The Divine Sovereignty of God and the Free Will of Man

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Table of Contents

Introduction
God
The Justification for Man’s Freedom
Issues and The Potential Remedies
Open Theism and Passive Knowledge
Conclusion
Bibliography
Footnotes

Introduction

God granted man free will, including so that man could freely and consciously become like Him, spiritually approach Him as his Creator, the Source of all good things, so that he could, with the assistance of Divine grace, realize his creative powers. Freedom of will, which is inherent to us in essence, when used correctly, helps us to acquire and develop virtues and voluntarily ascend the ladder of spiritual perfections. One can speak about the freedom of God based on the traditional principles of apophatic (denial of boundaries) and cataphatic (positive affirmations) theology. This paper examines the sovereignty of God, the main ideas regarding free will, as well as various interpretations of this concept, discusses its relationship with Divine authority. This study will concentrate on God’s will and how man’s decisions and choices might impact the outcomes of God’s divine purpose for man’s lives.

God

To that extent, the central position of classical theism can be considered the statement that God is an absolutely independent substance that does not need anything else for its existence. There are no material or metaphysical parts in God (for example, the difference between essence and existence) because if God consisted of any parts, He would be dependent on them¹. By virtue of its absolute simplicity, God is immaterial, has no extension, does not possess contingent non-relational properties, and is not subject to any changes². In addition, it follows from divine independence that God is eternal, exists necessarily, and is omnipresent. God is a perfect Mind that presupposes perfect wisdom, rationality, and knowledge³. He also has a perfect will, implying omnipotence. Thus, some of the divine attributes (ontological independence, simplicity, necessity, immutability, immateriality, non-tension, omnipresence) characterize God as the first-being, while others (omniscience, omnipotence) characterize Him personally.

At the same time, in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, the idea of Divine predestination is often mentioned in connection with the biblical understanding of history. Biblical revelation, among other things, differs from non-biblical religions in the belief that God does not remain indifferent to the events of history, as well as in the fact that human history in the face of God has meaning and purpose⁴. God’s intervention in history means for most biblical authors that the will of God ultimately determines the course of events, and human freedom is manifested in the fact that he either accepts this will of God or opposes it⁵. Historical predestination means that God paradoxically sees as accomplished even those historical events that have yet to happen (Isaiah 14:24-32)⁶. Through the prophets, God, in particular, announces the future to people so that they can choose for themselves, either following the ways of God or rejecting them and knowing about their choices’ consequences⁷. The primary function of prophecies of this kind is a call to choose life and remain faithful to God and a call to repentance.

The Justification for Man’s Freedom

Freedom is the ability of a person to become creative within the limits of those possibilities that God determines. From the point of view of its metaphysical content, freedom is an invaluable gift of God’s goodness, wisdom, and love given to man in his possession⁸. God gives man freedom as his property, as a kind of source, owning which a person is able to reveal himself, manifest, and realize creatively⁹. Although everything in the world is subject to the law of necessity, man, due to freedom, is not completely subject to it. He is the culprit of his formation because he has freedom.

The task of becoming a person presupposes his freedom. Like any gift received by a person from God, freedom is open for improvement. In comparison with the absolute freedom of God, human freedom is incomplete and imperfect¹⁰. God gave man the gift of freedom as a kind of pledge, using which a person could bring his freedom to that moral completeness and perfection in which the absolute freedom of God would be reflected the greatest extent¹¹. From the point of view of the task facing a man of achieving Godlikeness, it is necessary to establish what is primarily capable of determining the completeness and perfection of his freedom.

In solving this question, it is essential to keep in mind the duality of human nature and human existence, the involvement of a person in two worlds – the material and the spiritual. This duality is the existential root of human freedom, the riddle of human self-determination in terms of achieving and realizing the value of his being¹². The theistic tradition considers the duality of human nature and human existence as the most striking and unique characteristic of man, testifying to the universality of his purpose in the general structure of the world.

Issues and The Potential Remedies

There are various attempts to reconcile human freedom and God’s providence. Sometimes people deny one thing for the other. One current of thought (which has reached its logical conclusion in extreme Calvinism) emphasizes God’s sovereignty, reaching the denial of human freedom¹³. From the creation of the world, God has predetermined who will be called by His irresistible grace and who will find salvation and who will be deprived of grace and perish in their sins¹⁴. When critics of such a position draw attention to the fact that those convicted in such a case were deprived of any opportunity to be saved from the very beginning, they are told that God is not obliged to save anyone at all.

