Why must we hold that God’s will alone reigns supreme? What’s at stake in such a discussion?
Many Christians, especially in the past few hundred years in Western Christianity, reason that God must have given us as human beings some certain autonomy when he made us. Or else, the logic goes, we couldn’t be responsible for our actions. Simply said, the though has been that we must have some sort of ability to act and choose apart from God’s total control in order to be responsible for what we do.
But is this a biblical idea? It’s an important discussion to have. Why? Not mainly just to talk about matters of theology, but because who God is and why he gets all the glory and why we can trust him all hang in the balance.
Much can be said on this issue, especially concerning biblical passages, texts which the Protestant Reformers grasped with a firm grip. But in this post, I want to quote a (long) paragraph from Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will which, I think, is really helpful to explain a bit more why this matters, and why, perhaps surprisingly to many, God’s complete control makes not only must be true, but also makes the most sense.
A Very Helpful Quote on the Topic
Yet as a side-note before I quote him: Edwards can be confusing at times, especially as he’s writing in the 1700s. And he writes with ridiculously long sentences, so you can’t read him fast (or at least I can’t). But I encourage you to stick with him (don’t skim!) and follow his logic; it’s powerful. And I’ll interrupt the paragraph at times to paraphrase what he’s saying.
Edwards begins,
“One thing more I would observe, before I finish what I have to say on the head of the necessity of the acts of God’s Will; and that is, that something more more like a servile subjection of the Divine Being to a fatal necessity will follow from Arminian principles, than from the doctrines which they oppose…”
In other words, from the idea of each human having free will (an “Arminian principle”) comes more fatalism than from the idea that God is totally sovereign. We may object that this doesn’t make sense—that God’s sovereignty is what appears to be fatalism. But stick with Edwards’s logic as he continues,
“For they (at least most of them) suppose, with respect to all events that happen in the moral world, depending on the volitions of moral agents, which are the most important events of the universe, to which all others are subordinate; I say, they suppose, with respect to these, that God has certain foreknowledge of them, antecedent to any purposes or decrees of his, about them. And if so, they have a fixed certain futurity, prior to any designs or volitions of his, and independent on them, and to which his volitions must be subject, as he would wisely accommodate his affairs to this fixed futurity of the state of things in the moral world.”
Meaning, if the idea of God’s foreknowledge of autonomous free wills was true, then God’s decrees, plans, volitions, and actions would be subordinate to all these foreseen acts of human free wills. Why? Because these acts of free wills would necessarily have a “fixed futurity.” Meaning, for God in they past, these trillions upon trillions upon trillions of free acts would be fixed and set in the future, and God would then have to decree and act in subjection to all these fixed future free-will actions. (This is quite problematic…)
Edwards gets even clearer as he continues,
“So that here, instead of a moral necessity of God’s Will, arising from, or consisting in, the infinite perfection and blessedness of the Divine Being, we have a fixed unaltered state of things, properly distinct from the perfect nature of the Divine Mind, and the start of the Divine Will and Design, and entirely independent on these things, and which they have, no hand it, because they are prior to them; and which God’s Will is truly subject to, he being obliged to conform or accommodate himself to it, in all his purposes and decrees, and in every thing he does in his disposals and government of the world.”
Now Edwards is getting closer to the big issue: If God were subject to the fixed futurity of the trillions upon trillions of actions of free-willed humans, then this necessarily means that the plans, volitions, and actions of the divine being from all eternity would not be completely subject to his own blessedness and perfection (“from the perfect nature of the Divine Mind”). Instead, all God’s plans and actions would be subject to the moral wills of the human beings he makes and foresees. In other words, “God’s will is truly subject to [future human wills]…in all his purposes and decrees, and in everything he does in his disposal and government of the world.” God, from eternity past, would be subject to the trillions upon trillions of free, autonomous actions of human wills that he created and foresaw.
Which brings us to why this is such a massive issue. Edwards concludes with a bang,
“Such a subjection to necessity as this would truly argue an inferiority and servitude, that would be unworthy of the Supreme Being; and is much more agreeable to the notion which many of the heathen had of fate, as above the gods, than that moral necessity of fitness and wisdom which has been spoken [of God]; and is truly repugnant to the absolute sovereignty of God, and inconsistent with the supremacy of his Will; and really subjects the Will of the Most High to the Will of his creatures; and bring him in to dependence upon them” (emphasis added).
