Sovereignty of God in Christianity

Sovereignty of God in Christianity can be defined as the right of God to exercise his ruling power over his creation. Sovereignty can also include the way God exercises his ruling power. However, this aspect is subject to divergences notably related to the concept of God's self-imposed limitations. The correlation between God's sovereignty and human free will is a central theme in discussions about the meaningful nature of human choice.

Definition

God's sovereignty in Christianity can be defined as the right of God to exercise his ruling power over his creation. The way in which God exercises his power is subject to differing views.[1][2][3]

Calvinists generally see God's exercise of power as an intrinsic and inseparable part of his sovereignty.[4] Other Christians may either understand this exercise of power as part of sovereignty[5] or treat it separately under the idea of divine providence.[6][7]

The sovereignty of God must be distinguished from God's eternal attributes.[8] For example, God's omnipotence is his quality of having unlimited power. This attribute is not contingent upon something else other than God himself, and is therefore one of his eternal attributes.[9] God's sovereignty, as the right to exercise his ruling power over his creation, is contingent upon his creation. God's sovereignty only takes effect once creation exists for it to be expressed upon. If the sovereignty of God is considered one of his attributes, it is a temporal one.[10] God's sovereignty should then be seen as his right to express his eternal attribute of omnipotence over his creation[11] qualified by his other eternal attributes such as omnibenevolence and omniscience.[12][13]

Historical developments

Throughout history, Christian theologians have advocated for a free-will theodicy.[14] Besides, the question whether God's way of expressing his sovereignty is consistent with meaningful human decisions which are free from compulsion is a significant theological question in Christianity.[15] The debate on this question was first clearly expressed by Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century.[16] The debate has continued through various forms notably through the Calvinist-Arminian debate until today.[17] Theologians have subsequently articulated various perspectives on how God's exercise of sovereignty corresponds to distinct self-imposed limitations.[18][19]

Theological views

Early Christian views

The theological tradition before Augustine (354 – 430) largely emphasizes the freedom of the human will.[20] However, Augustine articulated God's sovereignty in terms of his continuous control and unifying governance of the universe.[21] In contrast, the Greek church fathers generally rejected theological determinism as a means of exercising divine sovereignty and affirmed a classical free will theism.[22] For example, Saint Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 662) argued that, because humans are created in the image of God, they possess a form of self-determination analogous to God's own.[23] Similarly, John of Damascus (c. 675 - 749) maintained that God's sovereignty does not override human self-determination but allows human freedom to operate within divine providence.[24]

Catholic views

Christian teaching on providence in the High Middle Ages was most fully developed by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica (1274). It viewed the concept of providence as a care exercised by God over the universe.[21]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993) expresses the concept of God's sovereignty as his rule over his creation, allowing human libertarian free will and co-operation with him: "God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures' co-operation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of almighty God's greatness and goodness. God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other".[25]

Eastern Orthodox view

In general, Eastern Theology places much more emphasis on human freedom and less on God's sovereignty than do the Augustinian and Reformed strands of Western theology. Orthodox view of human free will is close to the Wesleyan-Arminian view.[26]

Reformed view

Orthodox Reformed (both historical and Edwardsian Calvinism) view God's sovereignty as expressed through theological determinism.[27][28][29][30] This means that every event in the world is determined by God.[31] As the Westminster Confession of Faith put it: "God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatever comes to pass."[32]

From this perspective, God alone possesses free-will in the sense of ultimate self-determination.[33] Moreover, God acts through voluntarism in its nominalist sense.[34] This means, what God does is good not because it is guided by his character or moral structure within his nature, but only because God wants it.[35] Besides, Calvinism affirm a determinism involving semicompatibilism, which implies the compatibility between human responsibility for an act and its determination by God.[36]

Concerning salvation, Calvin expressly taught that it is God's sovereign decision to determine whether an individual is saved or damned.[37][38] He writes "By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death."[39] Indeed, human actions leading to this end are also predetermined by God.[40]

Concerning prayer, from an Edwardsian Calvinist view, it can be seen as a predetermined means for a predetermined purpose.[29] More generally, from the majority Calvinist view, prayer can't change by itself what is predetermined by God.[41] Specifically, prayer for salvation will not change the predetermined damnation of some.[42][43] Nor will prayer for salvation cause the predetermined salvation of the elect.[44][45]

Arminian view

Arminianism holds that God is both omnipotent and omniscient.[46] His power and knowledge are not subject to any external limitation but are exercised in accordance with his own divine nature and character.[47]

