The Sovereignty of God.
From what I can gather, the concerns raised in this thread so far should be
compared with the difficulties being grappled with in Clark Pinnock's book,
"The Openness of God" because of the similar conclusions that might emerge.
His concern is to deal with those passages in the Bible in which God changes
his mind. The classic Reformed perspective is to give priority to those
passages where God is shown to be unchangeable (hence the concept of
"control"). God changing his mind is dealt with as an accommodation to our
frailty.
Dealing with those passages first that are the more difficult has the
appearance of being more honest. It is attractive to those who are anxious
to get back to the Bible and are predisposed to think that the classic
formulations of the confessions have moved people away and separated them
from the Bible. The conclusion that God cannot see the future is in harmony
with the starting premise that God's changing his mind is an expression of
his nature. I believe that this conclusion is wrong and that justice is
not//cannot be done thus to those Scriptures that show God as knowing the
future and being immutable.
God's sovereignty is displayed in that a material universe with
relativistic uncertainty built into the nature of its constituent particles,
the free actions and interactions of autonomous men and the time-long
malevolence of a powerfully equipped enemy combine to do exactly what God
permits and what he has planned. God's "hands off" (to accommodate the
restrictions of our perception by using an anthropomorphism) position is not
Deistic; it is a display of his greatness, his sovereignty and, if we use
the word with the caution it needs (I admit that a new wineskin might be
required to hold the concept) his control.
And yet, God does occasionally relinquish that detachment which so well
expresses the greatness of his sovereignty and acts directly into
time/space/history. Why? I believe that we must look to Christ to get our
answer. In the display of his authority we find Jesus healing at a distance
and performing miracles by the mere word of his command (no hands!) It can
seem difficult, when we have intellectually and believingly grasped his
ability to do so, that he seems then to step backwards in taking a "hands
on" approach; healing partially and then completely or making clay from dust
and spittle with which to anoint the eyes of the blind.
We have in these "hands on" miracles an expression of the humiliation of
Christ (it is so important that it was clay that he used); Omnipotent Deity
puts on Competent Humanity, the Sovereign God takes on the servitude of Man,
the Living One becomes the Dying One. That this accommodation of Grace can
be read back into all the examples of God changing his mind to show that the
accommodation and God's forbearance is always unto salvation should
illustrate to us how it is that God's detached being-in-control is sometimes
interrupted by his taking-of-control. If he only does so to save then we
have both a powerful halt to accusations that we are postulating a "God of
the gaps" solution to scientific problems and a check on our own laziness to
jump to a "God did it" conclusion.
Yours,
John Kilpatrick/.