Christians everywhere say, God is sovereign.
God is free. God is love. But those words only
hold their meaning if we're careful about one
deeper word, necessary. When something happens
necessarily, it means it could not have been
otherwise. It's not unlikely. It's not difficult.
It's not improbable. It's impossible to be different.
Two plus two equals four. necessarily. Drop a
stone, it falls necessarily. There's no real
fork in reality. Now here's the question that
governs everything. Is God's willing like that?
Imagine two kings. King A. Everything in his
kingdom unfolds inevitably from who he is. He's
not forced. No one compels him. But if you understood
his nature perfectly, You could predict every
decree forever. Nothing could have been otherwise.
He is sovereign. But nothing is genuinely open.
Now, imagine King B. He is just as powerful,
just as wise, just as sovereign. But when he
surveys his kingdom, he sees many possible futures.
He could build by the sea. He could build by
the mountains. Each possibility reflects his
wisdom. None are inferior. None are forced. He
chooses one. Not because he must, but because
he wills it. Both kings are sovereign, but only
one has real alternative possibilities. That's
the difference between inevitability and freedom.
In much of Western theology, sovereignty is protected
so strongly that nothing can happen outside God's
decree. Every salvation, every one of your sins.
every event. Now ask, could anything have happened
differently? If the answer is no, not because
God chose this among alternatives, but because
he could not have done otherwise, then reality
is inevitable. It's not coerced, but unavoidable.
And here's the irony. In order to defend God's
sovereignty, we end up defying sovereignty in
such a way that God himself does not have libertarian
freedom. He is free, yes, but only in the sense
that he acts from himself, not in the sense that
he could have done otherwise. Sovereignty becomes
inevitability. Now bring this into election.
Both Catholic and Reformed traditions affirm
God shows mercy to the elect. He passes over or
ordains the reprobate. So he chooses the elect
and shows them his mercy, or he sort of ignores
those on the path to destruction or ordains their
destruction. There's a distinction, but if it
was necessary that these are saved and those
are damned, not because God freely chose among
real alternatives, but because he could not have
done otherwise, then what is mercy? If he could
not have saved the reprobate, what are we calling
grace? If he could not have refrained from saving
the elect, what are we calling love? The distinction
remains, but the openness disappears. And love
without openness begins to feel like structure.
Not chosen, but inevitable. You might think,
well, that's Aquinas. That's metaphysics. But
here's the deeper point. Tying this back to original
sin, you can arrive at the same place starting
with nothing but a strong doctrine of original
sin. Let's start fresh. There's no Aristotle
yet, no pure act, no metaphysical system. Just
this claim. If these terms are unfamiliar to
you, stick with me for just a second. After the
fall, human nature is corrupted. Humans cannot
see God. They cannot desire him rightly. and
now they act according to their fallen nature.
If fallen humans always act according to their
sinful nature, and they cannot do otherwise without
grace, then freedom must mean acting according
to your nature. Let me repeat that. If fallen
humans always act according to their sinful nature,
and they cannot do otherwise without God intervening,
taking the initiative, coming first, causal dependence
on God's initiative. then freedom must mean acting
according to your nature, not having the ability
to do otherwise. So already, libertarian freedom
has been removed at the human level. Freedom
becomes voluntary action flowing from internal
desire. Okay, freedom becomes voluntary action
flowing from internal desire. That's what compatibilism
is. And we haven't touched metaphysics. We've
just defined sin and the will. So if humans cannot
choose God, then salvation must be entirely God's
work. God changes the heart. God gives new desires.
God determines who receives grace. Now ask, could
God have chosen differently? If God saves some
and not others, is that a free selection among
real alternatives? Or is it part of an eternal
decree that could not have been otherwise? If
God's saving will cannot fail and nothing happens
outside his decree, then the fall itself must
have been within that decree. Because otherwise
something occurred outside his control. So now
the fall is within divine providence. Redemption
is within divine providence. Every detail is
within divine providence. Remember how freedom
was redefined at the human level? Freedom equals
acting according to one's nature. Now apply that
to God. God always acts according to his nature.
His nature is necessary. Therefore, his actions
cannot be otherwise. And without ever starting
with Aristotle, you have arrived at the same
place. Compatibilism all the way up. Different
road, same destination. Sometimes my Orthodox
friends will emphasize that maybe bigger than
original sin. in terms of why people don't grasp
orthodoxy as easily, as quickly, is a denial
of the essence energies distinction, which I
talked about in a previous episode. And I've
been trying to make the case that if you never
started with Aristotle's metaphysics, you would
still get there if you had original sin as your
starting point. To me, it doesn't really matter
how you get there. What you're going to end up
with is a God that does not look free, or he's
only free in this narrowly defined sense that
he must act according to his essence, which doesn't
deliberate, doesn't make choices, doesn't pick
A versus B, has no external influences. This
is how God becomes defined in Western theology
and into the Reformed tradition. And once you
get to evangelicals, you really don't know, probably
less likely to go. full reformed or towards Catholic
theology. But these are the deductions that come
about when you start with a certain starting
presupposition, whether it's original sin or
whether you deny the essence energies distinction.
That God's will is truly distinct from his essence.
Doesn't mean they're disconnected or unrelated.
We don't even try to explain it fully. It just
means they can't be identical or God wouldn't
have freedom anymore. Or he'd only have freedom.
in this narrow sense, where he acts according
to desire, but he really can't choose between
one thing and another thing. So whether you start
with metaphysics first, God is pure act, or anthropology
first, humans act according to nature, if you
reason consistently, you converge. You end with
no real alternative possibilities, divine willing
that cannot be otherwise, election that is structurally
fixed. Freedom redefined as non -coercion. That's
the system. If all of this is necessary, not
chosen among real alternatives, but structurally
unavoidable, then what do we mean when we say
God freely created? God freely loves. If it was
impossible for him to do otherwise, then love
becomes inevitable. And inevitability is not
the same thing as freedom. I remember a girl
across the street. that our kids would play with
when they were younger. She hit her teenage years.
