THE WILL OF MAN AND THE WILL OF GOD

As to this topic Spurgeon says, “The great controversy which for many ages has divided the Christian Church has hinged upon the difficult question of ‘the will.’ I need not say of that conflict that it has done much mischief to the Christian Church, undoubtedly it has; but I will rather say, that it has been fraught with incalculable usefulness; for it has thrust forward before the minds of Christians precious truths, which, but for it, might have been kept in the shade” (MTP vol 8, pg. 181).

With Spurgeon’s encouragement, we attempt to add to the usefulness of this discussion as it continues to be a point of controversy between different groups in the Christian church. A phrase that is quite commonplace in Christian parlance is ‘man’s free will.’  The phrase is often used as an obvious corrective to the doctrine of God’s sovereign will.  One hears it quite often in Bible studies where the topic of salvation is being expounded.  The teacher will say, “God is sovereign in salvation,” to which a hand immediately pops up and interjects, “Yes, but man has a free will.”  At this point a discussion ensues as to whether man’s will or God’s will saves. Both parties talk over each other and dig in their theological heels. As a result much heat and little light results and both parties leave thinking the other espouses a false doctrine. More often than not, the reason this happens is because neither side really understands what the other side is saying. The debate begins without the terms being properly defined. Each party ends up trying to debunk a position the other party does not hold to. This leads to hurt feelings and zero resolution.  

Believing that both propositions are true, our purpose is to go back and to re-examine how the will of man and the will of God intersect in space and time. In other words, is it possible to preserve the clear biblical teaching that both God and man exercise a free will? This is no small feat. However I will try, though feebly, to reconcile God’s sovereign free will with the free will of man. In doing this I am not trying to play both sides by inferring that two contradictory truths can exist side by side. Rather, my purpose is to show that if we properly understand the qualitative differences between the free will of God and the free will of man we will begin to understand, though not perfectly, how they can exists harmoniously and concurrently.  In order to get there we must first define what we mean by the words ‘will’ and ‘free.’ Having accomplished that, we can then move forward to address the issue properly.  

So what do we mean by the will?

THE WILL OF MAN

We use this word in a variety of ways, but few ever stop to think about what is meant by it.  The will by almost universal account is that ontological[1] component in a rational being that chooses. A rational being as described by Aristotle is a creature that has a capacity for deliberative imagination. A rational creature conceives of various courses of action before actually experiencing them. A rational being can live in the realm of possibility or imagination. The only rational creatures in the universe are man, angels and God. Accordingly, we define the will as ‘that capacity in a rational creature that enables it to move in the direction of its strongest inclination.’ It is the capacity of volition based on rational assessment. In contrast, brute beasts ‘choose’ by instinct built into their nature by God. They act but not according to possibility or premeditated assessment. Choice is therefore made as a rational being views the world through a complex grid and by using the mind will choose one option over another. Because man has more than one option at his disposal and because he opts for one over the other without outside coercion, we say that man has the power of free choice. Everyone reading this article has chosen to do so. Everyone reading this has made a myriad of choices in the course of their day without ever feeling that they were forced to make that choice or that other choices could not have been made. As humans we are free agent beings. We see, we consider, we choose.

This fact, however, brings us face to face with a huge conundrum, especially for Christians who believe in a Sovereign Creator. Trying to explain a possible solution to this conundrum is what this article is about. So what is the problem? When we read the Bible we quickly discover that God chooses all things according to His sovereign choice. Psalm 115:3 says “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.” If man chooses freely and if God chooses freely then we have two beings in the same universe who are free. If we think long about this we will acknowledge there must come a time when the wills will clash. What happens then? At the least the weaker will will have to involuntarily bend to the stronger will. And if this is true then that will is no longer free. So we come back to the question ‘does man truly have a free will?’ We say he does and at all times. But to pursue the point further let us dig a little deeper and analyze the very nature of the human will.

