Part 3: A Preliminary Response

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the foreknowledge of God in this address from The Gospel Coalition.

It was Shakespeare who wrote, “In religion, what damned error, but some sober brow will bless it and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness with fair ornament?” No doubt, we are all capable of using texts in the wrong way to hide the grossness with fair ornament, but part of the concern for the next hour or two I have with you is to work through large numbers of texts.

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What I propose to do here is to get as far as I can by reconsidering many of the texts I looked at an hour ago, pausing long enough to integrate theological reflection on the way through the exposition without spending a lot of time on the undergirding theology. We’ll return to that tomorrow.

Detailed consideration of theological, philological, philosophical, methodological, and historical issues … As important as they are, many of them are just going to have to wait. There’s just not enough time. Besides, as I’ve indicated already, some of those things are already pretty well treated by Bruce Weir. What I’m going to do is begin with the same order Boyd adopts.

1. Passages and categories that ostensibly are in support of classical theism

 In other words, I want to look at some of the same texts to see if he has interpreted them fairly. After that, we’ll turn to the sorts of texts he adduces in favor of openness theology and see if he has handled those texts fairly. Here and there we’ll stop for some of the larger hermeneutical issues that are involved.

A) Passages with God declaring his intentions

Passages like Isaiah 46 and 48. In those two chapters, it’s very important to recognize God is overtly comparing himself and contrasting himself with false gods who don’t know the future and can’t be relied upon to get things right. That’s what those chapters are about.

By contrast, God is the one who does get it right. He not only knows the future but controls the future. In that connection, then, it seems less than cogent to argue all the passage requires is that God gets some of it right and doesn’t know about the rest or doesn’t care about the rest or can’t predict the rest.

There is nothing in those chapters that makes those caveats. In other words, that’s being imported by an alien structure. Once you’ve assumed already that God is finite, you could just about get away with understanding those passages that way, but those passages don’t tend in that direction. In fact, what it would almost suggest is God is statistically superior to the other gods but that’s all. In other words, he gets it right more often because he knows more than they do.

But the argument of the two chapters is rather different. The argument of the two chapters is, “I know the end from the beginning. Which of you can predict the way things are going to happen? I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. I’ll raise up my servant Cyrus.” Within that kind of sweeping insistence that God is the God who can be trusted precisely because he does know and control the future, to argue instead it’s only so in some cases and, therefore, he’s merely statistically superior strikes me as an intrinsically implausible argument.

Not least, after all, when passages like Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 lay down tests for the true prophet. The true prophet is the one who, when he predicts something will happen it does happen.

B) Passages with foreknowledge of Israel’s future 

Some of the passages that are quoted in this respect include the 400 years predicted in Genesis 15, the 70 years predicted in Jeremiah 29, and that sort of thing, but to guarantee those details work out flawlessly, God certainly has to intervene at some point in human hearts. That raises a question to which I shall return several times, but let me raise it for the first time here.

Both Boyd and Sanders would agree in some cases God does directly intervene so that people come out with certain decisions a certain way. How that’s worded, I’ll come back to. To predict the exile (wherever you begin its opening and wherever you end it) will last 70 years presupposes at some point God has to intervene in some ways to make sure things come out in a certain way. Otherwise, at best, it’s sort of a statistical hope that it comes out pretty close to that, “Because I’m pretty good at predicting how nations interact.”

But as soon as you start saying God can intervene in an individual human decision, then the decision not to intervene is also a decision. You’re suddenly now at a place where you are no longer saying there are certain things God can’t do; you’re saying God is choosing in some cases not to do them, which is one of the reasons why, in this openness of God debate, you find quite different positions sometimes being espoused by the same writer in different passages.

Sometimes it is being argued God does not know and cannot know the free contingent future decision, and in other passages people are saying God chooses not to know or God chooses not to intervene or God chooses not to control here. That becomes really important in certain passages, as we’ll see.

Moreover, when Daniel prays, was Daniel simply saying, “Lord, you did promise 70 years. My guess is a wheel is going to come off here unless I pray and intercede with you to keep your word. You were just making a statistical prediction, but I would really like you to carry this out to the letter,” so, therefore, Daniel’s prayer makes the decisive difference in ending it in 70 years?

Or instead is Daniel’s prayer of the sort that says, “O, Lord God, this is what you predicted; now fulfill your word”? Does this provide a way of thinking about how we interact with God, and interact we do, in the light of his Word? We’ll come back to that one.

C) Passages with prophecies regarding individuals

Do you recall what Sanders says in particular? “God ‘sets strict parameters’ around Cyrus’ parents, around the freedom of his parents in naming their son Cyrus and also Josiah.” What does that mean, to set strict parameters around the parents so they have to name him Cyrus? As far as I can see, that means he controlled them.

