You're making total sense, and these are good questions to ask. (Hi, by the way. I really enjoy your blog.) I wonder if this is an either/or proposition. I see biblical examples of God working in history as "the great puppetmaster", but maybe those are the exception and not the rule. Maybe there are certain things that He wants to accomplish in this way, and everything else can be sorted out later. Anyway, I don't think I have any more "answers" than you do, but I appreciate the questions.

you're making my head hurt.

OK, seriously, .. here's my free opinion, because you asked. Remember you get what you pay for.

I've always been satisfied to think of His will and His sovereignty as a rushing river that meanders this way and that, like rapids at times, slow and deep and thoughtful at others. It might even bubble into a creek through my backyard.

I'm convinced that the river's flow and its direction and its depth and its force depends on my prayers and my accompanying action.

The river is always there.. can't stop that; it will flow whether I get in, build a raft, watch from the shore, build a dam, use the energy to light my house, even create a gully to force a divergent path.. but nothing stops the flow.

What we do individually or collectively to negatively alter or even stop the flow has consequences. IT WILL keep flowing, somewhere else perhaps. But we're left without the benefit of its power, its cleansing, its mere ability to carry us to new places. We suffer in the drought of it all.

When Jesus prayed for God's will to be done, I picture the river's rapids building, moving, spreading out into tentacles and tributaries all over the world.

Ok, I'll stop now. Sorry, I rambled again but you made me do it.

Jared - thanks for dropping by! Glad to hear your thoughts. I definitely agree that God intervenes in special ways at times, ordering things in a particular way for a particular purpose. I think too that He always has the ability, the power, and the right to do so. So I think rather than either/or, as you rightly say, I'm thinking more on the lines of potential/actual. So does He always order everything, or does He intervene at times in special ways but at others lets things take their own course?

Jeff - great imagery, very powerful. The more I think about it, the more I like it, particularly in the sense of it being irresistible, but in a way we don't usually think of irresistibility. Really interesting way of thinking about it.

Scott,
This is a profounder question than perhaps you realize now; as I get older the sovereignty of God becomes all the more important. I've listened over the years to the Calvinistic side of this debate, and it never set with me all that well, and I've listened to the Open Theism stuff, and they have some things to say but not enough, and I've listened to what is called Middle Knowledge, which makes a little more sense. But for me this issue has come down to this...

God, by definition, must encompass all -- whatever it is and wherever it is. By definition this must be true. If God encompasses all, and transcends it all, then he must be in some sense sovereign over it all.

Sovereignty always runs into the issue of free will, and the only way to come to grips with free will issues (for me) is this way: humans clearly can make choices, but their choices are determined or shaped by their "character" (the moral being in which that will works) and God encompasses that character. This makes me sound like Jonathan Edwards, but what he said seems (to me, and after all these years) to be the only way to make sense of it and have a God who is worthy of worship because he is altogether transcendent and holy and mighty.

www.scotmcknight.com

Now my head hurts. ;) Thanks for your thoughts, Scot - I suppose I should dig around in Edwards' work a bit more then. And you are exactly right in locating my struggle where you have.

Here is where I am currently thinking: as you say, God absolutely must be sovereign, if we are at all to take scripture seriously. And I like how you've described sovereignty, and what you say about free will is most helpful. With those things in mind, taking a step back, I'm trying to work my way through whether sovereignty must then equate to the actuality of absolute control or merely the potential for absolute control. I'm leaning towards the latter, which eventually will no doubt bump me up against some of the other things you've mentioned...

I have to confess that one of the things that I'm starting to find attractive about the "sovereignty = potential" line of reasoning is the way it causes me to think about God's redemptive acts. It causes, for example, Romans 8 to make somewhat more sense. In some sense, no matter how badly we manage to screw things up, God is always able to redeem it and turn it to His glory - He steers things back towards His ends by subverting them to His purposes. Ah, at this point I'm just thinking out loud. Jeff's river metaphor carries some powerful imagery in that tragectory.

At any rate, thanks much for your thoughts. I'm enjoying your posts on Carson's book - very well reasoned with what I think is a very appropriate tone.

Good questions...