If, by his sovereign will, out of ten captured villains, murderers, and rebels, He decides to pardon two for some incomprehensible reasons of his own, and leave the remaining eight to die, then those left have no reason to complain of injustice. They will suffer just punishment for their crimes, while two will receive the mercy they did not deserve. Sinners thus perish because they reject the possibility of salvation persistently offered to them¹⁵. Thus, although angels and humans act of their own free will and are themselves the authors of their decisions, they cannot do anything that would not be known to God and would not be included in His plan.

The Old Testament expresses people’s deep confidence that everything that happens in the world happens according to the will of the Creator. Thus, the prophets Amos and Isaiah emphasize that both good and evil are from God (Amos 3:6) and “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7)¹⁶. The idea of conducting and historical predestination for the Old Testament authors is a necessary logical consequence of monotheism¹⁷. Pagans, as a rule, see the cause of evil in the action of evil deities or spirits.

Rejecting all other deities, the Israeli sages and prophets inevitably attribute everything that happens to the One. Therefore, it is especially important that God Himself speaks about the origin of evil through some prophets. The most striking example here can be the words in Jeremiah (6:19), where destruction is called the fruit of people’s thoughts¹⁸. In addition, the Bible says more than once that the realization of the will of the Almighty occurs through the conscious or unconscious actions of people (Isaiah 41:2-4)¹⁹. In particular, the book of the Prophet Jonah, which is not a prophetic book by genre, but a philosophical parable, is devoted to understanding the phenomenon of historical predestination.

Its primary meaning is that repentance and conversion of people to God can change the course of history, which outside of this conversion turns out to be predetermined. It is important to remember that the concept of historical predestination does not contain the fullness of this phenomenon²⁰. In this regard, the paradoxical nature of predestination, as well as the God-human nature of history, as a rule, are expressed either in the form of a prediction of irrevocable events (this often happens post factum) or in the form of a prophecy that God determines the course of events depending on a person’s position.

Statements of both the first and second kind in the Bible are very numerous, so it is not possible to give them in any way ultimately. In the New Testament, to understand the phenomenon of historical predestination, it is essential to pay attention to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ about the coming end of the world. Speaking with the disciples on the Mount of Olives (Luke 21:6-36, Matthew 24:1-44, Mark 13:1-37), Christ speaks of the end of the world as an irrevocable fact that is about to happen²¹. At the same time, addressing the disciples, He calls them: “And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter” (Mark 13:18). Consequently, the event is perceived both as predetermined and, at the same time, as not predetermined, at least in detail.

Freedom of will, in its highest and positive definition, refers only to God and can be regarded as an absolute, unlimited fulfillment of His always good desires. As for intelligent created beings, freedom of will in its positive meaning can be attributed to them only to the extent that they themselves are the likeness of God. Creating the visible and invisible world, God endowed only disembodied spirits and the human race with mind and free will, which distinguished these freely intelligent beings from His entire creation²². After the fall of the first people, the nature of the whole world was distorted, and first of all, the nature of its freely intelligent beings²³. The freedom of the spirit, which a person who builds his life according to the commandments of God is called and can achieve, is freedom from sin.

In addition to the above, the word “freedom” concerning the created world is also used in another sense, namely, as an opportunity for a creature to go beyond the limits of the area indicated to it by God. This so-called negative definition of freedom as the absence of dependence on any conditions means, in essence, the possibility of a creature violating the Will of God. Moreover, God also gave such “freedom” to His creation, allowing him not only to develop but also to fall²⁴. The reason here is in man himself that he, being a created being, is finite, limited, and dependent on external conditions.

Any extension of the concept of freedom, which allows the possibility to ignore these restrictions, necessarily puts a person before a choice: to be within the “boundary” outlined by God through these restrictions or to go outside. By giving a person the opportunity for free research and free creativity, God corrects the cognitive process of a person, directs him in the right direction, and ultimately gives him the opportunity to know only to the extent that he, a limited being, can accommodate²⁵. A desire presupposes a goal, a direction towards it. Therefore, the will of a created being can be called a vector characteristic. The freedom of will that the Creator granted to the creature consists in the opportunity given to it to orient this vector independently without coercion.

