On freedom and divine sovereignty (summary)

Free will and determinism have exercised me since my teen years, and I’ve thought of myself as a compatibilist since college. I have found no reason to change my mind. Since my conversion in 2020, questions about freedom and divine sovereignty have weighed on my mind, and Calvinists—crusaders for God’s sovereignty that they are—have sternly insisted that I join their side. Well, I do think God is sovereign, and I am inclined to compatibilism. So, I do have much in common with my Calvinistic friends. My version of compatibilism takes free will much more seriously, however, meaning that I take something closer to a Thomistic position.

Recently, I had conversations on free will and divine sovereignty with my Bible study group, people on X, and ChatGPT. They challenged me to consider Augustine, Calvin, Edwards, and, more recently, Piper, as well as Craig’s molinism. I have also spent time with videos by Leighton Flowers (and, yes, I know about the debates between Flowers and James White). I’m sorry to have to be difficult, but I don’t align with any of these distinguished thinkers. The following, then, is a very quick, wide-ranging, and incomplete summary of my view at present.

The central question is how to reconcile divine sovereignty with robust human moral responsibility. Most traditional theological systems, when pressed, collapse into one of two extremes, and stating them represents a sort of dilemma. On one option, God is sovereign over all, which means he determines everything, and that includes human sin; this means God orchestrates an evil world that is not really independent of him, courting the heresies of Gnosticism and Panentheism. On the other option, God carves out room for free human choices, which are independent, causeless facts; but this makes human beings into ex nihilo creators of their own choices, a position incompatible with human experience and science. Both positions are untenable. The view defended here avoids both extremes, going between the horns of the dilemma. It affirms that all things are causally sustained by God’s providence, including the causal systems in which the human will operates; but it denies that God specifically “determines” every human choice, in the sense that he himself deliberates and settles upon it as optimal.

I. The nature of free will

Human beings are organisms with needs, impulses, and capacities. Over time, we develop habits and principles that guide our decisions. These habits are formed through precept, discipline, experience, reflection, repetition, and moral struggle. Now, when we reach a certain age—call it the age of majority—we inherit the structure of character and moral inclination we have, by then, come to possess. We inherit what we are, so to speak. But what we are—the structure of the human character—is not immutable. We remain capable of reflection and reformation; we may also be imbued with the grace of the Holy Spirit, for which we are not responsible, but for which we must be grateful. More about the latter in a bit.

Now, what makes this a compatibilist position is that this means that human action is embedded in a causal nexus, the framework of nature. Free choices do not emerge ex nihilo. They all have causes. They are—or could be, if we took the time—the result of deliberation informed by values, principles, desires, and perceptions. Yet such embeddedness does not destroy freedom; it is the very substance of freedom. This compatibilist concept does the work we require of it. Moral responsibility attaches to us precisely because the action flows from within a structure we rightly identify with ourselves. We are and own our habits, principles, etc.; there is nothing more constitutive of the core of who we are than our character. We take responsibility for our actions because those actions flow from that character.

Let me explain why the will is properly called ‘free’, on this account. Freedom, in the sense relevant to moral evaluation, consists in the unimpaired ability to deliberate and act according to one’s character. When we ask what makes the will free, we should expect an explanation of what the will is free of. It is not free of causation but free of coercion or impairment. When a person acts under duress, or in a state of hallucination, moral analysis and the American legal system both say the person is not free and not fully morally responsible for his actions. Why not? Because freedom requires ordinary, adult, unimpaired, rational self-governance. In the usual case, when we act, we may normally deliberate, and our action flows from our values, etc.; thus, we are free, even if our values have causes (as of course they do). Again, at the age of majority, we become owners of the values our parents (and others) have taught us. Our will at that point is manifestly not uncaused, but it is our own, and we, as conscious, rational agents, can go to work on it: we are able to change its direction. (Some young people do, and graduate from college as quite “different people” from the ones who entered it.)

Now, some readers will be familiar with a well-known philosophical argument that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are incompatible.¹ It goes roughly like this:

(1) God knows before I act what I will do.
(2) If so, then I cannot do otherwise.
(3) If I cannot do otherwise, then I am not free.
(4) Therefore, if God has perfect foreknowledge of what I will do, then I am not free.

But this argument equivocates on what “could have done otherwise” means. If we mean the ordinary sense—the one used in daily life and in courtrooms—then the argument’s step (2) is plainly false: of course I can do otherwise, even if God knows what I will in fact choose. What difference should that make? After all, I am not coerced, impaired, or constrained. But if the phrase means something like metaphysical indeterminacy—that I must be capable of choosing otherwise even with the same exact causes, character, and motives—then it is (3) that fails. After all, there is no reason to think the concept of freedom requires this strange state of causelessness: see the discussion above. Indeed, freedom, on that notion, would render all responsibility unintelligible. Freedom is not metaphysical indeterminacy or randomness; it is rational self-direction. It is precisely because we are formed, habitual, and reflective creatures that we are accountable.