If we take sovereignty as a starting point, and I think it is the only way to maintain a sane Christian faith, then we must admit then that God had his hand in the shaping of "who we are." (This isn't double predestination, a doctrine which is too extreme -- and if anyone blogs me about it I won't even address it.) This "who we are" is what we had at the Fall and, by being part of Adam, we are "corrupt." (Footnote: I dislike using "total depravity," not because it is inaccurate but because the second term does not mean today what it meant a century or two ago.)

God made us to be Eikons (Image of God) and Eikons have one responsibility: to reflect the glory of their maker. In Adam, we sinned and that means we are now "cracked Eikons." (This is what I will be talking about in my next book, due out in December from Paraclete, A Weekend called Grace.)

Now to your point: as cracked Eikons (this is now "who we are") we can be nothing other than "cracked." Our character shapes what we can do and be: we can't restore our own Eikon. Within that general condition of being cracked Eikons who can only live out a cracked Eikon existence, we have "choice" within that condition.

Sovereignty then does not mean "absolute control" but, in a sense, sovereignty means humans are restricted to the condition in which they exist before God and they are dependent upon God's good grace if they want to be restored.

Again, Edwards got this right. Even if he did preach that one sermon schoolkids are taught to be ridiculous.

I think that there's a few really good thoughts in here already, but I'm just going to throw in a couple more, because it's late and I'm tired and that's just what I do.

Firstly, on the nature of metaphors or conceptual paradigms. Tell me, what does coffee smell like? Describe it to me. If you've never tried this before, you'll soon realise how terribly difficult it is to describe something as simple (and beautiful) as the smell of coffee. Where do you even start? I guess it all depends on in what sense you are trying to convey the smell of coffee. If I'm trying to describe it in terms of rank, or how it makes me feel, it's easy! Imagine the best smell you've ever smelt in your life! That's the smell of coffee, first thing in the morning! But to describe it literally, so that the next time you walk past a cafe you will go "oh! That smell is coffee - it's exactly what the_blacke said it was like!"... well that's a lot harder.

Now we all know that coffeeness is next to godliness, but you're probably wondering what the hell I'm on about. So let me elaborate. If you can't even describe the smell of coffee to me, or I to you, what happens when we move on to something harder, something less tangible, something more significant? What happens when we try to talk about God? There is no paradigm, no metaphor which we can use to adequately describe God, is there? Everything is at best an approximation, a two dimensional snap-shot of a multi-dimensional being. Does that mean our descriptions are not true? Not at all. But then again, does that mean they are completely true? Well no, I wouldn't say that either. Tricky, isn't it?

So, the bible talks about God in terms of Kingship, and sovereignty. I think you are correct to ask questions about what metaphors were available to them, and what they might have entailed. What was a King, in their day? Overall, the Israelites had quite a bit of experience with Kings - foreign Kings, and later their own Kings. Is that what they were saying God was like? God was like King David, flaws and all? Certainly not! So, how does the image work? What do they mean when they talk about God as a King, or as having sovereign power?

I think we translate some of these images in a rather random and inappropriate way. If we were to think of a King or Sovereign in today's world, should we say that God is like Queen Elizabeth of Britain? Or worse - God is like Prince Charles?! No, so we reject that idea, and look for a more fitting King image to translate sovereignty to. So we post-enlightenment thinkers tend to think of God like a precision clock maker. God makes all the cogs, lines them up so that everything moves in perfect time, just the way he wants it to. If you want to take it further, you could go on to say that he has wound up the clock, and now just lets it go, watching from a distance, not needing to interfere because everything that happens is exactly as he planned it.

But this picture, this entire way of understanding sovereignty, is I think anachronistic, projecting back into the minds of the biblical writers ideas which they would never have had. So what do I think they did have in mind when they wrote such images? I think they had three themes in mind: creation, covenant, and justice.

They believed that their God was the creator. He has creative power, and so in a sense everything belongs to him, because he made it. Like a King who owns all the lands of his Kingdom, the earth is the Lord's, and everything in it.

They believed in God's covenant, in his promises to his people. He had promised to bless Abraham and through his descendents to bless the world, and he was capable of keeping his promises, as he had shown with the exodus.

