Originally posted by Cartesian Kid:
Although this has been rebutted time and again by Pastor Larry and others on this board, I will take a shot at it again. Sovereignty is all or nothing. There are no gradations to sovereignty; in other words, there is no such thing as more or less sovereign. Sovereignty is like pregnancy, either you are or you are not. He might have been sovereign prior to giving freedom to mankind, but that sovereignty would have been ceded the moment He gave mankind the ability to make their own choices.
Yes. God is sovereign.
If God grants total freedom to mankind, then He is no longer sovereign. There is absolutely no logical alternative.
There may be some confusion about what you believe free will (or "total freedom" as you expressed it) to be.
1.) We do *not* say that God steps aside and lets human beings run the show and God waits passively nearby. God is active in His creation and is constantly at work in the affairs of humankind.
2.) We do *not* say that human beings have the ability to do anything they want without the possibility of running into the restraining hand of God. Have you ever wondered why we haven't had a nuclear war yet? The devices to do it have been around for 50 years. I'm fairly sure God has restrained evildoers from launching nuclear attacks because it is not appropriate for God's purposes. I believe that God often frustrates the plans of the wicked -- He doesn't remove their free will, but he makes it so guns misfire, appointments are missed, and conspiratorial plans are misunderstood.
How on earth could God have guided history to the Incarnation and the fulfillment of the OT prophecies related to it if He doesn't have the ability to control mankind's choices.
NOTE: This debate is not whether God has the *ability* to control people, but rather if God *does* violate their free will.
God can bring prophecies to fulfillment without human cooperation, but at the same time, God has His people listening and obeying Him more than we probably realize. When we are obedient to the Spirit of God, we are helping God accomplish His purposes in the world.
The only alternative you're left with is that He had to sit idly by waiting for an opportune moment to send His Son, one when it just so happened that the couple pregnant with Him was in Bethlehem where He was supposed to be born; crucifixion, the prophesied method for Him to die, just happened to be the standard method of execution of the day;
Joseph and Mary were very obedient to God. It wasn't random even though they probably had no idea how astounding their lives were to become. As far as Jesus goes, there were times the hostile crowds tried to seize Jesus, but He slipped away (miracle?) because it wasn't His time yet. That sounds like God working in the midst of human freedom to me.
His propehesied messenger just happened to be born immediately before Him;
The pregnancy of Elizabeth was an explicit miracle of God. Check out the beginning of the Luke's gospel.
the Roman empire just happened to be in power at the time;
I'm convinced God is very active in the rising and falling of nations. Have you ever read an account of the Battle of Midway between the full power of the Japanese Navy and the weakened U.S. Navy during World War II? It is an amazing story -- in short, the U.S. defeated the Japanese because (from human terms) the U.S. was not able to follow through with their planned attack. If the U.S. had been able to follow the battle plan, the U.S. Navy would have most likely been badly defeated. Instead, the very problems with the American attack (including squadrons getting lost and finding the Japanese Navy at exactly the right time) and a large number of "random" problems on the Japanese side allow the U.S. to break the back of the Japanese Navy in one day. Looking at the amazing story through eyes that believe God is active in the world, I see the hand of God working in the midst of free will to bring about the desired effect.
I could go on and on because there are literally hundreds of prophecies that He fulfilled that, according to the Semi-Pelagians, would had to have been the result of the random decisions of free humanity.
Not random at all. Simply a combination of God's actions and humankind's actions (free will).
If you reply that God intervened to guide certain events toward this destiny, then you have conceded that mankind has no such thing as free will.
Not at all. You seem to assume that only one being's will can be in action at the same time. When a person is married, both the husband and the wife have opinions and the freedom to act (unless one is physically restrained). The dominance of one or the other does not prevent the dominated person from acting unless they submit to the will of their spouse -- (I'm not trying to paint a picture of a good marriage, but just a relationship). In the situation describe, both husband and wife have freedom to act in relation with each other, but they exercise it in different ways.
Even if you attempt to argue that God isn't actively intervening in every moment of time, the mere potential to intervene still abolishes any kind of freedom for mankind. For if God can intervene into your life at any moment to stop you from doing something or to change the course of your life, even if He isn't doing that at this moment, you are not free!
I think you are confusing the ability to act with the action itself.
I'm a big guy and have the ability to beat up a lot of people I don't particularly like. What stops me from doing it (besides the police)? It is not in my character, it is not an interest of mine, and I recognize that even people I don't like have a right to be jerks without having to worry about me attacking them.
But I also used to work for a private school where I and a team of others were responsible for protecting the children from kidnappers (there were some ultra-wealthy families that had their children at the school). If anyone were to try to threaten or harm the children, I would have taken them down swiftly and potently. If they threatened a life, we might have to end theirs.
I have no interest in controlling other people or being mean, but when it comes to protecting the innocent, my attitude changes very quickly. In a similar way, even though He has the power, God often does not act, even when innocent people suffer, because He has purposes and plans I don't understand. But sometimes God does act although we don't necessarily see His hand moving.
So there is no way to have it both ways. You cannot say that God is sovereign, yet He has given mankind free will because the two concepts are mutually exclusive.
Nope, but thank you for playing.
[ July 17, 2002, 02:16 AM: Message edited by: Baptist Believer ]
