Chapter 1: What is the extent of God's sovereignty over the world?
If God is totally sovereign and if people are fallen and some perish, how can God, who is sovereign, allow evil in the world? How can God allow people to perish? I've never actually met a Christian who comes out and says, I don't believe in the sovereignty of God. After all, the Bible says that He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. That is, until tragedy strikes.
It can be in those moments, those trials, when we might be tempted to question, is God still on His throne? Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thanks for joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. This week we're studying the topic of predestination, God's sovereignty. And it's an important topic, but it's also a controversial one.
It's why we need to handle this subject with care, with grace, with charity. I think one of the reasons why we might be tempted to limit the scope of God's sovereignty, especially when difficulties and tragedies come our way, is in an attempt to protect the character of God.
But as we'll hear from Dr. Sproul today, far from protecting God's character, we're actually distorting it, and distorting it so much that we're denying God Himself. Here's Dr. Sproul.
Chapter 2: How can God allow evil and suffering in a sovereign world?
I want to focus our attention on the sovereignty of God. And one of the reasons why I think it's important that we really begin here with our study of the doctrine is that here is an area in which virtually all Christians agree We agree that God is sovereign.
How we understand the sovereignty of God may differ from Christian to Christian, but certainly we would all make the confession that God is sovereign. I like to tell one of my favorite stories that took place in the seminary where I teach a couple of years ago.
I had announced in my theology class that the following week I would be lecturing on chapter 3 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which deals with the eternal decrees of God. And the students didn't miss the implications of that. They realized that we would soon be entering into this volatile arena of discussing predestination.
And since the evening class in theology was open to the public, they went and invited all their friends, particularly their friends who were not inclined toward the reformed doctrine of predestination.
So I had a tiger by the tail the following Monday night when we started, and I began by reading the first line of chapter 3 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and I'll read that now for your benefit so that we can recapture the glory of what happened in Mississippi. The third chapter of the Westminster Confession begins with these words, God from all eternity did
by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and immutably, that is, without possibility of changing it, God did freely and immutably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, semicolon. Let me take a breath there at the point of the semicolon. God from all eternity according to his own holy and wise counsel did freely and immutably ordain or foreordain whatsoever comes to pass.
And I paused at that point in the seminary classroom and I said to my students, How many of you believe that statement? I have to understand, this was a Presbyterian seminary, so these fellows were pretty well steeped in the Augustinian tradition, and I got like a 70% vote there. That large number believed it. I said, okay, how many of you don't believe that statement?
And 30 or so hands went in the air, and I said, fine. Now let me ask another question. I said, without fear of recriminations, nobody's going to jump all over you. We just would like to know, feel free to state your position, how many of you would call yourselves atheists? And nobody put their hand up. And I went into my Lieutenant Columbo routine. There's just one thing here I can't understand.
So I said, and I looked at those 30 who had raised their hand and I said, do you mind if I ask you a personal question? I said, I can't figure out why those of you who raised your hand saying you did not believe this statement didn't raise your hand when I asked if you were atheists. And they looked at me with a mixture of puzzlement, the same kind of looks I'm seeing in your eyes here today.
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Chapter 3: What is the relationship between God's sovereignty and human free will?
that if there's anything that happens in this world outside the foreordination of God, that if there's no sense in which God is ordaining whatsoever comes to pass, then at whatever point something happens outside the foreordination of God, it is therefore happening outside of the sovereignty of God.
Understand that when we talk about God's ordaining things, there are different ways that God ordains things to come to pass. This doesn't necessarily mean that God jumps down into the planet and makes something happen through a direct and immediate personal involvement on His part. But the trick, I guess, in the statement has to do with the word ordain.
All that statement means is that God is sovereign over anything that happens. Now, I need to continue what the Westminster Confession of Faith says. Remember I gave you a semicolon?
After that semicolon, the confession is quick to add that though God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, yet he does it in such a way as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of secondary causes taken away, but rather established.