If he sets strict parameters so that, at the end of the day, they called him the only thing they could call him for God’s prophecy to work out, then in this particular case, God is operating such that they name the kid Cyrus. You can call that sovereignty, you can call it control, you can call it secondary causality, you can call it anything you like, or you can actually say he set strict parameters, but the result is the same. God has done it. God has guaranteed it’s going to come out that way.

This is the kind of individual result that is like the movements of nations and so on. In some instances, God does control things (if you prefer the language of “set strict parameters around so it comes out that way,” I bow to your choice of words), but in some cases, God is controlling things so even the nitpicky choice, the future free contingent decision of a parent to name a child this and not that is in God’s hand a couple of centuries before it takes place, which means God can do it.

Nor are we to think there is anything in the text that suggests we’re saying, “Oh, boy. I don’t want to call this kid Cyrus, but something has empowered me inside against my will to call this kid Cyrus.” There’s no hint that’s what is going on, is there? In other words, this setting of the parameters so that out comes Cyrus is merely in line with what classic Christianity, whether Arminian or Calvinist, has always said.

Namely, that God works through all kinds of strict parameters. Call it whatever you like! Through the mysteries of providence, through personality and genes and who knows what to bring about a decision he himself has predicted and, indeed, in predicting it ordained without the parents in any sense doing other than what they want to do. They wanted to name their kid Cyrus.

How God did all of that, I don’t know. Maybe the Lord sovereignly arranged that there were all kinds of nice people named Cyrus who were brought into the life of the parents so that Cyrus was a happy name. You know how you come to naming your kids and some names are happy for you and some names have really abysmal associations? If you were brought up with a bully named Quincy, there’s no way you’re going to name your kid Quincy.

If, on the other hand, Quincy has just wonderful overtones of a happy heritage and playful youth and a dearly beloved uncle, you might call your kid Quincy. Poor kid. But you might. You might. Maybe the Lord intervened in that way, but even then, it’s only a statistical chance, isn’t it? Maybe one kid was brought up with a lot of happy people named Cyrus, but maybe his wife was brought up with some who were miserable. “Yes, we do like Cyrus, but you know, my great uncle was called John, so we really ought to call him John and not Cyrus.”

How does the Lord bring it about so that at the end of the day you get a Cyrus as God predicted two centuries in advance? Well, God sets strict parameters. It sounds like divine sovereignty to me by another name. As soon as you say God can do these things without impugning the voluntary choice of the parents of Cyrus to give him the name Cyrus, you’ve opened up through the backdoor all of the classical approach to God’s sovereignty in the first place.

In other words, I don’t see how you can avoid that sort of thinking about how God operates. I don’t see how you can avoid it at some domain and be a Christian at all. In fact, they don’t avoid it. They are forced in passages like that, you see, to recognize God does set strict parameters.

D) Passages with foreknowledge of predictable characters

One of the examples chosen is Peter’s denial in Matthew 26:33–35. It’s one thing for Christ to say, “Peter, I know you. You really are a bull in a china shop, and I predict, quite frankly, despite all your promises you’re going to disown me.” That would be one thing. It would be based on not more than astute character assessment.

But when the prediction says, “Peter, I tell you the truth. Before the cock crows, you will disown me three times,” that’s more than character assessment. That’s all the way down to the scandal of historical particularity, and the truth of the matter is, although Peter heard that particular prediction, he didn’t believe it because at that point, he says, “Though all forsake you, yet not I.”

He didn’t believe it, and he did it anyway, and he couldn’t help remembering what Christ had predicted, but that didn’t mean Peter, then, said, “Well, it wasn’t really my fault. Christ predicted it, so it wasn’t my fault. I just did what God in his sovereignty had worked out.” No, no, no. He wept bitterly because he saw, even though the thing had been predicted and, therefore, did take place, he was himself personally responsible for what he said and did and wept bitterly.

That comes already much closer to classic notions of compatibilism. I’m siding into compatibilism, you will find in due course, and I’m simply saying at this point all of these passages feel like that sort of thing in which God is sovereign. Christ does know in this case what will happen all the way down to historical particularity, not merely the flaws in principle of some character but all the way down to specific historical events.

Yet, the human beings who act in those events to bring about God’s purposes are responsible for what they do and see themselves that way. What do you do with Judas again in chapter 6 of John’s gospel, verse 64 or chapter 17, verse 12? What does the text say? Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him (was that merely character assessment?) and then says certain things and prays certain things so Scripture might be fulfilled.

