue that human beings cooperated with God in their creation or that the man Jesus freely agreed beforehand to be united with the eternal Son of God or that sinners begin or empower their own salvation.21 But when it comes to providence—God’s direction of the ordinary course of human history—some theologians begin to look for other mediators and modes of divine action. They argue that God cannot simply “cause” human freedom to do his will freely. For them, the idea of a caused free act is as contradictory as the concept of a square circle. Out of respect for freedom, God attempts to persuade people to do his will by fallible means: ideas, inspirations, conscience, circumstances, or words. Since the idea of infallible persuasion, short of seeing God face-to-face, seems problematic, it appears likely, according to this way of thinking, that God will fail to accomplish his providential will in all cases.22
I argue that providence does not constitute an exception to the way God works and that God’s freedom and action precede and empower human freedom and action at every point. In creation, God gives human beings their real and distinct existence, and because God is faithful, his creative Word continues its sustaining force. In providence, which presupposes creation and moves toward salvation, God works before, through, with, inside, around, and after human working to accomplish his will. Apart from God’s creation, nothing could exist. Without his sustaining action, nothing could abide, and without his continual cooperation, nothing could happen. Through the Word and the Spirit, God gives real and lasting efficacy to human action by empowering and directing all things, including human freedom, to their God-appointed end In this way, God frees human freedom from the futility of its blind groping and enables it to achieve its end. If God can create the original power of freedom, create a free human being who could not sin, and reorient fallen freedom toward righteousness without doing it violence, he can direct human freedom according to his will in every other case without doing it violence.23 For the fourth time: divine freedom creates and supports human freedom. In no way does it diminish it, contradict it, or compete with it!
What about Freedom and Responsibility?
I am sure some are asking themselves, “What kind of freedom can be created from nothing, infallibly directed to God’s ends, and reoriented toward righteousness, without being denatured? Can it really be genuine freedom?” What light does the analogy of faith shed on the nature of human freedom and responsibility and its compatibility with God’s sovereignty? Many theories of freedom — even theological ones — begin by asking what kind of freedom can ground genuine moral responsibility.24Some theologians begin with the premise that Scripture holds human beings responsible for their sins.25 This gives them a theological warrant for their theory of freedom. For example, Bruce Reichenbach admits that Scripture does not explicitly teach his view of freedom. He asserts, however, that “it is filled with instances of posed choices which presuppose freedom commands to act properly and the sanctions imposed on improper conduct only make sense if humans have freedom.”26 Scripture declares that God holds sinners responsible for their sins and that God is just in his judgments, claims from which David Ciocchi infers the following proposition: “God guarantees that human beings meet the conditions that are necessary and sufficient to ground deep moral responsibility.”27
What type of freedom is presupposed by this assertion of “deep” moral responsibility? Many conclude that it requires a strict form of libertarian freedom, a freedom that retains its potential indifference between opposing options even in the moment of decision. In other words, even with identical internal and external conditions and without any change in God’s sustaining action, concurrence, or grace, one could have chosen differently. This theory of freedom views responsibility as presupposing radical self-determination. The self is responsible because it alone determines itself and expresses itself in its act. Gregory Boyd asserts that the agent is the “ultimate explanation” of its action.28 And John Sanders contends that human beings are “minicreators” who create their deeds “ex nihilo, since it originates within us and is not merely the effect of divine causation.”29 Had the self been determined by its external or internal conditions or by God, it would not be responsible for its act. The act would have expressed the character of these alien forces rather than the will of the self. Hence, many (if not most) theologians who hold to the libertarian theory of freedom deny its compatibility with complete divine control.
In the light of biblical anthropology, the libertarian view of freedom and the allied concept of radical self-responsibility appear profoundly misguided and overflowing with hubris and self-flattery. They attribute to human beings complete self-possession, sovereign control over their being, and exclusive self-causation of their actions—powers that belong to God alone!30 The libertarian concept of self-determination gives to the one true God no more than historical relevance: God created us and gave us this awesome power. And the idea that we cannot come to possess sincere love for God or render genuine submission to his will unless as sinners we possess power to accept or reject any conceivable advance of divine grace makes us the cause, or at least the co-cause, of our salvation. It would take a much lengthier treatment to sustain these critical assertions; however, I will leave that critique for another occasion and focus on two problems that lie closer to the theme of this chapter.31
First, theologians who take this approach seem to be satisfied with a bare assertion that Scripture holds sinners responsible for their sin and move quickly to their discussions of freedom. They neglect to ask about the level of responsibility Scripture attributes to free human acts. Clearly, Scripture views sinners as blameworthy and liable to punishment, but central to the gospel are repentance, forgiveness of sins, and sanctification. The Scriptures teach that sin is forgivable and sinners are sanctifiable — through God’s grace. This understanding of sin and forgiveness presupposes a certain self-investment on the part of the sinner in his sin. Otherwise, we would not need forgiveness. But this self-investment cannot be an act of absolute self-determination. By definition, such radical acts cannot be forgiven or undone since they express the self definitively.32 Nowhere in Scripture are sinners described in such Promethean or Miltonian terms, as defiant gods or rebellious angels.
Though it discerns an element of defiance in sin, Scripture also describes the condition from which Christ saves as deception (Rom. 7:11; Titus 3:3), ignorance (Eph. 4:18), slavery (Rom. 6:6; 7:14; John 8:34), blindness (2 Cor. 4:4; 1 John 2:11), misery (Rom. 3:16), corruption (2 Peter 2:10), and death (Eph. 2:1). In each of these conditions, some alien power or defective lack of power blocks the self from true self-determination and self-realization. The power of radical self-determination is not ascribed to human beings in Scripture; it is not even presupposed by Scripture. Jesus’ words from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), are some of the most hopeful words in Scripture. And they clearly refute the notion that possessing a measure of responsibility requires absolute self-determination. You cannot possess such a power if you “do not know” what you are doing.33 Paul also makes this connection as he reflects on his conversion: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief” (1 Tim. 1:13). Paul did these horrible things willingly, but his willingness was coupled with ignorance and unbelief. This ignorant willingness, however, hardly merits the name of freedom,34 nor does it reveal a “deep” self-responsibility, which entails complete self-knowledge and self-possession. To determine yourself absolutely for a certain deed requires that you know all the alternatives to that deed and all its consequences. We do not possess such knowledge, and the possibility of repentance (hence, of forgiveness) is rooted in this lack.
There is a second problem with deriving a theory of freedom from the mere idea of moral responsibility. This strategy seeks to derive its understanding of freedom from something not directly addressed by the Scriptures while ignoring the explicit teaching of Scripture on the subject of freedom. A Scripture-based theology must allow the explicit teaching of Scripture to set the parameters for any effort to discern its implicit teaching. In those great chapters Romans 6 – 8, we do not find Paul extolling a natural human freedom to sin or not to sin or to choose between option A and option B. Instead, Paul rejoices in the freedom won for us by Christ and applied to us by the Spirit. He glories in a freedom from our settled disposition toward God as enemies, rebels, and ingrates; he delights in our liberation from deception, ignorance, slavery, blindness, misery, corruption, and death. The apostle praises God for setting us free through Christ and the Spirit from our sinful way of life in which we blindly chose our way to destruction. For Paul, sin is not something you can stop doing through your own effort and choice, apart from divine help. It is a master from which we need release. And death even more clearly shows itself as something from which we cannot liberate ourselves. It represents all the consequences of sin—corruption of every kind: moral, spiritual, and physical.
