Since I have had some feedback on the subject of God's will I will undertake to clarify what I think about it and how it relates to human freedom. I will do this through a series of questions because that is how I think best. I have already spoken to some of you about this and your questions will appear first. For everyone else I should be able to cover this subject in oh... say 100 blogs so it been nice knowing you (sounds of chutes popping as people jump ship). OK now I have the room to myself.
The first response I got was on my assertion that God had willed evil to take place place and that there was nothing man could do about it. This really is my position and I will try to explain why as briefly as possible here.
First off God is sovereign, and not over most things but over everything. Even the bad stuff which means that God has to allow any and all things which occur to occur, and if He did not then they either would not happen or God's sovereignty is an illusion. God is not interacting with time and doing the best He can, but is rather overruling all of history according to His will and His purpose and no purpose of His can be frustrated; 2Ch 20:6, Jer 49:19, 50:44. That means that all and everything which occurs does so according to God's will without exception.
God never is the cause of evil.
Depends on what you mean by cause. If you mean that God does not tempt men to evil nor to sin but rather that God wills that all should repent and come to salvation, I agree. But if you mean that evil happens to the absolute exclusion of God's will and desires then I disagree. Isaiah 45:7 unflinchingly declares that it is God who brings calamity. Of course one would say that the Lord is speaking of judgment, but this calamity is still in accordance with God's will and purpose. And God does not always send calamity in the form of judgment.
Job experiences a level of suffering beyond what most anyone would ever suffer and God not only does not do so in judgment, but God does not tell Job why He has done so. There is nothing in the book of Job to indicate that Satan acted apart from God's allowing him to torture Job, and there is no reason therefore to concoct an excuse for God's having done so.
Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers and then is falsely accused of attempted rape and then is imprisoned unjustly only to be rescued in time because he is God's man to affect the saving of his Father's family. God absolutely willed that this calamity would fall on Joseph, and the Bible makes that abundantly clear when Joseph tells his brothers that, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." Gen 50: 20.
If Scripture is not embarrassed then neither will I be.
Last, and greatest, is the Crucifixion. The Scripture makes it abundantly clear that it is God who crushes Jesus on Golgotha. It is the Lord's pleasure to bruise Him and to affect our healing with His wounds. (Isaiah 53) There is nothing in Scripture to lead us to believe that anything beyond the will and expectation of God happened on Golgotha, in fact it is in the famous prayer of Gethsemane in which Jesus acknowledges that it is God's will that He be crushed. To say otherwise makes the Cross the greatest cosmic flub in history and sets aside God's ruling power in any fashion. After all, if God is not capable of keeping Christ from the nails and whips of the executioner then neither should we trust in Him. But the Scripture is absolutely clear that this calamity was according to God's purpose and we have no reason to think otherwise. Clearly this is the greatest act of sin and human wickedness ever done, and the Scripture unblushingly tells us that it was done according to God's will and God's plan.
So clearly God allows, purposes and wills evil according to His own counsel, but He does not cause evil. That is a different thing altogether. God has never caused anyone to sin, if He did He would not be God but the Devil. And neither has God ever tempted anyone to sin, same reason.
God allows evil, God ordains evil. When God placed man in the Garden He knew man would fall and He let it happen. Had God not allowed it to happen it would not have happened. Therefore God ordained it to happen and inescapably it happened according to His will. But God did not cause the Fall. It was not God but the serpent who tempted Eve. It was not God who led Eve to sin but her own will. Clearly God did not desire that they would sin seeing as how He had told them to not eat of the Tree, and yet He knew they would fall and did not prevent it. If God is sovereign then it must have been according to His own purposes and will. If it were not so then God would not be sovereign.
But it is different to say that we allow something to happen and we cause something to happen. I could say to my kids that I am going to the store in five minutes and if they have their room picked up and shoes on they can go. If at the end of that five minutes they are still playing in the land of blocks everywhere having done neither of the things which I asked. I leave them with their mother even though they are mad at me, and will probably cry. I give them specific instructions about the conditions by which they may go to the store. I really want them to obey me and I want to take them to the store. They don't obey me and they don't go. Is it under my authority to force them to clean their room or even clean it for them? Yes. Will I? Not a chance. Have I done them wrong by allowing them to disobey me? No. Did I cause the disobedience? No. So if my children choose to disobey me they do so out of their own volition completely apart from my will, and my not helping them does no violence to them and neither does it make me a bad dad when I don't take them.
Well the same is true of God. God may allow us to sin, know we will sin and not prevent us from sinning, but in so doing He has done us no wrong. However the difference between me and God is that He is totally sovereign over the state of my kids room (which is proof positive that He wills disaster) as well as everything else. So when we sin He is sovereign over that and is working out history according to His will which includes my sin.
Ah, but sin is not God's will but man's.
True, God does not cause us to sin and God gave us free will.
And...
I fail to see why this supposed to be some sort of great argument for God's role in the existence of evil. It goes something like this. Man has free will and can therefore choose to not obey God and therefore it is not God's will that man sins.
Wow so many things wrong with this one.
First off is that at the most shallow level it could almost be true. But that is like saying the ocean is big and blue. Even if i is true it is not helpful if you are trying to find Venice Beach.
Second is that if God gave men free will and is not responsible at least in a secondary manner for the wickedness that men do then we can only draw one of two conclusions; one God had no idea what would happen when He gave men free will or two God in giving man free will surrendered His right to rule over His Creation.
If God gave men free will not knowing that they would sin then clearly God is not omniscient. How could God know everything and not know that? So if we are going to assert that God does in fact know everything perfectly then we must also assert in the giving of free will to men that God knew man would fall and therefore man's fall is according to God's will.
Or if God knew that man would fall and did His best to prevent it it but just couldn't the Rabbi Kushner is right and God is doing His best and we need to forgive Him for being a doddering old fart. After all, if God could not prevent man from sinning because man has free will then man is god now and god is irrelevant. What is the purpose for prophesy in such an idea? If God cannot overrule man's will then all man need do concerning the Second Coming, the end of sin and God's eternal rule in His Kingdom is say, "No we like it this way and choose to not have this whole Revelation thing come down," and God will be forced to smack His open palm to His forehead and yell, "Oh man! I had no idea it would come to this! I would never have written the Book if I had known they would say no! WHO TOLD THEM THEY COULD SAY NO!!!!"
No! It does not work. If we are to trust in God that He will keep His word we must first trust that He has the power to perform His word. We cannot say God is sovereign over everything excepting man's will excepting prophesy which is a special exemption. That is absurdity.
God is sovereign.
God did will man would have volition.
God did know man would fall when He did this.
God did not compel men to fall.
God did not prevent man's fall, and thus inescapably allowed it.
Therefore God knew evil would come into His Creation as a direct result of His creating.
Therefore God is responsible, even if secondarily, for the evil in the world.
This is not heresy, it is the ordination of a sovereign God over all things.
But how could God have allowed these things to happen and still be good?
I don't know. But the Bible gives us a hint, and it God's glory.
It is late and I am going to bed, I will pick this up tomorrow.
God Bless.
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