Freewill

Freewill and the Sovereignty of God
By Mark E. Moore

Notice that the title of this essay is not ‘Freewill vs. the Sovereignty of God’ for the
Scriptures affirm them both. Obviously God is sovereign—he has the right and power to make
any and all decisions. Logically, however, this does not demand that he make all decisions or
determine all actions; it merely demands that he has the right and power to do so. Part of
sovereignty must, necessarily, include the ability of the sovereign to delegate authority,
decisions, and actions. If he doesn’t have the power to delegate then his power is, to this extent,
limited. To illustrate, a king has the sovereign right to send an ambassador to carry out his
business and even make independent decisions. Likewise a president or CEO will hire staff. Or
the father of a house (adopting the Biblical hierarchy of Eph 5:23; 1 Cor 11:3) could rely on his
wife or first-born son, or for that matter, anyone he chooses, to carry out his daily affairs. These
are, in fact, the kind of metaphors used of God so the illustrations seem appropriate here.

This essay not only affirms the sovereign rights and powers of God but even his privilege
to act in ways we might deem arbitrary. For example Deuteronomy 2:30 says God ‘hardened’ Sihon so that he refused to allow the Israelites to pass through his land in order that Israel would attack and beat the Ammonites and take their territory. In Judges 14:1-4 Sampson lusts for Philistine women because God ordained it! Here is a terribly troubling one: God incited David to number his troops and then punished him for doing so (2 Samuel 24:1). It gets worse: 1
Chronicles 21:1 tells the same story only replaces the word ‘God’ with ‘Satan.’ Apparently Satan
incited David to take a census because God bade him do the ‘dirty work.’ In a similar vein, in
Ezekiel 14:9 God ‘enticed’ false prophets and then punished them for telling lies. Even in
the New Testament God put a spirit of delusion on people so they would believe the lie
of the Lawless One (2 Thess 2:11). These hardly fits the flannel-graph God of Sunday School.
Hence, this essay is not an attempt to rescue God from seemingly arbitrary acts such as thirdworld poverty, historical human evil, or Pandora’s open box in the natural world such as viruses, earthquakes, chiggers, and country-music. If God is sovereign, as the Bible asserts, then he is perfectly capable of defending himself without my assistance.

Rather this essay is an attempt to understand and affirm several major aspects of the
Bible that affirm human freewill at least to some moderate extent.

1. Throughout the Bible, God develops relationships through covenant. Each covenant has
terms, promises, and punishments. If the terms are kept, one receives the rewards, if they
are not, one receives the punishments. Covenant is the macro-structure of the entire Bible
(we even name the two major parts of the Bible ‘Old’ and ‘New Testament’). Without
freewill, both the invitation to join the covenant and the punishment for breaking the
covenant is nonsense … or at least extraneous. If, after all, God predetermines the destiny
of every human being, why go through the extensive legal process of covenant? Just
reward those you like and those you don’t can go to Hell.

2. Conditional Prophecy, likewise, is an extraneous verbal waste. A conditional prophecy
is one that uses or implies the term ‘if.’ God says, “If you do this I will respond in this
way, if you do not I will respond differently” (e.g. Isa 1:19–20; cf. Matt 23:37). Ok, if I
have no choice, then why the ‘if’? It is empty language to offer someone a choice who
actually has no choice. It is like asking a teenage boy if he would like to grow 3 inches or
20. Furthermore, some prophecies to Israel did not, in fact, come to pass as God said,
precisely because the word of the Lord was not obeyed.

3. God does not want any to perish (Eze 33:11; 2 Pet 3:9). If our destiny is absolutely
controlled by God then (a) he is schizophrenic, or (b) these passages refer to the chosen
only. However, if these refer only to the chosen, why are the ‘chosen’ called ‘wicked’?
After all, our classification as ‘righteous’ as opposed to ‘wicked’ under total sovereignty
would be determined only by God choosing us—his choice makes me righteous.
Furthermore, 2 Peter says God is waiting patiently for the wicked to repent. How can he
wait for that which he determined before the foundation of the world? This is
nonsensical. Furthermore, to say that God wants the vast majority to go to Hell is a
horribly inhospitable thing of which to accuse YHWH. He is a God of love and it is
inconceivable that he be compared to a Musilini, Stalin, or Hitler, eradicating all whom
he does not arbitrarily deem worthy.

4. The Bible speaks as if people have choices. Cain apparently had a choice whether to do
what was right or wrong (Gen 4:6–7) and Joshua urged the Israelites to choose whether
or not to serve God (Josh 24:15). See also Proverbs 1:29; 3:31; 8:10; Isa 7:15; 56:4. In
fact, Israel, God’s ‘chosen’ rejected God and against His will set up kings and idols
(Hosea 8:3–4).

5. While none of us accepts the Lord without God’s prior choosing and wooing (John 6:44;
15:16) we are invited to respond to God’s invitation (Matt 11:28; 22:1–14). Why are
we invited to respond if we are predetermined?

6. Without human choice the categories or sin and love are both meaningless. How can
we be judged for doing evil that we were forced to do? That is tantamount to shooting
pit-bull because he mauled a bunny. That’s what he was bred to do; he is not culpable for
fulfilling his purpose. Likewise, manipulated or coerced love not only looses all its
beauty and charm, it is actually abhorrent. Pedophiles, kidnappers, slave-traders, and
pimps sometimes actually do have loyal ‘clients’ but it is because of a psychosis needing
treatment, not the gracious love generated only by a divine God.

7. God changed His mind on various occasions as a result of people either repenting or
praying (cf. Exodus 32:9-13, Numbers 14:10-20, 2 Samuel 24:16, Psalm 106:45, Isaiah
57:6, Jeremiah 18:8, 42:10, Ezekiel 24:14, Jonah 3:9-10 and 4:2).

8. We are made in the image of God. That very nature sets us apart from animals. One of
the essential characteristics of our imago dei is that we have volition. To remove that
would radically alter the creation account, making the whole narrative of the fall a farce,
not to mention the sacrifice of Jesus, which becomes unnecessary theatrics. For if God
made us sinners so that Jesus would have to die when God could have created us sinless,
then we have more significant problems than just figuring out what it means that God is
sovereign.

***ADDED BY ARIEL***

In short, maybe the whole sovereignty/freewill thing comes down to the fact that we make decisions and have freewill to do as we wish, but the sovereignty of God simply means that he knows in advance what we will choose to do. This seems likely since he is our very creator who knows us better than we know ourselves. So, when we are given a choice, we have the freewill to choose one way or the other, but God (being sovereign) already knows the direction in which we will choose.