In reply to my exposition of the purpose of regeneration in Calvinism—which in turn was a reply to a general question from Ben at Arminian Perspectives—Ben has written ‘Addressing Dominic’s Response to the Purpose of Regeneration in Calvinism’. I encourage you to read it in full to understand the larger context, as I will only quote enough here to provide a platform for response. I also apologize for the brevity of this reply; I am not blessed with as much free time as I used to be.

Ben:

I admit to being confused by this and I certainly disagree with his “definition” of faith (i.e. the simple faith that receives Christ) as requiring the indwelling Spirit. It seems that he is saying that God can turn the will to belief but that belief doesn’t constitute faith. And I am still left to wonder what these “propositions” entail.

That is exactly what I’m saying; and I defended this claim quite adequately. I was also fairly clear that the propositions in question are the propositions of the Christian faith: namely, to start with, that Christ died for our sins; and all the truths which relate to this.

Faith, as pertains to receiving the truth of the gospel and the gift of salvation, is simple trust in the work of Christ, and does not require intimate knowledge of all of the “things of God” (Rom. 4:4, 5)

This is true, but doesn’t speak to whether or not a person can have faith apart from the indwelling Spirit. Nothing in Romans 4 speaks to this question—what is under consideration there is the means of justification, namely through faith in God’s promise. Of course, I affirm that; but it doesn’t speak to the nature of faith (whether for or against my position). It’s hard to see why you would appeal to Romans 4 here; it doesn’t seem to be relevant at all.

Oh! So God can turn the heart to a false faith but not a real faith.

Again, I explained this in my original response. God can turn the heart to either; but man is not capable, in and of himself, of attaining a genuine apprehension of spiritual truths. Therefore, since faith is a genuine apprehension of spiritual truths, a man can only attain faith when indwelt by the Spirit, who communicates those truths to him. Subsequently, without giving his Spirit, God can only turn the heart of man to false faith. True faith necessitates being born again of the Spirit.

If the unregenerate can muster it on their own, then why the need for God to turn the will towards this false faith? How is false faith any different than unbelief?

Re the first question, this seems to be trading on a view of God’s sovereignty which is alien to Calvinism, wherein man’s actions are implicitly autonomous, and God merely directs them. Naturally, reading an Arminian view of action theory into a Calvinist exposition will result in the appearance of incongruity. I need merely point out that, under the Calvinist view, the fact of the unregenerate sinner mustering a false faith is not distinct from the fact of God turning the will of the unregenerate sinner to a false faith. Whatever occurs in reality is instantiated by God; refer to my recent post on this matter: ‘A simple argument for divine determinism’.

Re the second question, its answer should be readily apparent given a moment’s reflection. False faith is a kind of unbelief; but it is an unbelief disguised as belief. Presumably you accept that false faith does exist; it is certainly referred to many times in Scripture. Warnings against false teachers, who are wolves in sheep’s clothing (ie, unbelievers pretending to be believers) are common. And James refers to those who are “hearers only, deceiving themselves” (1:22). Plainly, it is possible to believe—not merely making the pretence of belief—and yet to not be saved.

And is he suggesting that one needs to be “good” before he can believe? So the message of salvation is not for sinners but for those that God has made good enough to receive it by faith? Only the good can receive Christ by faith?

I’m having trouble seeing where I could be even remotely construed as saying this. You will need to explain your reasoning further; suffice to say this representation bears no resemblance to the position I explicated.

Paul is not speaking of understanding the gospel and accepting it (since they are infants in Christ), but the deeper revelations of the Spirit that can be received only by the mature (vss. 6, 7; cf. “solid food” of 3:2).