And they believed in God's justice. So much of the Old Testament in particular is taken up with stories of Israel either asking for justice against their neighbours (or at times, themselves), or reminding God of the promises he had made to them, and that he really ought to keep his promises. (Much of the rest of the Old Testament is taken up with God reminding Israel that they had made some promises too, and that this was a two way street. I think it is important to dwell on this also, that in some way God's sovereignty, the way in which he conducts himself in the affairs of his people, was related to their fidelity to him. This isn't a clock maker - there is something deeply relational about this God, where it is hard to get a good, objective look at him, because so often what we see of him is in relation to or response to what people have, or haven't already done.) But he's a God who loves justice, who loves for what is right to be done. And he has promised justice, both in the sense of judgement, and also in the sense of putting the world back to rights, undoing the damage which sin has done and redeeming and restoring his creation.

Creator, powerful and active. Covenant, faithful to promises. Justice, upholding righteousness, putting the world to rights. I think that these themes are running through the minds of the biblical authors - and probably others too, mind you - as they speak of God's sovereignty. Are they comparing God to, say, King David or King Solomon? Only in so far as David or Solomon is a shoddy reflection, a poor imitation, of God. Let me tell you about God - he's like King David, only better! He is more wise than Solomon, more righteous than David.

N.T. Wright, in the introduction to "The New Testament and the People of God", said something like this (quoting from memory): Many people approach the question 'was Jesus God?' as if God was the known quantity, and Jesus the unknown. I suggest that the reality is quite the reverse." In other words, we don't in reality have this objective understanding of God, which we then hold Jesus up to and assess whether he fits the mould or not. No, the reverse is that we gain a true understanding of who God is by examining, studying, following Jesus. Relevance? If you want to truly understand the sovereignty of God, I think we need to start with Jesus. Graham Kendrick summarised it well in his song 'The Servant King' though, like all summaries, I think that the reality is so much richer and deeper (and less over-sung in the 90s).

When the Tsunami struck on Boxing Day, certain idiots I am ecclesially related to spoke of this as God's Judgement upon a sinful and godless people. They saw God as being sovereign, in control, causing those waves to smash over the beach with such devistation.

When the Tsunami struck on Boxing Day, I saw that the church God has empowered to continue his mission in the world, to establish and expand his Kingdom in his power and Spirit, had failed in so many ways. I saw that this Tsunami stuck some of the poorest nations. Nations that are poor because of the exploitative practices of first world nations. Nations that are poor, so live with lower quality construction, and higher density living. High population levels living close to the water's edge, in sub-standard housing, with no money to invest in infrastructure to either detect a tsunami or to adequately warn its inhabitants if it had. And while we sat around, still full from all the eating we had done the previous day in Jesus' honour, thousands of lives, people Jesus loves, part of his creation, were devistated and crushed because in the wrong place, at the wrong time, they lived in such conditions that meant disaster was inevitable. Because the rich in this world have oppressed and exploited the poor, and the church hasn't stopped it. Some of God's sovereignty, at least, is exercised through his church, Christ's body, in the fulfilling of his mission. I think it's fair to say that we've failed God on that one.

If the tsunami had struck Sydney Harbour, or the Florida coast, would the devistation had been as bad? In dollar terms, yes, because the land right on the water is the most expensive. But those countries are affluent, and the population density isn't anywhere near as high along the coast. And the construction is of better quality. Even if there had been no prior warning, which there would have been if the Tsunami had bored down on America or Australia, then the loss of life wouldn't have been anywhere near so bad. But it didn't come for Australia. Why, because God loves Australia, and sovereignly directed the tsunami away? Of course not. As the tsunami bored down, I am quietly confident that Jesus silently wept, wishing that we had heeded his call, and carried out our mission, loving our neighbours as we love ourselves. If those countries had even half the wealth we hold, the loss of life wouldn't have been anywhere near what it was.

So I think we need to understand sovereignty, in part at least, as incorporating the fulfillment of God's mission to his creation, through his church. There are many things in human history, many times when people have asked 'where was God?', or have questioned (or badly claimed) his sovereignty, where I suspect if we dig a little deeper into what the church was doing in the years or generations previous, we might find that had the church behaved differently, things may have been different. I'm not saying this bit for sure, it's just a theory that I'm toying with. But, for example, after Albert Schweitzer, German Christology recoiled from historical Jesus study. Schweitzer's historical Jesus was so confronting that they decided that they didn't want to try and link Jesus with history at all, if that is the kind of Jesus you come up with. (I'm generalising, of course.) But what was the result of this? That, divorced from his historical context, Jesus could be made into a new Jesus, in German scholarship. A different Jesus from the one we find in the bible. A Jesus who, for example, didn't like Jews. Who wasn't a Jew, who hated the Jews, those people who killed Jesus. A German vision of Jesus who hated the Jews - where might that lead?

