The following is my Lord's Day offering originally posted in July of 2010:
Saturday's Wall Street Journal highlighted an article by Jane Goodall on her life among the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. It was touching, but there was one glaring error as the anthropologist looked upon these wonderful creatures as being our common ancestors from six million years ago whereas our ancestors were, one created man and one created woman, only six thousand years ago. This creation... us... has a free will. Martin Luther wrote a book and Johnathon Edwards, two hundred years later, wrote another with titles that seem, at first glance, to be saying something opposite of each other but Luther's Bondage Of The Will proclaims the same thing that Edward's Freedom Of The Will does.
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer concentrated on man's will. To him it was when one man's will did not coincide with another man's will that suffering ensued. Desire was the problem and denial the answer. Schopenauer claimed to be an atheist and talked often as would a Buddhist. I cut out a Bizarro comic that might address this, an Eastern monk kneels before his teacher and says what do you do when you have freed yourself of all desire except the desire to be free from desire. Third Reich filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl's historic work Triumph Of The Will deifies the will and the object of it, and the consequences of that are in our history books.
When a Christian enters the debate a genuine conversation on free will may come up, and the challenges pour in over the Christian's claim that a free will does exist but so does a fallen nature that determines what that free will chooses. Chief among these arguments might be If such is the case...why bother to try at all and If such is the case then God is unjust. I think that you have to step back a little bit and consider this, Are you a person...do you exist? Is it a silly question? No, for if you acknowledge that you are an individual...and also that God exists...there has to be either a relationship, or a broken relationship. Who determines that relationship, the creature or the Creator? Well, if it's the Creator, He's telling you that you are the culprit but He has provided a way. One might then say hold on, I'm not the culprit! If you deny culpability...how can you then complain about the method God has designed for forgiveness, for you have rejected his premise to begin with? Why do you barter over the cost of a car that you have no intention of buying? Address the first issue and you will be surprised how little challenge there is to the second!
If you truly had an unimpinged free will and consequently have no problem with rejecting the God that does exist, would it not have been better to have had a fallen free will and forced to depend, not on an intellectual decision of perceived truths or your own righteousness, but on a merciful Savior who has already promised forgiveness for coming to Him in sorrow for your sins and faith alone in His ability to redeem you?
So to recap, if you do not have the ability to have faith in God without His intervention (free will and a fallen nature) then God is unjust; but if you do have the free will yet freely reject Him, He is not unjust? When God commands everyone to believe in His Son and one refuses to, it is not the evidence of a choice as much as it is the evidence of a fallen nature! Man already has a choice but also a fallen nature so to demand of God a choice is not necessary, but a plea for forgiveness from sins emanating from that fallen nature is never turned down! It is not one's choice to seek forgiveness even though one does. It was God's choice to intervene! Is He to be called unjust for this....for overcoming your fallen nature through the power of His Holy Spirit?
Would you really rather to have not existed at all? There is an infinitesimal number of people.....who could have been.... but were never created therefore never existed. The ratio of created souls to souls never created would also be infinitesimal. Would God not then have to be infinitesimally fair and just to have created only those He has? Think of the innumerable multitudes that He never had to offer mercy, innumerable multitudes that would have rejected Him! Or is the injustice in that He has created you knowing you would have a fallen nature? But had He not created you, you could not call Him unjust for there would be no you. If just one soul is condemned, would that not, to some, be enough for a charge of injustice? Then again, if everyone were to be given salvation, would not the ultimate injustice be in the existence of suffering in this life throughout the course of this world at the hands of multitudes with no threat of punishment? If God never had created, there would be no suffering...and no one to know that there is no suffering, but also no joy....and no one to experience the glory, majesty and righteousness, mercy and love of God who "gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (ESV) Is it possible that the origin of our claim that God is unjust really in that we do not know everything that He knows, and would this not be us, the creature, demanding to be as God, the Creator?
What is the ultimate demand that you might give to God in order to absolve Him of the charge of injustice? If you eventually find God innocent of injustice, and He is taken out of the dock, might it not be wise to dwell on His goodness. The offer of forgiveness, adoption and redemption would then be seen, not as unjust, but as wonderful. This is undeniably a poor treatise on free will but I only hope to encourage you to reconsider charges of injustice towards God and ask yourself who rightfully lays the groundwork for salvation, you or God.
For resources on this topic that are infinitesimally better than mine visit www.ligonier.org
