One of the arguments often leveled against my vision of salvation is that it denies the role of human freedom in choosing God.
The argument goes like this: God has created humanity as free beings and has thus bound himself not to interfere with their free decisions and choice. Divine agency and human agency are conceived as mutually exclusive.
In one form or another we find this proposition commonly advanced in discussions of synergism, providence, theodicy, and eternal damnation. Please raise your hand if you have invoked the principle yourself.
The underlying image is that of a stage. God has created the stage and the human players, yet once having created them, God stands back, as it were, and lets the players live out their lives in freedom on the stage. But there's a problem here. The image is deistic. It isn't Christian. It forgets that not only has God created both the stage and players, but at every moment he is conferring existence upon them. In some sense, therefore, God must be the ultimate author of free human decisions and actions. If he weren’t, they wouldn't exist at all. God neither respects nor interferes with our free actions; he creates them. Think upon that for more than a few seconds.
What this means, of course, is that even if I grant the role of human freedom in salvation, I'm forced immediately to begin talking about divine agency. God is at work. There's no such thing as a single agent whose will and choice determines the outcome of things. At best there's a double agency.
If we take seriously the divine nature that God is everywhere, then there's no place where God is not. Divine omnipresence makes divine action possible. But here's the thing: The divine activity doesn't change my action. It makes my action possible. God isn't competing with me, but is instead making my choice, my will, capable of doing what it does.
God doesn't make a difference; he makes all the difference. He is the reason why anything and everything exists to begin with. To be created does not make a difference to some finite thing; it makes it possible for that finite thing to make a difference to all other finite things and to be the object of their causal activity.
Think about that for a minute. We simply can't say where God's causality ends and human causality begins. It's not as simple as an independent agent making independent, willful, chosen act.
If we take the creatio ex nihilo seriously, we will find ourselves wrestling with all sorts of challenging, perhaps intractable, problems.
Take a look at this and you'll see what I mean.
The argument goes like this: God has created humanity as free beings and has thus bound himself not to interfere with their free decisions and choice. Divine agency and human agency are conceived as mutually exclusive.
In one form or another we find this proposition commonly advanced in discussions of synergism, providence, theodicy, and eternal damnation. Please raise your hand if you have invoked the principle yourself.
The underlying image is that of a stage. God has created the stage and the human players, yet once having created them, God stands back, as it were, and lets the players live out their lives in freedom on the stage. But there's a problem here. The image is deistic. It isn't Christian. It forgets that not only has God created both the stage and players, but at every moment he is conferring existence upon them. In some sense, therefore, God must be the ultimate author of free human decisions and actions. If he weren’t, they wouldn't exist at all. God neither respects nor interferes with our free actions; he creates them. Think upon that for more than a few seconds.
What this means, of course, is that even if I grant the role of human freedom in salvation, I'm forced immediately to begin talking about divine agency. God is at work. There's no such thing as a single agent whose will and choice determines the outcome of things. At best there's a double agency.
If we take seriously the divine nature that God is everywhere, then there's no place where God is not. Divine omnipresence makes divine action possible. But here's the thing: The divine activity doesn't change my action. It makes my action possible. God isn't competing with me, but is instead making my choice, my will, capable of doing what it does.
God doesn't make a difference; he makes all the difference. He is the reason why anything and everything exists to begin with. To be created does not make a difference to some finite thing; it makes it possible for that finite thing to make a difference to all other finite things and to be the object of their causal activity.
Think about that for a minute. We simply can't say where God's causality ends and human causality begins. It's not as simple as an independent agent making independent, willful, chosen act.
If we take the creatio ex nihilo seriously, we will find ourselves wrestling with all sorts of challenging, perhaps intractable, problems.
Take a look at this and you'll see what I mean.