The problem for traditional, orthodox mainstream Christian Churches is that they make a very Big Thing about the creator deity being Omni-God - but when it comes to the free will of Men... Well, freedom is accorded much, much less significance.
On the one hand; Omni-God is absolutely mandatory - the church member must swear to that concept.
On the other hand; each Man's freedom... well, it is supposed to be present and effective. Christians are supposed to be able to choose our values, commitments, behaviours - either because we get divinely evaluated on them, or else simply because these decisions have consequences related to salvation.
However; both in theory and in practice, freedom may be (more, or less) dispensed-with by this type of Christianity. At the very least least, Man's freedom gets so hedged-about with so many caveats, that when it comes to the crunch - e.g. when it comes to a conflict between Man's Freedom and God's Omni-status... well, agency means little or nothing.
Omni-God Must Be - but Man's Freedom is something rather difficult, something we are allowed to doubt and debate...
In the crunch, Omni-God prevails and freedom is imprisoned, and perhaps forgotten.
Looking at a couple of Protestant documents: The Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 are (in theory, if not in practice) the confession of the Church of England, and all the other churches in the Anglican communion - third largest in the world. This has as its first item of faith, the Omni-God:
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.
The Westminster Confession of Faith from 1646 is the basis for several nonconformist groups, including the Presbyterians. This is more explicit, and hard-line, in its Omni-Goddism than the 39 Articles; and requires affirmation of a conception of the God that would (of itself) probably satisfy the most ardent pure-monotheist:
There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal most just and terrible in His judgments; hating all sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty.
God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them; He is the alone foundation of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom, are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them, whatsoever Himself pleaseth. In His sight all things are open and manifest; His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature; so as nothing is to Him contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all His counsels, in all His works, and in all His commands. To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them.
39 Articles: The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.
8 comments:
In the Bible Satan seems to act as if were possible for God to be defeated. This isn't to say it was probable, but his rebellion in heaven makes no sense if it were categorically impossible for him to have success. Satan's behavior implies that Omni-God isn't a metaphysical reality.
The idea that God could have lost, however improbable that outcome might have been, is what allows me to conceive of freedom as a meaningful concept.
@Derek - That is how it looks to me, too (from my Much lesser knowledge of the OT, than yours).
My understanding is that there was - and is - a sense in which God (the Father) can lose in this world; which is why Jesus Christ was/is so vital, in his "second creation" of Heaven.
What I mean is first that death cannot be eradicated from this mortal world of our experience. God can keep creating mortal life, but it will keep dying.
And there is a continual battle of God against evil. God can continue creating mortals, but the devil's party continues to accumulate "personnel", and can increase subversion.
This is not a matter of freedom as such, but a matter of the fact that beings just-are-free because not wholly of-God, because co-eternal in their existence and separate . What God can do for beings, can be undone by their choice.
The possibility for God to win eternally is also the consequence of freedom - it happens only because beings choose to follow Jesus Christ (to resurrected life in Heaven - which is free from evil, by the consent of resurrecting beings.
This is bound-up with Heaven being free of death - evil and entropy are both left-behind in resurrection.
In an ultimate sense, evil is against God's creation, and the only place that can ultimately go, is the ultimate death of uncreated chaos. This is why I regard spiteful destructiveness as the most extreme form of evil.
Hello, Dr. Charlton. I've been reading your work for about 2-3 months now and I've found it very enlightening on several fronts. Others have mentioned how, in spite of your apparently lower estimation of it, the Old Testament seems to dovetail quite nicely into your estimation of God as primarily Personal, rather than Philosophical. In this post's theme, I would propose a notion of (as far as I can tell) my own origination which I think harmonizes God's non-Omniscience (as you, and now I, reckon it) with His apparent ability to orchestrate events. My thought could be summarized as this:
"Imperfect Beings (meaning those that are not Complete) are necessarily predictable; a Being becomes less predictable as it nears Perfection/Completion."
A very simple illustration would be a shopping-cart at a grocery store. When the four wheels are balanced, it can take its full range of movement more or less with equal ease. When the wheels are Not balanced, it will tend to list either to one side or the other in a predictable fashion.