This isn’t so; you’re relying on a simplistic bifurcation of the passage to come to this conclusion. 1 Corinthians 2 begins with Paul’s recollection of his evangelizing the Corinthian Christians: namely, that he “decided to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (v 2). The faith of the Corinthians rested not “in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (v 5). Now, Paul does go on to speak of wisdom imparted to the mature; but this does not exclude the previous comments regarding the cross itself; rather, it builds on them. Consider verse 12: “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” What is the foremost of the things freely given to us by God—indeed, the very foundation of those things? Surely it is “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight” (Ephesians 1:7–8). Note also how that passage continues: “making known to us the mystery of his will”. In chapter 2 of Ephesians, during his reiteration of what God has done, Paul refers to this event as how God “made us alive together with Christ” (v 5). All of this describes quite plainly the action taken by God, and excludes human action as the cause of our apprehension of spiritual truth.

In fact, as you yourself note, the structure of Ephesians 1 corresponds well to 1 Corinthians 2: Paul reminds his audience of how they received Christ by the power of the Spirit, and then goes on to speak of the greater wisdom imparted by the Spirit to those mature in the faith. But as you failed to note, in both cases this is not a separate gift to faith, which requires the Spirit where faith does not. It is the same gift, extended: a knowledge which builds upon the initial faith of the believer: the “wisdom of the cross” which can only be understood via the indwelling of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 1:18 intimates, and 2:14 explicitly says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Now, unless you are going to argue that the message of the cross is not a spiritual truth, a “thing of the Spirit of God”, your objection is baseless—relying as it does on an unnatural bifurcation of the first half of the chapter from the second. Furthermore, I am of course not appealing solely to 1 Corinthians 2 to make my case. This is the passage I chose as best to make my point, because it is lengthy and clear; but as I noted, it’s merely a verbose explanation of John 3:3. Or of 1 Corinthians 12:3—“no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit”. What does faith entail if not the statement that Jesus is Lord? Yet no one can say this except in the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus himself said to Peter upon his profession of faith: “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17); and Peter himself acknowledged, saying “he has caused us to be born again” (1 Peter 1:3).

The interpretation Dominic suggests also runs contrary to what Paul says in Galatians 3:3, 5,

I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard? (emphasis mine)

Does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?“(emphasis mine)

You continue to appeal to verses which are not actually dealing with the issue at hand. I think this is telling. Just as with Romans 4, Galatians 3 is concerned with the means of justification—not with the nature of faith, or the ordo salutis. Nothing in Galatians 3 contradicts my position on the nature and prerequisites of faith; nothing in Galatians 3 speaks to the nature and prerequisites of faith. The same is true of your appeal to Ephesians 3:16 and 17.

To summarize, that spiritual rebirth must precede faith is amply evidenced in Scripture. It has always been necessary for faith, as Jesus expected Nicodemus to know (John 3:10)—though under the Old Covenant the Spirit was not given in such measure. The opposite view, that regeneration is the consequence of faith, simply isn’t evidenced at all—you have had to appeal to passages which don’t pertain to regeneration in order to make your case, while ignoring the numerous passages which do. This seems quite decisive to me, and stands in isolation to the other biblical arguments against libertarian action theory—which are themselves equally decisive.

Continued in ‘On the distinction between saving and non-saving faith’ ⇒

It struck me as I put the phone down how terribly sad it is that this is the best hope an unbeliever can offer another. Although it was he who was trying to comfort me, I felt that it was I who should have reached out to comfort him. His thinking about us would not keep Sarah healthy; wishing for it would not produce a safe delivery; and luck is just an adjective for whether an event is favorable or not. Yet unbelievers don’t just use these sorts of platitudes as window-dressing. They really mean them, and need them. Their best and only source of hope lies in the patently hopeless; yet they are willing to ignore this because they need hope so badly.

For my part, I had something infinitely more valuable than my colleagues’ thoughts and good wishes. I had prayer, and the prayers of my family and friends; and the assurance that a sovereign God who loves me and my family was listening, and working out all things for our good. In comparison, the platitudes of my colleagues, well meant as they were, were simply worthless to me. The good wishes of a million people might be behind me and I would despair but for my knowledge that God is behind me too. They could be against me instead and it would make no odds. It is only in the power and love of God that I can rest for assurance.