If it’s only character assessment and this on a sort of basis of statistical averages and that sort of thing, then supposing Jesus had eventually discovered none of the Twelve was suitable betrayal material. Would that mean he’d have to add a thirteenth candidate to the apostolic band just to get this Scripture fulfilled?

It raises, you see, far more problems than it solves to make this sort of passage nothing more than an assessment of character. Undoubtedly, Christ does assess character, but he’s claiming this is coming about, not only because he assesses character, but because he knows what’s there from the beginning and this had to happen so Scripture would be fulfilled, which sounds far more controlled, determined. I don’t like deterministic because that sounds as if it’s eliminating human responsibility, but certainly controlled and determined.

I’m now going to change the order from the passages that Boyd and others raised to get to one of the central issues.

2. Passages that deal with the foreordaining of Christ’s death

Turn now, if you will, to Acts. I’ll begin with Acts 2, and then we’ll go to Acts 4. Acts 2:22: “Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”

What is said about this passage is God determined Christ would die (that was God’s set purpose), but he did not predict which individuals would ultimately be responsible for it. You could just about get away with that reading of 2:23. You could just about get away with it if you’ve already found adequate reason elsewhere for buying into a finite God, but I don’t think you can get away with it in chapter 4.

In chapter 4, you face the first whiff of persecution, and on their release, Peter and John go back to their own people (4:23), to the Christians. They report everything that is said, and the Christians begin to pray. Verse 24: “Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” That’s very interesting they should start facing issues of persecution by confessing God’s sovereignty.

“You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one.’ Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.” Verse 28: “They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”

Sanders argues all that passage requires us to believe is that God ordained the crucifixion but did not ordain who would be the crucifiers, who would be the evil people, who would be the political manipulators. He knew the world was bad enough that if he put his Son into it there would be revulsion and, ultimately, this sort of end, and it determined, actually, that he be crucified.

He wasn’t going to be stoned to death. He had to be crucified, and he had to make it without having bones broken because that had been predicted. He couldn’t be stoned, but he didn’t ordain any individual to a particular task or role in the crucifixion of Christ, but is that what the passage says?

“Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus …” There’s a conspiracy. There is human guilt. “They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.” They did this. I’m going to mention a couple of other passages before we come back to this one again.

Consider Genesis 50, verses 19 and 20, another well-known passage. In this case, the brothers are coming to Joseph after their father has died, and they’re afraid Joseph will turn on them. He replies, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Let’s just think about that passage for a moment before we look at two or three more and then come back to the Acts 4:28 one again. What does this passage not say? This passage does not say, “God had intended to send me down to Egypt in an air-conditioned chariot so I could save people from the famine. Unfortunately, you guys mucked up his plan, and I went down instead as a slave and landed in prison and all of that. It took God a lot of moves in the chess game to sort that one out, but God intended it for good, and you chaps mucked it up.”

It doesn’t say that, nor does it say, “God wasn’t watching that day, but you sold me into slavery. Then, when the famine came up and all the things related to that, God came in like a rescuer on a white charger to save the day and turn around your evil. First, there was evil. Then God came in and saved the day.” It doesn’t say that. It says in one and the same event, in the betrayal, the move down to Egypt, and the whole bit, you intended it for evil and God intended it for good. That’s compatibilism.

Try another passage. Isaiah 10. This is a very interesting one. God is speaking now through the prophet Isaiah pronouncing a woe, in principle, on the Assyrian who is going to be used by God to chasten his people, and God says in chapter 10 of Isaiah, verse 5, “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.”

Get this. God is sending Assyria to do all of this, and the people against whom he is sending Assyria is his own covenant people. “But this is not what he intends …” In other words, Isaiah says Assyria does not say, “Yes, I’ll go along as God’s instrument.” That’s not what Assyria is thinking. “… this is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations. ‘Are not my commanders all kings?’ he says.” Even his generals are the equivalents of kings in other cultures.

“Has not Calno fared like Carchemish?” All cities along the battle trail that had been destroyed. “Is not Hamath like Arpad, and Samaria like Damascus? How is Samaria going to stand up? Samaria is no different from Damascus. Damascus had already been crushed by me. You wait. You’ll see what I can do with Samaria as well.

As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols, kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria—shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images as I dealt with Samaria and her idols? When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem …” When he has finished his work by using Assyria to chasten his covenant community, “… he will say, ‘I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes.’ For he says …”

That is, Assyria says, “By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding. I removed the boundaries of nations, I plundered their treasures.” God responds (verse 15), “Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it, or the saw boast against the one who uses it?”

In other words, in God’s eyes mighty Assyria is nothing more than a tool in God’s hands, and for Assyria to come back and say, “I’m not just a tool; I’m doing this all by myself,” is such enormous hubris that at the end of the day God is going to come down on them, too. “As if a rod were to wield the person who lifts it up, or a club brandish him who is not wood! Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors; under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame. The Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame; in a single day it will burn and consume his thorns and his briers.”

