The Paradox of Free Will and Predestination

…Another paradoxical facet of our humanity is the fact that we have free will, yet God is in sovereign control of our lives. This is not a contradiction, but there is definitely a dynamic tension – a practical tension that can affect the way we live – between knowing that God has given us the ability to make free choices (to step out on our own two feet, apart from God’s determining guidance, as C. S. Lewis describes in Perelandra), and knowing that God brought the universe into existence knowing all our choices, orchestrated them into his divine plan for salvation history and the telling of his story, and predestined our eternal fate from eternity past (see, for example, Ephesians 1:4-5, Romans 8:29-31, Acts 13:48). I am inclined to think that God, foreknowing our free choices in any possible situation, structured history around them, in so doing found a way to accomplish his purposes (including his sovereign guidance in each individual’s life), while preserving our freedom. We must learn to embrace this paradoxical tension in life, realizing that although God knows the future and is in control of it, it is often through our free choices (which he foreknows) that he brings about what he knows will happen. We ought not stumble into lazy inaction, justify wrong choices, or downplay the importance of free choice just because it was all “meant to be.” Nor does our free will throw the future out of God’s hands (he is not that small – he’s God!). Rather, we must make the most of every opportunity in life (Ephesians 5:16) while at the same time resting in the peace of knowing that God holds all things in the palm of his hand, including the effects of our choices.

Free will is an essential quality of humanity. Without it we would be machines, almost animals, but in giving us the freedom to choose God raised us to a new level of value and dignity as his children, made in his image. Our moral responsibility results from this essential mark of humanity. Consequently, far from being a degrading insult, God’s discipline and punishment of those who do wrong testifies to their dignity as morally responsible human beings. In treating us for who we are, creatures made in his image whom he loves (see Hebrews 12:6), God respects us. C. S. Lewis writes that in disciplining us God is training us to be who he intends us to be: “We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses – that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for more Love, but for less” (The Problem of Pain).

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The Paradox of Sinful Man

…Fallen human beings in particular are a very paradoxical part of the world. We are God’s sons and daughters, made in his image to shine his light as “little gods,” but we have fallen into sin and are now corrupted and depraved to the core, prone to sin and dead in sin:

• “The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and…every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).
• “The hearts of the children of man are full of evil” (Ecclesiastes 9:3).
• “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
• “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21-23).
• “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin’” (John 8:34; cf. Matthew 7:11, where Jesus actually calls man “evil”).
• “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:10-11).
• “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8).
• “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” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
• “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins…by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:1-3).

This portrayal of fallen, sinful man is described perhaps most vividly in Romans 1:28-32. We are filth, repulsive vermin, “worms in the dust.” None of us is any less sinful than the worst of killers (see “While We Were Still Sinners”) – we are all criminals against God, all corrupted, all prone to evil. “A fountain of pollution is deep within [our] nature” (The Valley of Vision, p. 73). This may seem extreme, but only a brief glimpse of the outward manifestation of sin in human lives and events plainly reveals how corrupted and depraved we really are – look at the wars and genocides of the 20th century. We ought to be careful of distancing ourselves from the men who committed these crimes – they were children too, once. Rather, let us be humble enough to admit that the same potential for evil lies in all of us, just waiting for circumstances in our lives to develop it into a heartless thoughts and actions. It is our own sinfulness that we see in the cruelty of dictators and murderers.

Our position as criminals against God is sharply contrasted by the fact that we are also, at the same time, God’s sons and daughters, glorious and beautiful creatures who reflect the knowledge, wisdom, majesty, and love of the Creator. Although we are sinful, we are nevertheless God’s creatures, and everything God creates is originally wholly good (Genesis 1:31). Even though God detests the sin that corrupts us, he still loves us. And although we are not so inclined, we are still capable of knowing and loving him. Even in our fallen state we are still God’s children – we have not ceased to be created in his image.

God’s chosen people, his church, will make known throughout the created order the wisdom of God (Ephesians 3:10), judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:3), and join Christ as he reigns on his throne (Revelation 3:21). This people of God is described (metaphorically) as nothing less than the radiant bride of Christ, even as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27; see Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 12). What a stunning role for creatures who have raised their fists against God in rebellion and are, in this present world, depraved, wicked, and corrupted to the core by sin and deserving of hell! G. K. Chesterton describes the paradox this way:

“In one way man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners…Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy ch. 6, “The Paradoxes of Christianity”).

