SUSPENDING THE DEBATE ABOUT DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY AND HUMAN FREEDOM

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 2008 by Ciocchi, David M

The debate about divine sovereignty and human freedom is a series of competing attempts to reconcile two apparently conflicting components of Christian belief. Each of these attempts, or reconciliation projects, offers an account of how it can be true both that God is sovereign (omnipotent and omniscient) and that human beings have the sort of freedom necessary for moral responsibility. This debate continues despite longstanding objections to it. I maintain that these objections fail, but that there is another, and better, way to object to the debate. Rather than taking the line of the traditional objections by rejecting all future work on divine sovereignty and human freedom, I argue that we should suspend this debate until we solve the logically prior problem of determining what it is about human beings that justifies God in treating them as morally responsible agents.

I. OBJECTIONS TO THE DEBATE

When an intellectual debate persists for centuries, there are likely to be thinkers who question not the standard positions defended by participants in the debate but the legitimacy of the debate itself. This has been true of the debate about divine sovereignty and human freedom (DSF debate). In this section I consider three objections to the DSF debate, two of which are long-standing objections that reject the debate outright, and one of which is a contemporary objection that views the debate as logically premature, and calls for its suspension.

1. Rejecting the debate. The first traditional way to reject the DSF debate may be termed the "impiety objection." This objection has its roots in the clash between the monasteries and universities in the Middle Ages, when pious monks grew suspicious of the practice by theologians of applying logical arguments to the mysteries of divine revelation.1 A classic example of the impiety objection appears in this passage about predestination and election from The Formula of Concord:

For, in addition to what has been revealed in Christ concerning this, of which we have hitherto spoken, God has still kept secret and concealed much concerning this mystery, and reserved it for His wisdom and knowledge alone, which we should not investigate, nor should we indulge our thoughts in this matter, nor draw conclusions, nor inquire curiously, but should adhere entirely to the revealed Word of God.2

The impiety objection, then, is the claim that it is offensive to God when anyone makes use of reason in an effort to go beyond what is explicitly stated in Scripture in order to secure a fuller understanding of God's truth. So if, for instance, God has revealed both that he is sovereign in salvation and that we are accountable for our response to his grace, but he has not revealed how these two teachings fit together, then we must not "draw conclusions" or "inquire curiously" about the matter. Such an effort would be an impious attempt to uncover what God "has still kept secret and concealed," an expression of intellectual pride.

Medieval proponents of the impiety objection were deeply concerned about the motivation of thinkers who applied their university training in logic to theological matters. For instance, monastic theologian Rupert of Deutz condemned those who dared to examine "the secrets of God in the Scriptures in a presumptuous way, motivated by curiosity and not by love," declaring that they "became heretics" and "proud" and were "not to be admitted to the sight of divinity and truth."3 Clearly, then, if this impiety objection is reasonable-if it makes sense to claim that those who use reason to go beyond the explicit statements of Scripture are offending God and guilty of intellectual pride-participants in the DSF debate should repent by abandoning their debate for all future purposes.

Despite its strong emotional impact on some monastic theologians and other persons in later times, the impiety objection is not reasonable. There are two grounds for dismissing it from further consideration. The first is that this objection to the DSF debate is logically self-defeating, since it is itself the result of an application of reason to divine revelation. The Bible nowhere states the impiety objection, so an advocate of that objection must argue that it is a logical implication of what the Bible does say. Proponents of the DSF debate are free to respond by arguing that their opponents are mistaken. The second basis for dismissing the impiety objection is the fact that intellectual pride and other impious motivation is not a necessary feature of the DSF debate. Participants in the debate can be motivated by love for God and a humble desire to serve him better through gaining a greater understanding of divine sovereignty and human freedom. They can acknowledge that there always will be limits to their understanding, and that God may well choose to keep some things secret. Given all this, it is reasonable to suppose that the DSF debate will please God rather than offend him.

The second traditional way to reject the DSF debate may be called the "futility objection." Roughly, this objection is the argument that since the Bible's teaching about divine sovereignty and human freedom constitutes a paradox, it follows that any effort to reconcile the two is an exercise in futility. So rather than pursuing the DSF debate, "we must accept the concept of paradox, believing that what we cannot square with our finite minds is somehow harmonized in the mind of God."4 Hoekema and other supporters of the futility objection see it as an expression of theological necessity, in keeping with standard Christian responses to other paradoxes, such as God's being both one and three and Jesus as God and man. As Chesterton put it, "Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious."5