In Romans 6 Paul describes sin as a slavemaster who holds us in bondage and drives us to “surrender to the concupiscent hunger of self-centered earthly and carnal life.”35 On four occasions in this chapter, the apostle asserts that we have been “freed” from sin (vv. 7, 18, 20, and 22). In chapter 8 he proclaims that we have been freed from “sin and death” through the work of Christ and the Spirit (v. 2).36 The apostle’s words make no sense on the assumption that we possess self-determining freedom as a natural power or can achieve it on our own. In that case, we would be naturally free from sin! According to Robert T. Osborn, “Freedom in the New Testament is not a self-determination but a determination of the self.”37 Our need for a freedom beyond our natural powers becomes clear in Paul’s discussion of the law. The law comes to us externally and demands that we obey. According to Paul, we do not, as Rabbinic Judaism taught, possess the natural power to obey or refuse the law’s demand. Nor can we, as Stoics maintained, attain freedom by bringing the lower part of the soul under the domination of the higher part. Paul teaches that “even in the retreat into inwardness man is not free.”38 Only Christ and the Spirit can free us from the impossible requirement that we achieve our freedom from sin and death by our own power. What Paul speaks of is “freedom from an existence which in sin leads through the Law to death.”39 We can no more free ourselves from sin than we can raise ourselves from the dead.40
For Paul, however, freedom is not merely a negative concept referring only to God’s act of removing the alien powers that block our true self-realization. It is also a positive state of full actuality and perfection. In Romans 8 Paul speaks of the glorious freedom of the children of God. Creation itself groans while it waits to be freed from its “bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (v. 21). Paul describes this anticipated liberation as “adoption,” “redemption,” and salvation (vv. 23 —24). The fullness of freedom, then, is not a natural possession or a power acquired through our own efforts. It is a future reality, identical to salvation, redemption, and eternal life, that will be fully realized at the resurrection of the dead. According to Hans Dieter Betz, Paul’s “doctrine of salvation is very clearly and consciously formulated as a doctrine of freedom.”41 Genuine freedom is the perfect realization of human nature and destiny, the full flowering of the true self, the “revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19 ASV). Karl Hermann Schelkle has well said, “The fullness of freedom is a gift reserved for the end. It is liberation from the slavery of the perishable to the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:21).”42 We participate in this freedom now only as we take on the attitude of the Spirit (Rom. 8:6 TNIV).43
Viewing the issue of freedom according to the analogy of faith places our discussion in a new light. In the explicit teaching of the New Testament, the fullness of freedom is not the beginning, but the goal, of human life. It is not the power to choose between this and that or between good and evil; it is the power for, and the actual state of, loving God perfectly and willing his will invariably. The free will we have in the natural state is not adequate for achieving freedom’s goal, which is righteousness, holiness, the love of God, and eternal life. Without divine grace, we cannot hope to achieve it. The title of this chapter is “God Controls by Liberating.” It could also have been titled “God Liberates by Controlling.” For it is clear that Scripture’s explicit teaching on freedom asserts that it is only through a sovereign act of God’s grace that we can be freed from the guilt and disposition of sin. Scripture does not see God’s sovereign grace as a problem for human freedom. Rather, Scripture proclaims it as the only power able to bestow genuine freedom on us!
Now it should be very clear that the New Testament view of freedom fits perfectly with a strong view of divine sovereignty. God’s providential and saving actions — even when they overrule and defeat our misguided and sinful intentions — are designed to liberate us from sin and death. Even if we cannot explain how God works in providence to accomplish his will perfectly, we can now see that the objection that such a view of providence contradicts human freedom and responsibility—however enticing to philosophical intuition—possesses no biblical warrant.
What about Evil?
If nothing can happen apart from the will of God and God accomplishes his will in all things, does this not mean that everything that happens is the will of God? And if you think everything that happens is the will of God, are you making God responsible for evil or, even stronger, the doer of evil? William Hasker charges that views like mine imply that “God has deliberately chosen to cause all the horrible evils that afflict our world.”44 Clearly, those defending God’s complete sovereignty must refute this charge or be defeated by this objection.
This objection gains much of its force by trading on an ambiguity in the word “evil.“ Hence, we must clarify this first. What do we mean by “evil"? There are two issues here that we ought not to confuse: (1) What is the basic definition of evil? and (2) How do we identify evil concretely? Keeping these two issues in mind, consider the following argument:
Evil is that which ought not to be.
God, being perfectly good, never brings into being that which ought not to be.
But evil happens (here are given examples of horrible violence and innocent suffering).
Therefore, not everything happens according to the will of God, and the complete divine sovereignty view of providence is defeated.
What can the defender of divine sovereignty say to this argument? Consider first its definition of evil (proposition 1). Let us grant for the moment that evil is that which ought not to be. This definition still leaves unanswered the question of the ground of the distinction between what ought to be and what ought not to be. It grants us no real insight into the ontological difference between good and evil, and it gives no help in identifying concrete evil. It does not clarify the relationship of the God of the Bible to “what ought not to be.” Clearly, this definition is not basic enough. Proposition 2 must be granted by every Christian theologian. The third step in the argument identifies concrete evils (proposition 3). Notice here how the argument depends on human beings’ possessing the ability to identify real evil by observation or experience. The assertion “This case of innocent suffering is evil” is a human judgment about a concrete event. What justifies this verdict?
It seems to me that this conclusion identifies something as evil by how much it offends our natural sensibilities. It designates the violence, suffering, pain, and loss we find dreadful and horrifying as “evil.“ We simply know that it ought not to be because of how we feel about it. Gregory Boyd asserts this epistemic principle: “Radical evil can be known only when incarnated and experienced concretely.” He then relates the gut-wrenching story of Zosia, a little girl who was tortured and killed during the Holocaust. Rejecting “abstract” definitions of evil, Boyd explains, “When I speak of ‘evil’ throughout this work … I am referring to every concrete horrifying experience that in various ways looks and feels like this one.”45 Boyd claims that evil can be identified by the way it “looks and feels.” This way of knowing evil was at the heart of the argument made by Manichaeans and other metaphysical dualists in the patristic era.46 Gregory of Nyssa pinpoints their mistake when he says, “Such people distinguish good and evil on the basis of sensation, and do not realize that that alone is evil which is alien to what is genuinely good. To judge good and evil on the basis of pain and suffering is appropriate [only] in the case of irrational natures, since by not sharing in intelligence and understanding they are unable to grasp what is genuinely good.”47
In my view, a doctrine of providence that judges theological truth by the way it “looks and feels” is deeply flawed for at least two reasons.48 First, it violates an essential principle of the Christian doctrine of providence: the doctrine of providence is a doctrine of faith based on Scripture. The above argument boils down to a criticism of a doctrine of faith, using human experience as a norm. Throughout Scripture, we are warned not to draw conclusions about God’s goodness, justice, providence, or power from our negative experiences. This criticism of the traditional view of providence recommends that we do just that! It is a faithless substitution of fragmentary human experience for the comfort of the Scriptures. Faith in God’s care is not always easy to maintain in the face of suffering and persecution. Scripture never said it would be.
Second, the objection from experience operates with a defective, or at least imprecise, understanding of evil. No moral law exists outside and above God by which we may judge him. God is the moral law in his own being. Though it is correct to say evil is “that which ought not to be,” Christian theology must speak more precisely, saying with Karl Barth that evil is a manifestation of that which “God has not willed and does not will and will not will.”49 Whatever God does not will is evil and ought not to be, precisely because he does not will it. And if this is our definition of evil, we can see that any judgment deeming an event to be evil is also a theological claim. We claim to know that God did not will that event. But what gives us the right to identify our feelings with the voice of God?
Now we need to explore how this more precise definition of evil works out in the doctrine of providence. If evil is that which God does not will and God’s will is always effective, then evil can have no genuine and lasting being. The Christian tradition of both Western and Eastern theology contends that everything that possesses being is good insofar as it is. As Augustine says, “So every being, even if it is corrupt, insofar as it is a being is good, and insofar as it is corrupt, is evil.”50 Hence, both branches rejected the Gnostic and Manichaean view that evil is a substance (that is, something with a real, independent existence), maintaining rather that it is a defect or perversion in something that is.51 This view is often misunderstood. The terms “defect,” “absence,” “privation,” and “perversion” do not refer to the intrinsic limits of our created being. It is not evil that we are vulnerable to nonbeing, possess physical bodies, and can experience pain. Nor is it evil that humanity is fallible in its imagination, intellect, will, and action. In other words, it is not evil that creatures are not God and therefore depend on God for being and for all good things. Karl Barth correctly referred to this aspect of creation as its “shadow” side and contended that it is part of the perfection of the creature.52 Genuine evil is the falseness of the images in the human imagination and the misdirection of the human will. It is the lack of the love of God and neighbor in the human heart.
A second misunderstanding of this view concludes that if evil has no real and lasting being, it is nothing at all and therefore is innocuous. To the contrary, the moral disorder that is evil does as much damage to the soul as the malfunction of disease does to the body, though neither adds a substance to God’s creation. According to Scripture, evil plunges the creature into bondage, misery, suffering, and death. And God takes evil with the utmost seriousness, responding to it with punishment and with purgative and redemptive suffering. The very heart of the Christian faith is our belief that the incarnate Son of God won the victory over evil through his vicarious suffering, death, and resurrection. So even though evil is nothing in itself, it is a deadly enemy of creation and therefore an enemy of the Creator
If evil is nothing in itself, how can there really be evil acts, events, or states of affairs? Does my position not imply that they cannot exist? To most people, this seems manifestly absurd. But if I admit that such things really exist and God’s will is invariably done in and through them, how can I escape the charge that I am making God the doer of evil? Let us pursue this thought even further. No one denies that acts such as murder, rape, and torture really happen, really exist. And we know murder is evil because the command “You shall not kill” expresses the will of God.53 Now, combining these ideas produces a strange situation: God commands that murder not be done, yet since nothing can happen apart from God’s creative power, every murder happens because God enables it to occur. Does this not make God responsible for the murder? My answer is no. God does not murder or do any evil. How can this be so?
In ordinary judgments, we speak of some acts as evil, plain and simple, just as we speak of some people as bad or evil. Of course, when we speak of a person as evil, we are not saying that he or she is an evil substance. We mean that this person is so morally defective, possessed, or blinded by evil that he or she seems wholly given over to evil. Because we believe in creation and in the power of divine grace, however, we would not declare such individuals completely beyond reclamation. Likewise, some acts seem purely evil and beyond redemption. But this is no truer of an act than it is of a person.
An act is not a simple thing. It is complex and involves at least five aspects: intention, deliberation, decision, exertion using means, and results.54 In intention, one imagines a desirable state of affairs. In decision, one breaks off deliberation and commits oneself to work toward this desired state. One then exerts energy and uses means to achieve the end. Finally, the results are achieved as an actual state of affairs. It is important to emphasize that things almost never turn out exactly the way we imagine. We cannot create a new state of affairs from nothing. Our efforts to influence the future are severely limited by our lack of power and knowledge and by the stubbornness of the world within which we work. Even if we are relatively successful in the short term, the final outcome of an action is largely out of our control and unknown, since it will not be fully achieved until the end of history. Hence, the final meaning of an act must be left open as long as history lasts.
From even this commonsense analysis, we can see clearly that an evil intention cannot wholly determine the final outcome or meaning of an act. The complete divine sovereignty view argues that God acts before, in, through, and beyond our acts — even our evil acts—to accomplish his will.55 I could not act at all if I did not exist, and I exist because God created me. I could do nothing if God were not sustaining me and the world around me during my act. God’s empowering of my action throughout its duration is often called “concurrence,” or cooperation. If God were not also acting in our acts, we could do nothing. Hence, whatever my act truly and lastingly accomplishes is the will of God because it is also the act of God.56 And even if my act is motivated by a false image and driven by a perverted will, God is not tainted by my evil and his will is not defeated. God’s faithfulness and patience in sustaining a person during his evil act does not make God a slave to the person’s evil intentions. Nor does God merely sustain and empower human acts while leaving the direction to the human actor in the name of freedom. God leaves the defects of a person’s will behind and achieves his will in and through the human agent’s actions.57
Hence, the doctrine of providence locates the evil aspect of human action, not in the created being of humanity and not in its final results, but rather in the sinfulness of a heart that is bereft of the knowledge of God and the love of God and neighbor. Sin is not God’s creature. It has no positive existence, and the false images it projects can never become real. Therefore, God does not do evil when he works in and through and after stupid, ignorant, and evil human acts. God overcomes the stupidity, ignorance, and evil to accomplish his good will perfectly.
I believe this line of thought enables us to say with some inner consistency and biblical faithfulness that God’s will is finally accomplished in all things and that God never wills or does evil. But a significant issue remains, one that is potentially lethal to my view; and I must face it head-on. What about the question that Ivan stated so powerfully in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov? Is any higher “harmony” worth the suffering of even one child?58 What about children’s cancer wards? What about the children crushed in earthquakes? What about the children beaten to death by abusive adults? What about tsunamis, typhoons, tornados, and famines? What about the human brutality exhibited in wars, ethnic cleansing, and the slave trade? There seems to be no end and no limit to human suffering and cruelty. Let me be quite clear. On my own, of my own wisdom and strength, I have absolutely nothing to offer a weeping world but my tears, my questions and doubts, my embraces, and my suffering.
I have only one hope: that in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ, the end of history has been revealed.59 He took on himself and into his person all the evil and suffering of the world from the beginning to the end. He drank the bitter cup and absorbed the violent blows. And he won the victory for us. The view I am developing here is opposed to Leibniz and others who see the world as a timeless work of visual art, where shadow and light, good and evil, suffering and joy, and sin and righteousness contribute to the perfection of the whole. Nor do I, like Hegel, see good and evil related in a dialectical movement toward perfection. My view of providence is christocentric and unfolds in dramatic, agonistic, and eschatological ways. It does not timelessly survey the world and conclude that it is the best of all possible worlds. Nor does it say that from the end the world will appear to have been perfect all along. It sees in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ the drama of history played out.
In Christ’s resurrection, we find revealed the final victory over evil and the ultimate destiny of the children of God. In this human being, sin has been atoned for and the consequences of sin have been removed. In him, God brings it about that his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Human freedom has been set free and redirected toward righteousness, and the history of creation and providence has been fulfilled. He is our life, our Savior, and our hope. And he is my paradigm for how God works out his will in all things without doing violence to human freedom or becoming the author of sin and evil.
But before the resurrection came the crucifixion. Scripture teaches that God willed the suffering and death of Christ. Though it was dreadful and horrible for Jesus, surely no Christian would say that the Father’s will was evil! God accomplished his will “by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23 ESV). The evil will of Christ’s betrayer and murderers did not prevent God from accomplishing his good will through their actions. And the evil wills of those who persecute us or the seemingly blind forces of nature that crush us cannot prevent our Father in heaven from bringing us to the kingdom he has promised. But we cannot expect to see the end of things with our eyes any more than the Good Friday disciples could anticipate Resurrection Sunday. And to reconstruct the doctrine of providence from a Good Friday perspective would be to abandon the resurrection faith and hope.
Conclusion
I began this chapter with the observation that the Western world is obsessed with freedom and wary of any encroachment on its cherished liberty. Unfortunately, the freedom it seeks is not the glorious liberty Jesus offers, freedom from sin and death. It craves, rather, LORDship over itself and power over its circumstances. We live in a culture that sees physical suffering and death as the worst possible evils, to be resisted and protested and avoided at all costs. It cannot comprehend the mind of the writer who sings that one day in the presence of the LORD is worth more than a thousand days anywhere else (Ps. 84:10) or understand the heart of Paul, who declares that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). Until we see our true bondage and misery and can cry with the apostle, “Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Rom. 7:24), we will not be able to grasp our absolute need of God’s grace and providential care. Not until, by God’s grace, we long for freedom from sin more than we desire another day of life can we rejoice in the divine providence that controls by liberating and liberates by controlling.
RESPONSE TO RON HIGHFIELD
A Kindred Spirit
An air of worship pervades Dr. Highfield’s discussion of providence that is both deeply satisfying and profoundly encouraging to those who are jealous to maintain the methodological priority of Scripture in the study of theology. While some might be tempted to write Dr. Highfield off as just another Calvinist whose understanding of God’s sovereignty has compromised his otherwise good judgment, in fact he is not trying to be “a good Calvinist” at all. For his theologizing is informed neither by a confessional commitment to the Reformed tradition nor by a “Calvinistic” reading of the text, but by his self-conscious devotion to the analogy of faith. Whatever affinities exist between Dr. Highfield’s views and those of Reformed believers generally, they testify not to what some might suggest is Dr. Highfield’s unacknowledged Calvinism but to the remarkable like-mindedness that often characterizes believers who recognize that God-honoring theology has much less to do with philosophical speculation than it does with faithful attention to what God has revealed in his Word. As a Reformed believer, my hope for Dr. Highfield is not that he would abandon his methodological commitment to the priority of Scripture and the analogy of faith but that through his careful attention to what the text of Scripture actually says he would come to embrace the Reformed worldview in all of its fullness and affirm with B. B. Warfield that Calvinism is not just another species of theism, religion, and evangelicalism but just theism, religion, and evangelicalism come to full flower. “In Calvinism,” Warfield notes in a comment that is sure to rankle those not presently members of the Reformed camp,
… objectively speaking, theism comes to its rights; subjectively speaking, the religious relation attains its purity; soteriologically speaking, evangelical religion finds at length its full expression and its secure stability. Theism comes to its rights only in a teleological conception of the universe, which perceives in the entire course of events the orderly outworking of the plan of God, who is the author, preserver, and governor of all things, whose will is consequently the ultimate cause of all. The religious relation attains its purity only when an attitude of absolute dependence on God is not merely temporarily assumed in the act, say, of prayer, but is sustained through all the activities of life, intellectual, emotional, executive. And evangelical religion reaches stability only when the sinful soul rests in humble, self-emptying trust purely on the God of grace as the immediate and sole source of all the efficiency which enters into its salvation. And these things are the formative principles of Calvinism.60
Points of Agreement
Dr. Highfield’s discussion of providence is informed by a number of judgments that I am eager to embrace as a Reformed believer. Among those judgments are the following: (1) He believes that “no-risk” views of providence are difficult for many of our contemporaries to take seriously because we live in a culture that has been “bewitched” by the notion of creaturely autonomy. Indeed, he correctly notes that many in the evangelical camp have endorsed an understanding of human freedom that, when considered “in the light of biblical anthropology,” is idolatrously “misguided” and “overflowing with hubris and self-flattery.” (2) He acknowledges that advocates of no-risk views of providence must concede that “they do not know a way to bring belief in God’s perfect LORDship into complete harmony with human freedom.” Those who take Scripture seriously, he argues, must grant that some things are ultimately inscrutable, and for this reason, they must resist the temptation to transform “revealed myster[ies] into … speculative obscurit[ies].” (3) He maintains that theologians attempting to formulate a distinctively Christian understanding of providence must exhaust the analogy of faith before making “cautious use of speculative methods to probe the inherent rationality of the faith.“ We ought not to confound theology and philosophy by granting methodological priority to philosophical speculation, he reasons, for when we do so, we subvert the authority of Scripture and mistake eisegesis for exegesis. (4) He insists that it is simply unbiblical to pretend that God’s “complete sovereignty” and human freedom are inherently incompatible, for he recognizes that because of the fallen condition, “God’s freedom and action [must] precede and empower human freedom and action at every point “ Failing to take the fallen condition seriously not only obscures the clear biblical teaching that “divine freedom creates and supports human freedom,” he reasons, but more important, it opens the door to a Manichaean tendency that subverts the gospel by making us “the cause, or at least the co-cause, of our salvation.” Finally, (5) Dr. Highfield affirms that the liberation of those who are in Christ will be fully realized only in the new heavens and the new earth. “The fullness of freedom,” he wisely concludes, “ … is not a natural possession or a power acquired by our own efforts. It is a future reality, identical to salvation, redemption, and eternal life, that will be fully realized at the resurrection of the dead.”
A Methodological Quibble
Although I am obviously very sympathetic with many aspects of Dr. Highfield’s discussion of providence, I have a minor though no less real concern about the methodological strategy that informs his analysis. While I understand and appreciate Dr. Highfield’s reluctance to transform “revealed myster[ies]” into “speculative obscurit[ies]” by confounding theology and philosophy, I wonder if his reluctance to address the “how” of God’s providential relationship to the world that he has made fosters a measure of confusion that, in the end, is largely unnecessary. If I am inferring correctly, Dr. Highfield is a theological determinist who endorses the distinction between primary and secondary causation, and thus he would explain the “how” of God’s relationship to the world that he has made in terms of an understanding of concurrence that embraces some form of compatibilism. While he rejects “risk” views of providence because he recognizes that there is “no biblical warrant” for the understanding of creaturely autonomy that those views take for granted, nevertheless he is reluctant explicitly to embrace determinism, the distinction between primary and secondary causation, and compatibilism. For doing so would apparently entail an unwarranted intrusion of philosophy into the realm of theology, a presumptuous attempt to probe the “how” of what is inherently inscrutable.
For the record, I greatly admire Dr. Highfield for his integrity and for his determination not to confound theology and philosophy. I wonder, though, why he is persuaded that endorsing any of the aforementioned stances would constitute an unwarranted philosophical presumption. While it certainly would be presumptuous to pretend that we know, for example, precisely how the mystery of compatibilism works, is it really all that presumptuous to say, along with scholars like D. A. Carson and Paul Helm, that compatibilism gives the best account of the biblical teaching on the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human freedom, even if the doctrine itself is not taught explicitly in Scripture, as Helm maintains?61 After all, if something looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is one really engaging in a kind of presumptuous speculation to say that it more than likely is a duck, particularly when that is the general conclusion to which exhausting the analogy of faith leads?
This quibble is particularly relevant to what, at least for me, is some confusion regarding Dr. Highfield’s discussion of the problem of evil near the end of his chapter. About midway through his analysis, Dr. Highfield alludes in a footnote to the medieval and Reformed insistence that there are “several senses” in which we can conceive of “the will of God.” Yet he does not relate the distinctions between these senses to the problem of evil, most likely because he believes that doing so would confound theology and philosophy and suggest that God is the author of evil in some sense. Instead, he insists that evil is “that which ought not to be,” or as Dr. Highfield puts it using the language of Karl Barth, “evil is a manifestation of that which ‘God has not willed and does not will and will not will.’ “ But, I wonder, if “nothing can happen apart from God’s creative power,” as Dr. Highfield argues, and if evil is “that which ought not to be,” as he maintains, then why is it? Even if we grant that evil is best understood as a “defect or perversion” in a created reality that is inherently good, it seems that the answer to this question begs for a fuller discussion of “the will of God,” particularly when Dr. Highfield later insists that “God’s will is finally accomplished in all things” and “God never wills or does evil.” It is certainly true that discussions of the distinction between, for example, the “hidden” and “revealed” wills of God can get quite technical and can devolve into mere wrangling about words. Is it not conceivable, however, that such discussions could lend needed clarity to Dr. Highfield’s understanding of the problem of evil—including his endorsement of Barth—without becoming excessively speculative? If so, then why the reluctance to engage in such a discussion, particularly when—at least as far as Reformed evangelicals are concerned—the distinction between, for example, the “hidden” and “revealed” wills of God flows more or less naturally out of the attempt to take everything that Scripture says about “the will of God” seriously?62
Conclusion
No matter how Dr. Highfield might respond to this methodological challenge, I want to make it clear how much I appreciate his work, and I want to emphasize how eager I am to stand with him in his concluding reminder to those who would do God-honoring Christian theology in an age that is “obsessed with freedom.” “Until we see our true bondage and misery and can cry with the apostle, ‘Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?’ (Rom. 7:24),” he wisely reminds us, “we will not be able to grasp our absolute need of God’s grace and providential care. Not until, by God’s grace, we long for freedom from sin more than we desire another day of life can we rejoice in the divine providence that controls by liberating and liberates by controlling.“
RESPONSE TO RON HIGHFIELD
So far as I can tell, Ron Highfield does not advocate a view different from that of Paul Kjoss Helseth, so that we have, in fact, only three rather than four views represented in our book. He, like Helseth, affirms universal, divine, causal determinism along with a compatibilistic view of human freedom.63 Most of what I say in response to Helseth’s contribution applies to Highfield’s paper and need not be repeated here. I shall restrict myself to comments on a few of Highfield’s defenses of his position.
Highfield’s fundamental contention is that “God accomplishes his will in all things.“ As for why he embraces such a view, he says, “What clinches my belief in God’s comprehensive sovereignty … is its coherence with a Scripture-based, God-honoring doctrine of God.” He warns:
Denying God’s comprehensive control requires revising the doctrine of God to be consistent with the assertion that God cannot create whatever he wants or accomplish whatever he chooses. You will have to limit God’s power, knowledge, presence, freedom, and wisdom; you will have to make God subject to time and space and change. And these moves will sooner or later lead to the conclusion that God is limited in his eternal being, his very essence.
