George W. Bush and the Sovereignty of God
In April of 2006, George W. Bush made a comment to the press that has always stuck with me because it was said in such a "Bushy" way.
This particular statement was made by President Bush in regards to Don Rumsfeld staying on as Secretary of Defense. Amid some of the problems in Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, etc. many people were calling for the head of Don Rumsfeld on a stick (or something worse), and there was speculation everywhere that Bushy (a nickname of kindness in my family by the way, not insult) was going to kick him out of the administration.
In regard to these speculations, the President said this:
The phrase that stuck with me as both kind of funny and very true was: "I'm the decider". Funny because it is a quintessential "Bushism", but very true because like all other cabinet posts - the SecDef serves at the will and pleasure of the President.
What struck me was that this term, "The Decider", is probably the best way to describe God's Sovereignty over all existence. In every ultimate way that exists, God is "The Decider".
This is what it means to be truly Sovereign. If God didn't have the ultimate decision making authority for anything and everything, then He wouldn't be God. If there were two, or three, or four similar beings that somehow divided Sovereignty amongst themselves, then none of them would be God either because they would all have areas that were out of their control, areas where they in fact were not sovereign. Therefore if we have a God, God must be both truly Sovereign and truly One. It really is just that simple. (How this works for the Biblical concept of the Trinity is saved for another post).
So with this being the case, any reasonable person should be asking some questions, like what is it that God has decided? And is there any way we can even know?
When we talk about God being the Great Decider, we really can only talk about two different things: ideas about how this works. Ready?
I will say that either option can make some people very, very uncomfortable - perhaps even angry. There are a whole range of options there for things that put bootprints all over some very fervently held theology. I get that. If you are one of those folks, I apologize if I upset you or made you mad. I just ask that you please stick with me here. My purpose is to show what man says, and then to show what God says. Hopefully we can all agree that what God says is the true thing, and therefore the only really important thing.
Okay, that's the context. Now on to: why should anyone even care?
Well, I believe that if we care about others we should care. If we love others as God told us to, we should care. But more importantly, if we really want to know what God is like - we should care. Because this question goes right to the very heart of Who and What God is.
Some, in pursuing this question and seeking to answer it from God's revelation of Himself in creation and the Bible, have come to the conclusion that 'what' God has decided can be no less than everything. This everything is not like option #2 above, but it's like #1: God hasn't given His creatures an authority to make any real choices. Rather, He has already decided all of their 'choices' for them. This particular flavor of reasoning goes like this - and it is very logical and cohesive:
There are many different ways to go when writing about this subject, but what I want to cover for now is this: If there are things in God's Word, the Bible, that can seem to support a hard deterministic theology (and there certainly are), is there anything clearly stated in God's Word that would rule out such an idea? Because after all, we know that the proper way to interpret the Bible is to let it interpret itself - it is its own guidebook. We are to hold to the whole council of God, not just the parts we like.
Is there anything in God's revelation of Himself to us that would lay the axe to the root of the idea that all is determined and we are simply marionettes playing a predetermined part in this thing we call life? Because just like any idea that is held to be universally true, if it can be shown false at any point then the whole idea comes tumbling down. If an all encompassing determinism is to be true, then it must be true in an all encompassing way with no exceptions. Agreed?
Now to be sure, the vast majority of the Bible is full of God speaking to us, giving us commands and warnings, as if we really had a will to obey Him or not. But the adherents of deterministic theology simply counter with the statement that God is simply using these commands and warnings to carry out His predetermined will: the commands and warnings are simply the mechanism (the means) He uses to bring His predetermined will to fruition in time. Those that He has already decided to save will obey Him. Those that He has decided to pass over will disobey Him. The fact that these things in the Bible seem like real commands and warnings are just all part of the plan of God in carrying out His will - His eternal decrees. They aren't meant to be 'real' commands and warnings that people can truly obey or observe.
Thus this philosophy tries to hold with one hand their interpretation of the Sovereignty of God, and with the other hand hold on to what we all realize to be true within ourselves (that we have a will and can make real decisions); but all the while they eventually and fully deny the second in favor of their interpretation of the first, because ultimately anything a person wills has already been fully and finally willed by God. Any claims of a real 'will' in man are therefore nullified because man's will is really just a marionette proxy for God's will.
For my take on the argument against this type of idea, please consider the following:
In 722 through 721BC, God gave a portion of His chosen, elect people of Israel over to a conquering foe in the form of the Assyrian Empire under the leadership of Shalmaneser V and his brother, Sargon II. The portion that God gave over was the northern kingdom of Israel. God allowed the southern kingdom of Judah to survive until 586BC, when He gave them over to the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar.
