More than a Potter (3)
Posted by Vincent Cheung on September 2, 2005Third, contrary to its intent, the objection uses an analogy that ascribes too much freedom to humans relative to God. The objector would expect the Christian to explain how humans are more free than robots and puppets, or how humans have genuine freedom while robots and puppets do not. Those who affirm popular Calvinism will also try to affirm God’s total sovereignty at the same time.6 This plays right into the objector’s expectation — it exposes the fact that the position of these Calvinists is indeed incoherent and paradoxical, and that it is affirmed by sheer force, as even the major Calvinistic theologians admit.7
However, if we would cast aside the usual unbiblical and irrational assumptions, we would confront the objection by claiming the very opposite. The objection fails to apply not because its analogy denies freedom to man, but because it concedes far too little control to God.8 Certainly, God has infinitely more control over us than we have over robots and puppets.
With robots and puppets, we can only rearrange and combine preexisting materials to form objects whose designs and functions are limited by its materials, by our intelligence and creativity, and then by our ability to maintain and manipulate them.
This is not so with God. Whether we are speaking of robots, puppets, or humans, God is the one who creates, sustains, and controls the very materials from which they are made. He is the one who conceived their designs and functions, and even then he is not limited to these, but he can change them at any time if he so wishes. He can create out of nothing (Genesis 1:1), change water into wine (John 2:9), turn stones into humans (Matthew 3:9), and humans into salt (Genesis 19:26). He could cause any object to function in ways that is apparently beyond their original design, such as to cause a donkey to speak (Numbers 22:28, 30; 2 Peter 2:16), and stones to cry out and praise him (Luke 19:40).
In the light of Scripture’s testimony, it is an abominable insult to God’s majesty and power to assert that he has no more control over us than we do over robots and puppets, or that we have more freedom relative to him than robots and puppets have relative to us.9 Of course humans are greater than robots and puppets, as we have already acknowledged. But then, God is far greater than humans.
Notes
6 Even "total" (or equivalent terms) has become relative for some of those who affirm popular Calvinism. They would affirm God’s "total" sovereignty against those who challenge them, but then they would turn around and challenge me for affirming God’s "total" sovereignty and its application to metaphysics, epistemology, and soteriology. They (these "Calvinists") would even begin their objections against me by saying, "But if God controls everything…," indicating that they do not really believe that God controls everything (for example, see section I of "Short Answers to Several Criticisms" in Vincent Cheung, Captive to Reason). The truth is that they do not believe in God’s total sovereignty — they just believe a stronger version of God’s crippled sovereignty than the Arminians.
7 See "Forced to Believe" in Vincent Cheung, The Author of Sin, in which I use A. A. Hodge as an example of this incoherent Calvinism. He writes, "Although the absolute origination of any new existence out of nothing is to us confessedly inconceivable, it is not one whit more so than the relation of the infinite foreknowledge, or foreordination, or providential control of God to the free agency of men, nor than many other truths which we are all forced to believe." I respond, "Biblical doctrines are inconceivable only if measured against some irrational premise or standard. What we need to do is to cast aside these false principles and assumptions that are not part of the biblical worldview in the first place. But if you are going to take principles and assumptions from two contradictory worldviews and try to jam them together, then, yes, you are going to end up with something inconceivable. Just don't call that Christianity or Calvinism."
8 See "Determinism vs. Fatalism" in Vincent Cheung, The Author of Sin, in which I respond to the charge that my position on divine sovereignty amounts to fatalism by noting that fatalism is in fact weaker than the biblical determinism that I affirm — it ascribes too little control to God over his creation.
9 As the following discussion of Romans 9 would imply, it is fine to use an analogy to illustrate God’s control over his creation in a relative sense, but no analogy can absolutely represent God’s infinite control over his creation. The error, therefore, is not in using an analogy to illustrate God’s control, but it is in asserting or implying that the analogy fully represents God’s power.
(to be continued)
Recommended
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology
Vincent Cheung, Commentary on Ephesians
Vincent Cheung, The Author of Sin
Vincent Cheung, Captive to Reason
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations