What About Free Will? That’s the title of Scott Christensen’s new book that we’re talking about today. It’s a question virtually every Christian puzzles over at some point, at least – if God is sovereign over all, as he clearly is, then what does that say about human freedom?
Hi, I’m Fred Zaspel, editor here at Books At a Glance, and we’re talking to Scott Christensen today about his new book on this subject. Scott is pastor of Summit Lake Community Church near Mancos, Colorado, and author of the new book, What About Free Will? Reconciling Our Choices with God’s Sovereignty. Scott, congratulations on your new book, and welcome – great to have you with us today!
Zaspel:
Just to get us on track and clarify the issue, explain for us the question you’re addressing in this book.
Christensen:
Well, as you said, many Christians have questions about free will. What is free will? Do we have free will? And if God is sovereign as I believe the Bible clearly teaches, and not just that he’s sovereign but he is meticulously sovereign over everything that transpires in time, space, and history, and if that is the case then in what sense do we have free will, if we have it at all? I try to address that question. Obviously many Calvinists historically have said that no, we do not have the will whereas Arminians say that we do have free will.
The problem I think is how that is defined. And Arminians typically define free will different then Calvinists would who would hold to some notion of free will though many Calvinists would deny any kind of free will. So there’s a spectrum of positions even among Calvinists on this question. In either case, the position that I take, which is known as compatibilism, differs considerably from what Arminians would say about free will, which is typically known as libertarianism. So it depends on how these things are defined.
Zaspel:
If you would, sketch out the alternative opinions for us here. In general perspective, what are the leading answers that have been offered to this question? Help us understand the labels “libertarianism” and “compatibilism.”
Christensen:
Well basically libertarianism is the most common view of free will that is held by Arminians, and the term libertarianism comes from the philosophical world because secular philosophers use these terms as well. And Christian theologians generally adopted some of that terminology. Libertarianism has nothing to do with the political philosophy that floats around. The notion of libertarianism essentially believes two things: first of all, that a person’s choices cannot be determined in any way. They can’t be determined by any sufficient causes in the temporal realm, if you want to put it that way, nor can they be determined by God.
And that’s the key point for Arminians is that in no way does God determine our choices. So the term indeterministic is often used. And secondly, libertarianism would say because our choices are not determined we can always choose other than what we do. One can equally make one choice or another and when it comes to moral choices one can either choose good or evil, and that there is no sufficient reason or no sufficient cause why one would choose one or the other.
So that is basically how libertarians and Arminians would define free will. That our choices are not determined, they do not have sufficient causes, and therefore we can make any kind of choice within certain limits obviously, but essentially one has the freedom to choose good or evil or any other range of choices that are possible.
The view that I take, that I defend in the book, is known as compatibilism; and the first person really to, I think, to articulate this well, was Jonathan Edwards in his book, Freedom of the Will. Some say that Martin Luther and John Calvin articulated these views in a more nascent kind of way, but it was really Edwards who solidified this position that is known as compatibilism today. He didn’t call it that. But essentially what compatibilism says is similar to the term is that our choices are compatible with God’s sovereignty.
In other words, I would say there is a dual explanation for the choices that people make. God determines those choices and yet at the same time we determine those choices and that there are determining causes both on a temporal level, and of course, ultimately you know from God’s sovereign perspective in that whatever factors enter into the choices that we make, those determining causes will create particular motives and that people always choose based on the strongest motive that they have based on the various determining factors. So there is this dual explanation for our choices that ultimately God is the primary cause of our choices although he is also the remote cause. Whereas humans are the immediate cause of their choices but the secondary cause.
So God is primary, we are secondary. God is remote, we are immediate. So there is this sort of dual explanation. And in that sense we have a kind of freedom in our choices, but we are only free to act in accordance with the strongest motives that determine our choices and that God stands sovereign over those choices. So that would be a basic outline of the compatibilistic perspective.
Zaspel:
Okay, compatibilism. As you say it in your book, there is a dual explanation for why good stuff and bad stuff happens. Flesh that out for us. And help us see the contrast here also – there is a dual explanation for both the good and the bad stuff that happens, but the explanation is not quite the same in these is it?
Christensen:
Yes, that is correct. And in order to understand that you have to look at a broader theological perspective with regard to God’s will. Many Calvinists make a distinction between two types of ways that the Bible speaks of God’s will. One way is what some have referred to as God’s decretive will or, better yet, as just his sovereign will – that God sovereignly determines everything that happens in time, space, and history, including our choices. What that means is that God determines both good and evil. God decrees that good takes place, and he decrees that evil takes place. That obviously presents its own set of issues and problems that we have to address, but that would be God’s decretive will.