If you wonder why God would ever do such a thing to His chosen people, just read Jeremiah 19. God lays it all out for anyone to read and understand.
If you'll read Jeremiah 19, as well as the other prophets that God sent to Israel to warn them to obey Him because His judgment was coming - prophets such as Amos, Isaiah, etc.; you'll quickly learn that God's main issue with Israel was that they lost faith in Him and kept on disobeying Him. In essence, they lost respect for Him. They thought they could go through the motions of worshiping God as He had specified, but then go and sin however they wanted. This unrepentant sin led them into other sin such that they oppressed the poor and denied justice to the most vulnerable people in society. At the same time the wealthy (who got that way by oppressing the poor, not by earning it honestly), were building for themselves multiple houses: mansions filled with luxury and wealth.
Israel thought that God was blessing them, but they came to realize that God was simply giving a stubborn and sinful people enough rope to hang themselves. This time could have been used for repentance but they refused, thus it turned the other way. They were so self deceived, they even called out for "The Day of the Lord". They cried out for Judgment Day, thinking that God would come to destroy His enemies: all those that weren't Israel. To their horror, Israel discovered that they had made themselves God's enemy - and when God showed up they were destroyed along with God's other enemies. (The book of Amos is a chilling reminder to the modern Church in the west to shape up. We are treading in Israel's footsteps).
Part of Israel's sin involved worshiping other gods like Baal and his consort (the Queen of Heaven) and Molech, among others. It is to this particular that I want to turn to talk about God's Sovereignty: specifically, about what some say about God's Sovereignty (that He determines everything so that we are merely following His hidden decrees made in eternity past). I want to contrast that idea with what God says about Himself.
In the dread chapter 19 of Jeremiah, we find the following statement from God about Israel in verses 4 and 5:
What an interesting statement for God to make if in fact He has determined each and every action all people will ever take from eternity past, no?
God actually gives us this message not once, not twice, but a full three times in Jeremiah: 7:30-32, 19:4-5, 32:35.
He explicitly says in regard to Israel sacrificing their children by burning them alive: "something I did not command or mention..."
And then God adds something very interesting. He says: "...something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind."
If you claim to believe that the Bible is God's Word, as I do; and you claim that it is infallible - meaning that as it was given to us it truly and accurately is the Word of God, as I do; and if because of these things you hold to God's Word as the anchor for you entire life: your thoughts, your conclusions, your actions, and your future; as I do - then you must deal with God's dealings through Jeremiah.
And if you believe that when we speak of God's Sovereignty and human will that we are talking about things with eternal ramifications - both in their genesis and in their future eternity; and that anything we read in God's Word falls under the authority of God's Sovereignty, then you must deal with His Word in all honesty of heart and mind.
What we read here is not somehow exempt from God's Sovereignty; it is not somehow exempt from any eternal decrees God has or has not given. And it is not exempt from a faithful display of God's nature. God does not sin and bear a false witness - in fact, He cannot because He is holy.
In regard to this vignette out of Israel's history, God tells us three things concerning this particularly horrible sin of child sacrifice of which Israel was guilty. But in doing this, God is telling us something very important about His eternal nature and His Sovereignty - how He has decided to administer His creation:
Do you see and understand what God is saying?
The fact that Israel had done such things didn't find its cause in God. The cause of these things was outside of God. He didn't command them (tsavah), He didn't mention them in any way (dabar), nor did it ever even enter His mind, His heart, His very self (leb) that Israel should do such things. This means these actions could not have been part of a supposed eternal decree of God.
Well, if the will that caused this sin didn't come from God then where did it come from? These things that Israel did weren't some type of reflex action or natural phenomenon - they were clearly decisions.
The mechanism God has given in His creation to make decisions is a will. In fact, that is the express purpose and function of a will: to make decisions. God is telling us that the will that caused these sins wasn't His, and not only that - His will had absolutely nothing to do with them in any way at all.
Where then did the sinful will come from?
It came from Israel themselves. If God is the only 'Decider', how can this be true? The answer is that it cannot be true if God is the only 'Decider'. It can only be true if God, as the Sovereign of everything that exists (the ultimate Decider) has exercised His will in such a way that He has allowed our wills to make true, undetermined choices.