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The Paradox of God’s Kingdom on Earth: “Already, But Not Yet”

…This paradox is strongly related to the paradox of a fallen world – it is a paradox of the present age in that fallen world, the messianic age, the age of God’s Spirit, in which God is at work in and through his people to bring the good news to the ends of the earth and thus complete the renewal of creation begun with Christ’s death and resurrection. We are at a point where the world is still fallen and broken, yet at the same time on its way to redemption; indeed, in a sense it has already been accomplished. The paradoxical nature of this age in salvation history can be summarized with the phrase “already, but not yet”:

• The kingdom of God has already been inaugurated on earth (in the Church), but has not yet been brought to its final destination.
• Evil has already been defeated at the cross, but the evil one has not yet conceded defeat. God’s victory has already been accomplished and ensured at the cross, but the full manifestation or revelation of that victory has not yet been completed.
• Satan has been robbed of his accusing power and he cannot touch our salvation – we are held in God’s hand (John 10:28-29). Still, we are warned to beware his power to harm us in this world – he still “prowls around like a roaring lion” (1 Peter 5:8) (see p. 240 of The Cross of Christ, by John Stott).
• God has already taken humanity upon himself, in Christ, but we have not yet been fully transformed into his image, as we were intended to be.
• God’s people have been reconciled to him and are already part of the divine community of God’s family (Ephesians 2:19), yet they have at many times in history been treated by the world as “the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:13).
• The sins of mankind have already been paid for at the cross, but sin itself has not yet been eradicated.
• God’s people have already been justified before him (justice has been carried out, and our debt has been paid), but we have not yet been sanctified (we have not yet become the holy, righteous people that God has declared us to be in Christ).
• The Holy Spirit is at work within us and has given us a new understanding of the things of God and ability to live humbly and obediently, but we still struggle with our natural inclination towards sin and selfishness (Romans 7:14-25). These last two points bring me to the next paradox…

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The Paradox of ‘Beauty Marred’: A Fallen World (Romans 1, 8)

…So far I have been describing paradoxes in the being of God himself. From here on, I will focus on paradoxes that involve not only the Creator, but also creation. First, the fallen world we live in is paradoxical. It is created by God, and therefore fundamentally good and beautiful and majestic, revealing its Creator and shining his glory (Genesis 1:31, Romans 1:20). But it is also corrupted by evil powers which hold the world in bondage and have bound it to decay and death (Romans 8:20-22). Ours is a dying world (see my posts on “Integrating Scientific and Biblical Eschatologies” as well as “Death and Resurrection,” parts II and III), marred, wounded, and filled with evil, and yet its author is God, and it has not wholly lost its original beauty. Satan is “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31, 14:30. 16:11; see also 2 Corinthians 4:4); indeed, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19, see also Ephesians 2:2). And yet God is sovereign over Satan’s every move, and even in this dying world, seeds of renewal and resurrection are being planted. The world is dying and being raised to life, under Satan’s power and God’s, scarred deeply with pain and evil and yet still beautiful. This is the paradox of a fallen world.

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The Paradox of Christ: God and Man (Philippians 2)

…Another paradox can be observed in the being of God himself. In the person of Jesus Christ, God became a man. Jesus Christ is both a human being and the second person of the Trinity. Put simply, this man, Jesus, was and is the God of the universe. It is a shocking statement.

“Christ Jesus…though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” – Philippians 2:5-7

“The Word was God” (John 1:1) and “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) – in Christ God revealed his glory to his people as never before in history, yet this was done in the humble act of incarnation, becoming flesh. This person, this God-man, both exists eternally outside of and beyond time as the omniscient, omnipotent Creator (John 1:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 1:2) and came into existence within time at a specific point.* He emptied himself (Philippians 2:7, “made himself nothing”) of the full extent of his divine qualities (presumably knowledge, comprehension, etc.) and took upon himself the limited, finite mind and body of man. The implications of this are quite interesting. For example, as a man, the divine author of mathematics would have been, like all humans, fallible in his human understanding of mathematics. The designer of the universe would have been, as a 1st-century Jew, completely oblivious to the wonders of quantum mechanics and relativity by which the world functions. How strange, this divine emptying, this kenosis, in which the God of all reality “makes himself nothing” and gives himself for man out of love, becomes incarnate that man might be deified:

“He came below to raise me above, he was born like me that I might become like him.” – The Valley of Vision, p. 16

*There is something of a paradox in the virgin birth. Mary was a virgin, and she conceived and gave birth to Jesus. It is not a logical contradiction, but a miraculous event, unique in history.

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The Paradox of the Trinity: Unity and Diversity

…First, and most importantly, the Triune God is a paradox to the human mind. In a mysterious, incomprehensible way, God is both one united being and a community of three persons. Given our understanding of what being and personhood mean for finite, created human beings, this would seem to be a contradiction, but we cannot presume that the incomprehensible, transcendent God would be understandable to our finite minds.

