Let's elaborate on God's Omnipotence

Omnipotence does NOT mean that God can do all things.  There are things that God cannot do!

1. Can God make a rock so big that He can’t move it?

   This is a false dilemma.  The question assumes that God can do anything;  but we need to understand that He cannot violate His nature (those attributes we listed above).  If He were to make a rock too big for Him to move, He would cease to be Sovereign.  (The rock would be too big for God.)  By definition, God is Sovereign.  (Nothing is too big for God!)  Therefore, the answer to the question above is NO!

2. God cannot ...
   • Act against His nature
   • Be not-God
   • Be both eternal and created
   • Sin
   • Lie
   • Die
   • Learn

God’s inability to learn leads us to a brief discussion of His Omniscience.

"Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit" (Psalm 147:5).  God knows the future with certainty.  It is impossible for God to know the future without the future being fixed.  The future is necessarily fixed, but not coerced.  Nothing is contingent for God.

God "acts" in eternity.  He does not "re-act" in time.  His actions are revealed in time for His eternal purpose.  Everything has a purpose.  Nothing is arbitrary or random.  God has only a PLAN A.  There is no such thing as luck or chance or fate.  Merely Providence.  God's Sovereign Omniscience should comfort us, but instead it often baffles us or makes us angry!

Second, the Will of God

Does God have free-will?  YES.  He is free to do anything according to His nature.  But notice that His will...

• is restricted by His nature
• is perfect because His nature is perfect
• is unchanging, because His nature is unchanging (immutable)

God's "free" will is ONE will with different aspects:

• Will of Command (Revealed Will, Preceptive Will, Permissive Will)
  1. Based on His Word

  2. We are held accountable

• Will of Decree (Decretive Will, Secret Will, Hidden Will)
  1. Whatsoever comes to Pass (see: The Westminster Confession of Faith)

     "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29).

  2. We are NOT held accountable

     "A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How can anyone understand his own way?" (Proverbs 20:24)

     "I know, O LORD, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps." (Jeremiah 10:23)

     "Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?" (Lamentations 3:37-38)

     "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity [literally good ] and create disaster [literally evil ]; I, the LORD, do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7)

     "When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?" (Amos 3:6)

  3. Active vs. Passive Decree, consider the intentions in the following:

     "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." (Genesis 50:20)

     "Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets. But this is not what he intends, this is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations." (Isaiah 10:5-7)

     "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." (Acts 2:22-24)

     "Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen." (Acts 4:27-28)

     One act (active man / passive God) with two intentions (evil / good) = Concurrence: the will of God (primary) and the will of man (secondary) working together.

  4. R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths, pg. 67: “Even when God passively permits things to happen, He chooses to permit them in that He always has the power and right to intervene and prevent the actions and events of this world. Insofar as He lets things happen, He has willed them in this certain sense.”

  5. Additional Scripture to understand God’s Will of Decree: Genesis 45:8; Exodus 4:21; Deuteronomy 28:63; Joshua 11:20; Judges 9:23; 1 Samuel 16:14; 1 Kings 22:20-23; Ezra 1:1; Job 1:21; Job 2:10; Job 42:1-2; Psalm 33:11,15; Psalm 115:3; Psalm 135:6; Proverbs 16:1,4,9; 19:21; 21:1; Isaiah 10:12-15; Isaiah 14:24-27; Isaiah 41:21-23; Isaiah 46:9-10; Isaiah 55:11; Ezekiel 14:9; 36:26-27; Daniel 4:34-35; Matthew 19:25-26; Luke 10:21-22; 22:22; John 9:1-3; John 12:37-40; Acts 17:24-31; Romans 9:10-24; 11:33-36; Ephesians 1:4-12; 2:10; Philippians 2:12-13; Colossians 1:15-17; Hebrews 6:17-18

• Will of Disposition
  1. Attitude God displays in interaction with humanity (Consider anthropomorphisms: God described in human terms, though He is not human and Has no physical human attributes)

  2. What He likes and dislikes (the Lord was angry or pleased)

Third, Human Nature

Augustine tackled the issue of the human nature in battle with Pelagius (early fifth century):

• Pre-Fall – agreement that Adam had both the ability to sin and the ability to not sin
• Post-Fall – disagreement

  1. Pelagius said there was no change in Adam’s offspring.  They likewise have both the ability to sin and the ability to not sin.