That is the only option if we are to believe what God says about His own Sovereignty. He has exercised His all controlling Sovereignty in a way that has gifted us with a true will so that we are true personal creations and not pre-programmed marionettes. This will, while at all times under the influence of God because He is God, can also make decisions that have nothing to do with the express will of God at all - as is the case above with ancient Israel.
How this intersects with God's decisions concerning how a person is saved from their sin by the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross requires its own explanation. But suffice it to say that if we hold the Bible to be true, God has not made the decision to bring into being a pre-determined universe. And I'm so glad that He hasn't.
Use the ability and time that God has given you to make the right decision concerning His Son Jesus Christ. Allow His words to convict you of your sin, turn from what He shows you about yourself, and give Him everything that you are. If you do, you will find life and you will never be the same again.
This particular statement was made by President Bush in regards to Don Rumsfeld staying on as Secretary of Defense. Amid some of the problems in Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, etc. many people were calling for the head of Don Rumsfeld on a stick (or something worse), and there was speculation everywhere that Bushy (a nickname of kindness in my family by the way, not insult) was going to kick him out of the administration.
In regard to these speculations, the President said this:
"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."
The phrase that stuck with me as both kind of funny and very true was: "I'm the decider". Funny because it is a quintessential "Bushism", but very true because like all other cabinet posts - the SecDef serves at the will and pleasure of the President.
What struck me was that this term, "The Decider", is probably the best way to describe God's Sovereignty over all existence. In every ultimate way that exists, God is "The Decider".
This is what it means to be truly Sovereign. If God didn't have the ultimate decision making authority for anything and everything, then He wouldn't be God. If there were two, or three, or four similar beings that somehow divided Sovereignty amongst themselves, then none of them would be God either because they would all have areas that were out of their control, areas where they in fact were not sovereign. Therefore if we have a God, God must be both truly Sovereign and truly One. It really is just that simple. (How this works for the Biblical concept of the Trinity is saved for another post).
So with this being the case, any reasonable person should be asking some questions, like what is it that God has decided? And is there any way we can even know?
When we talk about God being the Great Decider, we really can only talk about two different things: ideas about how this works. Ready?
- The first is that God has exercised His Sovereignty in such a manner that He is the only "Decider". Each and every event in space/time as well as every decision made by any creature with a will has already been made and determined by God. So in other words, this option would be a hard determinism. If we see something that looks like a will making a real decision (like the fact that a few minutes ago I decided to eat a mondo bowl of Cheerios), what we are witnessing is really an illusion because God has already determined everything ages ago in eternity past. That's idea #1: God is the sole "Decider" leading to a hard determinism. Humans, or anything else with a 'will', when acting through that will are really just playing a programmed part that God has already dictated.
- The second, and it is not compatible with the first, is that God has exercised His Sovereignty in such a way that He has purposely left room for other decision makers. This means that in essence, God has given certain of His creatures a measure of sovereignty over their own minds such that they can make real choices that are really their own real choices. These choices are sourced from their will, and not God's. In His Sovereignty He both rules and overrules, meaning that although He allows His creations to make truly bona fide choices - He overrules the consequences of their actions in order to fulfill His own purpose. He remains the ultimate Decider, because in His Sovereignty He has decided that this should happen. He remains in control as God because nothing that happens is outside of His control. He controls either through determining what will happen, or where He has allowed other wills to truly be exercised, He controls the consequences of the actions performed by these other wills.
I will say that either option can make some people very, very uncomfortable - perhaps even angry. There are a whole range of options there for things that put bootprints all over some very fervently held theology. I get that. If you are one of those folks, I apologize if I upset you or made you mad. I just ask that you please stick with me here. My purpose is to show what man says, and then to show what God says. Hopefully we can all agree that what God says is the true thing, and therefore the only really important thing.
Okay, that's the context. Now on to: why should anyone even care?
Well, I believe that if we care about others we should care. If we love others as God told us to, we should care. But more importantly, if we really want to know what God is like - we should care. Because this question goes right to the very heart of Who and What God is.
Some, in pursuing this question and seeking to answer it from God's revelation of Himself in creation and the Bible, have come to the conclusion that 'what' God has decided can be no less than everything. This everything is not like option #2 above, but it's like #1: God hasn't given His creatures an authority to make any real choices. Rather, He has already decided all of their 'choices' for them. This particular flavor of reasoning goes like this - and it is very logical and cohesive:
- Because God is truly Sovereign, there is nothing outside of His control. If there were things outside of His control, then He would not be God.
- Because of this, for God to reign as God, He must exercise His Sovereignty in such a way that everything that happens is according to His design (His eternal decrees). In all things He is the only real Decider.