The first thing we will say, which we have already hinted at, is that man chooses freely. This is clearly taught in the Scripture. People in the Bible are never presented as being robots guided by the strong arm of a hidden God. Rather, men are always displayed as choosing freely and doing what they desired to do. And because men choose freely, the Bible clearly holds men culpable for their behavior.  God never says, “I forced you to do such and such, therefore you are not guilty for what you did.” Because men are free to choose all disobedience to God is therefore justly punishable. The Apostle Paul confirms that God has the right to judge sinful behavior. He writes, “Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? Certainly not, for then how will God judge the world” (Romans 3:5-6). Man’s free choice is clearly seen in the opening pages of the Bible in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve freely chose to eat the forbidden fruit and they were punished for it. Similar stories litter the sacred writ. Hezekiah freely chooses to destroy the high places in the land of Judah.  God did not force him. Judas chose to betray his Master. Never was he moved to do that dastardly deed by God’s irresistible hand. Peter and John chose to continue to preach the resurrection in the face of persecution. They were neither forced by God to preach nor forced to stop preaching by the Pharisees.  Ananias and Sapphira chose to lie about their sale of their property and made the decision freely together. To be sure the Bible chronicles one human choice after another, including the choice of the Son of Man to go to a cross and die. He says, “I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me but I lay it down of Myself” (John 10:17-18).     

Furthermore, making choices is not optional for the human being but rather the use of the will is the inevitable result of being a rational being. As a ‘time-dweller’ man is always moving. Time does not stop. We grow older with each passing minute. As the ancient philosopher Heraclitus taught, man is always becoming; that is, he is always changing.  And because he is always changing he must then be always choosing. Crossroads are inevitable because movement through time demands we face them. At each crossroad we all must choose. We have no choice but to choose. Time demands it. So the question for all mankind is not if they will choose, but what they will choose.

Another aspect of the will is that it is exclusionary. When one chooses ‘A’ one is excluding any chance of choosing B or C or D at the same time.  Choice does not expand horizons, it severely narrows them.  It squeezes us into narrow passageways that define our lives.  An old sage once told me, “You can spend a dollar any way you want but you can only spend it once.” In the same way men can choose whatever they want to choose but they can only make one choice. Facing this exclusionary aspect of choice has driven many into severe regret, even schizophrenia. Fear of making the wrong choice immobilizes the masses. Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken highlights this nerve-wracking dilemma. Frost begins,

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both.”

Guarding against making a wrong choice, however, never results in not making a choice. “Why” said the little child, “if I choose a vanilla cone I can’t have chocolate.” And if the child stands in that frozen state of indecision he will end up making the one choice he dreaded the most; he will get neither. Not choosing is itself a choice. Herein lies the great irony of choice: we are so frightened to choose to avoid regret that we will end up making a choice that leads to greater regret.  For that reason it is generally advantageous to choose proactively than to make a passive choice not to choose. In either case, active choice or passive choice, the chooser has excluded all other choices that could have possibly been made.  This constant prospect of making choices is the great blessing of being a rational being, — and also a potential curse. That is, the price of freedom is the ever present possibility that one will make a life-damaging poor choice and have nobody to blame but himself. But would anyone prefer to be a non-rational being, thereby cutting off the possibility of experiencing the joy of choosing at all?  

Another aspect of the human will is that it is dependent on factors outside itself, that is, the human will is not autonomous. Human choices are not made independent of outside influences. We can demonstrate this by illustrating one of the many choices that a man makes in a day. Let’s say that a man chooses to go swimming. How was that choice made?  Did the will simply wake up one day and say, “I choose to go swimming.” Or did he make that choice within the formative pressures of space, time, experience, analysis, feeling, etc.  Before the will sprung into action had not the mind already done a yeoman’s work of analyzing the data and esteeming various options, some better, some worse? Did not the mind assess the various risks, opportunities, and possibilities associated with that decision?  So too with the affections. What the mind presents is complemented by one’s emotions. One feels that swimming will bring pleasure or that it is uncomfortable, or lovely, or painful. Our emotions bring us a sense that the activity will brings us a sense of good will, or a flush of nostalgia or will it cause emotional strife. Perhaps the heat reminds one of the sensual gratification swimming would bring.  As the mind has weighed out many conceptions so the emotions have sensed either attraction or repulsion or indifference. If the event seems reasonable and pleasurable and the person has a stronger inclination to do it than any other option, the will then springs into action and turns the person in that direction. Thus a choice is dependent on a complex set of contextual factors. But in every case there was other choices that could have been made. Thus the human will is free.