Open Theism and Passive Knowledge

Open theism is an attempt to explain God’s foresight regarding the free human will. Open theism asserts that God gave people free will, and in order for it to remain free, God cannot know in advance the free choice of people. Open theism is based on the words of the Bible, which say that God changes His plans, is surprised, or receives new knowledge (Genesis 6:6; Exodus 32:14; Jonah 3:10)²⁶. Nevertheless, in the light of many other verses of the Bible, which speak of God’s knowledge of the future, these verses should be considered as a description of Himself in a form more accessible to our understanding²⁷. God knows what we will do and what decisions we will make, but sometimes He changes His plans in response to our actions. The fact that God is surprised and disappointed by humanity’s depravity does not mean He did not expect this from us.

Free will is a God-given ability without which a person could not consciously and willingly strive for good and therefore could not become virtuous. God is a supremely free Being because He acts independently of necessity or compulsion. He chooses what He wants and carries out the chosen as He wants²⁸. At the same time, His will has perfect holiness; God Himself creates only the highest good, which excludes all evil, as light excludes darkness. Created in the Image of God, man also has the gift of free will. Becoming like God, man is called to do one good and grow in unceasing union with God as the Prototype and Source of Good.

His freedom must continually increase through such a union, for God Himself is completely free. The fall came from the abuse of the freedom of intelligent creatures, which God created good, and having granted them, no longer wants to violate. After the fall, a man stood on the lowest degree of freedom – the choice between good and evil²⁹. By choosing the good, a person struggles with sin and unites with God, growing in freedom. By choosing evil, a person is enslaved to sin – his vicious passions, liberation from which requires a considerable feat with the assistance of Divine grace.

Man’s communion with God is a mystery that takes place in the depths of the human personality. In the mystery of this communion, the union of human freedom with the will of God takes place. By His goodness, God does not restrict a person’s moral freedom in any way, giving him the right to ask for the Divine will be accomplished³⁰. However, this descent of God’s goodness to man does not at all mean the dependence of the Divine will on human arbitrariness. Even when a person, conscious of his freedom, goes against the will of God, he is at the mercy of God’s triumphant omnipotence³¹. The will of God is unchangeable: its violation by man does not cancel the Divine plan for man. Where it is violated, it affects the individual’s inner state with the consequences of its violation³². It is experienced by the individual as a consciousness of guilt, and with renewed vigor demands that a person, through overcoming his self, enter the God-ordained path of truth and moral goodness.

The will of God is what God requires of people. However, at the same time, the will of God is not only a demand that stands above a person or before a person but also a mysterious inner influence by which God helps a person to do what he must do³³. When a person fulfills the requirement of God’s will, he satisfies it not only by his own willpower but also by that mysterious power or action of God, which is called grace.

It follows from this that the will of God is not only an absolute moral requirement but also a good gift achieved in unity, harmony, and interaction of the human will with the will of God. When God reveals His good will, a person should not “confer with flesh and blood” (Galatians 1:16)³⁴ but should follow what is required of him by the Divine calling. The more the spiritual growth of the personality takes place, the more resolute and more profound its rejection of all desires and claims of the perverted will of the man becomes³⁵. The more it is devoted to the will of God at all responsible and significant moments of life, the more it is in possession of Divine grace it ascends into a state of ideal freedom, perfection, and holiness.

Conclusion

The freedom of the individual as one of the main manifestations of the image of God in man remains inviolable and indestructible. Having created man, God gave him ownership of this source, the possession of which means the free acceptance or rejection of God’s mercy and love. The providence of God in the fate of every person is a kind of dialogue of wisdom, goodness, and omnipotence of God with a person’s freedom. The initiative in this dialogue belongs to God, but with the constant observance of human freedom. In eternity, God only determines all the possibilities of what can happen in the world, but the moral freedom of man creatively realizes these possibilities, and it, like all creativity, contains something new. However, this “new” is new only to man, not to God, and it is unique only in reality, not in possibility.

Bibliography

De Florio, Ciro, and Aldo Frigerio. Divine Omniscience and Human Free Will: A Logical and Metaphysical Analysis. 1st ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020.

DeVito, Michael, and Tyler Dalton McNabb. “Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will: Embracing the Paradox.”International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 90, no. 2 (2021): 93–107.

Ekstrom, Laura Waddell. Free Will: A Philosophical Study. Routledge, 2018.

“King James Bible.”Kingjamesbibleonline.org.

Kováčik, Matej. “Freedom to Choose Between Good and Evil: Theological Anthropology in Discussion with Philosophy.”European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12, no. 4 (2020): 95–115.

Laing, John D. Middle Knowledge: Human Freedom in Divine Sovereignty. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2018.

Lubin, Dean. “Is Human Freedom Compatible with Divine Foreknowledge?”Open Journal of Philosophy 11, no. 04 (2021): 528–551.