  2. Augustine said humanity was forever changed by the sin of Adam.  Adam’s offspring have the inability to not sin.  The Doctrine of Original Sin:  We sin because we are sinners;  we are not sinners because we sin.

     "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." (Psalm 51:5)

     "Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies." (Psalm 58:3)

  3. Councils rejected Pelagius’ view and upheld Augustine’s.

HUMAN NATURE IS SINFUL!

Fourth, SIN in relation to the Human Will

We have seen the correlation of God’s nature and God’s will, so we must ask:  What affect does original sin (the sin nature) have on the human will?  Several views of philosophy and theological soteriology will help us understand the orthodox position.

Fifth and finally, WHAT IS THE HUMAN WILL?

Jonathan Edwards defines the will as: "The mind choosing" or "that by which the mind chooses" (Quoted by Sproul, Essential Truths, pg 179)

What causes the mind to choose?

1. Edwards says, "The mind will always choose that which it most desires," so our greatest desire in any given circumstance compels us to choose, forces our choice, of that which we most desire (consider the wallet-at-gunpoint analogy).

2. Sproul, Willing To Believe, pg 155 says: "A man never in any instance wills anything contrary to his greatest desires or desires anything contrary to his will." (Consider this statement in light of Romans 7:15.)

3. According to Edwards, there is a reason for EVERY choice we make! We are ALWAYS free to choose whatever we desire.  We are not free to choose what we do not desire (explain). We cannot go against our greatest desire in any situation.  Whatever we choose will be based on our greatest desire, our motive for choice.

What affects man’s greatest desires?

1. The sinful nature of man!  (See letter "B" above.)

2. Determinism

   1. Hard-Determinism says that our thoughts, words, and deeds are determined by something external to ourselves, like God or Satan or your boss or mother-in-law.  Therefore, there is NO FREE WILL WHATSOEVER.

   2. Self-Determinism says rather that our thoughts, words, and deeds are determined by something internal to ourselves.  There are 2 varieties:

      1. InDeterminism (Libertarian Free Will) says that our wills are self-determining uncaused causes.  The nature has influence but not control over our wills.  To truly be free, we must have the ability to choose against our natures.  We must be autonomous.

         Objections to Libertarian Free Will:

         1. Since God must love Himself and cannot do otherwise, He is not truly free.
         2. God’s Holiness is unpraiseworthy in this model, because He cannot be anything but Holy.
         3. Christ does not deserves our praise, because He could not have done otherwise than obey the Father’s Will.
         4. All choices would either be coerced by motive / nature or arbitrary.  In order to be free, they must be neither coerced nor arbitrary.
         5. Sproul, Willing To Believe, pg. 27, "Autonomy represents a degree of freedom that is unlimited by any higher authority or power."  Man’s autonomy and God’s sovereignty are mutually exclusive.

         We are not autonomous.  Only God is autonomous.  We are heteronomous in that we live under the law of someone or something other than us and theonomous in that the "someone" is God.

      2. Soft-Determinism (Compatibilistic Free Will) says that our wills are still determined, but by our own natures.  We do not have autonomous free will, but we have free moral agency.  WE ARE RESPONSIBLE.

3. Willingness (will / will not) and Ability (can / cannot):

   1. PHYSICAL: I would if I could, but I can’t so I won’t.
   2. SPIRITUAL: I could if I would, but I won’t so I can’t.

Defining Free Will ... The orthodox view:

Man is free to choose that which he most desires.  What he most desires is determined by his nature, which is corrupt due to the sin of Adam, our ancestor and Federal representative.  Fallen man is unwilling, indeed morally unable, to come to Christ without God’s grace acting first towards us.  The will is voluntarily in bondage to sin until it is positively affected by the grace of God.

CONCLUSION

This definition of FREE WILL limits our further study to the "orthodox" positions of Calvinism and Arminianism in regards to salvation.  The debate between Calvinism and Arminianism is regarding how the grace of God positively affects humanity.  Why did we begin with these "will and nature" issues?

Sproul, Willing To Believe, pg. 29, says, "Any view of the human will that destroys the Biblical view of human responsibility is seriously defective.  Any view of the human will that destroys the Biblical view of God’s character is even worse.  The debate [between Calvinism and Arminianism] will affect our understanding of God’s righteousness, sovereignty, and grace.  All of these are vital to Christian Theology.  If we ignore these issues or regard them as trivial, we greatly demean the full character of God as revealed in Scripture."

Homework for week 1