Grudem 16c: Human action is important.

Here is more summary/evaluation from Grudem's 16th chapter on God's Providence. Thus far I have reviewed:

• God's Preservation of everything and
• God's Cooperation with everything

Now the second to last installment:
____________________
C. Government
Summary
After discussing God's maintenance of everything and the relationship between human will and God's will, Grudem proceeds to God's government. Grudem defines God's government as the fact that "God has a purpose in all that he does in the world and he providentially governs or directs all things in order that they accomplish his purposes" (331). Grudem does distinguish between God's "moral" will, his moral expectations of the universe and God's "providential" or "secret" will, his will for what happens in history.

Evaluation
We have argued in our evaluation of the previous section that God's "concurrence" or "cooperation" with the creation for Grudem is not substantially different from God's direct governance. Grudem makes a distinction without a difference. Our evaluations elsewhere on this chapter will sufficiently cover the problems with Grudem's approach.

We might mention here a distinction in God's will that Grudem does not accept, namely, the difference between God's "directive" will and God's "permissive" will. For Grudem, all God's will reduces to his directive will, things that he specifically commands. By contrast, others such as myself would say that God sometimes allows things to happen that he did not specifically command. Interestingly, this Arminian perspective still fits within Grudem's definition of God's government, since one of God's purposes for the universe is to give it a measure of freedom.

D. The Decrees of God
Summary
"The decrees of God are the eternal plans of God whereby, before the creation of the world, he determined to bring about everything that happens" (332). This is the plan itself, whereas providence is the implementation of the plan in history. "God does not make up plans suddenly as he goes along" (333).

Evaluation
An Arminian will generally not have a problem with the idea that God had a plan for the universe, although it would not be typical to speak of the decrees of God outside of Calvinist circles. Arminians have typically believed that God's plan is from eternity past, only that he formulated that plan in dialog with his foreknowledge of choices we would make. It is this last statement that Grudem and other Calvinists would reject.

E. The Importance of Human Actions
Summary
One objection to Calvinist determinism is that it implies that our actions are not important or that we should not be morally responsible for our actions, if God is determining them. This section argues that human action remains significant even though it is determined.

1. We are still responsible for our actions.
It is in this section that Grudem basically says that God has defined "being responsible" as doing the act. The primary agent (God) is not responsible, but the secondary agent that does the act (us), at least when it comes to God. If we do it, we are the guilty ones, even if God made us do it.

2. Our actions have real results and do change the course of events.
This is true to Grudem because "God has ordained that events will come about by our causing them" (334). In other words, our actions do things that God has planned, which makes them significant. God has predestined that certain things happen by way of our actions. He has determined our actions and he has determined the results of our actions.

3. Prayer is one specific kind of action that has definite results and that does change the course of events.
In other words, God has both predestined us to pray for certain things and he has predestined that he will perform certain miracles as a result of those prayers he has predetermined that we would pray. He has also predetermined that sometimes we would pray and he would not answer.

4. In conclusion, we must act!
"A hearty belief in God's providence is not a discouragement but a spur to action" (336). God has predestined that the actions he has predestined us to do will be the means by which certain things come about. The Calvinist doctrine of providence, Grudem argues, should not encourage anyone to sit back in idleness to wait for God to act. Laziness is a distortion of the doctrine of providence, Grudem says.

Grudem does not mention Calvinism and missions, but we can use the question of missionary work to clarify what he is saying here. When modern missions was first on the rise around the year 1800, some Calvinists objected to the idea of going to India to preach the Christian message. The idea was that if God had predestined those in India to be saved, they would have been born somewhere where the Christian message already was.

Grudem and Carey would respond that it is God's will that such individuals hear the gospel by the human agency of missionaries going. In that sense, the fact that the eternal destiny of each individual person from India is decided by God is no excuse not to go and share the good news with them.

5. What if we cannot understand this doctrine fully?
Grudem, like Calvin, recognizes that the Calvinist doctrine of providence is difficult. Calvin's advice is to accept it because (he thinks) it is taught in Scripture and to embrace it "with humble teachableness."

Evaluation
I have already discussed some of this material in the earlier evaluations of this chapter. Arminians--and all rational thinkers--maintain that the person planning an act is far more responsible for an act than the puppet or instrument that actually does the act. This is the fundamental basis of all moral understanding and is in fact an aspect of Western law that demonstrates the influence of Judeo-Christian values. The Calvinist trajectory on this issue thus fundamentally undermines the basis of moral thinking in general.

Jesus teaches that it is the heart that defines evil (Mark 7:20-23), not the action. Paul (e.g., Romans 14:5, 14, 23) and the New Testament (e.g., James 4:3, 17) operates with an ethic that focuses on intention rather than action. The Calvinist orientation toward the act itself, rather than the intention behind the act, threatens to undo the very essence of Christian ethics. The Calvinist definition of sin is thus wholly inadequate, defined as any act short of God's absolute moral standard.

The Wesleyan-Arminian definition of sin, at least the sin about which God is most concerned, is more biblical, especially in terms of the New Testament. Sin is any intentional action contrary to what you know to be the right action. This is not the only kind of wrongdoing, but it is the one about which God is most concerned.