Mann, William E. “6. God’s Freedom, Human Freedom, and God’s Responsibility for Sin.” In Divine and Human Action, edited by Thomas V. Morris, 182–210. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.

Matthews Grant, W. Free Will and God’s Universal Causality: The dual Sources Account. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Salamon, Janusz. “The Sovereignty of Humanity and Social Responsibility for Evil Prevention.”Religions 12, no. 6 (2021): 418.

Thai, Lee Pham, and Jerry Pillay. “Can God Create Humans with Free Will Who Never Commit Evil?”Theological Studies 76, no. 1 (2020).

Thai, Lee. Boundaries of Freedom: The Quantum Proposal of Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019.

Ware, Bruce A. God’s Lesser Glory: A Critique of Open Theism. Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2018.

Footnotes

Matthews Grant, W. Free will and God’s universal causality: The dual sources account. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Thai, Lee Pham, and Jerry Pillay. “Can God create humans with free will who never commit evil?” Theological Studies 76, no. 1 (2020). Web.
Laing, John D. Middle knowledge: Human freedom in divine sovereignty. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2018.
Matthews Grant, W. Free will and God’s universal causality: The dual sources account. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Thai, Lee Pham, and Jerry Pillay. “Can God create humans with free will who never commit evil?” Theological Studies 76, no. 1 (2020). Web.
“King James Bible.” Kingjamesbibleonline.org. Web.
Thai, Lee. Boundaries of freedom: The quantum proposal of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019
Matthews Grant, W. Free will and God’s universal causality: The dual sources account. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Ekstrom, Laura Waddell. Free will: A philosophical study. Routledge, 2018.
Lubin, Dean. “Is human freedom compatible with divine foreknowledge?” Open Journal of Philosophy 11, no. 04 (2021): 528–551. Web.
Mann, William E. “6. God’s freedom, human freedom, and God’s responsibility for sin.” In Divine and human action, edited by Thomas V. Morris, 182–210. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.
Mann, William E. “6. God’s freedom, human freedom, and God’s responsibility for sin.” In Divine and human action, edited by Thomas V. Morris, 182–210. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.
Thai, Lee. Boundaries of freedom: The quantum proposal of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019.
Matthews Grant, W. Free will and God’s universal causality: The dual sources account. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Lubin, Dean. “Is human freedom compatible with divine foreknowledge?” Open Journal of Philosophy 11, no. 04 (2021): 528–551. Web.
“King James Bible.” Kingjamesbibleonline.org. Web.
De Florio, Ciro, and Aldo Frigerio. Divine omniscience and human free will: A logical and metaphysical analysis. 1st ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020.
“King James Bible.” Kingjamesbibleonline.org. Web.
“King James Bible.” Kingjamesbibleonline.org. Web.
Kováčik, Matej. “Freedom to choose between good and evil: Theological anthropology in discussion with philosophy.” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12, no. 4 (2020): 95–115. Web.
“King James Bible.” Kingjamesbibleonline.org. Web.
De Florio, Ciro, and Aldo Frigerio. Divine omniscience and human free will: A logical and metaphysical analysis. 1st ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020.
Thai, Lee. Boundaries of freedom: The quantum proposal of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019
Ware, Bruce A. God’s lesser glory: A critique of open theism. Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2018.
De Florio, Ciro, and Aldo Frigerio. Divine omniscience and human free will: A logical and metaphysical analysis. 1st ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020.
“King James Bible.” Kingjamesbibleonline.org. Web.
Ekstrom, Laura Waddell. Free will: A philosophical study. Routledge, 2018.
DeVito, Michael, and Tyler Dalton McNabb. “Divine foreknowledge and human free will: Embracing the paradox.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 90, no. 2 (2021): 93–107. Web.
Ekstrom, Laura Waddell. Free will: A philosophical study. Routledge, 2018.
Matthews Grant, W. Free will and God’s universal causality: The dual sources account. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Ekstrom, Laura Waddell. Free will: A philosophical study. Routledge, 2018.
DeVito, Michael, and Tyler Dalton McNabb. “Divine foreknowledge and human free will: Embracing the paradox.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 90, no. 2 (2021): 93–107. Web.
Salamon, Janusz. “The sovereignty of humanity and social responsibility for evil prevention.” Religions 12, no. 6 (2021): 418. Web.
“King James Bible.” Kingjamesbibleonline.org. Web.
Ware, Bruce A. God’s lesser glory: A critique of open theism. Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2018.

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