Now you might object, and I know that many skeptics will, that it’s easy to say such things in hindsight, after everything turned out well. It wouldn’t be so easy to write such a smug post if Sarah had died and I was an only parent with a baby in the critical care ward. But let me remind you of two things: Firstly, I didn’t know how events would unfold when I made that phonecall. I was not assuming that God would provide the outcome I was praying for simply because he loves me. I am not that naive. Indeed, although God has been immensely good to me, and the trials with which he has tested me have been meager in comparison to some, it is during those very trials that I have been most acutely aware of his loving providence and the over-arching goodness of his purposes. So if you wish to test the genuineness and strength of the hope that is within me, test it according to my reaction at the time—not afterwards when everything has turned out well. But then you will find no fault, for I obeyed Scripture’s command to not be anxious about anything, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving made my requests known to God (Phil 4:6). Not that I obeyed perfectly—but I obeyed. Secondly, how much stronger would my hope be if things had gone badly! If I were writing this with my wife in the grave and my baby in the hospital, would I need the assurance of God’s providence more or less? Do you think that my assurance is based on things going well? On the contrary! I could not have made the first point above if my hope were not prepared exactly for those times when things go badly. It is a hope based on the assurance of the ultimate wellbeing of all God’s people. The Bible does not teach health and wealth—quite the opposite. But it teaches that God loves his own, and answers their prayers; and so I have a hope both for the temporal well-being of my family, and a far greater hope for their eternal well-being in the resurrection, when that temporal well-being is taken away.

Is faith a crutch on which we lean in times of trouble, as some atheists sneeringly assert? You’d better believe it is. If you don’t, you don’t believe what the Bible says about it, and what hope do you have? Let the unbeliever mock, as Paul was mocked at the Areopagus, and as our Lord was mocked on the cross. His jeer is empty and his ridicule turns back on itself. Is he jealous that we have such hope? Let him join us, for it is offered to all. Is he angry that we believe what is false? Why be angry if it is not true? Is he afraid that we do not hope in vain? Let him fear no longer, but repent and believe. Is he contemptuous because he needs no hope for himself? What will his contempt gain him in the grave? For what reason does he rail against us? Does he despise those who admit their weakness? Or does that weakness imply error? But we have the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. We run the race with endurance, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith—who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of God on high. Our hope is built on nothing less than the knowledge that we will one day be there also.

I was wondering why we believe, biblically, that God directly causes all human thought/thoughts. Especially when we have scripture that seems to teach just the opposite? Like Proverbs 16, which has a couple of examples:

1. The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is
from the LORD.

9. The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

Or—

Pro 16:1 The plans of the heart belong to man, But the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.

Man plans freely, but the Lord (re)directs his steps, in sovereignty.

Pro 16:9 The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.

This actually teaches freewill. Man plans freely, “his way”, but the Lord (re)directs his steps, in sovereignty.

Since this latter contention was very recently directed toward me, I determined to start the new year by sprucing up the replies I sent to the initially-quoted question, so as to post them as a resource for the future which thoroughly demonstrates how these verses actually deny libertarianism, and prove biblical determinism.

Firstly, let me quote in full Proverbs 15:31-16:-13, so as to establish a partial context for this discussion. I will highlight in bold the two pertinent verses:

15:31The ear that listens to life-giving reproof
will dwell among the wise. 32Whoever ignores instruction despises himself,
but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence. 33The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor. 16:1The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD. 2All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit. 3Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. 4The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. 5Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished. 6By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the LORD one turns away from evil. 7When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. 8Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. 9The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. 10An oracle is on the lips of a king;
his mouth does not sin in judgment. 11A just balance and scales are the LORD’s; all the weights in the bag are his work. 12It is an abomination to kings to do evil, for the throne is established by righteousness. 13Righteous lips are the delight of a king, and he loves him who speaks what is right.

