Creation/Redemption

Multiplicity and Extension 3: Will

Reductionism
Modern scientific reductionism rejects any multiplicity of causes, including wills. Determinism of any sort, modern or otherwise, arises from a reduction of each possible factor in the outcome of a decision to absolute decisiveness or inconsequentiality, from, that is, some sort of dislike of multiple causes.

Divine Sovereignty
Another aspect of multiplicity and extension in what God has created and loved is wills. Those who dislike multiplicity at this level give to God a sovereignty that cannot limit itself. If God's sovereignty were absolute and unlimitable, even by God himself, then there could be no creation of other wills. What is created would have to be a lifeless plaything, not a living and changing returner of love to God. Aquinas distinguishes between God's absolute omnipotence and his actual use of his power.¹ We do not know God's sovereignty as an abstraction but as his will to create and redeem this world, as, that is, as love.
     "God is in control." One expression of this belief in a sovereignty that cannot limit itself was a bumper sticker slogan of a few years back, which I still hear said by Christians now and then: "God is in control of everything." If God exercised sovereignty in a way that would be compatible with such an understanding, then he would be answerable for many evils. But the New Testament acknowledges what observation has indicated with "We see not all things" (). To say "God is in control of everything" is to eliminate any need for the eschaton. It is how the whole story of creation and redemption comes out that God is in control of. "All things work together for good" (), but not necessarily now. Things happen to us that are not "God's will" because God really did create a world that is separate from himself and because sin really has had drastic effects in our world. One might refer such events to God's "permissive will," but only if we mean by that that God has allowed the existence of wills other than himself. On at least a terminological level we are better off just rightly understanding God's sovereignty in creation. God is sovereign. But he freely and sovereignly chooses to give up some choices to others, to accomplish his purposes slowly, and to allow other free beings to determine some part of the story and its outcome (by, at least, the choice for or against salvation). Because we believe in creation, we can know that what happens does not happen necessarily. Things could be other than as they are.²
     Predestiniarianism. Another expression of belief in an unlimitable sovereignty is predestinarianism, which makes human love for God automatic. Apply biblical statements regarding predestination to the actual method of redemption (check on what predestination is contrasted to: is it other supposed methods of salvation?). Barth's emphasis on the election of Christ is a way of saying this, though Barth still holds to irresistible grace. Either grace is resistible or we are not free. Universalism (I don't mean Barth's at this point) is not the only way out of double predestination; there is also free will. Like scientific determinism, any form of theological determinism is monism--a rejection of multiplicity--reductionism. God does harden some (though I don't think Romans 9 is saying that salvation was the issue for Pharaoh or the patriarchs) and draw others, though his actions as such are not determinative of the outcome. The words used suggest action that is not determinative.
     The loss of time in redemption. Creation-redemption makes a good story because of its non-linear path toward its goal. Creation must be non-linear ultimately as a result of it including creation of wills other than God. Calvin: All the decisions regarding salvation were made before time existed. We might have free will, but it does not matter in the most ultimate sense. Redemption would be a return it to the original state (recapitulation thus understood; e.g., Origen). But the eschaton is not a return to conditions as they were before the fall. It is the completion of creation.
     We need, instead, a view of divine sovereignty that makes it possible for God to act in time. Again, setting God outside time does not necessarily result in determinism, even if God is held to have complete foreknowledge. The transcendent God has created wills outside himself. God is not in time as we are. He created time. But he has placed his own working within time. In relation to us he limits himself to time. So the incarnation. But in himself he is outside time. The apologetic significance of this: God is not to blame for the sorry state of the world.

Creation and Redemption

Multiplicity and Extension 3: Will