Frame on God’s sovereignty in election and our responsibility as moral agents

Both these things are true:

1. God is sovereign and is in control of all things.  Human choices in no way diminish the sovereignty of God.

2. Human beings are responsible moral agents.  God is in no way morally responsible for sin.

Of course, just looking at these two statements can cause a head ache.  Our finite minds cannot completely understand how these two truths come together.  Still, it is worth reflecting on and meditating further.  John Frame has helped my understanding by making a literary comparison.  Read Frame below and see if you think it helps.

Be aware going in – – as one of my professors always warned, “These kinds of analogies end in heresy.”  Frame himself points out that this is not an exhaustive explanation of the problem.

A Literary Model of Divine and Human Agency, quoting from the magisterial, The Doctrine of God (A Theology of Lordship)

“No analogy is a perfect description of the Creator-creature relationship, because that relationship is unique. But I do believe that the author-character model conveys significant insight. The author has complete control over the characters. But, as I indicated in my discussion of creature otherness, the author seeks to make the characters and events fit together in a coherent and artistic way. Once he conceives of a character, that character takes a life of its own, as we say, and the author takes responsibility to shape the events of the story in light of the integrity of the character. And of course the reverse is also true: he shapes the character to fit with integrity into the story.

In a well-wrought story, there is a causal nexus within the world that the author creates. Events can be explained, not only by the author’s intention, but also by the structure of “secondary causes” within the world of the story. When events can be explained only by the author’s intention, we often use terms like dues ex machine. Ordinarily the intrusion of arbitrary elements that are not explainable within the world of the story is the mark of an unskilled writer.

In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Macbeth kills King Duncan for his own reasons, using resources that are available to him. Duncan’s death can be described entirely by causes and effects within the world of the play. But, the author, Shakespeare, is the ultimate cause of everything. Furthermore, although Duncan’s death can be explained by causes within the drama, the author is not just the “primary cause” who sets in motion a chain of causes and effects that unfold without his further involvement. Rather, he writes every detail of the narrative and dialogue; as author, he is involved in everything that happens. So there are two complete causal chains. Every event inMacbeth has two causes, two sets of necessary and sufficient conditions: the causes within the play itself, and the intentions of Shakespeare.

The two different worlds, then, are sufficiently distinct that the two causal chains play different roles. Perhaps it is misleading to call them both causal, though we can certainly understand why it is natural to do so.

We can see one reason why Macbeth is responsible for his actions, even though Shakespeare in one sense “made him” kill Duncan. In his world, on his level, Macbeth is the necessary and sufficient cause of Duncan’s death. He is fully to blame.

So Macbeth is responsible within the plane of the story—horizontally, we might say. But is he also responsible vertically? Is he responsible to Shakespeare as we are responsible to God? Well, here the analogy bogs down a bit, but some things can be said. First, Macbeth the character has not received revelation of Shakespeare’s existence, nor is he held responsible for a covenant relationship with Shakespeare, as we are for our relationship with God. But an author other than Shakespeare might take on an even more godlike role: entering the drama to reveal his own standards to the characters, provoke them in some way to respond to this revelation, and then judge their responses. So vertical responsibility is possible within the authorial model. Second, Shakespeare was probably a theist, and in the play he created a world in which characters are responsible to God, not to himself. But Shakespeare is also an authority in Macbeth’s world, for he sets up the standards to the characters, provoke them in some way to respond to this revelation, and then judge their responses. Shakespeare is not a modern nihilist; the world of his plays is a world in which transitional (mainly biblical) moral standards prevail. Shakespeare invents the plot that brings Macbeth down, since the playwright judges that downfall to be appropriate. So, in an important sense, Macbeth is responsible to Shakespeare.

We can see how various elements of this analogy reflect God’s relationship to us: (1) God’s creativity, (2) his fitting of characters to the plot and vice versa, (3) the two complete causal structures, (4) God’s complete control, (5) his involvement in every detail of the story, (6) the two distinct levels of reality, (7) the asymmetry by which God has the power in himself to become man, but we don’t have any power to become God, and (3) creaturely responsibility to other creatures and to God. . .

Our model suggests exciting ways of looking at the course of nature and history. As with any story, human history is plagued by terrible difficulties that seem impossible to remedy. The Fall brings a radical change in human character. We have no resources for dealing with it. But God surprises us with the most amazing and wonderful deliverance: life from the death of his Son. This is not a deus ex machine, for Jesus is perfectly human as well as perfectly divine. As man, he must endure all the temptations, sorrows, and miseries of the fallen world. But he rises glorious from the dead to rule all the nations and to bring his purposes to pass. We continue to live amid sorrows that are, from the standpoint of our own resources, impenetrable. But we look forward to great surprises, as God comes to humble the proud and exalt the lowly in his grand resolution of the story.

Jesus also emerges from the broader historical process in the most wonderful way. For many centuries, God has prepared Israel for the coming of Christ, through prophecies, types, shadows, and redemptive events. When he arrives, he frustrates their messianic expectations. But, with a deeper understanding of Scripture (see Luke 24:25-32), we perceive a profound organic unity between the Old Testament and Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. There is tension, but a deeper unity between the Lord and his historical environment. Thus, Scripture bears the mark of a great drama: tension, surprise, and shock, but nevertheless with a profound sense of inevitability.

As literature alone, this story would be fascinating. What is all the more wonderful is that it is real. And as we read on excitedly through a well crafted novel to delight in the author’s creative resolutions of tensions, far more may we look at the trials of this life in that confident expectation that God will resolve the tensions in a way that will delight. Thus were are encouraged to look forward to God’s complete victory over sin as the final solution of the problem of evil.”

This was previously posted.