Talking to a philosopher friend of mine during an Oak Hall bible week a few days ago, he balked at the idea of hard determinism, thereby implicitly refuting the absolute sovereignty of God (as Spurgeon puts it, if determinism says “what happens, must happen;” God’s sovereignty says, “what God wills, must happen”) .
Having read a lot of John Piper recently, I feel the need to defend the doctrine of God’s sovereignty!
First of all, we need to understand that God (at least the God of the Bible) and chance are mutually exclusive: if chance exists, then God does not; likewise, if God exists, then chance does not.
Piper makes an excellent case for God’s total sovereignty in his book Desiring God (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!). One point he makes is this: God’s sovereignty is the foundation for God’s happiness; or, in the words of Psalm 115:
... Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.
Just imagine if God didn’t have complete, sovereign control over His creation: He’d be frustrated, unsatisfied and anything but happy!
And since my friend is reading Church history, it seems appropriate to direct him to chapter seven of Piper’s Life as a Vapor (again, highly recommended), which discusses Augustine’s famous plea,
“Lord, command what you will, and give what you command!”
And ends with the beautiful prayer:
Lord, I pray that you would fill us with
hope and joy and expectation
that You have the power to put Your hand on us,
and grant us the will to do what You command.
You have made it plain:
We are responsible to do what You tell us to do.
But we know that in ourselves we
do not have the will to do it.
And so we cry with Augustine,
“Lord, command what You will,
and give what You command.”
Leave us not to ourselves. Have mercy.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
My prayer is that my brother too may come to rejoice in the absolute sovereignty of our Lord and Saviour: our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases!