One of the kids came home and says, so -and -so
is an atheist now. She's in our driveway and
I'm cleaning the garage. And I said, oh, I heard
you became an atheist. And she nodded. I could
tell she was awkward. I shouldn't have said this.
Sometime when your mom is telling you goodnight
and she says, I love you. Tell her, you don't
love me, mom. You're just programmed to care
about my survival. I shouldn't have said that
to her. I admit that. Draw the parallel. I said
that thinking, look, if you just acted according
to nature, the way that evolution, atheistic
evolution describes it, love isn't real. Now,
if you do the same thing with God, it's not our
definition of love anymore. It's something we
don't understand. If I don't choose to love you,
then I don't really love you. I'm not saying
at all that other Christian traditions deny God's
personal love. I know that that's not true. They
don't deny it. They affirm it and they reciprocate
it. I'm saying when you start with these ideas,
this is where they go. And you have to ignore
them down the road just to function because you
can't relate to a being where their definition
of freedom and our definition of freedom have
zero analogy. At the bottom of reality, does
everything reduce to necessity? Or does explanation
finally end in God freely willed it? Sometimes
you'll hear people say that out of the overflow
of love within the Trinity, that that necessarily
resulted in creation. The creation of our world
and of us came about sort of inevitably as the
overflow of love. Love's creativity. That's nice
poetically. Creation really didn't have to be.
At the bottom of reality, does everything reduce
to necessity? Or does explanation finally end
in God freely willed it? If it reduces to necessity,
then sovereignty is inevitability. Think about
that. Sovereignty is not freedom, the way that
we think of freedom. It's inevitability. If it
ends in personal willing, then freedom is fundamental.
And that is not a small difference. That determines
whether ultimate reality is a machine or a mind,
a structure or a sovereign person. And everything
else follows from how you answer that. I want
to point out one more thing. Where do you start?
Where do you start? If you're an average person,
where do you start knowing God? I mean, usually
it's something like the Bible, the Bible taught,
the Bible preached. What I'm saying is you start
with a person. When God reveals himself through
scripture to us, it's personal. If you have encounter
with Christ, if you're struck by his love, it's
personal. We relate to a personal God. We believe
in the God who says, I am who I am, who's there
walking in the garden. In the icon of the creation
of man, Christ is there with Adam. It's a person.
When we start thinking about theology, we start
with the person. Then we look at what the person
does. should be fairly intuitive. This is what
we do with people in general. We meet a person,
we look at their life, look at what they do,
their output, and then we can try to peer into
the depths of who they are. But we realize that's
really impossible. Now, say you reverse that
order. Say instead of, people do do this and
they're very foolish for it, but Say instead
of meeting someone, you start with who you think
they are. Before you've seen their activity,
before they've revealed themselves to you personally,
you start with who they must be. And then you
move to what is your activity, and then you move
to who are you to the person. You've done things
backwards, right? That shouldn't be controversial.
Unless you think people are determined. In the
order that we do theology in the Eastern churches,
and I really hope this resonates with a lot of
evangelicals, you start with who is revealed.
Who, not what, not the how. You start with who,
with I am, with you are the Christ, the son of
the living God. You start there. Then you move
to what have you been up to? What can I observe?
that lets me know more about who you are. And
then you try to look inside, but you realize
these things are too wonderful for me. If I try
to do the opposite, I've really altered how I
normally know things, right? I normally know
empirically through revelation, observation,
and then depth of thought. I don't typically
come up with a metaphysical idea, then looking
at activity, then when I get the person, who
have I found? I've already assumed all these
things about you before I ever got to know you.
I believe rationally, if you start with original
sin and guilt, you will end up with similar metaphysics
as Aristotle. defined abstract deity that must
do these things. It must be this way. And then
you've got layers and layers and layers of definitions
on God that are often strained in terms of derivation
from scripture. But the bigger point is this.
One of the things that Eastern Orthodoxy solved
for me, I'm not saying there's no tension, no
mystery, the free will debate. hung heavy over
a lot of my life, and it still hangs heavy over
the Christian church. People who affirm freedom
often think that once you're regenerated, once
you're saved, once you've had a decisive moment
with Christ, that you pretty much lose the freedom
to leave Christ in any meaningful sense, any
sense where this leaves you vulnerable and in
danger after you've been saved. God must be free
if we're going to be free. If we're going to
have free will, God must have free will. If we
say that we act according to our desires, but
all our desires are fallen, we have genuine freedom
in this way of thinking. We have real freedom
to do nothing but evil. That's why total depravity
usually gets called total inability. You're totally
unable to move towards God. These are the doctrines
that later generations debated and negotiated
with and modified to avoid the implications that
either God created evil or that we have no responsibility
or that why do evangelism if God has ordained
everything? It started with these notions of
freedom with us, and then we often read those
onto God. Or we do the opposite. We come up with
an idea of God's freedom, and then we read them
onto us. It's really hard not to do these things.
I know that libertarian freedom for God, that
his freedom, I don't understand it. I don't.
I'm never going to. But I instinctively can't
think of freedom as being real if God must do
things that his nature determines. It looks like
pantheism to me. And I'm not the only one. And
if you don't know, pantheism is... thoroughly
deterministic. It's all fate.