God is sovereign? Yes, I believe he is, and he calls his children, his church, to be a light to the nations, a city on a hill that can't be hidden. I don't think that we can divorce our calling from God's authority. I think it's always been this way, that God has a covenant with his people and that they have a part to play, so that through Abraham's descendents the whole world will be blessed.

And of course, as I said at the start, this is only one side of it, a two-dimensional picture of a multi-dimensional reality.

God bless, and peace.

Rapid qualification. Schweitzer was around the turn of the 20th century - can't remember exactly. And my point in this, discussing German Christology in the post-Schweitzer period, is that perhaps if more of the church had stood up to the brewing terror in 1930s Germany things may have gone differently. It's late and I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been when talking about such a topic. Apologies if I offended anyone.

Scot - I think all of your points are very well taken. I love the term "Cracked Eikon" - I think it captures beautifully the tragedy of the human condition. And, to your point, the human dilemma as well.

the_blacke - creation, covenant, justice - now that's what I'm talking about. Absolutely great thoughts. You've given me some really great things to think about here.

Another thought - how does the cross play into this? What does it do for our understanding of sovereignty to recognize that God suffered? Does it matter?

I think the most important lesson I have learned so far in studying church history is that a little scripture, and a little logic, is a very dangerous combination. Arius, having seized the concept of monotheism with both hands, therefore concluded that Jesus could not have been God in the same way that God the father was. And it is that joining word, 'therefore', that I think we need to be careful of. Sometimes we can take a biblical idea, and chuck a 'therefore' after it, and wind up somewhere very different. I have been told that 'true hyper-calvinists' don't believe in evangelism, because God has already predestined those he wants to save and our efforts couldn't make a scrap of difference. Not that I know that for sure, not many calvinists stick around in conversation long with me ;-). But the point is that, God has predestined some, *therefore* we don't need to evangelise them ... and suddenly the great commission and a whole heap else gets marginalised on account of one true idea, and our use of 'therefore'. I am sure I am guilty of this myself - in short, we don't like paradox. But when we come to discuss the sovereignty of God, I think we can't help but encounter, and embrace it.

I think in Jesus we see this paradox come to life: the almighty, the creator, has become flesh and lived amongst his creation. More than that, though he deserved a royal birth, he was born in obscurity and most likely poverty. More than that, though he should be served by his friends, he serves them. More than that, though he deserved teh attentions of the highest in the land, he was known as a friend of sinners. This is sovereignty, but it is turned on its head. If you were a shepherd, would you leave your 99 healthy sheep behind to go seek the one who was lost? Would you really? Risk 99 for the one? This kind of sovereignty doesn't make sense! Indeed, it's all backwards. He who should be served does the serving! He who should be exalted has chosen to be humble! What kind of King is this?

And more than that: he goes to the cross. He is wounded, beaten, rejected, and executed, for his subjects. For his people. Humiliated, for his people. Broken and crushed, for his people. For us, and for our salvation.

Whenever I hear of people talking about God's sovereignty as something executed from afar - God sits outside of time and chooses those he knows will accept his invitation; God sits up in heaven and sends tidal waves at people in judgement - I have trouble reconciling that with a God who was so concerned that he got in the ring with us, and took every blow that was aimed at us, onto himself. It's not that this God isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, but that he took that to the nth degree - you couldn't get more involved, more hands on, than Jesus. You couldn't turn our idea of a righteous King any further upside down than Jesus did! It just isn't possible! It's not that he wasn't righteous, or that he wasn't a King - but what that meant to him, and how he lived that vocation, how he fulfilled that role, well it's as close to the opposite of what I think we would have expected as it could possibly be. He didn't love from afar - he came and drew near. He didn't wait to see who would respond, he went out and called to people, talking to them, teaching them. He wasn't afraid to be seen with 'the wrong people', indeed he seemed to wear that badge with honour. And it wasn't PR, it wasn't just charity. When the going got tough his body-guards didn't jump in and protect him from it (well, his friends tried, but he rebuked them). He took upon himself the very worst - not just the worst that humanity could dish out, but the very worst that sin could throw at him. He took on death, and endured it. What kind of King is this? One who dies for his people - for people who do not even know him yet.