Is that true? I agree with Highfield that open theism’s doctrine of providence is very difficult to square with Scripture on the whole, but the same cannot be said of Molinism, given that Scripture does not pronounce on whether God brings things to pass only by strongly actualizing states of affairs or also by weakly actualizing states that involve human free choices.64 It is correct that Molinism holds that God cannot create whatever he wants or accomplish whatever he chooses, since some possible worlds are infeasible for God. So he is not free to create just any world he pleases. But I deny that that places any nonlogical limit on his power, any more than does his inability to create a married bachelor.65 Nor is he limited in his knowledge, presence, or wisdom or thereby subject to time, space, or change. Thus, Molinism does not in any way limit God’s essential attributes. On the contrary, it is Highfield’s and Helseth’s view that limits God’s essence by impugning his essential goodness and wisdom. For according to universal divine determinism, God makes people sin and then punishes them for it, and the world becomes a farcical charade. Such a view is neither faithful to the full testimony of Scripture nor honoring of God.
Molinism requires that we draw a distinction between God’s absolute intentions and his conditional intentions. His absolute intention is that all persons be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. But due to human freedom and obstinacy, that absolute intention is frustrated. God’s conditional intention is to save certain persons and bring about certain events without abrogating human freedom, and God’s conditional intentions are always fulfilled. Thus, while God’s absolute will is not accomplished, his permissive will is. Such an understanding is faithful to Scripture’s witness to the universal salvific will of God and the tragic fact that many persons will be damned. Calvinism cannot really take seriously Scripture’s testimony to God’s universal salvific will.
Highfield recognizes that “many evangelical theologians would agree that God works … in complete gratuity in creation, incarnation, and salvation …But when it comes to providence some theologians … argue that God cannot simply ‘cause’ human freedom to do his will freely.” Right; they reject compatibilism. Here is an argument for that conclusion.
So how does Highfield respond to such an argument? First, he denounces libertarian freedom: “In the light of biblical anthropology, the libertarian view of freedom and the allied concept of radical self-responsibility appear profoundly misguided and overflowing with hubris and self-flattery. They attribute to human beings complete self-possession, sovereign control over their being, and exclusive self-causation of their actions—powers that belong to God alone!”
This sort of response misfires, not merely because it represents a tendentious reading of Scripture, but more fundamentally because the argument for the incompatibility of determinism and free will does not presume that there is free will. The above argument could be put forward by the determinist who denies that human freedom exists (indeed, one wonders why his view is not represented in this book!). Incompatibilists, then, may be either libertarians or determinists.66
More to the point, Highfield seems to deny premise 1 on the grounds that libertarian freedom is inconsistent with responsibility. He denies that “possessing a measure of responsibility requires absolute self-determination.” I found his argument for this denial simply astonishing. Highfield argues that God’s forgiving our sins is dependent on our not being fully responsible for those sins. The possibility of repentance and forgiveness is rooted in our ignorance of “all the alternatives to that deed and all its consequences.” Had we sinned with full knowledge of the alternatives and the consequences, then “such radical acts cannot be forgiven or undone since they express the self definitively.”
This denial of the power of God’s grace and the efficacy of Christ’s atonement is very disturbing and will be, I hope, repudiated by every other contributor to this volume. Of course, had Highfield given some reason to think that acts that “express the self definitively” are unforgivable, that would be something with which to grapple. But he merely asserts it.
Not only so, but how does his point work to refute the argument? If our deeds are forgivable because they are to some extent due to factors outside our control, that only reinforces the claim that one is morally responsible for an act only to the extent that the act is up to that person. To the degree that it is not, one is exonerated and may be forgiven. If one were utterly determined to do the act, one would be completely nonculpable. Hence, Highfield’s objection actually supports the argument for the incompatibility of freedom and determinism.
Highfield’s second objection to the argument for the incompatibility of freedom and determinism is that it derives its understanding of freedom from something other than Scripture. According to the New Testament, freedom in all its fullness “is not the power to choose between this and that or between good and evil; it is the power for, and the actual state of, loving God perfectly and willing his will invariably.” This scriptural doctrine of full freedom, however, is not relevant to this argument. The argument does not try to give a positive account of full freedom but simply attempts to show that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism. Highfield’s comments neither have relevance nor do anything to defeat the argument’s conclusion. If full freedom is compatible with determinism, then it excludes moral responsibility.
Finally, Highfield attempts to come to grips with the claim that universal divine determinism makes God responsible for evil. I agree with Highfield that one cannot assume that so-called natural evils are really evil and “ought not to be.” Suffering is not necessarily evil. But let us therefore stick with moral evil as our point of contention, sins that we commit. Since Highfield thinks that God’s will is invariably done and nothing escapes his will, it follows that God wills moral evil and even causes it to occur. Given that that is impossible, there must be no moral evil. Here is an argument to that effect.
The Molinist escapes this argument by denying premise 2. Sinful acts are willed only conditionally by God. But Highfield affirms both premises and is therefore logically committed to denying that anything that happens is evil, an unscriptural and evidently false conclusion.
Incredibly, but consistently, Highfield appears to embrace 3.67 He says, “If evil is that which God does not will and God’s will is always effective, then evil can have no genuine and lasting being.” One cannot mollify this conclusion by saying that God will do away with evil or that evil is a privation with no positive being. I am not claiming anything about the ontological status of evil as such but just affirming that people do act sinfully, contrary to 3. Highfield has to deny that people act sinfully.
Highfield seems to appreciate the difficulty in which this puts him: “If evil is nothing in itself, how can there really be evil acts, events, or states of affairs? Does my position not imply that they cannot exist? To most people, this seems manifestly absurd. But if I admit that such things really exist and God’s will is invariably done in and through them, how can I escape the charge that I am making God the doer of evil?”
How, indeed? Highfield tries to break down a sinful action into various aspects, such as intention, deliberation, decision, exertion, and results. He points out that acts committed with evil intention can result in God’s will being done, a point no one would care to dispute. But Highfield recognizes that evil intentions do occur. He says, “The doctrine of providence locates the evil aspect of human action, not in the created being of humanity and not in its final results, but rather in the sinfulness of a heart that is bereft of the knowledge of God and the love of God and neighbor. Sin is not God’s creature. It has no positive existence, and the false images it projects can never become real.”
Clearly, this answer will not suffice. For in universal divine determinism, the intention, the deliberation, the decision, and the exertion are all caused by God to occur. God is therefore the source of evil. Highfield tries to escape this result by saying, “In evil acts, God’s concurrence overcomes the evil in the act, not allowing it to be truly and lastingly realized but instead bringing good out of evil.“ Alas, this is all to no avail: of course, God can bring a good result out of evil, but the evil intent and decision are not therefore somehow rendered morally neutral so that sin becomes an illusion. Highfield’s view that God determines everything that happens leads to the conclusion either that moral evil and sin are illusory or that God is the source of evil.
Finally, I have to say that I am troubled by what seems to me an incipient irrationalism in Highfield’s approach to theology. He offers almost no account of how God sovereignly controls the universe, much less how such control is compatible with human freedom. He excuses himself because “God’s nature and his relationship to the world are ultimately incomprehensible by human reason.” While allowing that “it is possible to achieve some rational insight” into divine providence, he is afraid of allowing “biblically based theology to be overwhelmed by speculative metaphysics or logic or psychology or ‘passion for systematic consistency.’ “ He insists that
before Christian theologians take up the role of metaphysicians or logicians or psychologists, they should exhaust the method evangelicals ought to hold nearest to their hearts: the analogy of the faith. With this method, obscure elements of the faith are laid beside clearer parts. And each scriptural teaching is understood in the light of every other. Only after this method has been exhaustively applied should we feel free to make cautious use of speculative methods to probe the inherent rationality of the faith.