- This means that there is no such thing as an action in the physical world or the spiritual world that can really go one way or another to make an event happen. To use philosopher speak, this means that there is no such thing as true contingency.
Tomorrow I'll be driving on a road somewhere and I'll have the choice of turning left or right, or proceeding straight ahead. It seems like I have a real choice I can make but in reality I don't. Long ago before anything existed God decided which way I would go on this particular day at this particular juncture, and by His eternal decree He makes sure that happens. Anything like this that seems to have real contingency about it is just an illusion, because God has decreed for certain all the things that lead up to my 'decision' (the time of day, the thoughts in my head, my brain and body chemistry, etc.) such that I will do what He has already decided I will do.
There are many different ways to go when writing about this subject, but what I want to cover for now is this: If there are things in God's Word, the Bible, that can seem to support a hard deterministic theology (and there certainly are), is there anything clearly stated in God's Word that would rule out such an idea? Because after all, we know that the proper way to interpret the Bible is to let it interpret itself - it is its own guidebook. We are to hold to the whole council of God, not just the parts we like.
Is there anything in God's revelation of Himself to us that would lay the axe to the root of the idea that all is determined and we are simply marionettes playing a predetermined part in this thing we call life? Because just like any idea that is held to be universally true, if it can be shown false at any point then the whole idea comes tumbling down. If an all encompassing determinism is to be true, then it must be true in an all encompassing way with no exceptions. Agreed?
Now to be sure, the vast majority of the Bible is full of God speaking to us, giving us commands and warnings, as if we really had a will to obey Him or not. But the adherents of deterministic theology simply counter with the statement that God is simply using these commands and warnings to carry out His predetermined will: the commands and warnings are simply the mechanism (the means) He uses to bring His predetermined will to fruition in time. Those that He has already decided to save will obey Him. Those that He has decided to pass over will disobey Him. The fact that these things in the Bible seem like real commands and warnings are just all part of the plan of God in carrying out His will - His eternal decrees. They aren't meant to be 'real' commands and warnings that people can truly obey or observe.
Thus this philosophy tries to hold with one hand their interpretation of the Sovereignty of God, and with the other hand hold on to what we all realize to be true within ourselves (that we have a will and can make real decisions); but all the while they eventually and fully deny the second in favor of their interpretation of the first, because ultimately anything a person wills has already been fully and finally willed by God. Any claims of a real 'will' in man are therefore nullified because man's will is really just a marionette proxy for God's will.
For my take on the argument against this type of idea, please consider the following:
In 722 through 721BC, God gave a portion of His chosen, elect people of Israel over to a conquering foe in the form of the Assyrian Empire under the leadership of Shalmaneser V and his brother, Sargon II. The portion that God gave over was the northern kingdom of Israel. God allowed the southern kingdom of Judah to survive until 586BC, when He gave them over to the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar.
If you wonder why God would ever do such a thing to His chosen people, just read Jeremiah 19. God lays it all out for anyone to read and understand.
If you'll read Jeremiah 19, as well as the other prophets that God sent to Israel to warn them to obey Him because His judgment was coming - prophets such as Amos, Isaiah, etc.; you'll quickly learn that God's main issue with Israel was that they lost faith in Him and kept on disobeying Him. In essence, they lost respect for Him. They thought they could go through the motions of worshiping God as He had specified, but then go and sin however they wanted. This unrepentant sin led them into other sin such that they oppressed the poor and denied justice to the most vulnerable people in society. At the same time the wealthy (who got that way by oppressing the poor, not by earning it honestly), were building for themselves multiple houses: mansions filled with luxury and wealth.
Israel thought that God was blessing them, but they came to realize that God was simply giving a stubborn and sinful people enough rope to hang themselves. This time could have been used for repentance but they refused, thus it turned the other way. They were so self deceived, they even called out for "The Day of the Lord". They cried out for Judgment Day, thinking that God would come to destroy His enemies: all those that weren't Israel. To their horror, Israel discovered that they had made themselves God's enemy - and when God showed up they were destroyed along with God's other enemies. (The book of Amos is a chilling reminder to the modern Church in the west to shape up. We are treading in Israel's footsteps).
Part of Israel's sin involved worshiping other gods like Baal and his consort (the Queen of Heaven) and Molech, among others. It is to this particular that I want to turn to talk about God's Sovereignty: specifically, about what some say about God's Sovereignty (that He determines everything so that we are merely following His hidden decrees made in eternity past). I want to contrast that idea with what God says about Himself.
