God's Choices and His Sovereignty

God's choices to utilize his qualities in creation define the nature of human free will by God administering his sovereignty.

Introduction

Questions regarding the fundamental nature of human freedom often are debated by many, but these questions have a much greater significance when considered in light of God's choices to conduct himself. Along with such ideas, the questions that can be raised are those regarding God's fundamental nature and his capacity to express that nature. Overall, defining how exactly God's sovereignty works can thus give opportunity for human free will when considering the possibility of God restraining himself from fully expressing all of his power to transform creation.

The significance of asking such questions regarding human free will and the sovereignty of God are important for resolution because the great many theological systems that seek to provide an understanding of atonement differ because of key underlying concepts that are embedded in ideas regarding God's nature and his choices to express or constrain that nature. Clearly, the wars between Catholics and Protestants had not only existed as a result of church leadership but had also existed as a result of differing conceptions of God utilizing his sovereignty. Overall, human free will is thus often considered the result of whatever freedom is leftover to men after God administers his sovereignty.

How God Administers his Sovereignty

In Exodus 27:21 the ark of the covenant was spoken about as shielding the tent of meeting, and in Exodus 33:17-23 the glory of the Lord is spoken about as a emanating quality that must be shielded in order to prevent a person from directly experiencing it. In this regard the temple would have combined the idea of shielding the glory of God from everyone's experience, and this would have been accomplished by making a separation between the holy and the most holy place. In this spirit of things Exodus 33:19 expresses that God thus makes a choice about who he will have compassion on and who he will not have mercy on.

The fact that the Hebrew scripture designates a priesthood for mediating between God and the people suggests that God has a real interest in protecting his glory. This for example can be seen as the reason why Aaron's sons died before the Lord when they offered unauthorized fire in Numbers 3:4. In this regard, God would administer a choice in whom he lets live and whom he lets die, and the yearly sacrifice at the temple would determine the life or death of the High Priest.

The doctrine of general atonement is important to consider in light of the idea that God expresses his choice to have mercy on whomever he wants to, and this is true because not everyone can be offered salvation if God chooses whom he will save. On the other hand, God could for example use his power of choice to save everyone that fits a certain criteria that God has established for salvation [1] , and in this regard God would provide a standard of measure and a covenant to identify who is saved from who is not saved. The problem with a standard of measure to determine who is saved from whom is not saved is that salvation often becomes a matter of calculation of the sum of the things that a person has compared to the requirements of a covenant, and this approach can raise serious questions about how to measure salvation.

The difficulties that the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer faces is that it not only provides for everyone to have equal footing with God, but in doing this it provides a much different openness to God's glory. What is meant by this is that in the past priests had to work in the holy place and some in the most holy place without the ability for the common person to enter into the same dwellings of God as the priests, but the New Testament in Hebrews 9:11-22 would suggest that since Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, then that covenant is perhaps mediated directly such that everyone is on the same par with God. The only problem with such a view is that the New Testament does not explicitly state that everyone has an equal share of God.

The truth of the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer hinges on the question of how much the practices of priesthood in the Old Testament would interject themselves into the practice of priesthood in the New Testament. For the Roman Catholic Church for example Jesus Christ is considered to be the High Priest, and every Roman Catholic priest under him would have exclusive rites of priesthood like the priests under Aaron and his sons. In both models the idea of protecting God's glory would be much different depending upon the exclusiveness of the priesthood to either incorporate all believers or just some believers.

One would think that because the Roman Catholic Church makes priesthood exclusive that not just anyone could be a priest that dwells in the inner recesses of God's glory, and that as a result particular atonement would appear to be more prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church by this line of thinking. The truth of the matter is that general atonement is perhaps more representative of the Roman Catholic world view than particular atonement. A point to be made is that the Roman Catholic world view is sort of like a system of theology built on general atonement, and that system of theology mediates god's grace and attempts to protect his glory while embracing some things important to administering grace and rejecting others.

When the resistibility of God's grace is mentioned in light of the temple, what is clear is that either God administers Grace through some means given a person's choice or he doesn't give that choice but does it automatically. What the common person would see in this process is the clergy of the temple performing their required duties as prescribed by the law, and these duties would administer grace to the people depending upon a person's personal choice to participate or not. To argue the case in this context for an administration of God's grace that is irresistible would mean that, either the people receiving the administration of grace from the priest would have to be held against their will, unknowingly given grace, or God himself mediated by Jesus Christ and perhaps the angels would have to administer grace beyond what a human priest would otherwise do.

What is assumed with the idea of irresistible grace is that God would either administer grace through Jesus Christ directly (perhaps also with the angels) and that this activity would be like loading batteries into a toy. What is meant by this is that the toy would be like the person in need of grace, and the batteries would be that grace. In this example the toy does not have the ability to accept or reject the batteries nor should it, but the toy is activated (made alive) by installing batteries into it and turning it on. In this example God would be the one installing the grace (the batteries), and he would be turning the toy on.

With the concept of irresistible grace, free will to choose to receive grace or not is not prevalent. The problem however with free will is that the personal freedom to choose means that God is not making the choice himself, and a person could argue that if God is not making the choice, then he is not fully in charge of everything. In this case human history would not be able to be predestined by God, but instead all of human history would be generated by man. Human history that is generated by man would simply not have any ability to have a governing prophecy over it that predicts what will happen in the future.

When human history does not have any guiding force by God, then God does not have any sovereignty over man. God's glory is thus robbed because he cannot choose whom to give mercy to or whom to not give mercy to, and as a result God becomes more of a idea that can be manipulated in any way shape or form instead of a real person. The fact however that God is not only a real person, but is three people in one suggests a lot of interaction between all three people in different ways to make choices and to administer both grace and justice.

The Nature of Human Free Will

Human free will is defined by God's choices, and this is the case because God made humans and endowed them with the qualities that he possess according to the creation account. In this regard God's choice to make man and to design him has limited man in his free will in one way shape or form, and then if God has predestined history, then man is even more limited to utilize free will. The concept thus is that God has bound free will to his will.

Another way to look at the problem is to affirm that Christ came into the world in the form of an infant such that he limited himself by holding back from expressing his divinity such that he would be able to grow in stature by removing his own self limitations. In this regard, just as the temple would have restricted the glory of God from eliminating the Israelites, so too the self containment of the embodiment of Jesus Christ would have restricted the glory of God from Christ (the light) eliminating evil (the darkness) by a sudden dawning of the day (Christ fully revealing himself in glory to all). The point is that Jesus Christ thus would have made his expression of himself rather contained at first, and this would have had an effect on human free will of individuals because the choices of God to express or restrict himself limit human choice to receive or to take from God willingly.

The most basic and greatest point to make is that the choices of God to express himself limit the choices of man to have free will, and this is the case because God can withdraw his glory or even contain it. By doing this God can have the choice that makes all the other choices obedient to his in one way shape or from, and just like a light has a shade and that shade brings the darkness, so too God chooses to shade his illumination by purposely restricting himself in what is know of as his glory. The overall point is that the glory of God is restricted or contained by the choices of God to express his nature, and this determines human free will.

Conclusion

God's nature and his willingness to express that nature is what determines free will in humans. God administers his sovereignty however he so chooses, but this may take servants to protect his glory and how this works is often a matter of dispute over the Old Testament usage today. Overall, God just simply does whatever he wants to do, and that is the entire basis for the question of human free will.

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[1] See John 3:16