This understanding of God gives rise to two fundamental principles. First, divine action must be conceived in such a way that God is never, even secondarily, the author of evil, since this would contradict his character, especially as fully revealed in Jesus Christ.[48] Second, human responsibility for evil must be preserved.[49] These two principles shape the Arminian understanding of divine sovereignty. God exercises a limited mode of providence, deliberately governing creation without determining every event, and his election is understood as a "predestination by foreknowledge".[50] Consequently, God's foreknowledge is exhaustive and complete, fully compatible with human freedom of action.[51]

Human free will is therefore granted and bounded by divine sovereignty, which nonetheless permits all people to accept the gospel through faith while also allowing them to resist it.[52]

Notes and references

Citations

  1. ↑ Easton 1897. "Sovereignty of God [is] his absolute right to do all things according to his own good pleasure."
  2. ↑ Leonard 1991, ‌. "Sovereignty of God [is] the biblical teaching that God is that all things come from and depend upon God. [...] [It] does not mean that everything which occurs in the world is God's will."
  3. ↑ Oke 1983, p. 171. "Divine sovereignty [concept] is twofold. First, it may be seen as the divine right to rule totally; second, it may be extended to include God's exercise of this right. As to the first aspect, there is no debate. Difference of opinion arises in respect to the second aspect."
  4. ↑ Grudem 1994, p. 217. "God's exercise of power over his creation is also called God's sovereignty."
  5. ↑ McCall 2008, p. 205. "With the great company of the saints, I understand any acceptable doctrine of divine sovereignty to include (at least) these elements: (a) God is omnipotent, (b) God is a se and (c) God is providentially active in governing and judging the world without being in any way threatened by it".
  6. ↑ Walker 1911. "Providence is God Himself considered in that act by which in His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized."
  7. ↑ Baaren & Stefon 2020. "Providence [...] indicates that God not only created the world but also governs it and cares for its welfare."
  8. ↑ Wiley 1940, pp. 253–254. "It is necessary that a careful distinction be made between attributes and predicates. A predicate is anything that may be affirmed or predicated of God, such as sovereignty, creatorship or like affirmations which do not attribute to God essential qualities or distinguishing characteristics. Predicate is the wider term and includes all the attributes, but the converse is not true. Predicates may change, but attributes are unchangeable. Varying predicates are, therefore, based upon unvarying attributes."
  9. ↑ Lewis 2001, p. 10.
  10. ↑ Flowers 2017, ch. 3. "For God to be in control over others there has to be others in which to control. He can’t display His power over creatures unless the creatures exist. Therefore, before creation the concept of sovereignty (or providence) was not an attribute that could be used to describe God. An eternal attribute is something God possesses that is not contingent upon something else. The eternal attribute of God is His omnipotence, which refers to His eternally limitless power. Sovereignty is a temporal characteristic, not an eternal one, thus we can say God is all powerful, not because He is sovereign, but He is sovereign because He is all powerful, or at least He is as sovereign as He so chooses to be in relation to this temporal world."
  11. ↑ Flowers 2017, ch. 3‌.
  12. ↑ Grudem 1994, p. 217, ‌. "Also God's power is infinite, his use of his power his qualified by his other attributes".
  13. ↑ Wiley 1940, p. 352. "It is evident that even omnipotence must be conditioned by God's wisdom and goodness. William Newton Clarke points out that it is easy to fall into the error of regarding omnipotence as the ability to do everything that can be thought, but divine power must always operate in harmony with the divine nature. He cannot do anything contrary to His divine will, this would be irrational, and contradictory to Himself. It was this that occasioned in Van Oosterzee the contention that Sovereignty must be regarded as an attribute of God, and this in an unlimited sense."
  14. ↑ Plantinga 1974, p. 10.
  15. ↑ Kärkkäinen 2017.
  16. ↑ Warfield 1971, pp. 320–323.
  17. ↑ Tenney 1975, Sovereignty of God.
  18. ↑ Ryrie 1986, pp. 40, 43, 44. "Self imposed limitations include those things He has not chosen to include in His plan which he might have included as long as they were not contrary to His nature. He did not choose to spare His Son; He did not choose to save all people; He did not choose all nations in Old Testament times; He did not choose Esau; He did not choose to spare James (Acts 12:2). Though He could have done any of these things without being inconsistent with omnipotence, He did not choose to do so in His plan. [...] Ultimately God is in complete control of all things, though He may choose to let certain events happen according to natural laws which He has ordained."
  19. ↑ Leonard 1991. "God has created a world in which freedom is a real possibility. His permissive will provides for human freedom and the laws of nature."
  20. ↑ McGrath 1998, p. 20. "The pre-Augustinian theological tradition is practically of one voice in asserting the freedom of the human will. Thus Justin Martyr [c. AD 100- c. AD 165] rejects the idea that all human actions are foreordained on the grounds that this eliminates human accountability."
  21. 1 2 Walker 1911, ‌.
  22. ↑ Olson 2009, p. 90. "The early Greek church fathers believed in freedom of the will and rejected determinism."
  23. ↑ Bathrellos 2004, p. 167. "As regards the way in which self-determination must be understood, it is noteworthy that, for Maximus, the basis and archetype of man’s self-determination is the self-determination of God. As we have seen, Maximus argued that man is self-determining because he is made in the image of the divinity, which is self-determining [...]".
  24. ↑ Louth 2019, ch. 1. "Again, as with Chrysostom, the mystery of free human engagement with God concerns John, not God’s will overriding human self-determination: “It must be understood not as of God’s own activity, but as of God’s allowing through self-determination, furthermore the good is not to be forced.”"
  25. ↑ John Paul II 1993, Section II, Ch. 1, Article 1, §4 Providence and secondary causes, item 306.
  26. ↑ Fairbairn 2002, p. 91.
  27. ↑ Sproul 1986, p. 15. "That God in some sense foreordains whatever comes to pass is a necessary result of his sovereignty. [...] To say that God foreordains all that comes to pass is simply to say that God is sovereign over his entire creation."
  28. ↑ Helm 2010, p. 230. "[I]t is reasonable to conclude that although Calvin does not avow determinism in so many words, he nevertheless adopts a broadly deterministic outlook."
  29. 1 2 Helm 2010, p. 268.
  30. ↑ Clark 1961, pp. 237–238. "God is the sole ultimate cause of everything. There is absolutely nothing independent of him. He alone is the eternal being. He alone is omnipotent. He alone is sovereign."
  31. ↑ Alexander & Johnson 2016, p. 204. "It should be conceded at the outset, and without any embarrassment, that Calvinism is indeed committed to divine determinism: the view that everything is ultimately determined by God."
  32. ↑ Westminster Assembly 1946, ch. 3.
  33. ↑ Piper 2016. "Only God has free will in the sense of ultimate self-determination."
  34. ↑ Brice 2023, pp. 27–31.
  35. ↑ Calvin 1845, 3.23.2. "For God’s will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it. But if you proceed further to ask why he so willed, you are seeking something greater and higher than God’s will, which cannot be found."
  36. ↑ Alexander & Johnson 2016, p. 4. "Calvinists are committed to saying that moral responsibility and any sort of free will that is necessary for moral responsibility are compatible with whatever sort of determinism is entailed by Calvinist views of providence."
  37. ↑ Calvin 1845, 3.21.5.
  38. ↑ Calvin 1845, 3.23.1. "Those therefore whom God passes by [does not elect] He reprobates, and that for no other cause than He is pleased to exclude them."
  39. ↑ Calvin 1845, 3.21.7.
  40. ↑ Sproul 2011a, p. 37. "If God has decided our destinies from all eternity, that strongly suggests that our free choices are but charades, empty exercises in predetermined playacting. It is as though God wrote the script for us in concrete and we are merely carrying out his scenario."
  41. ↑ Pink 2001, p. 217. "Prayer is not the requesting of God to alter His purpose or for Him to form a new one."
  42. ↑ Spurgeon 1860. “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.”
  43. ↑ Pink 2001, p. 101.
  44. ↑ Packer 2003.
  45. ↑ Pink 2001, p. 203-219.
  46. ↑ Olson 2009, pp. 90–91.
  47. ↑ Olson 2009, p. 124, n. 20. "For Arminius, God always remains omnipotent in the most radical sense possible within a metaphysically realistic frame of reference (i.e., God’s power conditioned by his character)."
  48. ↑ Olson 2014, p. 11.
  49. ↑ Olson 2010. "Classical Arminianism does NOT say God never interferes with free will. It says God NEVER foreordains or renders certain evil. [...] An Arminian COULD believe in divine dictation of Scripture and not do violence to his or her Arminian beliefs. [...] Arminianism is not in love with libertarian free will –as if that were central in and of itself. Classical Arminians have gone out of our way (beginning with Arminius himself) to make clear that our sole reasons for believe in free will AS ARMINIANS [...] are 1) to avoid making God the author of sin and evil, and 2) to make clear human responsibility for sin and evil."
  50. ↑ Olson 2018. "What is Arminianism? A) Belief that God limits himself to give human beings free will to go against his perfect will so that God did not design or ordain sin and evil (or their consequences such as innocent suffering); B) Belief that, although sinners cannot achieve salvation on their own, without “prevenient grace” (enabling grace), God makes salvation possible for all through Jesus Christ and offers free salvation to all through the gospel. “A” is called “limited providence,” “B” is called “predestination by foreknowledge.”"
  51. ↑ Picirilli 2002, p. 40.
  52. ↑ Olson 2009, p. 142.

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