So we're not talking about a rigid determinism that eliminates free creatures, but we are affirming a sovereign God who is sovereign even over free creatures. That is the point that the confession is making. Now this brings us to the thorny problem that came up at least briefly in one of our discussion periods. If God is totally sovereign,
And if people are fallen and some perish, how can God, who is sovereign, allow evil in the world? How can God allow people to perish? If God knows in advance, for example, that a certain person is going to be born and is going to live their life and perish everlastingly in hell, how could a good God let that happen?
The dilemma was set forth philosophically by John Stuart Mill when he said, if God allows this evil situation to exist, it can only mean one of two things. Either God does not have the power to stop it, that is, he would like to have a world where there's no suffering, no pain, no evil, and no one is ever lost, but he just can't pull it off. If that's the case, then God is not omnipotent.
But if God is omnipotent and evil still exists and people still perish, then God is not loving. Now, that argument in one form or another has been set forth as a criticism of Christianity again and again and again since John Stuart Mill formulated it the way he did. And as Christians, how would we respond to that? Don't we struggle over that very question and over that very problem?
I think philosophically we can demonstrate that John Stuart Mill's dilemma here is what we would call a false dilemma. It commits the fallacy of the false dilemma because he doesn't consider every option that is involved here. And there's some great big assumptions going on here. in this argument that aren't brought to the surface, but we'll try to do that in a few moments.
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Chapter 4: How do Christians view the concept of predestination?
And as I've often said to my students, that's one of the greatest pitfalls in Christian thinking. As soon as your mind tells you that God must be merciful or that God ought to be kind, as soon as you think for a second that God is obligated to be merciful, a bell ought to go off in your head and alert you to the fact that you're not thinking about mercy anymore.
Because by definition, the big difference between mercy and justice is that mercy is never, never, never obligatory. Mercy, by definition, is something God doesn't have to do. It's something that God does voluntarily, freely. But as soon as you think he owes us mercy, you're not thinking about mercy anymore. Justice can be owed. but mercy is never obligatory. Do we get that?
We have to understand that principle. Okay, second thing is he could provide an opportunity for everyone to be saved. Actually, there's six things that we could do here and I'm trying to shortcut this for the sake of time and I'll just put in parentheses here, or he could create an opportunity for some people to be saved.
But bottom line, God could give the world an opportunity for salvation and set it up in such a way as that everybody or some of the people at least had a chance to be saved, but there's no guarantee that anybody would ever be saved. Okay? That's what we mean by opportunity. God is an equal opportunity redeemer in this schema.
The third option is that God, exercising His power and His sovereignty, could intrude into the human situation, not only providing an opportunity for salvation, but by so working in the hearts of fallen people, ensure the salvation of some. Or, let's put it this way, ensure the salvation of everybody. That is, God can intervene for everybody, ensuring their salvation.
That is, in his sovereignty, he could so guide the steps of a person and so influence inwardly their hearts as to actually bring them to faith. Now, again, does God have the power to do that? Yes. Now, he could do that for some, or he could do that for others. for everybody. Now, these are different options that God had or has.
What we're trying to get at in this course is what, in fact, has He done? Now, does the Bible indicate that God has provided no opportunity for anybody to be saved? We can eliminate that one as Christians, can't we? Right off the bat. There's no argument there. We all agree that this is not the biblical view, that God has made no provision whatsoever for salvation.
Now, how about the idea that God intervenes in everybody's life and ensures the salvation of everyone? What do we call that view? Universalism. And there are Christians who believe in universalism. But the debate historically between semi-Pelagianism and Augustinianism is not a debate over universalism. Those two viewpoints both agree what? That only some people ultimately are saved.
They are particularists rather than universalists. The Bible seems to teach, I think clearly, that there are those who are lost. ultimately lost, and at the last judgment will be lost, as our Lord indicates. Some will be sent out into outer darkness forever, weeping and gnashing of teeth. So we believe that there are some people who will never be redeemed. So this one has to be eliminated.
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