There is one last thing to note about human choice. Wills in themselves are neither strong nor weak.  The human will is merely the direction by which the active forces of the mind and emotions will travel. The will obeys the inclination of the heart and sets the direction of the ship. It turns the rational being to a certain course but has no force of its own. Like the rudder on a ship the will moves to the left or the right and depends on the engine to supply the force. The will is a light switch which turns a light on or off but can do nothing for the wattage. So when we speak of someone with a strong will what we mean by that is the one choosing has a greater or lesser conviction about a certain choice which is a product of the mind and the emotions. This is an important point because it is often thought that the will is a force, a power, unto itself. But in reality the will does nothing but passively obey the true seat of decision making in the heart. Let us be careful not to ascribe a power in the will that it does not possess.       

THE WILL OF GOD

God being a personal/rational being also has a will. In one sense God chooses just as man chooses. But there is one paramount difference. Whereas man is a dependent being and his choice is affected by external considerations, God is a self-sustaining being and His will is merely the outworking of His simple, self-actualized, unaffected nature. God does not will because He has understood something or felt something. He acts independent of any internal or external force. His will is a pure extension of His being. God does not react, He acts. And His will is singular, simple and unchangeable. God operates ‘from Himself.’ He is self- contained, self- authenticating and self- sufficient, an attribute theologians call His aseity.  Milton says it this way,

"“My goodness is most free to act or not;

Necessity and Chance Approach not me,

And what I will is fate.’

God’s will is unaffected by anything outside of itself; it is also uncomplicated. God is one integrated whole, not an alloy comprised of His attributes. He has no parts and cannot be divided. Theologians call this the simplicity of God. We study His attributes separately only because the human mind is incapable of understanding something that is absolutely pure and uncomplicated. God is not holy and love but He is holy love and loving holiness. Whatever God wills comes from His eternal holiness and loveliness. He is never one attribute at one time, nor does one attribute eclipse another. Remember God is not subject to time nor bound by time. What God wills is an extension of who He is. Thus God’s will can never be separated from His glorious essence. About man we can say ‘his decision was uncharacteristic.’ But such a thing is never said about God. God’s will is always truth for He is the God of truth. Therefore God can never make a mistake nor can He ever change His mind or regret something.  Texts that call into question God’s immutable purposes such as Genesis 6:6 are nothing more than anthropomorphisms[2], attempts to put God’s complexity and eternality within the grasp of human understanding. What God wills is unchangeably right because God knows all things, knows all contingencies, and knows all human choices. Because God is free, His choices can look to us as mental adjustments, but this only appears from the limited vision of changeable beings. God is free from all influences. Man is not.  This means that God’s will is infinitely above and beyond the understanding of mankind.  

Nevertheless, in the sense of choosing a certain direction, both God and man have free wills. God chooses freely and man chooses exactly what he desires and so also chooses freely. So the great question remains, “How can two free beings operate concurrently in the same universe without the will of the stronger ultimately annihilating the will of the other?” 

MAN’S WILL – GOD’S WILL.

This leads us to discuss the interrelationship between man’s will and God’s will in history. While both man and God exercise their wills freely, the Bible teaches that these wills work concurrently and in harmony with one another in the same space-time continuum. Man chooses what He wants to choose but what he chooses is always in full conformity to the immutable will of God. How can God do whatsoever He wills (Ps 115:3) and yet bequeath to mankind the ability to choose freely?  In other words how can two beings which choose what they desire not collide with each other so that stronger one must coerce the weaker? Yet the Bible never hints that man operates by being coerced to do anything. Man chooses freely according to his desires. Finding a way to reconcile this seeming paradox is at the heart of the Calvinist/Arminian debate. Is there, then, a good explanation to how two free-willed creatures can occupy the same space at the same time while maintaining their respective freedoms? Let us explain this by using the data given earlier in this article.