Now, the overall context of this passage is not really metaphysical at all—that is, it is not chiefly concerned with the ultimate causes and natures of things, as they appear from God’s point of view. It is not God-oriented. That is not the context. Rather, like most of the Bible, it is concerned explicitly with the human context: it makes commentary from our point of view, rather than from God’s. It is human-oriented; and here it is chiefly interested in the relationship between wisdom, faith, and righteousness; and an upright and successful life—and, conversely, the relationship between foolishness, faithlessness, and unrighteousness; and a downtrodden life of failure. So immediately I am circumspect about “cross-contextualizing”; that is, of taking a teaching from one context and applying it, without adequate conversion, to a totally different one. To do so would be like taking a discussion of how binary logic works in a computer chip, trying to apply it to the chip itself, and thus supposing that silicon gates are actually logical ones and zeros. This will either result in a very twisted understanding of what is really going on, or will just lead to incoherent nonsense (usually both).

So the primary teaching of Proverbs 16 is that faithfulness to the ways of the LORD “make your way prosperous” and yields “good success” (Josh 1:8); while following the ways of man and what seems right to our own minds results in the opposite. In other words, God, and not man, is the source of practical wisdom. However, sovereignty is nonetheless still affirmed to a reasonable degree, since as well as being the source of wisdom for successful and upright living, the LORD is also said to be the one who causes this success (vv 16:3 and 16:9). It is not simply that following God’s law results in success because he knows what’s best, but rather that, when we follow his law, he makes it what is best because of our obedience. God is on both sides of the equation. God tells us how to live, and he rewards us when we live this way. Therefore, I think it is not unreasonable to read at least some metaphysical commentary into this passage. That said, though, clearly the passage is focusing on what we do, and the way in which God responds. It is not attempting a metaphysical treatise; and so to treat it as implicitly metaphysical will result in confusion.

Indeed, this passage is typical of how God communicates to us, because what he is communicating is about us. God has decreed that this command-response, cause-effect system is the method in which he will interact with his creation; and so rather than presenting the situation from his point of view (which would be pointless because this would completely fail to address our situation) he addresses it from ours. Rather than speaking from his point of view, where I argue that he is always active, and we always passive, he rather speaks in a way we will better understand, with our being active and him responding. If, ultimately, only he is active, this fact is really neither here nor there to us in terms of our understanding the basic message of Scripture: that we are sinners and that we must repent and believe in his provision for our salvation: the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

That said, however, Proverbs 16 does obviously affirm a high view of God’s sovereignty. And I should note that, when it says that “the plans of the heart belong to man” (v 1) and “the heart of man plans his way” (v 9), it does not in any way contradict the teaching of God’s complete control over all creation. In the human context, rather than the metaphysical one, determinism affirms exactly this. Speaking in a human context, we certainly do precisely as these verses say. We plan things according to our own thoughts and desires. To use my previous analogy, in the software context rather than the hardware one, silicon gates certainly are ones and zeros.

Nonetheless, if Proverbs 16:1 and 16:9 appear to affirm man’s free decisions prior to God’s own actions, a closer inspection reveals otherwise. These verses are parallelisms, and it must be stressed that their first clauses both lead to a “but”. But—who establishes my steps? The LORD does. But—who puts an answer on my tongue? The LORD does. Now, I haven’t studied Proverbs as extensively as I’d like, so I haven’t investigated its linguistic devices, but if the parallelization here is similar to the typical Hebrew usage it would seem that there is a very strong and direct relationship being drawn between “the heart of the man plan[ning] his way” and “the LORD establish[ing] his steps”. One leads directly into the other; it is not a dichotomy or contrast or comparison, such as that which is drawn in, say, Proverbs 10:8: “The wise of heart will receive commandments, but a babbling fool will come to ruin.” Rather, it appears to be a unity, a premise followed by an explanatory conclusion, such as that in Proverbs 16:33: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” In light of this structure, it can also be compared to similar parallelisms which involve and statements, such as Proverbs 24:5: “A wise man is full of strength, and a man of knowledge enhances his might.” Notice that “wise” and “knowledge” are made synonymous, and “strength” and “might” also.