That’s compatibilism. Do you see what’s being said there? It’s not even that God permits Assyria to do this sort of thing. God is said to send Assyria to do this sort of thing and then holds Assyria responsible for thinking that it’s doing it on its own. Assyria thinks not, “I have to beat up the Lord’s covenant community because God is forcing me to.” No. What Assyria thinks is, “Whoopee! Isn’t this fun? More rape and pillage!” Therefore, God holds them accountable as well.

Let me define compatibilism. Compatibilism is nothing other than the view that the following two statements are both true. First, God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never removes or mitigates human responsibility. Secondly, human beings are morally responsible creatures. By this, I mean they choose, they believe, they disbelieve, they obey, they disobey, and their actions are significant.

Human beings are morally responsible creatures, but the exercise of their responsibility never makes God absolutely contingent. I say absolutely contingent because in the play of the biblical narrative, often God is relatively contingent. I’ll come back to that one later. My point is in these passages, both of those truths held together are necessary to make sense of the text. I don’t see how you can make sense of this text without distorting the text unless you believe both of those things at the same time.

With respect to Joseph, it’s not as if the evil people had free course and then God did his bit (they made a play and then God made a play), nor is it that God made a play, and they made a play and mucked it up, but in one and the same event God was operating in a way that was good and with good intent, and they were operating in a way that was evil and with evil intent.

In one and the same event, God was operating sovereignly. Yet, this did not mitigate the responsibility of the brothers for what they did. In one and the same event, the brothers were held accountable for all the evil they did, but that didn’t mean God was asleep that day or had taken a walk or was going to have to come in a white charger after the event.

Rather, in that event itself, God was sovereignly working out his pleasure. That’s all that compatibilism is. Don’t call it, in the first instance, a philosophical construct that is extra-biblical. The term is extra-biblical in exactly the same way the word Trinity is extra-biblical, but what I would want to argue is Christian biblical monotheism is profoundly compatibilistic.

When you come to Isaiah 10, likewise, there is no way to avoid the conclusion God himself used the Assyrians who were infamous in the ancient world for their ferocity, their viciousness, their rape and pillage. God used them as a tool against his own people, and this was God’s doing. Yet, they acted in such a way that God then held them to account for what they did.

I know that raises huge questions about the complexities of secondary causality and all those sorts of things. You can start worrying, “How can this be? How does it work out?” We can probe the edges of that a little later if we have time, but to begin with just begin with the text. On the face of things, it seems to me, if you take the text at face value, that’s what these texts say.

Now you come back to Acts, chapter 4, verses 27 and 28. “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate and all the leaders of the Jews conspired against your holy servant Jesus. They did what your hand had determined beforehand should be done.” Can you imagine it any other way? Can you imagine it was just that God was actually hoping Jesus would get by scot-free, but unfortunately, these wicked guys came along and sort of mucked up his plans?

Can you imagine it was just God figured out with the perversity of human nature and his deep grasp of how sinful and alien it was, that when he sent forth his Son, his own sovereign plan to bring about his crucifixion would be taking place and he didn’t himself quite know by whom or how or under what circumstances?

Mind you, the laws of the day meant only Pontius Pilate could, in that political structure, have ordained that Jesus be crucified. After all, it required the governor to sign off on stuff like that. Nevertheless, God didn’t know who would actually be responsible. He didn’t know that. He just ordained instead that Christ would eventually suffer. Then those chaps came along and did their bit perfectly and freely without any sort of constraint whatsoever so that, at the end of the day, God’s plans worked out. Is that what the text is saying?

Or do you want the text to say God had worked the whole thing out with such utter deterministic control that, at the end of the day, Pilate didn’t want to do this, Herod wouldn’t have done it, but they were puppets. They were robots. You can’t blame them. God had determined the whole thing in advance, and because God is so sovereign and worked out all the details and Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundations of the earth, you can’t blame the crucifiers. After all, they’re just doing what God had ordained.

In which case, how can the text in verse 27 speak of a conspiracy? How can you start saying of Judas it would have been better for him never to have been born? But if you hold to compatibilism, don’t these pair of verses make sense? I know there’s a central mystery to compatibilism (we’ll come to that), but once you see compatibilism is taught in a monotheistic universe, then aren’t you simultaneously saying God is absolutely sovereign and he brings this whole thing to pass?