Even the Bible can support this notion of freedom, by the way. In what sense do Jesus and Paul mean that we are—indeed, our will is—free, after we are converted? We are “free from sin” (Rom 6:18). Sin is treated as a heavy burden, directly contrary to freedom. We stumble about in darkness, again the dark confusion of sin, but “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). The Jews could not bear to see the uncovered face of Moses, who “put a vail [sic in the KJV] over his face”, for its shining features reminded them of the law and of the recent punishment of the sin of their idolatry. But now we may contemplate the Lord—God with us himself—because we know that in him, we are free from sin. He has revealed himself in us and remade our hearts, removing the chains of our many sins: “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor 3:7-18, esp. v17). Jesus and Paul wrote of true freedom, and this concerns the remaking of our character, not some metaphysical indeterminacy. The philosophers may respond that Jesus and Paul refer to some kind of freedom other than metaphysical free will; but then I wonder if both of these supposedly different concepts can be made out with adequate clarity. I doubt it.

By now, you might be able to see why I say that libertarian (or indeterminist) definitions of free will fail on both philosophical and biblical grounds. Indeterminism is simply the view that not all events are determined by causal antecedents; and, in particular, free human actions lack causal antecedents. Now, libertarianism² posits that free choices must be uncaused, but this makes moral responsibility unintelligible. How could lack of a cause explain why we are responsible? Why insist on such a bizarre concept? If a choice is a causeless event, how could it reflect anything about the self? And if an action does not reflect the self, how could the person be morally responsible for it? It is true that the action has no cause prior to ourselves; but if it has no cause, as indeterminism says, then we are not its cause.

Moreover, an indeterminist account of free will cannot account for the ordinary distinctions we make between free and unfree action. Impairment and compulsion are problematic for the human will, not because they add causes, but because they interfere with rational self-direction. A person impaired by compulsion, delusion, or hallucination is less responsible for that reason, and this is reflected in how such persons are treated in courts. And does the age of majority cause children to be able to undertake causeless actions? Or do they become free because their capacity for reason is sufficiently mature that we credit them with the ability to direct and take responsibility for themselves?

II. Divine sovereignty 

God is sovereign over all things, but this sovereignty does not require that he determines every detail. Rather, he upholds the existence and operation of all natural systems, including the human organism. Living organisms are, in a weak but meaningful sense, autonomous: broadly speaking, every function of the organism, at every degree of speciality, is directed to its own self-preservation. An organism’s many concurrent activities are guided toward homeostasis by their inherent functions, internal structures, and responsiveness to their environment. This is a weak kind of “natural autonomy” for the simple reason that the living functions of organisms are, to a great extent, independent of whatever is going on outside of them.

Now, such natural autonomy forms the foundation of higher-order freedom. Human freedom emerges as a further development of the general principle of life: we deliberate, reflect, and reshape the patterns by which we live. Against this biological and philosophical background, we may understand God’s decretive will³ as the ongoing act of sustaining the cosmos and its order—including this framework of organismic self-direction. As the author of Hebrews says, Christ is “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). This is not the deliberate weighing or selection of each human act, and certainly not sinful acts; that really would make us puppets on strings, and then our sin really would be God’s sin.

In special cases—notably, regeneration—God moves the will. This is no mere detail; through this we are saved and will ultimately be perfected by him, and this is the great “free gift” of God to us. For this, we are not responsible, nor can we deserve it. As the psalmist prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10), and as Ezekiel prophesies, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26), God acts upon the heart itself. But this is not coercion; we reflect on what is occurring within us, and we accede to it. It becomes part of us, and we take responsibility for our “clean heart.” It becomes part of who we are. God saves us; he does not save himself. It is our heart that changes, not God’s; but it is his originating work. This preserves both divine initiative and human agency; here, I am aware that I am following Aquinas to some extent.

Where I part company with my Calvinist friends is my absolute insistence that God does not will sin, nor does he ever cause it. He does permit it; why he permits it is the problem of evil, which is a problem outside the scope of this essay.⁴ God sustains a world in which sinful agents are permitted to act, but he does not make them sin. The choices that arise from disordered desire and corrupted will are real choices. We make those choices and God may justly punish us for them, if we are not forgiven.⁵

Yet I can concede, as Calvinists (and other theological determinists) want me to, that God is shown in Scripture to act upon the human will, and this is an essential part of the story of redemption. Yes. Indeed, he foreknows and providentially orders history to a good end, and that includes my salvation. But the evil within it is not his doing; rather, he uses evil, which he abhors, for his own purposes. A good biblical example is found in Joseph’s words to his brothers: “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Gen. 50:20). This is used as a proof text by Calvinists, but they do not do it justice. God did not put the evil into their hearts, nor cause their jealousy or betrayal. What he did was give Joseph dreams, and imbue him with favor and wisdom that would ultimately lead to his rise. God could foresee that the brothers’ envy would lead them to send Joseph into Egypt, and that there, through hardship, Joseph would be shaped into the man needed to save many. God nudges—through dreams, gifts, providential arrangement of circumstances—but he rarely overrides. He makes use of the full texture of human and moral agency, without compromising it. The sin remains the brothers’ sin, and yet the story, in the end, is the sovereign Lord’s.