So it seems to be in 16:1 and 16:9—a similarity is being drawn between planning and doing, and the explanatory power of the verse is in the second statement. Planning the way and establishing the steps seem to be set together, as with planning and answering. This is strongly supported by the semitic totality concept, wherein planning and doing were seen as part of the same action—as being indivisible parts of the same whole. It seems, therefore, that Proverbs 16:1 and 16:9 are not actually drawing a dichotomy or distinction or polarization or contrast between man’s actions and God’s, as it may appear given a plain English reading; but actually they are presenting a unity, a similarity, a sameness of activity, by making the two things mentioned synonymous—with the latter expanding upon the former. So it seems to me that a strong case can be made that, although the overall context of the chapter is the human one, there is a sort of metaphysical reminder injected in the first and ninth (and thirty-third) verses that, although we certainly do things, it is the LORD who ultimately causes them. The structure chosen seems to confirm this, in that it takes the total concept of an action (planning and execution), and puts the passive emphasis on man through planning, and the active emphasis on God through execution—and then God’s action is given the explanatory power of the verse. The two statements are part of the one whole, and they are separate not to show that man does one thing and God another, but quite the opposite: to show with poetry that man does one thing, and God does the same thing. Assuming that planning and executing are the same action under semitic totality, these verses do seem quite intentionally formed to emphasize the total involvement of both man and God in the very same action, and to further emphasize who is passive and who is active during this involvement. Thus: man does it, but God does it.

Obviously, this strongly supports determinism and the doctrine of God’s total causative sovereignty. It concurrently denies libertarianism and the doctrine of man’s total freedom of will. It is God who causes all of man’s actions, even though it is man who does them and is the secondary cause after God. However, a reader might object that much of this analysis is rather speculative—these verses could be taken as commentating purely from the human perspective, and meaning merely that God brings about that which man freely plans. After all, the rest of Proverbs 16 comports with such a view, since it speaks of the causes and effects of man’s own actions—not God’s. The metaphysical freedom of these actions is not directly stated, and so someone disagreeing with my thoughts about the parallel natures of verses 1 and 9 could still continue to affirm that libertarian free will is consistent with these passages. This is valid—but then consistency does not imply support. In such a case, Proverbs 16 would say nothing at all about libertarianism or determinism. The context would totally ignore these doctrines, and one or the other would have to be presupposed and applied to it during interpretation (which is the contention I make regarding libertarian advocates). Since either view can be shown to be consistent with Proverbs 16:1 and 16:9 in isolation (at least superficially), it is certainly futile to assert that they prove libertarianism, when what is meant is that if libertarianism is presupposed, then it can be found in them!

However, it seems to me that even if my analysis above is rejected, there is in fact ample content within these verses (taken together) to prove determinism and refute libertarianism. True, if verse 1 did not appear and verse 9 was all we had to go on, then the situation I describe above would hold. After all, one could interpret verse 9 as saying that a man’s mind freely plans what he will do, but the LORD organizes it so that these plans succeed or fail. A man may plan to go to Bethlehem, but the LORD may organize it so that something causes him to go to Jerusalem. I obviously argue that the LORD “establishing his steps” entails more than mere coercion or the cunning organization of various situations to cause the man to decide to go somewhere else. If nothing else, it is hard to see how God could make any definite prophecies in such a case. But someone could argue that such a passive involvement by God is indeed entailed, and without other considerations to tip the balance, I could not make a conclusive argument otherwise; nor even make any more compelling a case. Not from verse 9.