But that never mitigates human responsibility. Herod is responsible. Pilate is responsible. The people are responsible. God help us, you and I are responsible. But just because we’re responsible for our deeds, and we do choose and believe and all those sorts of things or disbelieve and disobey, that does not mean God is thereby rendered absolutely contingent. That presupposes a certain definition of libertarian freedom, and other possibilities are open to us, as we’ll see in due course.

I want to argue, finally, it’s impossible to make sense of the cross, in my view, without some notion of compatibilism. I don’t think you can. Let me venture on a small excursus here. At Trinity I teach two doctoral seminars that deal with the use of the Old Testament in the New. These are PhD seminars, and a lot of the discussion is technical. It’s all the way down to how some particular text is quoting the Old Testament and what text is being used and how does this fulfill and all of this sort of thing.

What we discover is a great deal of the prophecy fulfillment language that is used in the New Testament is really bound up with profound typologies. There is a great deal of New Testament fulfilled prophecy that is not bound up with the fulfillment of a particular verbal prediction. Some of them are, like the prediction that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). That’s a verbal prediction and Jesus fulfills it.

But a lot of the fulfillment passages in the New Testament turn, in fact, on huge typologies which is one of the reasons why some of us sometimes in our early stages of Bible reading feel just a wee bit uncomfortable with the way the New Testament uses the Old. Do you ever feel like that?

You’re not supposed to admit it. You know, it’s God’s inerrant Word and all that, but deep down you think, “Boy, if I handle the Old Testament like that, my professor at seminary would clobber me.” Deep down we wonder once in a while, “Why doesn’t God give some really massive, unavoidably explicit prophecies in the Old Testament?”

So I offer you one. Here is Isaiah 53 according to Carson. This is how Carson would have written Isaiah 53 on this mode of thinking. “ ‘And it shall come to pass in those days,’ saith the Lord, ‘that there shall be a young woman by the name of Mary living in Nazareth who will be betrothed to a young artisan called Joseph. In my sovereignty, I will ordain Caesar Augustus in Rome will issue a decree that the entire Roman world should be enrolled.’ ”

Footnote: I know the Roman Empire at this point doesn’t exist. I know we’re still in the days of the Assyrians, and after the Assyrians come the neo-Babylonians, and after them the Medes and the Persians, and after them the Greeks. Then it splits up into four kingdoms under them. Then there is sort of chaos everywhere. Then the Romans begin to take over. I know at the moment a bunch of little villages on the Left Bank of the Tiber, but believe me, eventually there will be a Roman Empire, and the head of that whole show will be called Caesar. Trust me. Back to the text.

“As a result, Joseph and his bride will travel down to Bethlehem because they are of the lineage of David. It will come to pass …” You work out all the details: the magi coming and who is on the throne. Name Herod. Name the blighter in advance. Get it down. Ultimately, you move on to all the healings and the actual words Jesus teaches.

You come all the way to the passion narrative, and you name Pilate and the hand washing. “He’s going to wash his hands, and his wife is going to warn him, but he’s going to wash his hands in any case. Then he’s going to pronounce judgment.” You have it all down there 700 years before Christ. That would be a wingding of a prophecy, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that confound the skeptics?

And even if somebody wanted to late date Isaiah and say it was Maccabean, at the end of the day, you have those wretched Qumran manuscripts that are clearly at least two centuries before Jesus naming all these blokes before they’re born. Wouldn’t that help in terms of the Bible’s credibility? Wouldn’t that make much better prophecy? Typology, for goodness’ sake … You don’t see it till after the fact half the time. Wouldn’t that be an improved Bible?

Now put yourself in Pilate’s place. “This sure has been an interesting few years. All these predictions about Jesus coming true explicitly, and I’m next. There’s that bowl of water. There’s no way I’m going to wash my hands. No way. No way.” His wife comes in and says, “Dear, don’t wash your hands. I’ve had a dream.”

“I didn’t want to tell you this, but I have to!” Then his hands are suddenly dragged by divine mystery over to the basin so he actually washes his hands despite himself. Do you begin to see the problem? You think we have problems with compatibilism now? If I rewrote the Bible with my sort of predictions, boy, would we have problems with compatibilism!

In fact, what we have is a God who has worked so sublimely and perfectly that pattern after pattern after pattern, sometimes in explicit verbal prediction and sometimes in complex typology whose matrix is seen only as you move on with time and some of whose parts you only see in retrospect, works all of these things out so that those with eyes to see after the fact can in truth see Jesus is the foreordained temple and the foreordained priest and the foreordained Davidic Son and the foreordained Lamb and the foreordained Passover.

You can see the patterns there. In fact, you can begin to see, even within the Old Testament structure, there are clues and evidences these things had to come about this way. That’s one of the arguments of the epistle to the Hebrews. The epistle to the Hebrews is constantly showing in the Old Testament text, if only people had eyes to see, they could have, they should have seen how these things were being predicted in these typological patterns.