As we said already, God chooses outside the constraints of space and time, that is, He chooses autonomously. There are no constraints outside His pure and homogenous nature. If His being is absolutely eternal and comprehensive, His will must be the same. As the prophet says, He sees the beginning from the end and therefore His choices encompass the entire scope of all reality, including contingencies, primary means, secondary means and, above all, the free choices of His creatures (Is 46:10). His will is completely unhinged from the restraints that space and time impose. His plan is from beginning to end and cannot be thwarted. His plan is simply what is.  

Man on the other hand chooses within the space-time continuum. Man is affected by all sorts of external influences that are part of life in this lower world.  Within this space-time continuum man chooses freely.  His will moves freely in the direction of that which he desires most forcefully, that is, according to his strongest inclination (Edwards).  But note this carefully. Man chooses freely and is never coerced to choose other than what he desires. Thus man too has a “free will” but his freedom is in a space time context. The will of God is not. To say it another way, man chooses freely within space and time which lies underneath the transcendent will of God. Because we are dealing with two separate paradigms — God’s will operates outside of space-time and man’s operates within space-time — we need not conclude that this is a logical fallacy since the realm in which God chooses and the realm in which man chooses are not in the same context nor in the same relationship. God’s context of choice arises out of His autonomous self; man’s context of choice arises out of His dependency on space-time limitations.

To make matters even harder, this integration of God’s will and man’s will presents another problem. From Genesis 50:20 and other texts it seems like while both man and God have free wills and both choose freely, their respective end goals are different. No matter how this is explained the idea grates roughly on our mind. Two free beings who coexist in the same universe and have different purposes and yet both remain free? How can this be? Though the mystery is not fully explained, theologians do have a name for this phenomenon called concursus dei or divine concurrence.  It states that God’s will and man’s will run peacefully parallel to each other in history without impinging on one another’s freedoms.

The Bible also teaches, and this makes the mystery more unbelievable, that while God and man choose freely in the same context, both may be choosing with differing, even opposing, goals.

A father may take his children to an amusement park and does so for their social wellbeing. At the same time the children go because they want to have fun. The father plans the trip; he sets all the parameters, supplies the funds and orchestrates the entire trip from beginning to end. He chooses that which he knows will allow his children to develop social intercourse and a modicum of freedom while at the same time allowing them the freedom to enjoy their time according to their childish natures. The children know none of what the father has planned but rather merely look to have a good time. The dad lets them out of the car knowing full well what they will choose to do within the parameters he has set. He chooses freely and his goals are achieved while at the same time the children choose freely and they too achieve their desires. Poor illustration I know, but it demonstrates in a very imprecise way how two levels of will can operate concurrently.

The Bible teaches that this is exactly what happens in providence (God’s rule over history). Man chooses freely in history while God overrules history by his autonomous will. Man chooses so as to produce one goal; God chooses so as to achieve His ultimate goal. The story that best illustrates this in the Bible is the Joseph narrative found in Genesis chapter 37 and in chapters 39-50.

We will review this story briefly in order to show that the Bible does indeed teach divine concurrence. The story opens innocently as most stories do.  A boy receives a special gift from his father. We see clearly that this gift of a coat of many colors is given freely by Jacob as he seems to favor Joseph whose mother was Rachel, Jacob’s favored wife. This decision leads to a train of human choices that leads to envy, betrayal, lust, etc. Throughout the story no one would ever deduce that this is anything but a family making choices – good and bad. Upon receiving the coat the young man – as boys are wont to do - boasts in his favored status and shares dreams that place him above his brothers in the family economy. This angers the brothers and one day they concoct a plan to get rid of him. They soak his colorful coat in animal blood which tricks their father into believing that the worst has fallen upon him. Unbeknownst to the dad, the brothers have thrown the lad into a pit to discuss his fate. Instead of killing him the eldest brother convinces the rest to sell him to slave traders heading for Egypt.  Put on the slave block, Joseph is chosen by one of the top military leaders in Egypt who esteems the boy so much that he gives him a privileged position in the household. While the reader now thinks Joseph’s fortunes have changed, the story takes a sudden turn for the worse as Joseph is accused by the man’s wife of attempted rape. The favored servant now finds himself in prison. Here again he prospers and his dreaming gift is revealed by predicting the fate of two of his cell mates. One of them promises to put a good word in for him when he is released.  But the story again takes a negative turn as the man forgets his promise and Joseph languishes in prison for several years more. One day Pharaoh dreams a troublesome dream and asks for an interpreter. The old friend remembers his fault and tells the king about Joseph. Joseph interprets the dream and the monarch is so impressed that he elevates this young man to be second ruler in the kingdom, a position which controls the treasury and the distribution of food.  While this is going on, the grieving father and his sons experience a severe famine. They realize their only hope of survival is to get food from Egypt which is prospering under Joseph. The father sends the sons down with large sacks and there they meet with their long lost brother whom they do not recognize.  But he recognizes them which turns the story into tale of intrigue as Joseph plays his brothers by concealing his identity and treating them rather harshly. Eventually, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers who are utterly surprised and instantly filled with fear and guilt. Eventually Joseph brings the entire family to live in a fertile area of Egypt. As the story ends and the father is about to die and the brothers are again struck with fear.  With Jacob gone, Joseph will certainly take revenge on them. The brothers plead for mercy, whereupon the Egyptian brother responds with kindness, believing that all that has transpired, including all the many acts of sin, have happened under the loving hand of their God. He concludes the story with these famous words, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to keep many people alive.”