Extrapolating this out to Man, we can see that even the merchants' unthinking algorithms are able to predict the tendencies of people based on their spending habits; how much more, then, should God (who is, at least, necessarily the Most Intelligent, Wise, Insightful, etc. of all Beings) be able to determine the tendencies of those same Beings? I take it as a given that, He is Not Omnipresent, He is at least able to go anywhere He pleases in very little time (I tend, for simple need of an illustration, to apply the classic conception of Worm-Holes; namely that he can "fold space", as it were, to put disparate locations momentarily close together and make passage instantaneous).
God, under this understanding, is not able to read or see-into our Souls, as such, but He is quite capable of searching out the fullness of what is going on in our bodies, which includes our brains. Thus, if we suppose that to be further from Perfection is, necessarily, to be more Worldly (more of such a person's behavior is contingent on their physical state, rather than spontaneously-creative Soul activity), the more Worldly a person is, the easier it is for God to predict that person's behavior and fit it into His intentions. Judas could be drafted for the role of the Betrayer precisely because he had a weakness for money, for example.
When Moses writes about God "hardening" Pharaoh's heart, what I take this to mean is that (by some means, perhaps subliminal suggestion?) God provoked Pharaoh to ignore the strictly-pragmatic considerations weighing on his actions (the need and desire to escape the plagues) and to do what he really Wanted to do, to act on his most essential Motivations, rather than be merely directed by practical necessity; meaning that Pharaoh was actually free to repent and do the right thing toward the Hebrews of his own accord (contra how some people interpret Paul's reference in Romans 9).
While many Christians articulate this [i.e. our lack of freedom and agency) as something they (purport to) believe in, and that it forms a prominent part of their belief system. Yet, my experience is that even among the most hard-core Hyper-Calvinist, NO ONE actually lives their life in its day-to-day particulars as if they belief this. When it comes to any decision made in the moment with regard to a specific situation in front of one's face, no one believes he lacks freedom or agency. So while this idea appears to have a sort of out-sized theological significance at the theoretical and systematizing level; however it plays next to no role in how people live their lives. Of course, after the circumstances of a decision or a circumstance have played themselves out ("God allowed me to get sick so that I would better learn to accept and made peace with suffering" etc etc), people often read something like a lack of agency back onto the situation in hindsight, but that is -- in my view -- significantly different from holding that a decision I am making in the here and now is literally not within my control. (This is one of my major issues with Calvinists: They don't live their lives as if they lack freedom and agency!)
Not sure if you agree with how I am framing this.
And maybe the implications of this distinction don't matter as much as I may be implying: I.e., even if it is "only" a theological construct, rather than a default way of acting in the world, it may still have repercussions because the implications of a worldview play out in ways aside from immediate decision-making.
And perhaps more to your point: The key issue here is that people are lying to themselves about what they _actually_ believe; "revealed preference" and all that.
@Daniel - I thin you are re-stating what I also believe. But I am quite clear that saying one thing, and doing another - while it was possible to Man in the past - does not work here and now, where almost the whole apparatus of civilization is organized to expose, ridicule, subvert and invert Christianity.
That the current complex-fuzzy confusion does not work, and is killing Christianity, ought to have been obvious from how the churches behaved in 2020 - but people seem to have forgotten this, minimized its significance, or else forgiven the churches what they never repented.
Got it, and yes, as I worked through my comment, I realized I was essentially restating your position.
And the current structure of Christianity (other than perhaps Mormonism) is not equipped to handle your ideas because it will respond that these questions have all been answered, and then refer you to The Answers(TM), usually without having even fully understood the problem or paradox you have placed in front of them...
@Daniel - As I see it, the problems are very simple and obvious (i.e. Jesus cannot be both a mortal man And the eternal God; the Trinity cannot Also be one; God cannot be omni and men Also be free) ; while the Trademark "Answers" are extremely complex and abstract - so people can fool themselves into thinking that they themselves understand the "Answers", but those who question them do not.
Daniel,
"So while this idea appears to have a sort of out-sized theological significance at the theoretical and systematizing level; however it plays next to no role in how people live their lives."
I've noticed this exact thing in my discussion of the Trinity (on my blog). Pastors and theologians give an out-sized significance to the doctrine of the Trinity—which is paradoxically defined—but studies show that a majority of Christians can't describe it without using heretical terms.
For something so supposedly important, people do not perform as if they believe it actually is.
Bruce has written a lot about bureaucracy and the slavish desire to check boxes. Christianity has a lot of box-checking doctrines that people don't care much about and don't actually matter. And just like secular bureaucracy crushes institutions by its inanity, the same has happened in the church.
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