That’s why Jesus himself, after the resurrection in Luke 24, can berate his own disciples and say, “O, fools and slow of heart not to believe all the prophets have written. Ought not the Christ to have suffered?” That didn’t mean anybody saw it, not even his own disciples! There’s Peter at Caesarea Philippi saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus begins to talk about how he has to die. “Not you, Lord. That doesn’t happen. Messiahs live; they don’t die. They win. They triumph. You don’t die. That’s a bit silly, Lord. You’ve gone over the top on this one.” They didn’t see it. Then after the resurrection, they have the cheek to stand up and preach again and again and again, “This is what the Bible says. This is what the Bible says. This is what the Bible says. We misinterpreted the Bible, and that’s what you’re doing, too.”

Thus, after the fact, you see how these things interweave and work together and are sovereignly brought about so the most explicit things that are said about David in Psalm 69 are applied to Jesus in the passion narrative: betrayed by his own familiar friend, drinking gall, all kinds of things, explicit things that are bound up with deep typologies not with simple verbal predictions.

Because God in his mysterious sovereignty worked these things out so people as they discharge their human relationships, as they live things out, they did them with the self-consciousness that they were doing these things “freely.” Not without absolute power to contrary. No. God was working these things out. Someone has coined the expression, “God set the parameters.” In fact, he set the parameters all the way down so it worked out exactly like that while the people themselves were actually making the choices.

We’re to come away from this with a sense of mystery and reverence and awe, with a sense of profound gratitude that God could be so explicit, perhaps 300 predictions concerning the first coming of Christ but maybe 90 or 95 percent of them bound up in typological categories precisely so you don’t end up in the idiocy of Carson’s Isaiah 53, yet you still see how this sovereign God brought things together for his own good purpose and pleasure. That’s elementary compatibilism. It’s bound up with the way the entire Canon is constructed. This is not a peripheral mistake.

3. Passages that speak of predestining the church and the like (Ephesians 1:4 and such passages) or God’s foreknowing and predestining Christians and the golden chain of Romans 8:29

What do we make of these passages? Is it enough simply to say God foreordained or predestined the church as a whole body but none of the individuals in it? Will that do? Does it handle the language?

I’d be the first to acknowledge there are a lot of Pauline passages which we individualize too quickly. We think individualistically in the West, and some cultures (a lot of sub-Saharan black Africa, for example) think corporately or communitarian much more quickly than we do, so I’d be the first to acknowledge there is something to be said for that view.

On the other hand, in the so-called golden chain, for example, we read, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” It’s in the plural, but it’s a kind of collective plural. It’s those people. It’s not just the church as an abstract body regardless of who was in it.

Thus, you have the sweeping claim of Jesus, “I know my sheep. No one will pluck them out of my hand.” Does that mean, “I know my sheep collectively, but I don’t know the individuals very well, and some of them might pluck some of them out, but not the sheep as a whole”? What will you then do with a passage like John 6, verses 37 and following?

“All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” Literally, in Greek, “I will not lose one of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” Verse 40: “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

I want to deal with this passage a little more in tomorrow morning’s sermon, but let me at least say this. Verse 37 is often, I think, misunderstood. Norman Geisler views this as what he calls a Calminian passage. I don’t like these historical categories in any case. They’re a bit deceiving, but by this he means in the first part all the Calvinists say, “Amen,” and in the second part all the Arminians say, “Amen.”

“All those the Father gives to me will come to me …” Calvinists say, “Amen.” “… and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” All the Arminians say, “Amen.” Which part you quote just depends on what tradition you’re from, and that’s all there is to it, but that rather misunderstands the text because, in the second part, the “drive away” or the “cast out” (it’s ekballō in Greek) presupposes the person is already in. It’s a litotes, a literary figure in which you affirm something by denying the opposite.

For example, “How many people were at the theater last night?” “Oh, not a few.” What do you mean by not a few? You mean many. You’ve denied the few. Thus, you are affirming the many. There are a lot of litotes like that in the English language. When he says here (verse 37),

“Whoever comes to me I will never drive away,” does he mean, “Whoever comes to me, therefore, I will not not drive away but I will keep them in”? or does it mean, “I will welcome them in”? Which does it mean in the context?

The view that this is basically an Arminian text says this second part means, “I will welcome them in when they come. If they come to me, I will welcome them in. I won’t drive them away. I’ll welcome them in.” But in fact, the form of the utterance and the context both suggest he means, “Once they come to me, I won’t let them go. I’ll hold them in. I won’t drive them away. I’ll keep them in.” Do you know why we know it’s saying that? Because of the next verse.