Again, to say otherwise—to claim, with theological determinists, that God decrees every sin—is to make him morally responsible for evil. Calvinists seek ways to avoid this horrific conclusion, and I don’t have time to consider them all. One common thread is to appeal to the distinction between God’s decretive and preceptive wills.⁶ But this cannot solve this problem if God’s decretive will is said to causally determine our sin: if we are machines over which God exerts fine-grained control, that is tantamount to saying he is directing us to sin. The way I draw the distinction, however, permits a more robust human will. God’s “decreeing” of all events (his decretive will) is better understood as God’s sustaining governance. He is the one who continues natural laws in their necessary operation; thus, he knows all that must happen, given prior circumstances; but that does not mean he deliberated about each item in the causal chain and moved it in that direction. So, he is not to blame for disasters such as our sin. That is how I propose to avoid the problem on which theological determinism is impaled.

III. Conclusion: how this view differs from others

Calvinism affirms God’s absolute sovereignty, but does so by sacrificing human agency in favor of divine causality. The result is a theology in which God ordains sin and then punishes us for it. This is not just morally problematic; it risks turning God into a metaphysical leviathan, collapsing all causality into divine action and thereby drifting into panentheism. In a very real way, the universe becomes an extension of God. Everything that happens is merely an expression of his will—including our actions, even our very sins. Contemplation of the evil of the world and God as its sovereign ruler can lead to something like Gnosticism: in response to such notions of God, some have concluded that the God of the Bible is an evil ruler of a fallen world, whom we must rise above by means of pure spirit. Calvinism isn’t committed to this, of course, but it is concerning that, historically, divine determinism has pushed some in this direction.

Libertarian approaches, including classical Arminianism and Leighton Flowers’ provisionism, affirm moral responsibility but does so by affirming libertarian free will (i.e., indeterminism). This, as I explained, denies causal explanation of human choices and thus undermines both metaphysical coherence and moral intelligibility. In addition, it makes divine sovereignty dependent on a vast set of ungrounded creaturely decisions—tiny causal universes created by each causally independent will.

Molinism tries to preserve both sovereignty and libertarian freedom by positing “middle knowledge”: God knows what any creature would freely choose in any circumstance and arranges the world to achieve the best of all possible worlds. This bypasses a certain metaphysical problem but is left with the problem of libertarian free will explained above.

The view defended here steers between a classic theological dilemma: either theistic determinism, with its God who is responsible for my sin, and libertarianism, which makes nonsense of human responsibility. God governs the whole; we govern ourselves within it, subject to his providence and judgment. The hard and frequently sad human condition is that we are responsible for what we do, because what we do flows from what we are; what we are is profoundly disordered; still, what we are, once we reach maturity, is a matter of our own choice. From this self-inflicted hell, God provides the only means of rescue. We depend utterly on the clean heart he creates within us, by which we receive the grace of forgiveness.

I leave you with one final argument. In formulating doctrine, the safest way forward is to find all the relevant texts on a question and then follow analogia fidei—let doctrine flow out of the most elegant way to make all the texts consistent. Or, as they say in philosophy of science, you are making a “model” of the text, one that “does justice” to “all the data.” When we approach the biblical text armed with this inductive hermeneutic, we discover two puzzlingly different tendencies. On the one hand, we observe the lives of sinners like Jacob, David, and Solomon, shaped by a rich psychology; we find many injunctions to fidelity, together with very real internal struggles and failures to maintain that fidelity. We also see intergenerational, inherited sin. On the other hand, there is a God who makes use of this sin to his own higher ends, and who mercifully (and supernaturally) intercedes by regenerating our very hearts.

In short, we see a robust notion of freedom and responsibility, yes, but also an insistence that our choices are, ultimately, deeply conditioned by wills outside of our own. A fully biblical view of freedom and providence requires a view that fully does justice to both.

Footnotes

1. This is explained in, e.g., William L. Rowe’s text, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Wadsworth, 2001), ch. 11.[↩]
2. Volitional, not political libertarianism.[↩]
3. The term used by Calvinist theologians. Basically, it means that God brings things about without regard to his judgment as to their justice. He decrees that sin will occur, though he abhors it. This is distinguished from his preceptive will, or what he would have us do if we were obedient to him (this being closely aligned with his law). It is also distinguished from his permissive will, or what he permits to take place. This is the broadest category, because not everything that he might permit actually comes to pass.[↩]
4. If it matters to anybody, I have nearly 100 pages about it in my book in progress.[↩]
5. Some will cite Romans 9 as a proof-text for unconditional election and inherited guilt. But Paul’s concern in that chapter is not abstract metaphysics; he is addressing Jewish anxiety over Gentile inclusion and the apparent failure of God’s promises to Israel. Paul is defending God’s freedom to redefine the boundaries of covenant membership as God sees fit; in so doing, Paul is not asserting that God directs all our choices.[↩]
6. On which, see an earlier footnote.[↩]