In the dread chapter 19 of Jeremiah, we find the following statement from God about Israel in verses 4 and 5:
Jeremiah 19:4-5 (NIV)
4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.
5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.
What an interesting statement for God to make if in fact He has determined each and every action all people will ever take from eternity past, no?
God actually gives us this message not once, not twice, but a full three times in Jeremiah: 7:30-32, 19:4-5, 32:35.
He explicitly says in regard to Israel sacrificing their children by burning them alive: "something I did not command or mention..."
And then God adds something very interesting. He says: "...something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind."
If you claim to believe that the Bible is God's Word, as I do; and you claim that it is infallible - meaning that as it was given to us it truly and accurately is the Word of God, as I do; and if because of these things you hold to God's Word as the anchor for you entire life: your thoughts, your conclusions, your actions, and your future; as I do - then you must deal with God's dealings through Jeremiah.
And if you believe that when we speak of God's Sovereignty and human will that we are talking about things with eternal ramifications - both in their genesis and in their future eternity; and that anything we read in God's Word falls under the authority of God's Sovereignty, then you must deal with His Word in all honesty of heart and mind.
What we read here is not somehow exempt from God's Sovereignty; it is not somehow exempt from any eternal decrees God has or has not given. And it is not exempt from a faithful display of God's nature. God does not sin and bear a false witness - in fact, He cannot because He is holy.
In regard to this vignette out of Israel's history, God tells us three things concerning this particularly horrible sin of child sacrifice of which Israel was guilty. But in doing this, God is telling us something very important about His eternal nature and His Sovereignty - how He has decided to administer His creation:
- This sin of Israel is something [He] did not command...: The Hebrew word here is 'tsavah'. It means to 'command, to order, to instruct, to dictate'. Most certainly because God is God, this is His right. But in this message to us, God is saying that He did not exercise His Sovereignty in this direction: He did not command Israel to do such a thing.
- This sin of Israel is something [He] did not mention...: The Hebrew word here is 'dabar'. Unlike 'tsavah' that always means a command, 'dabar' is a more general term that simply means communicated speech. It can mean a command, but in the context of this verse it's clear that since God has already said He has not commanded this thing for Israel, when He now mentions 'dabar', He is talking about it's other meanings, which are: 'to say, to speak, to promise, to mention, to communicate'.
- This sin of Israel is something that did not enter His mind: This doesn't mean that this was somehow outside the realm of God's omniscience (the fact that He perceives and knows everything). It means that any determination on God's part that Israel should do this horrible thing never even entered His mind. The Hebrew word here for mind really means heart: 'leb' - 'heart'. It has the metaphorical meanings of: 'inner person, center of being, the self, the place where both thought and emotion originate, conscience, mind, understanding'.
Do you see and understand what God is saying?
The fact that Israel had done such things didn't find its cause in God. The cause of these things was outside of God. He didn't command them (tsavah), He didn't mention them in any way (dabar), nor did it ever even enter His mind, His heart, His very self (leb) that Israel should do such things. This means these actions could not have been part of a supposed eternal decree of God.
Well, if the will that caused this sin didn't come from God then where did it come from? These things that Israel did weren't some type of reflex action or natural phenomenon - they were clearly decisions.
The mechanism God has given in His creation to make decisions is a will. In fact, that is the express purpose and function of a will: to make decisions. God is telling us that the will that caused these sins wasn't His, and not only that - His will had absolutely nothing to do with them in any way at all.
Where then did the sinful will come from?
It came from Israel themselves. If God is the only 'Decider', how can this be true? The answer is that it cannot be true if God is the only 'Decider'. It can only be true if God, as the Sovereign of everything that exists (the ultimate Decider) has exercised His will in such a way that He has allowed our wills to make true, undetermined choices.
That is the only option if we are to believe what God says about His own Sovereignty. He has exercised His all controlling Sovereignty in a way that has gifted us with a true will so that we are true personal creations and not pre-programmed marionettes. This will, while at all times under the influence of God because He is God, can also make decisions that have nothing to do with the express will of God at all - as is the case above with ancient Israel.
How this intersects with God's decisions concerning how a person is saved from their sin by the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross requires its own explanation. But suffice it to say that if we hold the Bible to be true, God has not made the decision to bring into being a pre-determined universe. And I'm so glad that He hasn't.
Use the ability and time that God has given you to make the right decision concerning His Son Jesus Christ. Allow His words to convict you of your sin, turn from what He shows you about yourself, and give Him everything that you are. If you do, you will find life and you will never be the same again.
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