The Search for Faith
Under the surface of this difficult doctrinal issue is the tension between God’s sovereignty in salvation and human responsibility. How do the two work together? Let it be said that the Bible clearly teaches both. The Bible speaks of God’s role in salvation as all encompassing. The whole event is His work from beginning to end, it is monergistic. So in his letter to the Ephesians Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Yet there is a very clear teaching throughout the gospels that man must repent of his sins and call out in faith to Jesus for salvation. There is no salvation without this response. So when Peter preaches the gospel at Pentecost and the crowd hears the word of God and replies, “What must we do?” Peter does not say, “nothing, God will figure it all out,” instead he says, “Repent” (Acts 2:37-38a).
Now both sides of the debate claim to believe that God is sovereign in salvation and that man is responsible. The means, by which these two truths mix, however, is sometimes set up in such a way as to totally contradict one another. There is, however, an approach to their interaction that makes, at least abstract, logical sense. We call this Compatabilist Free-Will.
Compatabilist free-will deals with the relationship between human freedom and divine sovereignty. Of course not all Compatabilist treats these two subjects. Some atheists offer the theory as a unifier for predeterminate naturalism and human freedom. But in the theological world it is a reference to the compatibility of human freedom and divine sovereignty. The Bible teaches both that God is sovereign, and that man is responsible for his free choices, the question remains, then, for theologians to assess how this can be possible. How can God be sovereign over the entire world, and yet hold man responsible for what he does? To answer this question two major views have been proposed:[1]
1) Arminianism suggests that God, in creating human beings with a free will, voluntarily gave up some of His sovereignty. God did not want to create a race of robots who were simply compelled to love and serve Him because He had pre-determined that they would. Rather, He wanted a people who could freely express true love and devotion by having the power to choose either to love God, or reject God. This view of freedom is known as “libertarian freedom.” Libertarian Freedom states that “given the conditions preceding any voluntary decision, more than one decision must be possible- the person making the decision must be in a position to chose differently.”[2] Or as Bruce Ware Words it, “at the very moment of choice, we are free in making that choice if (and only if) in the choosing what we do, we could have chosen otherwise.”[3]
2) The alternate view is that of Calvinism. Calvinists believe both that God is sovereign and that man has a free will. There is a common misconception among people that Calvinists are fatalistic and that they deny human freedom; there is no such validity to that claim, however.[4] To resolve the apparent conflict between human freedom and divine sovereignty Calvinists propose the theory of Compatabilist freedom. Compatabilist Freedom states that we are free to choose what we want but that our choices are always limited by our desires. That is we chose what we most desire. Jonathan Edwards called it the freedom of inclination; we are free to choose what (and only what) we are most inclined towards. I will explore below how this plays itself out in the divine sovereignty/human responsibility debate, but for now let it suffice to say that Compatabilist freedom makes compatible God’s control over everything and my freedom of choice.
[1] There exists more than three resolutions on this issue. Open Theism, a recent trend in theology, simply denies that God knows the future and therefore isn’t actually sovereign over it at all. For a Biblical response to this position see Bruce Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), and John M. Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism. (Philipsburg: P&R, 2001).
[2] David Basinger, The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment. (Downers Grove: IVP, 1996). 26.
[3] Bruce Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004). 63. Ware is not supporting this view in his work, he is merely stating it as its supporters would state it.
[4] The reader should dismiss any criticism of Calvinism that they read which begins by asserting that Calvinists (or Reformed types) deny human responsibility. An example of such a criticism would be Norman Geisler, Chosen But Free: A Balanced View of Divine Election. (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1999).
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 