If the admonition here is simply to do careful biblical theology prior to engaging in systematic theology, then such advice is unremarkable We evangelicals all agree with such a procedure. But it is hard not to detect here a certain distrust of logical analysis and philosophical reflection, which is both unfortunate and naïve: unfortunate because it would deprive us of the insights such reflection might bring and naïve because such methods are already from the start quietly at work when one does biblical exegesis and theology. While we may not be able to explain how God providentially governs the world, we can at least provide models of such governance that show the logical coherence of the Christian worldview—a project that Highfield admits exceeds the capacity of Reformed theology.
RESPONSE TO RON HIGHFIELD
I applaud Highfield’s attempt to sustain a christocentric methodology as well as his obvious, earnest desire to articulate a view of providence that honors God and reflects his Word. Yet I believe there are some serious problems with the thesis he articulated and defended in his essay. I will group my criticisms around three topics: Highfield’s inadequate and confusing views on freedom, an incoherence I find in Highfield’s central thesis, and Highfield’s inadequate handling of the problem of evil.
Issues Related to Freedom
I have three closely related issues regarding Highfield’s various comments on the nature of freedom.68 The first concerns the role of free will in salvation. I am in full agreement with Highfield when he argues that the God-appointed end of our freedom of choice is eventually to give way to a much more beautiful form of freedom: the freedom to love God and to be conformed to the image of Christ. Highfield correctly notes that this is the freedom Paul and other New Testament authors celebrate. Moreover, I wholeheartedly agree with Highfield that we never could have entered this “fullness of freedom” by our own power of choice. Without the liberating empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we are dead in our sin (Eph. 2:1, 5).
Where Highfield and I part ways, however, is that I do not see how this highest form of freedom could be characterized as a freedom for genuine love of God if the process that led up to it was itself exhaustively controlled by God. Love that is not chosen is not, in my view, genuine love. Related to this, I see no scriptural or rational reasons why we should see the liberating empowerment of the Holy Spirit as all-controlling. It is one thing to grant that we who are dead in sin cannot love God without the Holy Spirit, and quite a different thing to say that with the Holy Spirit we who are being liberated must love God. So far as I can see, Scripture consistently teaches the first but never teaches the second. To the contrary, we are repeatedly encouraged to yield to the Spirit rather than resist or suppress the Holy Spirit.69
Second, as is to be expected given his deterministic convictions, Highfield is no fan of “the libertarian view of freedom.” He believes this concept is driven by the modern need to be autonomous and self-determining. “We want control,” he argues, “and we insist that controlling ourselves and our circumstances accompanies any meaningful liberty.” This view, he argues, is “profoundly misguided and overflowing with hubris and self-flattery.”70
Now, for all I know, Highfield may be correct in alleging that some people embrace libertarian freedom because they are “overflowing with hubris and self-flattery.” But so far as I can discern, my own motives as well as the motives of all the Christians I know who espouse libertarian freedom are centered on biblical, theological, and philosophical considerations. It might have been more helpful if Highfield had focused his critique on these considerations rather than resorting to an ad hominem argument.
I also find it hard to accept Highfield’s argument that the concept of libertarian freedom is a modern, prideful, humanistic idea. The early church uniformly and emphatically defended free will against all forms of determinism and held that evil originates in the misuse of these wills, not in a mysterious plan of God. Only with Augustine in the fifth century do we find Christians embracing a Stoic, compatibilistic understanding of freedom and espousing a Stoic-type theodicy that contended that evil was part of God’s grand plan.
Third, Highfield frequently expresses his compatibilistic understanding of freedom by saying things like, “God works before, through, with, inside, around, and after human working to accomplish his will. “ Hence, he holds, humans are free and yet God accomplishes exactly what he wills in and through us When one considers some of the demented and diabolic ways humans have freely acted, the thought that God was meticulously accomplishing his will through them is rather disturbing, especially when we remember that Highfield contends that God controls by liberating. What is liberating about the God-controlled activity of Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot? This leads to the second major point I want to make in response to Highfield’s essay.
A Foundational Incoherence
As the title of his essay suggests, Highfield’s thesis is that divine providence “controls by liberating.“ At the same time, Highfield believes God exercises “comprehensive sovereignty,” which for him means, “God controls the world comprehensively.” Nothing happens outside of God’s will. My fundamental difficulty with Highfield’s essay is that I frankly do not see how these two theses are compatible.
If God controls by liberating while also controlling everything, should not everything be liberated? Even more fundamentally, if God controls by liberating while controlling everything, how is it that anything or anyone ever needs liberating in the first place? Where did bondage come from? And does God control whatever it is that we and creation are in bondage to? If yes, it seems that at least one thing violates the thesis that God controls by liberating. If no, it seems that at least one thing violates the thesis that God controls everything. Either way, I cannot see how Highfield’s position is internally consistent.
In various ways, this foundational incoherence crops up throughout Highfield’s essay. For example, Highfield rightly argues that without “divine help,” we cannot free ourselves from our sin. Sin “is a master from which we need release.” I could not agree more. Yet, based on the assumption that God controls everything, there would be no such master from which we need releasing unless God willed it. I thus must wonder, once again, how Highfield can claim God controls by liberating when God also controls the bondage from which we need to be liberated.
Similarly, Highfield argues, “God’s providential and saving actions — even when they overrule and defeat our misguided and sinful intentions — are designed to liberate us from sin and death.” Yet it is not clear why God should need providentially to “overrule” and “defeat” anything if everything is already providentially controlled by God. Nor is it clear to me how Highfield can claim that all God’s providential actions are liberating when they include preserving in existence the sin and death from which God seeks to liberate us. In this light, it seems to me Highfield should have titled his essay “God Controls by Oppressing in Order to Liberate,” though, so far as I can see, even this modified thesis would be acceptable only if Highfield embraced universalism.
The Nature of Evil
The foundational incoherence I find in Highfield’s position is most clearly evidenced in his discussion of evil. For example, at one point Highfield says, “Whatever God does not will is evil and ought not to be, precisely because he does not will it.“ This is a decent (though abstract) definition of evil.71 Yet I cannot conceive of how anything can exist that God does not will if everything that exists does so only because God wills it, as Highfield argues.
For a moment I wondered if Highfield was going to suggest that evil does not exist, which, so far as I can see, is the only logical conclusion available to him. He came close when he argued that “evil can have no genuine and lasting being” and “evil has no real … being.” Now, I cannot pretend to know what Highfield means by denying that evil has “genuine” or “real” being, for I frankly cannot form a clear conception in my mind of what would constitute “disingenuous” and “unreal” being. So far as I can see, being is simply being. Whatever Highfield might mean, however, I struggle to see how evil can exist at all if the all-good God controls everything, let alone controls everything “by liberating.”
My confusion was hardly lessened when Highfield went on to insist that it would be a mistake to conclude that since “evil has no real and lasting being, it is nothing at all and therefore is innocuous.” To the contrary, Highfield argues, “The moral disorder that is evil does as much damage to the soul as the malfunction of disease does to the body, though neither adds a substance to God’s creation.” Now, I again cannot begin to guess at what Highfield might mean when he denies that evil is “nothing at all” while affirming that evil “has no real and lasting being.” How does “no real … being” differ from “nothing at all"? Nor can I guess what Highfield might intend to communicate by denying that the evil of moral disorder and of physical disease “adds a substance to God’s creation.” What does adding a “substance” to “God’s creation” mean—especially if the “substance” has “no real … being"? What really puzzles me, however, is how the damage done to the soul or body can be evil when God controls both, and nothing controlled by God can be evil. To the contrary, everything God controls (that is, everything) is supposed to be liberating.
My confusion was not alleviated when I later came upon Highfield’s argument that “even though evil is nothing in itself, it is a deadly enemy of creation and therefore an enemy of the Creator.” I again confess to having no idea what Highfield means when he says evil is “nothing in itself” and yet is “a deadly enemy.” I honestly cannot get clear on what it means to say that something (?) is “nothing in itself,” still less what it means to say that something (?) that is “nothing in itself” can relate to everything else as an “enemy.” But what really baffles me is how “something” (?) that is “nothing in itself” could ever be “an enemy of the Creator” when the Creator is said to control everything (by liberating!), for it seems to me that everything must include even things that are “nothing in itself.” To his credit, Highfield acknowledges that “to most people this seems manifestly absurd,” and I readily count myself among this majority.