Then you have what is called God’s perceptive will, or his instructive will. This would refer to God’s will of command – what he determines to be good and right and true. So this could refer to God’s commands in Scripture and so forth. So you see this distinction in Scripture, that God decrees certain things that may be in line with, for example, God’s perceptive will, so he declares that all men everywhere should repent – that would be God’s perceptive will. And yet he only decrees that certain men will repent – that refers to God’s decretive will or his will of decree, his sovereign will.
What happens in our choices is that sometimes God will decree things that are in line with his perceptive will and other times God will decree things that are not in line with his perceptive will. For example, for the believer, we see that God has decreed that we should be conformed to the image of Christ. We see that in Romans 8.
Zaspel:
Yes, that’s the precept.
Christensen:
Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “I am convinced that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” So that’s God’s decretive will, that he is going to make certain that all believers are conformed to the image of Christ, and yet we also know from Scripture that it is a command that we be conformed to the image of Christ, that we pursue godliness and holiness and so forth as believers. So this is a case where God decretive will lines up with his perceptive will.
However, we find cases in Scripture where God’s decretive will is that certain evil may take place. And so that people make choices then that go against God’s perceptive will, his instructive will, but are in line with his sovereign will. I think one of the most poignant examples of that is seen in the story of Joseph and his brothers in the book of Genesis where Joseph’s brothers clearly defied God’s commandments, God’s moral will, God’s perceptive will by doing evil, by selling Joseph into slavery. And yet we read later on that as Joseph reflects upon this experience when he became the Prime Minister of Egypt and was reunited with his brothers they were in fear and trembling before him and he made it very clear that they did make this evil choice, and yet within the same breath in Genesis 45 he says, “but I want you to know that God sent me here.”
That God decreed that this would happen. In the iconic statement that we find later on in chapter 50, verse 20 Joseph says, “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.” And there you have this dual explanation for the same event – that Joseph’s brothers intended evil and therefore they defied God’s moral law, and yet at the same time God decreed that that would take place even though he had a different intention than they did for it.
So God can decree evil and yet human beings are culpable for the evil that he decrees because of their intentions. This gets into other issues, but essentially when we think about this, how is it that we are culpable for our choices? Well, I think the Scripture makes clear that our moral culpability, our moral responsibility is tied to the intentions of our hearts. Obviously the actions in themselves are evil, but those actions proceed from the intentions or the motives of our hearts and that is where are culpability lies.
Whereas on God’s side of things, because God is incapable of evil, he cannot do evil, he has no evil motives no evil intentions, and yet this is not contrary to the fact that God can decree evil to take place. But he always has some good intention for the evil that he decrees. We may not always understand what those intentions are because God does not reveal them all to us. In the case of Joseph, he says, I brought this about so that I could bring about the preservation of this family through famine and so forth, because Joseph’s brothers came to get food when the famine took place. But essentially it’s God magnifying his glory.
We see the same thing, for example, with Pharaoh. I think it’s 19 times in the book of Exodus that it says that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened but essentially half of those times it says that God hardened his heart and the other half it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And those statements are interspersed with one another and it’s sort of strange to think, well, how could God hardened his heart at one moment and Pharaoh hardened his heart at the next moment?
The point is that they were both involved in every instance of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. God hardened his heart and Pharaoh hardened his own heart so there’s this dual explanation. And yet we see that ultimately God’s purpose in the evil intentions that Pharaoh had in trying to prevent the Israelites from leaving Egypt, God had a glorious intention, he had an intention to magnify his glory through the judgments and the plagues and all of that the came upon Egypt and so his purpose in decreeing the evil of Pharaoh’s hardened heart ultimately had a good intention.
So we see these things in Scripture and we don’t always see God giving reasons for all the evil that he decrees, but we can be assured that he always has some good intention for it and therefore he is never culpable for evil.
Zaspel:
Yes, and of course the cross is the classic example of this – that God stands behind all things, even this evil event which was decreed to accomplish his saving purpose.
But I want to pin this down a bit. God stands behind all that is, but he does not stand behind good and evil in the same way, right?