So yeah, I think recognising that God suffered does change our understanding of sovereignty, I think it has to. Indeed I think it needs to turn our understanding of sovereignty on its head. I kind of hope I'm wrong, but I half suspect that the first time I see Jesus in heaven, he's going to walk up to me, kneel down, and wash my feet from my journey. And like Peter I will surely protest, because that just isn't right!. I should be washing his feet, washing it with my tears and drying it with my hair. But that is just the sort of God we have. He wears the sovereign robes of a servant's apron. He was born, and he died, in rags. As he hung upon the cross, the weight of sin crushing the life from an innocent man, he - the righteous one! - cries out to his father in heaven... not "vindicate me!", not "punish them for their unbelief". No, not this King. What did this king, this paradoxial, turn everything upside down king cry?

"Forgive them, Father, they don't know what they are doing."

Forgive us, oh Lord, for most surely we do not. We banter your incarnation like a theory, constructing our own frameworks of how you think, how you feel, what you will do. We make rules about you, we fight wars about you, we crush and attack others in your name, in the name of "truth". Oh that we might just be like you, and take up in your authority, a servant's apron. Oh that we might kneel, and wash our neighbours' feet after their journey. Oh that we may seek to love you with our whole heart, and love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Oh that we might seek to know you, not just know things about you.

"Forgive them, Father, they don't know what they are doing."

PS: Sitting on my bookshelf, as yet unread, is a copy of Moltmann: the Crucified God. I intend to read it once I have knocked over this subject, so I'll let you know once I have, but from what I've been told, it's a powerful book looking at God through the prism of the cross.

On my view of the cross, I have a very brief sketch for a popular audience, and many more things could be said, but you can find it in my The Jesus Creed, about chap 29 or so.

Scot - it's too bad I didn't find your stuff earlier; I just put in an Amazon order about a week ago. I'll definitely have to pick it up. Based on your insightful comments here and your well-written articles on your site, I'm sure it's a great read. *off to add to wishlist*

the_blacke - I don't really have words to express what I'm thinking. It's beautiful and amazing and true - and completely opposite everything that you'd expect (as you rightly say). Although I'm not nearly as big on apologetics as I used to be, it does occur to me that this is either the stupidest story I've ever heard, or it has to be true. And it's too amazing to be stupid.

I don't know about all this theology stuff. Frankly, I'm not that smart. But I do know this: For almost everyone I see at work today, their suffering and pain may be their only tangible point of intersection between their lives and God's love. Ever.

And when I got out of bed this morning God asked me to carry that love to them.

That's it. That's all I've got.

Scott, it is the strangest, most beautiful story I've ever heard. I was basically in tears as I wrote much of that last night, blown away by the beauty, ashamed that so often I don't stop to think of it in those terms. I would like to think that if we could all somehow fold that vision of Jesus into our theology of leadership in the churh, the world would be an amazingly different place.

Tom Wright (somewhere, can't remember where) talks about how the gospel, the declaration that Jesus is King, is the power of God for salvation. He then expands that a little - the story that this world has a new King, and it isn't Ceasar. This new King is a Jew, but more than that, he's a Jew that the Jews themselves rejected. What's more, he's an executed Jew - he was disowned by the Jews and killed by the Romans. But more than that, this new King has been resurrected, and is alive again! No wonder Paul called the gospel a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles. A rejected-executed-resurrected Jew, King of the whole world, more powerful than Ceasar? It's too rediculous to be true! And yet people believed...

rhymes_with_kerouac - I don't know, I've been reading your stuff for a little while now and it seems that you live your theology better than most people I know. If that's not wisdom, I don't know what is. ;)

the_blacke - I know Wright talks about that in The Challenge of Jesus, so it probably also shows up in his larger works. It's really something when you distill it down to the terms in which it would have been viewed in the first century. Incredible. And yeah, you're exactly right - how we manage to screw up our leadership paradigms with the example we've been given is a bit beyond me...