Chapter 4 – God of will or God of love?

Throughout Christian history, some have centred their theology on the idea of God’s absolute sovereignty.  God is almighty, he is in control.  Whatever he wishes comes to pass.  Everything is foreordained – including the fall of humanity, the election of some to eternal life, and the fate of those who defy him.

So, if God commands the slaughter of a people, to obey is good, to disobey is evil (see 1 Sam 15).

We have no right to object if God chooses an evil empire to inflict violent punishment on his own people (Hos 13).

Such a God is ‘an irresistible force to be feared and obeyed, worshiped and love, or else!’

The wilful God in Christian history

According to Augustine, God is free both to love, forgive and save, and also to judge, condemn and damn.

In the Medieval period the voluntarism of Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham placed God’s will before his goodness.  An omnipotent God is not bound by his own goodness.  He not only allows evil; he decrees it.

At the time of the Reformation John Calvin taught that all events take place according to God’s sovereign will.  There is no difference between what God allows and what God decrees.  According to Calvin,

‘God is not only beyond good and evil, but everyone who does evil is merely acting as his instrument and at his command. When an evil person or even the devil commits evil, it is because the Lord not only permitted it—he commanded them and forced them to do it.’

Calvin’s theology was taken up by the radical Puritan Oliver Cromwell, who appealed to the OT to justify his violent revolution.

The neo-reformed theology of our own day encompasses not only ‘flaky’ groups such as the Westboro Baptists, but also wise and fruitful teachers like Tim Keller.

For John Piper, the violence of 9/11 was divinely ordained, as was the Minneapolis bridge collapse of 2007, in which 13 people were killed, and 145 injured.  But what are we to say to those many who have been raped, beaten, turtured, murdered, abducted?  If God not only permits atrocity, but actually wills it, how can he be said to be ‘good’?

The willful God in Jewish Scripture

But this God also features within the Old Testament.

Contrary to our Christian sensibilities (which condemn genocide and seeks to help the afflicted), we find Yahweh commanding or sending calamity.

Those same Scriptures represent God as

‘gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness’ (Ex 34:6; Ps 103:8).

But, according to Psa 115:3, ‘God does whatever pleases him.’

God’s answer to poor Job is, “Who are you to question me? How dare anyone judge me? I’m God almighty!” (Job 38:1-3; 40:1-7; 42:1-6).  Yet the main take-away from Job is that God’s essense is not iron will but loving heart (Job 33:23-26).

The willful God in the New Testament

We may not pit a ‘callous’ God of the OT against a ‘loving’ God of the NT.  It does not work simply to replace Yahweh with Jesus.  Just as the OT presents a God who is both vengeful and gracious, so the NT not only teaches that God is love, but also can be described as:

‘an exacting Master (Matt. 19:28-35), avenging Landowner (Mark 12:1-12) or retributive Judge (2 Thess. 1:6-10).’

Jesus himself can be envisioned as a blood-soaked warrior (Rev 19:11-19).

And yet there is a trajectory from the OT to the NT:

‘For example, we read in John 1:17 that Moses gave us the Law (a system of rewards and punishments), but Christ brought us grace and truth. We read in 2 Cor. 3:9ff that Moses’ covenant brought condemnation but Jesus’ covenant brings righteousness, true freedom and transformation.’

The old is not replaced by the new, but there is a fuller, more rounded revelation of who God is:

‘Rather than replacing Yahweh of the Old Testament with the Christ of the New, these authors emphasize that Moses’ revelation of God as the just Judge (the law-bringer) is being eclipsed by Jesus’ greater revelation of God the loving Father (the gospel-giver). They preach the same God, but through a different lens.’

Calvinists like to parade Romans 9:13-21 as evidence that the NT affirms the hateful, excluding and condemning God pictured in some OT passages.  Indeed, Paul seems to be teaching that God created some people for the sole purpose of damning them.  But it is only so when read through the lens of absolute will.  In context, Paul is teaching God’s freedom-in-love to save both Jews and Gentiles.

Consider the following:

• King, Master, Warrior, Conqueror
• sovereignty, dominion, control, intervention
• almighty, omnipotent, invincible, supreme
• power, force, authority, rule, command
• punishment, retribution, vengeance, wrath

We are not at liberty to simply airbrush such concepts from our Bibles and from our theology.  On the other hand, when the idea of God they represent is absolutised, then ‘an idolatrous and unChristlike portrait of God emerges’.

So we need to refound our theology on the following grounds:

• God’s essence [is] not pure will.
• His essence is selfless love.
• God’s primary attribute is not freedom.
• God is first of all good.
• God’s nature is totally Christlike, and, we’ll see, cruciform.

I appreciate Bard Jersak’s candour in acknowledging that Scripture, in both testaments, represents God as both sovereign and loving.

However, he has not extended this courtesy to the Augustinian and Calvinistic thinkers he mentions.  He has failed (so far, at any rate) to mention the concept of ‘compatibilism’ which John Piper’s friend and contemporary D.A. Carson has exposited so ably.  According to that concept, it is possible (nay, necessary) to speak both of divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

It is ironic that critics of Calvin and his followers accuse them of unyielding logic, whereas they themselves use their own fallible human logic to claim that God cannot be both perfectly sovereign and perfectly loving.  I think that Jersak most clearly shows his inability to hold these two in balance when he represents Calvin as teaching that Gpd ‘forces’ people to do evil.