A text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text. Look at the context. “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me [I’m not going to shove them out; I’m going to keep them in]. For …” Verse 38: “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” Then it’s repeated down in verse 40.

That’s the will of God, which means, therefore, the only way Jesus could lose any one of those whom the Father has given him is either by being unable or unwilling to do his Father’s will. That’s what the text says. Don’t misunderstand me. Because I’m a compatibilist, I don’t think that’s merely determinism.

I still insist people must believe, they must continue to obey, they must repent, they must have faith and it is their faith. I still insist on all of those points, but to argue when the Bible speaks of God’s predestining of Christians or the church or that sort of thing, the only thing that is in view is the global entity and not the individual simply isn’t fair to these sorts of texts. They’re just too explicit. They’re either collectives or they’re all the way down to the individual and bound up with the obedience of the Son to his Father.

Now it’s worth pushing just a little more while we’re at this point to reflect a little further on compatibilism. Open God theologians, I think, are constantly forcing a complete antithesis. For example, one of them writes, “The only way to deny that God takes risks is to maintain that everything that occurs in world history is exactly what God wanted to occur,” and this, Boyd says, makes us recoil in horror because it means, ultimately, the Holocaust is God’s, too.

What do you do with a passage like 2 Peter 3:9, he asks. God is “not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.” But if that’s what God honestly wants and all that he wants actually takes place, then either everybody is saved ultimately (and he’s not a Universalist, so he doesn’t come to that conclusion) or God’s very will is sometimes frustrated by our refusal or the Bible speaks of God’s will in different ways, which Boyd, then, is forced to deny. Those are the only options.

If you say there is no libertarian free will, the openness of God theologians argue, God finally is in charge of everything. That’s the antithesis. In other words, if you don’t buy their package, their definition of libertarian free will, then you’re in a world of determinism where God is morally responsible for everything.

If you buy into that antithesis, if those are the only options, then the openness of God theologians will always win, because you will recoil in horror from saying God is directly and immediately responsible for the Holocaust or for anything else (the death of your wife from cancer or whatever). If you buy into that antithesis, if you say those are the only options, you will be driven into the openness of God camp.

One of them writes, “Such a world would at one level be perfect but it would also be perfectly robotic.” What that does is fail to reckon with other alternatives, mediating positions like historical Christian theism. In some ways, both Calvinism and Arminianism are both, in some sense, compatibilistic. They draw some of the lines a little differently, but they deny the only options are these two.

In compatibilism of whatever sort, although Christians want to say God is absolutely sovereign, they still say God stands behind good and evil asymmetrically. He doesn’t stand behind good and evil in exactly the same way. He stands behind the good such that the good is ultimately creditable to him, but he stands behind evil such that the evil is not ultimately creditable to him.

The evil is ultimately credited to secondary causalities. It happens all the time. Although you never escape the outermost bounds of God’s sovereignty, the Bible is careful not to say God stands behind good and evil so he becomes personally amoral. He’s the God who can stand over against evil and be opposed to it and be shocked by it and be grieved by it and oppose it.

Whereas, he does not stand over against good, shocked by it, opposing it. He stands behind good and evil asymmetrically, in other words. That means you have to face the fact that the Bible does speak of the will of God in several different ways. Let me come at this through a side door, if I may.

4. Passages that speak of the love of God

 I would want to argue similarly the Bible speaks of the love of God in several different ways. That’s part of the burden of the little book that was mentioned earlier, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God.

It seems to me, in modern evangelicalism, we’re flattening out things the Bible distinguishes, and we’re ending up with nonsense. Amongst the evangelical clichÈs of the time are the views, for example, that God’s love is always unconditional or God loves everyone exactly the same way. Is that always the case? Let’s back off just a wee bit.

A) Passages that speak of the love of the Father for the Son

For example, John 5. The Father loves the Son. It speaks of the love of the Son for the Father. When the Father loves the Son, he does not love him redemptively because there is nothing to redeem.

He loves him with all the love and the intimacy of preincarnate glory, what we today call Trinitarian love. The manifestation of the love of the Son for the Father is in always doing those things that please the Father, and there’s no touch of redemption in all of that. That’s one way the Bible speaks of the love of God.

B) Passages that speak of his providential love

He’s the God who sends his sun and his rain upon the just and upon the unjust. That’s indistinguishable. In that sense, God loves everybody the same.

C) Passages that speak of God’s yearning, salvific love

“Turn, turn; why will you die? The Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” Even though world there means the whole moral order in rebellion against the Creator not, against some of my Reformed friends, does world there mean the elect. “For God so loved the elect …” It doesn’t mean that. It means God so loved the world. Of course.