Highfield concludes his essay by claiming, “Not until, by God’s grace, we long for freedom from sin more than we desire another day of life can we rejoice in the divine providence that controls by liberating and liberates by controlling.“ I would like to claim I long to be free from sin more than I desire another day of life, though I honestly doubt that this is altogether true. But I am also quite certain this has little to do with my inability to rejoice “in the divine providence that controls by liberating and liberates by controlling.” My inability, rather, is rooted in the simple fact that I honestly cannot get a clear idea of what Highfield means when he asserts this.
1. Unfortunately, the word “control” carries connotations of coercion, manipulation, and anxiety None of these limitations characterizes God’s action of accomplishing his will perfectly in all things.
2. In 1859 John Stuart Mill anticipated our own age when he laid down the principle that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant” (On Liberty [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1956], 13).
3. Terrance L. Tiessen, Providence and Prayer: How Does God Work in the World? (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 363 — 64. Tiessen relates eleven different models of providence on a sliding scale of how much control over the world they attribute to God. A decisive break occurs, however, between Molinism (model 6) and Thomism (model 7) In the first six models God risks failure, and in the last five God’s will is assuredly done in all things.
4. use the intentionally vague term “some other reality” because in Molinism, which Tiessen correctly numbers among the “risk” models (Providence and Prayer, 363), once God decides which possible and feasible world to realize, everything goes according to plan. However, God depends on there being such a possible and feasible world. God cannot make a world possible or feasible
5. This is the position that distinguished evangelical scholar J. I. Packer defends in his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1961), 18 — 24. David M. Ciocchi also adopts an “agnostic position” on the possibility of reconciling God’s control and human freedom. See his “Reconciling Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37, no. 3 (1994): 395 — 412. Ciocchi reasserts his agnostic position in a later article, “Suspending the Debate about Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 51, no. 3 (2008): 573 — 90.
6. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 16.
7. Alfred J. Freddoso, introduction to On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), by Luis de Molina, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 35.
8. See Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 2:493 — 97, for a discussion of the Reformed method of interpreting Scripture according to the analogy of faith. For Karl Barth’s use of the analogy of faith, see CD 1/1, 243 —47.
9. I should inform the reader that my ecclesiastical tradition, Churches of Christ (Stone– Campbell Movement), has always resisted committing itself to any creed, confession of faith, or extrabiblical theological system, such as Calvinism or Arminianism or any other. I believe it is very important to affirm every biblical truth even if one cannot explain fully how they all fit together, and I do not want to sacrifice even one biblical truth to make a theological system more internally consistent. I am not trying to be a good Calvinist or a good Arminian. So, in developing my understanding of providence, although I have considered many theories, I have tried to the best of my ability to conform my views to Scripture.
10. John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter– Varsity Press, 1998), 39 – 139. For a similar study, see Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” in Pinnock et al., Openness of God, 11 — 58.
11. See Gen. 6:5 – 7; 22:12; Ex. 4:2 – 5, 8, 9; 32:9 – 14; 1 Sam. 15:29; 2 Kings 20:5; Jer. 3:7; Hos. 11:8, 9; Mark 6:6; Luke 8:43 – 48; and James 4:2.
12. Sanders, God Who Risks, 38.
13. See Ron Highfield, Great Is the Lord: Theology for the Praise of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 151 – 53, 359 – 61; see also Alfred Freddoso, “The ‘Openness’ of God: A Reply to William Hasker,” Christian Scholars Review 28 (1998): 124.
14. My book Great Is the Lord is a sustained defense of the traditional doctrine of God against the criticisms of open theism and process theology.
15. Karl Barth rejects all answers to the question of how God operates in creation other than the operation of the Word and Spirit: “And now we can and must give the simple positive answer that the operation of God is His utterance to all creatures of the Word of God which has all the force and wisdom and goodness of His Holy Spirit. Or, to put it in another way, the operation of God is His moving of all creatures by the force and wisdom and goodness which are His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of His Word” (CD 3/3, 142).
16. Gregory of Nyssa, “Address on Religious Instruction,” in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward R. Hardy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 288, emphasis in original. Irenaeus, in his debate with the Gnostics, urged that God “Himself in Himself, after a fashion which we can neither describe nor conceive, predestinating all things, formed them as He pleased” (Against All Heresies 2. 2. 4 [ANF 1:361]).
17. Irenaeus Against All Heresies 2. 2. 4 (ANF 1:361). For a study of this theme in Irenaeus, see Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 52 – 56.
18. These four qualifications on the relationship of the human and divine natures were laid down in the Symbol of Chalcedon (451), and the affirmation of two wills working in complete harmony, with the human in perfect submission to the divine, was laid down in the Sixth Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 680. See Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2, rev. David S. Schaff (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 63 – 64, 72.
19. Though the term “Semipelagianism” was coined in the sixteenth century by opponents of Molina, this idea was condemned at the Council of Orange (529) See F L Cross and E A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), s v “Semipelagianism”
20. One of the best examples of medieval thought on grace and freedom can be found in Bernard of Clairvaux, “On Grace and Free Choice,” in The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol 7, Treatises III, trans Daniel O’Donovan (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1977), 53 — 111
21. Perhaps I am being too optimistic Karl Barth correctly points out that Luis de Molina and his Jesuit colleagues developed the theory of middle knowledge to support their Semipelagian theology of grace; that is, “to aid a new semi-pelagianism to gain its necessary place and right in the new situation in opposition to the Augustinian-Thomistic teaching of the Dominicans, which they accused of being dangerously near to Luther and Calvin” (CD 2/1, 569) Evangelicals under the influence of Molina will have a difficult time escaping his Semi– pelagianism, even if they wish to do so
22. John Duns Scotus, distinguishing himself from the views of Thomas Aquinas, advocates a type of infallible persuasion that God exerts in his grace Thomists reject this theory as impossible apart from the vision of God For this discussion, see Garrigou-LaGrange, Predistination, 113 – 14.
23. I am not proposing a theory of “how” God does this
24. Rather than beginning with moral responsibility, Gregory Boyd takes his point of departure from the thesis that God created the world so that others can participate in his triune love But love is possible only where there is freedom, and freedom requires risk, and risk entails moral responsibility (see Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 50 — 53, 165).
25. Philosophers need to find other epistemic grounds for believing in moral responsibility For a variety of contemporary philosophical opinions on the issue, see John Martin and Mark Ravizza, eds., Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (Ithaca, N,Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993)
26. Bruce Reichenbach, “God Limits His Power,” in Predestination and Freewill: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom, ed. David Basinger and Randal Basinger (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 104.
27. Ciocchi, “Suspending the Debate,” 586, emphasis in original. To be fair I need to point out that Ciocchi is agnostic about the exact nature of human responsibility and the freedom that grounds it
28. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 19.
29. John Sanders, “God as Personal,” in The Grace of God, the Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism, ed. Clark Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 176.
30. Reflection on God’s freedom, or aseity, is very relevant to this discussion. See chapter 8 of my book Great Is the Lord, 222 -54.
31. For a readable critique of the necessity or coherence of rooting human responsibility in autonomous freedom, see Susan Wolf, Freedom within Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3 -22.
32. See my article “The Freedom to Say ‘No'? Karl Rahner’s Doctrine of Sin,” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 485 — 503. I deal there extensively with Rahner’s view of freedom, responsibility, and the possibility of the forgiveness of sins. Rahner defines sin as a free self-determining “no” to God. But how can such a refusal be forgiven and reversed, if it really is free and self-defining? See also my book Barth and Rahner: Toward an Ecumenical Understanding of Sin and Evil (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 99 — 110.
33. I do not think Jesus meant that those sinners who crucified him had no idea of what they were doing. However, they certainly did not know fully what they were doing. Jesus’ intersession for their forgiveness assumes that had they known what they were doing, they would not have done it. Responsibility comes in degrees, but we never know fully what we are doing.
34. For a clear distinction between mere willingness (what Bernard calls “freedom from necessity” or “free choice”) and genuine freedom (what Bernard calls “freedom from sin” and “freedom from sorrow”), see Bernard of Clairvaux, “On Grace and Free Choice,” 53 — 111.