Here we find the great truth acknowledged by Scripture that we have been arguing for in this article.  Throughout the story man has made a series of choices, some good, some evil.  Nothing in the story makes the reader think that any choice made by any person has been coerced by a cosmic puppeteer pulling strings. Everyone acts according to their strongest inclination at the time. The brothers in jealousy plot against their brother; no one stirred that jealously in them, it was an outflow of their own heart. No one moved Rueben to alter the plan of murder, rather from his own internal assessment he deemed selling Joseph into slavery to be a better option. No one induced Potipher’s wife to give into her lust; she engaged it freely. No one moved Potipher to punish Joseph. From his rational perspective this was the best thing to do. No one caused Joseph’s prison buddies to forget about him.  And no one forced Pharaoh to call on Joseph when he needed a dream interpreted. Such statements could be made about every decision made in this story. No reader sees it as anything more than people making decisions as they moved along in life. Yet as the story concludes we hear Joseph’s testimony that another will was at work, a will that transcended yet worked along side of the free choices of the human actors. It was the will of God. The will of God hovers in the background of the entire story. After all, God had a larger story in which the Joseph story was merely one scene. Consider these facts. God had chosen Israel to be His people. Because they were His special people God must chastise them for their disobedience, thus the famine. As the son who will save the entire family, Joseph is freely allowed to put himself in a position where he will be the object of jealousy, leading to outright betrayal. God decreed that Israel must prosper in accordance with a promise made decades before. Behind this story and all other stories, lies this overarching divine plan to save humanity. The Joseph story pushes the redemptive story down the pathway a bit. It begins in Genesis and will one day conclude in the Book of Revelation. God’s story is forged outside of time but played out in time. And that is why His cosmic purposes are accomplished within the confines of a space-time reality, acted out by men. The Joseph story is one chapter of this cosmic plan; one little brick in the grand city that God will ultimately bring forth in the world to come. To say it differently, God wills the entire story from beginning to end but He also wills the means.  

The central event of God’s cosmic story is the death of Jesus Christ on a cross.  Men chose to put Him to death. They are guilty.  The Jews are guilty; Judas is guilty; the crowd in the square is guilty. Pilate chooses to wash his hands of the entire matter, but he too is guilty. Yet, this death is still part of God’s cosmic plan. In fact it is the centerpiece of God’s cosmic plan. Peter acknowledges this when he says, He was ‘delivered by determined purpose and foreknowledge of God,’ (Acts 2:23). So God also put Jesus on the cross. But He is not guilty. His plan is far removed from such lowly motives. Guilty no, but gracious, yes. Man puts the Son on a cross because man hates Him. God puts His Son a cross because He loves mankind. Both God and man choose to kill Jesus Christ. But how different the motives! So we find ourselves again standing beneath the mystery of God’s will and man’s will. And we whisper under our collective breaths, “How unsearchable are God’s ways in finding out.”  Amen and amen.

[1] Ontology is the study of essence or being

[2] An anthropomorphism is a figure of speech whereby a human characteristic is assigned to the infinite God for purposes of understanding.