Perhaps more generally, there is both unity and diversity in the nature of God. God is (and here perhaps I speculate) multifaceted; inherent to his nature there is, I think, emotion and thought (ie., in the love and joy shared in the community of three persons), mathematical truth (how can God exist in three persons without number being a facet of who he is?), a standard for moral right and wrong (which would find application in the created order), and perhaps many more beautiful treasures that have not yet been even partially revealed to us. These realities are very diverse. For example, God’s moral aspect is very different from his mathematical aspect – they are distinct realities. And yet all these “parts” or “facets” or “aspects” (and all those words fall short, because they call to mind ideas about created things, and God is transcendent and uncreated) of God are united into one “thing,” the singular divine nature, or, more simply, the being of God. There is nothing more singular or united (one might even use the word simple) than God. The diverse God is One.

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The Paradoxes of Christianity

What is Christianity? A set of doctrines or truth claims? A story? A description of reality? Perhaps all of the above. Whatever language we use to describe the Christian faith, its very essence is paradoxical.

“As dying, and behold, we live...as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” – Paul

I must be careful to define what I mean by “paradox,” or else the language I use will be ambiguous, and will not give the reader an accurate understanding of my thoughts. By “paradox” I do not mean a logical contradiction. A paradox is a true and logically consistent proposition or statement that establishes a connection or relationship between starkly contrasting ideas or objects (and may thus seem to be inconsistent or internally contradictory, but is in fact true). In this new dynamic relation, there is contrast and tension: paradox emerges. For example, “one must die in order to live” (a sequential or causal connection is established between death and life, two opposing ideas). Or “Jesus Christ is both God and a man” (in this case, a connection of identity is made between God and man, two seemingly mutually exclusive categories).¹

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.”
– Jesus

When I say that Christianity is paradoxical in essence (and so also in ways is the very fabric of reality), then, I mean that there is in Christianity a deeply-embedded theme of paradoxes, a beautiful theme that is ultimately derived from a beauty in the nature of God himself, a theme in the Story that reflects the Author, or in the Music that reveals the Composer.

In the next several blog posts, I will attempt to trace this theme throughout Scripture² and identify instances of paradox (present in both the Old and New Testaments) in key Christian doctrines, the words and actions of Jesus, the central event of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and especially in the Christian life, that is, the way of life taught by Jesus and his followers, as recorded in the New Testament. I will also share some thoughts on what may be paradoxical elements in the larger Story of Christianity, and even in the very nature of reality, but these ideas will be more speculative and less grounded in Scripture…

¹One might, alternatively, formulate some paradoxes as pairs of contrasting, seemingly contradictory truths. For example, “Jesus Christ is God” and “Jesus Christ is a man.” This is similar to Niels Bohr’s principle of complementarity, which states that a particle can have seemingly contradictory properties (we, however, cannot observe both properties at once). Not all paradoxes can be stated this way, though.

²Of course, I do not presume to have identified all or even most instances of paradox that can be found. The treasures of God’s word are valuable beyond price, but are often somewhat hidden and somewhat mysterious. I am merely gathering jewels from the surface of a vast and deep cavern of riches.

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The Mandlebrot Set

The Mandlebrot Set is the set of complex numbers c such that the series z_n+1=z_n²+c (where z_o=0) is bounded (it does not tend to ∞ or -∞). For some examples and more information, see wikipedia. Since, in the complex plane, the complex number a+bi is plotted at the coordinates (a,b), a set of complex numbers is represented as a region of space in the complex plane. The Mandlebrot Set is the black region shown here; its boundary is a fractal:

Slightly zoomed in:

Here are a couple videos that zoom in on different "places" in the Mandlebrot set:


In the words of physicist Roger Penrose, "The Mandlebrot Set is not an invention of the human mind: it was a discovery. Like Mount Everest, the Mandlebrot set is just there" (Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind). The fact that the Mandlebrot set "is just there" is remarkable. It's mere existence is worth wondering at.

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Synopsis for The Cross of Christ, by John Stott

I have recently been reading John Stott's book The Cross of Christ, in which he gives an in-depth explanation of why the cross so central to Christianity, what happened on the cross that resulted in our salvation, a greater revelation of God, and the defeat of evil, and what it means for us today. Here's the synopsis from the back of the book:

"'I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross...In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?' With compelling honesty John Stott confronts this generation with the centrality of the cross in God's redemption of the world—a world now haunted by the memories of Auschwitz, the pain of oppression and the specter of nuclear war.

Can we see triumph in tragedy, victory in shame? Why should an object of Roman distaste and Jewish disgust be the emblem of our worship and the axiom of our faith? And what does it mean for us today?

Now from one of the foremost preachers and Christian leaders of our day comes theology at its readable best, a contemporary restatement of the meaning of the cross. At the cross Stott finds the majesty and love of God disclosed, the sin and bondage of the world exposed.

More than a study of the atonement, this book brings Scripture into living dialog with Christian theology and the twentieth century. What emerges is a pattern for Christian life and worship, hope and mission.

Destined to be a classic study of the center of our faith, Stott's work is the product of a uniquely gifted pastor, scholar and Christian statesman. His penetrating insight, charitable scholarship and pastoral warmth are guaranteed to feed both heart and mind."

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