As far as prayer is concerned, we would suggest that God actually makes decisions on whether to intervene in the flow of history sometimes, based on whether we choose to pray or not. In one scenario, he might let x happen because we do not pray. But if we pray, he might intervene to where y will happen. Of course he knew whether we would pray or not before the foundation of the world and thus he knew how he would respond from eternity past.

E. Further Practical Application
Summary
The headings for this section more or less speak for themselves. Trust in God. "We need not worry about the future but trust in God's omnipotent care" (337). Be thankful for all good things that happen. Finally, "there is no such thing as 'luck' or 'chance.'" Nothing "just happens." "We should see God's hand in events throughout the day, causing all things to work together for good for those who love him."

Evaluation
We do not need to worry about the future. We should be thankful for the good things that happen to us.

Whether there is "luck" or "chance" is a good question for an Arminian. Does God grant a degree of freedom to the creation? Certainly nothing happens without God's permission, but it is here that the Arminian may resort to mystery and say we don't know whether God has ordained that some events happen by chance.

However, an Arminian probably will not see God micromanaging everything that happens every day. In some cases, God may let nature take its course. In other cases, God allows human beings to make choices. In that sense, Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life is much more of a Calvinist perspective than an Arminian one. It may be more comfortable to think that God causes everything to happen for a reason, but that does not make it true. And, when it comes to evil, it is deeply problematic to think that God directs the evil that happens down to the smallest detail.

Grudem 16a: God's Providence 1 - Preservation

Nowhere perhaps is Wesleyan-Arminian theology more distinct from Calvinist than in the subject matter of this chapter.  I hope to review this chapter in three installments: 1) today's on Grudem's treatment of God's preservation of the universe, ) a second one on God's "cooperation" with the creation, including whether God causes evil, and 3) a third where Grudem argues against the Arminian position.

For previous summaries and evaluations of Grudem's theology, see here.

Chapter 16: God's Providence
Summary
Wayne Grudem defines God's providence in this way: "God is continually involved with all created things in such a way that he 1) keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them; 2) cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do; and 3) directs them to fulfill his purposes" (315). He treats each of these areas under a distinct heading: 1) preservation, 2) concurrence, and 3) government.

A. Preservation
Summary
God does not continuously create new atoms and molecules, but God preserves what has already been created. "God has made and continues to sustain a universe that acts in predictable ways" (317). Grudem references verses like Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:17, which speak of God upholding the universe by his word or holding things together. Nehemiah 9:6 says that God preserves the heaven, the earth, and the hosts within them.

Evaluation
One of the biggest weaknesses of Grudem's use of Scripture is his failure to read verses in their full contexts. He more or less takes verses as straightforward propositions. But God spoke to the audiences of Scriptures largely in their worldviews, including their paradigms of the cosmos. This means that language such as that found in the verses Grudem references cannot be assumed to be straightforwardly literal, much less the basis for a firm perspective on a doctrine. In this case, see how few verses he is even able to produce on this subject--a reflection of the fact that we are trying to address questions that were not the questions of the biblical authors themselves.

In Nehemiah's worldview, for example, the hosts that worship God may include stars. In Nehemiah's day, they sometimes thought of stars as heavenly beings, angelic beings of a sort, while we now think of them as burning suns. Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:7 may draw on Jewish traditions about the Logos, which Philo also says glues the world together (e.g., Heir 188). In such cases we are better to take biblical language as more poetic than literal. The imagery is drawn from ancient worldview.

In short, we have no way of knowing exactly how God sustains the universe. The universe would not exist apart from God and it only continues to exist by God's direct will. But does God actively go around making sure gravity always works according to Newton and Einstein's laws? Is God holding my rear end down right now so that I don't fly up and hit the ceiling? Does God specifically make sure the second law of thermodynamics is in play (or is it the result of sin?)? This is certainly the way Christians before the scientific age would have viewed it.

But there is surely nothing heretical to suggest that we may now be able to speculate more precisely than was relevant for Christians before the 1600s and the biblical writers themselves. What if God created the universe as a machine that more or less runs on its own? What if a miracle is God interrupting the normal working of the machine? The key doctrines are maintained. God is still in ultimate control. God is still active in the world according to his will.

However, contrary to Grudem's approach, it was not the sense that God is predictable in his sustaining of events in the universe that gave rise to modern science. Rather, science exploded because thinkers in the 1500s and 1600s believed God had created the universe to run on its own by certain natural laws that inhere in nature itself. Indeed, the view that everything that happens in the world is the action of God or some other spiritual being was an obstacle to the rise of science. It is no coincidence that the Arminian point of view, which argues for free will and which Grudem argues against, rose at the same time as the rise of modern science.

In the end, we have no way of knowing exactly how it works. Does God go around directly making sure electromagnetic forces follow the laws of physics? No one can disprove that he does, because natural laws would look exactly the same. Did God create the universe largely as a machine that runs according to the laws he created as part of it? The fact that the "scientific" paradigms of the biblical authors were a function of their ancient contexts does not argue against this position, since the Bible was revealed in categories its original audiences could understand.

But science has not advanced on the supposition that God flips every switch and yanks every chain. It advances on the assumption that there are regular laws to the way the universe operates and that we best understand those rules by experimentation and the collection of evidence. Grudem's approach thus more pulls against science and the discoveries whose benefits are undeniable and all around us.