Thursday, January 10, 2008

Why the Sovereignty vs. Free Will Debate will never be resolved on its own terms

Alternative Title: Why the Predestination vs. Open Future discussion will never be resolved on its own terms.

To put it simply, the issue is never resolved because it is the WRONG question! The question for example is an apples-to-oranges question. The question is slanted because it is a leading question in favor of the Classisict: God's Sovereignty vs. Man's Free Will? How can man (free will) win over God (sovereignty)? Of course, the Hyper-Calvinist is confident that the answer is God's Sovereignty without question. However, the evidence for free-will is just so overwhelming that they do not have a complete logical concept or just need to take some miracle pills to get real at least temporarily.
That is why the debate goes on with almost no resolution in sight, and most theologians would dismiss this as another mystery.

The rest would just say they are somewhere in between but are never able to articulate it with definiteness and with some degree of precision as well as confidence that there are no contradictions in their articulation.

The right question to ask should be an apples-to-apples question, and let the question both refer to God and His wonderful attributes. How about comparing God's Love vs. God's Sovereignty. This is where we separate those who are hermeneutically honest from those who just play around with words and contexts in even subtle forms of actual Scripture-twisting.

The correct question therefore is, Does God's Sovereignty dictate how God loves (including limiting how he loves for the sake of protecting His Sovereignty, Timelessness, Simplicity, etc.), or does God's Love dictate how He exercises His sovereignty (including limiting how he exercises sovereignty for the sake of His Love and taking risks)?

One has to truly re-assess his personal theology in the light of the new question.

Nevertheless, it is completely astounding for anyone to deny Free-Will either directly or indirectly ["Oh, I will end up in God's will (or, with God's will) anyway?"]

The Fall of Man is the 2nd and best evidence of Free Will (the first being the fall of Satan from heaven). How can a Sovereign God predetermine His own failure?

In my article on "Axiomatic Foundations for a Faithfully Biblical Systematic Theology", I pointed out that when your theological model runs into major contradictions, it is time to change the model, not retrofit reality, common sense, and/or logic into your preconceived model.

Classical theology which include Hyper_Calvinism is logically correct within their own assumptions. However, it is their assumptions that are biblically faulty and unreasonable.

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