Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: How Should Southern Baptists Respond To This Divine Mystery?
January 17, 2008
Dr. Daniel Akin, president of Southestern Baptist Theological Seminary, provides the following article for SBC Life (April 2006) discussing how Southern Baptists should respond to the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibilty.
Although this article is addressed to ‘Southern Baptists’ I find it relevant for all Christian denominations.
Dr. Akin concludes the article with an excerpt from a message preached by Charles Spurgeon that is compelling. On August 1, 1858, Spurgeon preached this sermon entitled, “Sovereign Grace and Man’s Responsibility.”
excerpt: Sovereign Grace and Man’s Responsibility
“I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure. Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no precedence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other. These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring. . . .You ask me to reconcile the two. I answer, they do not want any reconcilement; I never tried to reconcile them to myself, because I could never see a discrepancy. . . . Both are true; no two truths can be inconsistent with each other; and what you have to do is to believe them both”.
D. A. Carson has also addressed this issue in his book Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspective in Tension
Posted in C.H. Spurgeon, Calvinism, D.A. Carson, Doctrines of Grace
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January 17th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Very interesting post. I agree it is relevant for all Christians, because some folks use the same terms to mean slightly different things. I think the false dichotomy the some can make (with a strict Calvinistic world view) is that: Man cannot be free because God is Sovereign. Why can’t it be both? Can’t man have free will in his daily life while a God who lives completely outside of time still remain completely sovereign? This is simply setting up a problem where none exists. God is sovereign and man is free. We can understand this to an extent, but it still remains a Sacred Mystery. A man can tell me that I eat too much, or exercise too little. He may tell me that I need a haircut, a new shirt, or a new car. But he can’t tell me that I’m not free to choose these for myself.
The eliminating of the great Christian Paradox’s has lead to the sad worldviews of some liberal mainline denominations in the modern church. Christ cannot be both God and Man. Food cannot be both Body and Bread. Mary cannot be both a virgin and a mother. A Church cannot be both visible and invisible, there is a heaven so there cannot be a hell. You pray to Jesus so you cannot pray with Saints etc. They slowly whittle away at doctrines until they fall into either universalism or agnosticism.
Some otherwise orthodox Christians say that a man is saved by faith alone, and that baptism and works of charity have no bearing on one’s salvation. If the Bible says in different places that faith, baptism, and works all save you, why explain these verses away in a effort to build a wall around the word faith where none is needed?
I think Chesterton echoed Spurgeons words, perhaps a little more poetically:
“Mysticism keeps men sane. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of today) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also…He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.” [Taken from “Orthodoxy” by GK Chesterton]
January 18th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Brett,
As always your comments are welcome but your attempt to defend the Roman Catholic doctrine of Justification does not go without notice.
Regarding Chesterton, I don’t think poetry is what we should be considering here. Truth is what we need, not error, no matter how poetic it may be. As you know, I have covered in an earlier post some of the error found in Chesterton’s theology.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Shane,
For the record, I wasn’t trying to defend any doctrine of justification by my comments. I completely agree with Spurgeons quote and he said it much better than I could. I also completely read and enjoyed Dr. Akin’s article, although I am aware that he does not need my approval of it.
Also for the record, I think the Psalms testify that Truth can be found in poetry.
January 18th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Brett,
Maybe I made some assumptions I should not have, sorry.
You are correct about the poetry of the Psalms but Chesterton his hardly a psalmist and his theology, most importantly his Catholicism, is cause for concern.