Verse 1, however, makes it impossible to affirm such a weak view of verse 9. It sets it in a totally different context. I have suggested that planning and acting should be considered more closely related than Western thought would have them, such that they are both the direct result of the man’s conscious thoughts—and that it is these which the LORD establishes. Consideration of verse 1 bears this out. It shows that no argument can be made wherein the LORD merely sets things up so that the man’s free conscious thoughts result in the desired course of action, and so on. This is because it is not describing a situation in which man can be passively directed—it is instead describing his very speech! “The answer of the tongue is from the LORD.” I submit that the answer of the tongue is directly and inevitably linked to a man’s thoughts at the moment of his speaking; and I take it that any sensible person would not disagree. No one would go so far as to say that a man plans to say one thing, and then opens his mouth to do it, but says something completely different because God has intervened. Certainly not the libertarian, at any rate. That would be a very confusing and ridiculous state of affairs. No; man plans what he will say, and then says it—his speech is directly related to his mind. Every single word and inflection is governed by the mind (compare Matt 15:18). Conversely, a man does not say that which he does not think to say. But if it is indeed true that “the answer of the tongue is from the LORD”, then it must also be true that the thoughts from which this answer stems, the thoughts which directly cause the speech in the first place, are from the LORD. Although the man thinks them, they are from the LORD; as much as, although the man speaks, his speech is from the LORD.

Any other interpretation of this verse would make it very silly. There would be all sorts of bizarre things going on between the supposedly free man and his thoughts, and the sovereign God who causes the speech—which is also somehow the result of this man’s free thoughts. One simply couldn’t make sense of the verse at all. This is what libertarianism always eventually results in: self-contradictory or non-existent explanatory power with regards to causation. By attempting to affirm free will here, the libertarian either denies the causal correlation between a man’s thoughts and his speech; or he denies that the speech is from the LORD, which is what the verse itself affirms. In either case, foolishness is the result. If the speech is from the LORD and it is immediately from the thoughts, then the thoughts must be from the LORD as well. But if the thoughts are not from the LORD, then the speech is not from the LORD either, since the speech proceeds immediately from the thoughts.

Since verse 1 and verse 9 parallel each other, the conclusion I have drawn here is equally applied to a man’s “steps”. Since God establishes these, and since they proceed immediately from the man’s plans, then it stands that God establishes the plans as well. But even if this meaning is rejected, verse 1 remains; and there is no point denying God’s total sovereignty here when it is affirmed there. Either way, libertarian freedom is refuted, and determinism is seen to be the only framework within which Scripture makes sense. Just as with the Lord’s Prayer, or any other part of Scripture, it is possible to read libertarianism into the passage, and suppose that it only makes sense this way. But, equally, it is simply impossible to read it out of the passage, or to make Scripture actually sensible if libertarianism is true.

Related posts:

1. “No one is righteous”…metaphorically speaking

I suppose you would agree that the greatest Scriptural prayer is the Lord’s Prayer, given to us by the Son of God himself? The version in my Bible begins:

Our Father (which I take means a loving father who wants his children to be in his household and so would not consign them deliberately to hell),
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (which implies that it is not always done, thereby further implying that we have freedom to do other than God’s will).

This is taken, of course, from Matthew 6:9-10. Now, this response is answered perfectly aptly in the very article it questions, because it is simply a case of inferring an indicative sense from an imperative verb. But it seems worthwhile to use it as an example, to discuss the implications that presupposing free will has for understanding the Bible. As I will show, by believing in free will, even the simple prayer of our Lord becomes a quagmire of irrationality and incoherence.

The basic argument being forwarded here is twofold: firstly, that God loves all people equally and desires them all to be saved. Secondly, that since Jesus instructs us to pray that God’s will be done, this must conversely indicate that it is possible for God’s will to not be done. This, in turn, implies that man is free to not do God’s will (and, hence, this is the reason for men not being saved).

So, in regards to the first point, we need only ask: what god is this? Certainly not the God of the Bible, since from Genesis 3:15 onward it’s clear that there are two types of people in the world: God’s children, and Satan’s children. Though God, in his benevolence, makes the sun rise on the good and the evil (Matt 5:45), this is the limit of the love which he extends to those whom he hasn’t elected to salvation. It is a temporary love, and will be replaced by wrath and righteous justice at the day of judgment. As I’ve already extensively shown from Proverbs, Romans, Ephesians, and so on, God creates everything for its purpose: the wicked for damnation, and, out of their number, the elect, to be covered by Christ’s own righteousness and saved to eternal life.