Such a conclusion is correct. (We’ll discuss his brilliant connection to the idea of “fate” in the second point below). To summarize Edwards’s whole paragraph: If God were subject to the foreseen fixed futurity of trillions upon trillions of actions of free human wills, then he would need to, from all eternity past, subject his divine plans and volitions and decrees to these trillions upon trillions of feelings and actions of human wills. And if this were the case, it would be totally unfitting for the Most High and Supreme Being. Why? Because it “really subjects the Will of the Most to the Will of his created; and bring[s] him in to dependence upon them.” And importantly, this is not the picture we have of the total sovereign, do-whatever-he-pleases God in the Bible (see Psalm 115:3; Ephesians 1:11; and more).
Summarizing It All in Three Points
Encapsulating Edwards’s ideas in the quote above, we can say three things would disastrously be the case if the idea of autonomous human ability were true.
- First, if autonomous human ability were true, God’s will would, in essence, be subjected to the trillions upon trillions of actions of foreseen future human wills. This would be unworthy of the Supreme Being because such an idea would be “inconsistent with the supremacy of his will,” which is a thoroughly biblical idea (see Ephesians 1:11). Incredibly, God would be in subject to (foreseen) us in all his plans and actions and in how he governs the world.
- Second, this idea of free will would actually make a more fatalistic world than the belief in a totally sovereign God. This seems contrary to what we may think; how then is this the case? Because the free will logic in actuality is more in line with pagan fatalism, namely, that there’s just so many wills and competing factors that all is essentially chaos; so what can you or the gods do to truly change anything? (A fascinating point from Edwards, isn’t it?) The more biblical view of God’s total sovereignty—of a God who “works all things according to the counsel of his will”—allows us to not be fatalistic because everything is controlled by a good, sovereign God. No chaos. We don’t need a free will; we don’t want free will because it would totally strip God of his God-ness, make him subjected to the trillions of trillions of foreseen wills, and promote a fatalistic chaos. We’d rather have God be in total control—even over our actions.
- Third, this idea of autonomous human choice is “repugnant to the absolute sovereignty of God…and brings him in to dependence upon [his creatures].” This is how Edwards ends his paragraph because he rightly sees such an idea as so repugnant biblically. It is not the God we see in the Bible from beginning to end. Believing in autonomous free will might help us logically answer how we can be responsible for our actions, but it leaves us with a “God” who is dependent—in his plans, volitions, and governing of the world—to the trillions upon trillions of foreseen willful actions of humans. And this would mean that our wills are even more autonomous than his will—an idea absolutely foreign to the Bible, an idea totally backwards. To quote Edwards’s powerful last line one last time, such an idea is “truly repugnant to the absolute sovereignty of God, and inconsistent with the supremacy of his Will; and really subjects the Will of the Most High to the Will of his creatures; and bring him in to dependence upon them.”
As a result, if we believe in the God of the Bible, the God who has eternal purposes (Ephesians 3:11) and works “all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11), not ours, then we must throw away the idea that we can have autonomous choice apart from and not subjected to God’s total control. He alone is the independent, un-subjected Sovereign One.
Why This Matters in Daily Life
But to bring it even closer to home, we may still want to ask: But why does all this matter in my daily Christian life? This total control of God is no mere debate; it’s biblical, logical, and for our good in the daily Christian life. The Reformers understood this, and we should, too.
For think of this: If such autonomous human choice were true, and if the living God actually was subjected to the trillions upon trillions of (foreseen) human choices, then God by definition wouldn’t truly be the totally-in-control, sovereign God. He’d be a subjected God. In all his divine and perfect plans and intentions, he’d be dependent on the trillions of choices of us. Although he’d foresee the trillions of actions and choices and events, he’d still have his hands tied by humanity’s autonomy.
And wouldn’t such a subjected and dependent God be a crippling blow to our ability to completely trust him and bring him all the glory?
May we, therefore, understand who our God is and be encouraged that we worship a sovereign, totally-in-control God.
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Quotes from Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, 219-220.