Christensen:
That’s correct. A number of theologians have talked about this. Paul Helm talks about it in his book on God’s providence and D.A. Carson talks about it in his book that tackles these issues. But essentially what these men have said is that God’s relationship to good and evil is asymmetrical. It is not symmetrical. In other words, God does not stand behind evil that he decrees in the same way that he stands behind good. So that God can be more directly connected to the decreeing and the outcome of good and more indirectly connected to the outcome of evil. One way of looking at this is that God always employs other instruments such as Angels and Demons and Satan or human beings when it comes to evil. Whereas in situations of good he can be more of what we would consider the direct cause. So that there is not the same type of relationship with God stands behind evil as when he does behind good, if that makes sense.
Zaspel:
So if I do what is right and what is good I have only God to thank. But if I do what is wrong, I have only myself to blame, right?
Christensen:
That’s right. That’s right. Yes, that would be correct.
Zaspel:
Okay, the question begging for mis-steps and even criticism however you answer it: Just what is “free will,” and do we have it or not?
Christensen:
Yes, I think there is a sense in which we have free will, and another sense in which we do not. If we understand that the freedom of choice that humans have is tied to their motives and when it comes to moral choices that our motives are always tied to our nature, then we can only act in accordance with our nature. So when it comes to our spiritual choices, moral choices we only act in a way that is determined the nature from which those choices proceed. So for example, in the unregenerate person, the person who is not a Christian, they have a corrupted nature. So, due to that corrupted nature, all of their choices are going to be corrupted because they proceed from corrupted motives and therefore they are free to make those choices but they’re only free to act in accordance with their nature. So in that sense they are both free and in bondage at the same time. They are free to act in accordance with their nature but there never free to act against their nature. So as an unbeliever, every choice that we make, every moral choice that we make or don’t make this always going to be tied to our corruption.
So for example, as Isaiah says, even the best righteous deeds that we do are as filthy rags because the heart is desperately wicked, as Jeremiah says. So we have a corrupted heart, a corrupted nature that produces corrupted motives and we always act upon the strongest motive. But if the strongest motive is corrupted and we can only make corrupted choices.
Now, on the other hand, as you become regenerated, which is a work of God, the Holy Spirit draws us to an understanding of the gospel, opens our eyes to see the truth of the gospel, opens our hearts to receive the gospel in this calling, this drawing is I think synonymous with the work of regeneration. And so, what does that mean? It means that the Holy Spirit has caused us to have a renewed nature within us so that we now are capable of making choices that are truly God pleasing, that are truly God glorified. So apart from this regeneration we are incapable of making such choices. So what that means is for the believer we have a new found freedom. We have a freedom that the unbeliever didn’t have. We have the freedom to be able to make choices that are truly good and righteous in God glorifying and we could not make such choices before. We were not only incapable of making such choices, but we were unwilling to make such choices.
So the believer has a kind of freedom of will, if you will, that the unbeliever does not. And yet we also see from Scripture that the believer is still plagued with the remnants of the old nature. So there’s a battle within us and often times we produce motives that are still corrupted, that lead to sinful choices. But the unbeliever is always making corrupted choices where the believer has the capacity to make truly God glorifying choices.
Zaspel:
So it is not just bare willing at work but affections – a driving bias one way or the other. Is that right?
Christensen:
That’s right. Jonathan Edwards like to use that word, “affections,” which I believe speaks to the sort of base desires, the things that we truly love, the things that we truly long for and it’s another way of talking about motives. Although I think there could be a distinction made between those things. But yes, there’s a certain attraction to the choices that a believer is going to make as a result of this new heart that has been placed within the believer that makes Christ attractive, makes holiness attractive and creates these affections that did not exist in the unregenerate person’s heart.
Zaspel:
What about the argument that ought implies can? Does responsibility necessarily imply ability?
Christensen:
Yes, that is often an argument that is made by Arminians against God’s sovereignty. If God commands us things that we are incapable of doing because we’re so corrupted by sin that we just simply have no ability to obey those commands, well then it would seem unfair that God would give us such commands. But that’s simply not true.
You can just think of a scenario in everyday life, suppose you borrow a friend’s car and say you don’t have insurance or whatever and direct that car. You borrow that car and wrecked it and you don’t have the money to pay him back. You certainly owe him that money because you are responsible for wrecking the car but you don’t have the money to pay them back. So do you then say, well, because you are incapable of paying me back, well then you’re not responsible. While that would be a ridiculous argument. Just because we are unable to meet the demands that are just this not mean that we are suddenly now freed of responsibility for those demands that are placed upon us.
Zaspel:
Human activity and divine sovereignty both – what does this look like at the moment of conversion when we come to faith in Christ?