What do you do with 1 John 2:2? There is some sense in which the atonement of Christ is precisely embracing enough to bring in not only the people of God but it has potential for all who sin at any time in any place. Of course!

D) Passages that speak of the love of God in an elective sense

Deuteronomy 7; Deuteronomy 10. Why did God choose Israel? Not because Israel was great or mighty or powerful but, “God loved you because he set his affection upon you.” In other words, he loved you because he loved you.

What do you do with Malachi? “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated?” Does God love them the same? Clearly, there is a distinction being made in the love. Paul goes so far as to point out this takes place before they’re even born. Before either of them does anything good or evil, God makes this choice.

E) Passages that speak of what might be called his conditional love

Jude 21. “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” The implication is if you don’t act a certain way, you’re out of the love of God. In John 15, what does Jesus say? “If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love as I obey my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” Isn’t the Decalogue full of that sort of thing? “Showing mercy to the thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” It’s a conditional love.

I want to argue all of those ways of speaking, in one fashion or another, we mirror in our relationships, too. If I say to my teenage son, who is a junior in high school, “Look, Nicholas. I expect you in by midnight tonight. Not one minute later. Unless you phone, you’ll be here by midnight.”

Nicholas knows me well enough that he jolly well better be in by midnight or he will experience the wrath of Dad. He knows, in other words, to keep himself in the love of Dad. If he comes in with a good reason or something, that’s different, but if it’s just that he has goofed off and he isn’t paying any attention to the clock, yeah, he knows to keep himself in the love of Dad.

Now there’s another sense in which I would like to think if Nicholas, God forbid, should end up a druggie and on the wrong side of the street and pushing atheism in the local university and all of that, there’s another sense in which I will love him no matter what he does. In that sense, my love for him, I would like to think, is unconditional.

Thus, in human relationships, even between the same persons we may use love categories in different dynamic ways, mightn’t we? In one sense, my love is unconditional; in another sense it’s conditional. It’s conditional on him getting home by midnight if I tell him to.

What about this evangelical cliché? God’s love is unconditional. Is that true or false? Well, it’s false in the sense of the last one, isn’t it? It’s not quite right even with respect to the fourth one with respect to election. It’s right with respect to the second one bound up with providence. What about, “God loves everybody the same way”? Well, that’s right with respect to when the Bible speaks of God’s providential love, but certainly not right with respect to his electing love, and certainly not right with respect to his conditional love.

In no case am I suggesting God has different loves, as if God looks at a certain person and says, “Hmm … Love number three.” That’s not what is going on. He’s a person, and his character is love, and his love operates within the matrix of all of his other attributes, of all of his other perfections, but because he’s a person, it interacts with people in different kinds of ways. The Bible uses these different ways to speak about these things.

To choose one of them and construct your doctrine of the love of God and then universalize it, pretty soon, ends up making a mash of all the texts. You’re no longer listening to what the text is saying, and that is exactly what is going on with respect to some of the discussions about the will of God.

The Bible speaks of the will of God in a lot of different ways, too. I’m going to come back to that one. It’s just too important for me to duck. But sometimes the will of God is what his heart desires, what his values are, and sometimes it’s the determined will of God so that what he wills happens whether you like it or not.

The Bible demonstrably speaks of the wills of God in various ways. I know that leads to all kinds of philosophical problems, but it’s part of the dynamic way the Bible speaks about the will of God. In exactly the same way that talking about God’s love in different ways can lead to all kinds of philosophical problems, but it’s part of the way demonstrably the Bible does speak of these things.

To head off, therefore, into a vision of God that ultimately denies the diversity of the ways the Bible speaks about God ultimately diminishes God. It demeans God. It leaves you with a reduced God, a reductionistic God who fits only some part of the evidence and then all the rest of the evidence has to be subsumed under it. Sooner or later, that has horrible manifestations elsewhere in your whole doctrinal system and, ultimately, in your pastoral care and in your ethical system as well, as we shall see.

One writer says, “We must consider the implication of denying that human choice plays any role in salvation. If the reasons why some people are saved and other people are not isn’t because some people choose to accept God’s grace while others refuse it, then the reasons must be because God chooses some people to be saved and others not to be, but this contradicts Scripture’s teaching that God’s love is universal and impartial and that he wants everyone to be saved.”

Do you hear the argument? The texts about God universally wanting everybody to be saved are being set over against texts which do say God loved some and not others and, then, universalized. Somebody’s not listening.

That’s as far as we can get now. There’s more I will try to tackle along these lines this afternoon. We haven’t begun to tackle any of the positive passages that are adduced or the repentance language, but that’s still for this afternoon. Now we had better throw it open for questions before we break for lunch.