In regards to the second point, then: given that it arises from a view of God which is humanistic, and not biblical, its validity and soundness should immediately be suspect. This can be further shown—

The argument itself rests upon the inference that a command to pray that God’s will be done implies firstly that God’s will is sometimes not done, and secondly that the reason for this is human freedom. On the first implication I can certainly agree: it seems senseless in this context to pray for something which is certain to happen in any case; and Jesus wouldn’t instruct us to pray for something which is not only sure to happen, but which cannot not happen. But as far as the second implication goes, I don’t see it at all. It really does no good to make an appeal to such an apparent implication, because it is only apparent and only implied if one presupposes that man has freedom of will, and that Jesus believed God’s will could be thwarted.

Now, I should comment regarding God’s will, lest there be confusion. It should be evident that Jesus is here referring to God’s revealed will: that is, the commands he has given to mankind, detailing what we should do. This is as opposed to his secret will: the counsel and plan by which he works all things to their end; the will which stands unchanging from the foundation of the world, of which his revealed will is but a part. This must be so, because to assume that Jesus is referring to God’s secret will would entail that prayer, in and of itself, has some kind of power to cause, or at least contribute, to this will being done. This would conversely entail that our failing to pray might result in God’s will not being done. But since our prayers only have power through God in the first place, we can hardly suppose that they are therefore able to further the cause of his will being done, as if through some power of their own. Or, we should hardly suppose that without our prayers, God would neglect to do his own will. Both these conclusions are absurd unless we conceive of some other ultimate power than God, or suppose him to be less than perfect in his mental faculties.

Obviously, then, we are told to pray that God’s revealed will be done, just as we are in 1 Timothy 2:1-2:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

In like fashion, in the Lord’s prayer, we are told to pray that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven”. Surely this is to be understood in the sense of human actions performed in conformance to God’s law; and in light of 1 Tim 2:1-2 we can further conclude that this is for the benefit of God’s faithful. But if human actions are truly free, then God is quite powerless to influence them, for when we speak of the freedom of the will, we are speaking of its freedom from God. Therefore, of what use would be praying that God’s will be done, when the power of prayer is derived from God’s action, and God is powerless to act? Is this merely a command to express our heartfelt desire that God’s will be done, despite the impotence of both ourselves and him to achieve this end? Surely not! It is ridiculous and blasphemous to think that Jesus is telling us to dwell wishfully with God upon a common desire which we share, but upon which we cannot act. The whole context of the Lord’s prayer is of asking for things which we may expect to be granted.

But if we can expect that our prayer will be fulfilled—that is, that God will honor our request that his will be done—then we must necessarily believe that God has both the power and the inclination to ensure that this happens. So when we ask that God’s revealed will be done, we believe that he will respond by preventing evil actions on the part of men, and ensuring righteous actions instead. The prayer presupposes that he will do this surely and definitely, and therefore irresistibly (as is the way God always acts; proved from Scripture in my article on free will). There is no uncertainty in the action involved; if there were, then the argument above still holds, revealing that the very command to pray in the first place is absurd, because the prayer cannot be founded in a justified belief that God will honor it.

Therefore, to believe in free will is to utterly destroy the basis for praying that God’s will be done. Rather than implying human freedom, the command to pray “your will be done” necessarily entails the opposite. If it did not, our prayer would be irrational; as would be the command to pray! It would be a case of asking for something which we know is beyond God’s control to grant.

All this, of course, is merely ancillary to my article on free will previously. To argue for free will, one would first need to demonstrate how Scripture says the very opposite of what I’ve already demonstrated there. This would have to come even before moving on to engage with the irrationality I’ve exposed here, which is produced in any number of scriptural passages and theological topics by trying to force a round, humanistic peg into a square, biblical hole.