Christensen:
What I believe happens, is that God, through election, because God has elected believers to salvation at a particular time and point in their life he draws them to himself – we hear the gospel and God uses the preaching of the gospel as part of his purpose in drawing people to himself and through the preaching of the gospel the Holy Spirit begins to work in a person’s life and essentially brings about a transformation, and that this is the work of regeneration and that through this process a person’s thinking is changed with regard to the intellectual components of the gospel and his heart is changed with regard to his affections toward those things like we talked about earlier. And therefore this transformation, I believe, is a work of regeneration and that’s the divine side the person’s coming to Christ.
So, if you imagine a coin, on one side of the coin you have regeneration which represents God’s sovereign work in a person’s life and then the flip side of that coin would be conversion which is the human response to God’s work of regeneration. And that human response includes both faith and repentance. But without the prior work of God in the Holy Spirit in regeneration, one would not be capable of exercising faith and repentance because they would have no desire for it. They are not only incapable of it but they have no desire for it either. But when God renews their hearts and minds through the work of regeneration, he not only enables them to act with faith and repentance, but he plants those desires within their hearts as well so that they desire to repent of their sins and trust Christ for salvation.
And they do so freely, they do so voluntarily – that’s one way of describing a Calvinistic view of free agency, or if you want to call it free will you can call it that. I try to avoid that term somewhat in describing the Calvinistic perception of our free agency, our freedom of choice and whatnot, because the term free will itself is so often associated with Arminianism and it can be very confusing when you hear that terminology. But the point is that in the Calvinistic compatibilistic perspective, free will is simply tied to the voluntariness of our choices. The more voluntarily we choose something, the more free we are in making that choice. So in the case of the unbeliever, he freely chooses to sin, but he is also only capable of making sinful choices.
Zaspel:
He also freely chooses to reject Christ too.
Christensen:
That’s right, he freely chooses to reject Christ. So you’d never have anybody standing in the judgment before God and saying, “You know what, God? I really wanted to get to heaven, I wanted to choose Christ, but you prevented me from doing so.” Well, that’s never the case. People freely reject Christ and they do not want to receive Christ because they have corrupted natures.
Zaspel:
What audience do you have in mind for your book?
Christensen:
Well, it’s not an easy book, first of all, but it’s not what I would call a scholarly academic book either. What I really intended to do with this book is to try to take the very complex issues, and there are many of them, and try to make them as understanding as possible to the broadest audience possible. And that’s a difficult task because of the complexity of these issues, so I think that most educated laypersons can understand this book without having to get too mired in a lot of heavy theology and things like that. Educated laypeople, pastors in particular are who I’ve directed this book to.
Most people think this is a book for Calvinists and whatnot and that’s certainly true because even Calvinists have a hard time thinking through these issues, but I would hope that Arminians would read this book as well. I try to treat the Arminian position very fairly, I do not try to attack Arminians. So I would like to see Arminians read this book and be challenged to think through what it is that Arminianism really teaches and be challenged to think through some of these issues for themselves.
And any others who may be undecided, they’ve considered the claims of Scripture and the Calvinistic perspective on these things but they are not really sure yet in this whole question of free will is a huge hangup for many people because they don’t really understand what is meant by free will. And a lot of times you ask even an Arminian who is well studied what is free will, people have a hard time articulating what they really mean by that phrase and so it’s bantered about without really being well-defined. You can find that even a lot in Arminian literature that they assume a definition of free will without actually giving one. And so I try to be very clear about how thinking Arminians have defined free will and how thinking Calvinists responded to it.
Zaspel:
Have you been encouraged so far with the reception your book has had so far?
Christensen:
Yes, very much so. It seems to be doing well. I don’t know how well but my publisher tells me it’s doing very well. It’s the privilege to have D.A. Carson write the forward. I’ve had some very nice endorsements from some very well-known theologians and pastors and leaders. You know, this is my first book, I’m not very well-known at all, I pastor a very small church in a rural part of Colorado and so I’m very pleased at the reception that the book has received so far. It’s been nothing but very positive responses everywhere I’ve heard so far, and I’ve yet to hear any major negatives. So I’m very excited about it.
Zaspel:
We’re talking today with Scott Christensen, author of the new book, What About Free Will? Reconciling Our Choices with God’s Sovereignty. It’s an ever-hot topic and an important one at that, and we encourage you to get a copy of this excellent new book that helps sort out the answers.
Scott, thanks for talking with us today.
Christensen:
You’re welcome.