35. Heinrich Schlier, “Eleutheros,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 2:497. Hereafter cited as TDNT.
36. “In the Spirit of the freedom of Jesus Christ, there arises our freedom” (TDNT 2:499).
37. Robert T. Osborn, Freedom in Modern Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 12.
38. TDNT 2:496.
39. Ibid
40. Jürgen Blunck, “Freedom,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 1:715 -20. According to Blunck, Paul teaches that the power to liberate oneself from sin is not “within the realm of his own capacities.”
41. Hans Dieter Betz, Paul’s Concept of Freedom in the Context of Hellenistic Discussions about Possibilities of Human Freedom, Protocol Series of the Colloquies of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenism and Modern Culture 26 (Berkeley, Calif.: The Center, 1977), 7.
42. Karl Hermann Schelkle, “New Testament Theology: Pauline Theology,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 1078. According to Schelkle, Paul’s teaching on freedom is to be understood as within the horizon of Hellenism, “where freedom was regarded as a precious possession and a prize to be sought after in philosophy, ethics and religion … It was a point at which the world and the gospel met and parted. In the former, in the Stoa, for instance, freedom is won by the wise man’s own effort. In the latter it is the gift of the liberating grace of God” (ibid.). See also Max Müller, “Freedom,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, 542, where he says, “The free man is the man at one with God. Only if he abandons himself to God does he receive himself back as his own personal possession.”
43. TDNT 2:499. For more on the freedom theme in Paul, see Richard N. Longenecker, Paul, Apostle of Liberty (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 156 – 80; Lincoln E. Galloway, Freedom in the Gospel: Paul’s Exemplum in 1 Cor 9 in Conversation with the Discourses of Epictetus and Philo (Leuven: Peeters, 2004).
44. William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in Pinnock et al., Openness of God, 152.
45. Boyd, God at War, 34 — 35, emphasis added. In Satan and the Problem of Evil, Boyd adopts the same strategy for defining evil. There he tells the story of Greta, a seven-year-old girl who was kidnapped, raped, and killed (214 — 15). For my analysis and critique of Boyd’s theodicy, see Ron Highfield, “A Response to Gregory Boyd’s Open Theist Solution,” Restoration Quarterly 45 (2003): 165 – 80.
46. The role Gregory Boyd gives to Satan (in God at War and Satan and the Problem of Evil) is strikingly similar to metaphysical “darkness” in Manichaean thought. Even if Satan is a created and fallen being, he performs the role that metaphysical evil plays in dualistic systems. He limits God’s sovereignty, crowds his space, corrupts his creation, defeats his will, and spoils his plans. In effect, Satan is the creator of the concrete world in which we live.
47. Gregory of Nyssa, “Address on Religious Instruction,” 285.
48. To avoid misunderstanding, I am not saying that evil is not at work in such horrifying events as Zosia’s murder. It is. I am criticizing a certain way of claiming knowledge of this fact and a certain carelessness of language that pronounces such events as “evil” without qualification. This way of speaking may satisfy our need to express our horror, but it should not be imported into the doctrine of providence without qualification.
49. Barth, CD 4/1, 409. Barth uses the term “nothingness” (or das Nichtiges) where I use the term “evil “ For Barth, “nothingness” is a broad term that includes sin, evil, and death (CD 3/3, 310).
50. Augustine, in The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Bruce Harbert (New York: New City Press, 1999), 4. 13, p. 43.
51. For the Western understanding, see Augustine Confessions 7; for the Eastern understanding, see Basil the Great, God Is Not the Author of Evil 8: “Do not consider God the cause for the existence of evil, nor imagine evil as having its own existence For evil is not subsistent the way an animal might be; nor can we see its essence substantiated For evil is the absence of good evil does not have its own subsistence, but it follows upon the wounds of the soul” (quoted in Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification [Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000], 148).
52. Barth, CD 3/3, 295 – 302.
53. Medieval and post-Reformation Reformed theologians distinguished between several senses of the will of God. Clearly, there is a difference between expressions of the divine will such as “Let there be light,” “This night your life will be required of you,” or “Lazarus! Come forth!” and “You shall not murder.” The first three clearly express the divine intention to bring about a new state of affairs. The latter may have several purposes: to render humanity guilty, for instance, or to enlighten us. For the Reformed view, see Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:432 — 75.
54. For Aquinas’s view of action, see Alan Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 642 — 54.
55. See Alfred Freddoso, “Suarez on God’s Causal Involvement in Sinful Acts,” in The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Elmar Kremer and Michael Latzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 10 – 34, for a very sophisticated analysis of divine concurrence with sinful acts from a middle knowledge perspective
56. The emphasis on “truly and lastingly” is very important. The true meaning of an act cannot be known until all its effects have played out, and this perspective is completely beyond our horizon
57. The Jesuits argued that God’s concurrence empowers human free action but is not efficacious in determining acts. The Dominicans argued that God’s concurrence is efficacious in the case of good acts but not in the case of evil acts. I would say it differently. In evil acts, God’s concurrence overcomes the evil in the act, not allowing it to be truly and lastingly realized but instead bringing good out of evil. See Freddoso, introduction to On Divine Foreknowledge (Molina), 18 – 19.
58. See the section titled “Rebellion” (5. 4), in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1995), 218 -27.
59. This revelation is the basis, the only possible basis, of my argument about the nature of evil events and their final and lasting results.
60. B. B. Warfield, “Calvinism,” in Calvin and Calvinism, vol. 5 of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield(1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 355.
61. For example, see D. A. Carson, “Reflections on Assurance,” in Schreiner and Ware, The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, 2:405 – 8; Paul Helm, “Response by Paul Helm [to John Sanders],” in Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views, ed. Bruce A. Ware (Nashville: B&H, 2008), 242.
62. For a good discussion of the distinction between the hidden, or “decretive,” and the revealed, or “preceptive,” wills of God, see, e. g, Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:220 — 22
63. Although Highfield says next to nothing about how God controls everything that happens, his commitment to universal determinism, as well as to human freedom, is evident in his remark that some theologians, with whom he disagrees, “argue that God cannot simply ‘cause’ human freedom to do his will freely. For them, the idea of a caused free act is as contradictory as the concept of a square circle.”
64. See my response to Helseth.
65. See Thomas P. Flint and Alfred J. Freddoso, “Maximal Power,” in The Existence and Nature of God, ed. Alfred J. Freddoso (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 81 – 113.
66. As I was recently reminded by my assistant and former grad student Shaun McNaughton.
67. Ironically thereby frustrating Highfield’s aspiration, “I do not want to sacrifice even one biblical truth to make a theological system more internally consistent.”
68. Highfield’s use of the term “freedom” is at times confusing, largely because he uses the term in at least three distinct senses without ever clearly indicating which sense he means. Sometimes the term refers to a person’s freedom to love God and be free from sin — what Highfield calls the “fullness of freedom” or “genuine freedom.” Other times he uses the term in a compatibilistic sense, referring to a person’s freedom to choose what they want. And still other times Highfield uses the term to refer to libertarian freedom, which he of course rejects. I feel this pervasive ambiguity makes his essay more challenging to follow than is necessary.
69. E.g., Isa. 63:10; Gal. 5:16; Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19.
70. It does not help that Highfield imagines that libertarian freedom “attributes to human beings complete self-possession, sovereign control over their being, and exclusive self-causation of their actions — powers that belong to God alone!” (emphasis added). I am quite certain that all philosophically trained defenders of libertarian freedom would agree with me that this is a caricature of libertarian freedom. A person’s freedom cannot even be theoretically isolated from the myriad of physical, social, psychological, and spiritual factors that influence a person moment to moment.
71. In God at War, I argue that abstract definitions of evil never capture the essence of evil. I thus give a concrete nonfictional illustration of evil involving a little Jewish girl who had her eyes plucked out by Nazi soldiers. Highfield argued that my argument “boils down to a criticism of a doctrine of faith [viz., his understanding of providence], using human experience as a norm.” It is, he says, “a faithless substitution of fragmentary human experience for the comfort of the Scriptures.” I am puzzled as to why Highfield views my concrete illustration as a norm against which his deterministic doctrine of providence falls short, especially when Highfield explicitly acknowledges his agreement that my illustration constitutes an evil.