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{"id":17712,"date":"2015-11-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2537"},"modified":"2015-11-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T00:00:00","slug":"gods-will-and-ours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/11\/gods-will-and-ours\/","title":{"rendered":"God’s Will and Ours"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

In the second volume of his\u00a0Systematic Theology<\/a>, Jenson raises pointed, Edwardsean questions about free will theodicies. Such devices suppose \u201cthat God once created and then somehow retreated, so that at least some things that happen within creation, those dependent on creatures\u2019 \u2018free will,\u2019 he merely, as it were, observes\u201d (22). That cannot be right because \u201cin no present instant does anything happen outside the deliberate act of God.\u201d But if that <\/em>is right, then what becomes of our freedom, and how is God not the author of sin?<\/p>\n

The standard answer, Jenson argues, is the right one, namely that \u201cGod\u2019s sovereignty of human and other events does not foreclose human freedom precisely because God\u2019s will is absolute, so that between God and creatures choosing is not a zero sum game. . . . just because God\u2019s will is absolute, there is no . . . competition between his will and mine, no arithmetic within which a decision by me is one less for him to make or vice versa\u201d (22).<\/p>\n

He cites Thomas\u2019s claim that not only \u201cwhat God wills to happen does happen,\u201d but \u201cit happens in the way <\/em>in which he wills it to happen.\u201d If God wills something to happen contingently, it does. As Jenson says, \u201cThomas then applies this to God\u2019s willing of those events that are contingent because they depend on human choice. If God \u2018moves\u2019 a human will to incline to some object or action, that will necessarily so inclines. Nevertheless, if God, in accord with the nature of what he in this case moves, wills also that this inclination be itself a free <\/em>\u2018movement,\u2019 then that is the sort of movement it is.\u201d \u201cIf\u201d \u2013 or since <\/em>\u2013 \u201cthere is the biblical God, there can be free creaturely choices only and precisely because God\u2019s will is so entirely of another sort than ours that he not only can will us to choose this ratehr than that, but that our choice be in itself uncoerced by his.\u201d This doesn\u2019t absolve us of responsibility; but on the other hand, neither is God absolved of responsibility for what does happen (22).<\/p>\n

As he puts it, \u201csomeone so utterly in control as the biblical God is supposed to be . . . cannot lack responsibility for what in fact happens, for the bad as for the good, including the boundary-conditions within which sometimes the bad may be necessary for the sake of the good, and including our standards of judgment of good and bad\u201d (21).<\/p>\n

Jenson concludes from this that \u201call theodicies must eventually fail. . . . The evil and sin in God\u2019s creation will always be reason to deny him\u201d (23). If we pronounce a \u201cnevertheless\u201d in defiance of this conclusion, it is a confession of a good Creator. We cannot know what might have been in another world. We do know that in this world \u201cthe actual life of the triune God with us is a true drama, and therefore conflicted and twisting,\u201d a conflict of \u201cdeath and life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Jenson sometimes sounds like an open theist, at other times he sounds like a high Calvinist. One is tempted to say: Just like the Bible.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"