Living the Answer Blog

I was recently listening to R.C. Sproul in an audio series on divine sovereignty when he made an argument which is rather common in such discussions, that total freedom for man and absolute sovereignty of God are mutually incompatible. If man is absolutely free, then God cannot be fully sovereign; if God is absolutely sovereign, man cannot be completely free. Sproul took the position that God’s sovereignty is absolute, while man’s freedom, though real, is limited and bounded by that sovereignty. He pointed out that the existence of “one maverick molecule,” that is, a single molecule which is truly free from divine control and capable of acting contrary to God’s will, creates at least the possibility that any or all of God’s plans might be undermined. Since God’s plans cannot be frustrated, nothing in creation can be absolutely free.

While I agree with Sproul’s point as regards his maverick molecule, in making his overall argument he is unclear on the meaning of “freedom” and thereby reaches a conclusion which is misleading at best. In fact, man may be absolutely free and God absolutely sovereign without contradiction, depending upon what is meant by the word freedom.

When we speak of human freedom, we can mean one of three things: freedom of action, volitional freedom, and freedom from obligation. Working in reverse order, freedom from obligation refers to a state in which there is no “ought,” nothing which a man should do, regardless of whether he actually does it. This is the sort of freedom demanded by French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who declared that God cannot exist because “man is free, man is freedom,” and therefore there can be no “infinite and perfect consciousness,” for such a being would necessarily imply an objective Good that would have some claim upon man.

I introduce this sort of freedom first in order to dismiss it from the discussion, because Sproul, I, and any orthodox Christian would agree that man is not free from obligation; indeed, I would argue that such freedom is an ontological impossibility. It is the other two sorts of freedom which Sproul appears to conflate.

Freedom of action is the freedom to do whatever we please. Man does not have absolute freedom of action, and a moment’s reflection would suffice to convince even an atheist of this point. Sartre himself, apostle of freedom though he was, acknowledged that one’s circumstances are necessarily limiting. Even the freest man is not free to fly like a bird, breathe underwater, or exist in multiple locations at once. The world around us imposes multitudinous constrains upon our actions, most of which are so routine that we don’t even notice them.

As Christians, we would add God to the list of things which can constrain our freedom of action. The Red Sea blocked the Egyptian’s freedom of action and a sudden appetite for grass blocked Nebuchadnezzar’s, while a large hole in the ground effectively constrained that of Korah and his household. One could open practically any page of Scripture and find an example to support the point that our sovereign God, against whose will even Satan himself is powerless, can and does limit our freedom of action. If God could not constrain our freedom of action – or that of any would-be maverick molecules – he would indeed cease to be sovereign.

But there is a third and more morally significant kind of freedom: volitional freedom. This is the freedom to choose. When we speak of “free will,” we mean volitional freedom. It could be defined as the freedom to select from an array of options whichever one is most appealing to us at the moment of decision.

I said this freedom is more morally significant than the freedom to act, and that is because this freedom is the source of good and evil deeds. Our choices are the stuff of vice or virtue. Without choice a “bad” act is not sinful. This is why, for example, the church has always carefully distinguished between rape and adultery. On the other hand, a “good” act absent volition is not virtuous. If a man absentmindedly stumbles and knocks another out of the path of a falling brick his act was certainly convenient for the one who was saved, but it was hardly morally praiseworthy. Going all the way back in time to the Garden, Adam’s sin lay not in eating the fruit, but in choosing to eat it. Had Satan somehow compelled Adam to consume the forbidden fruit against his will, the Fall would not have occurred. The act of choosing matters. In fact, morally it is all that matters.

One may be volitionally free without possessing absolute freedom of action. Paul and Silas, imprisoned in Philippi, were severely constrained in their freedom of action, but they could still choose to respond to their situation in whatever manner they chose. In fact, man is always and absolutely volitionally free. The choice, whatever it is, is always ours to make. This, not due to any inherent power on our part, but merely because the sovereign God has decreed it so. If we were not free, then God could not justly hold us guilty for our sin, because, as noted earlier, free choice is a necessary ingredient of sin. To quote Augustine, “Evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be punished justly if they had not been performed voluntarily.”

How, then, does man’s volitional freedom coexist with divine sovereignty? Very easily. Remember that volitional freedom does not imply freedom of action. Our maverick molecule (or, perhaps, angel of light) may choose to rebel against God, but the actualization, circumstances, and fortunes of the actual rebellion are all controlled by God. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Man may choose whatever he will, but God determines the result. As the old proverb reminds us,

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The omnipotent, omniscient God who holds in his hands all horseshoe nails, horseshoes, horses, riders, battles, and kingdoms is as little threatened by the freedom he has granted to his human creation as a doctor is troubled by the freedom of an infant to kick while being delivered. As Mordecai reminded Esther when she quailed at the thought of risking her life to save her people, “If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” Her choice rested in her hands alone, but the ultimate end was not in doubt.

Absolute human freedom of action is indeed incompatible with divine sovereignty. But a blanket statement that human freedom is incompatible with the absolute sovereignty of God ignores the more morally significant freedom of volition, because it is in fact possible for man to be completely free to choose without compromising the absolute sovereignty of God over all creation.

Apologies in advance for what is likely to be a somewhat rambling post. I came across this music video for Twisted Sister’s 1984 hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” somewhat randomly on a political blog and watched the first bit out of curiosity, then found myself engrossed and rewatching the whole five minute video. The imagery has stuck with me for the last couple days, tying in with a lot of the themes of maleness that I’ve been thinking about recently.

To start off, watch the video. (The whole thing. Seriously.)

What is so striking about this video is the way it echoes, in a dim and rather unwell way, the model of a male initiation. All the requisite players are there: father and family, son, and initiators in the form of the band; but it’s all off somehow, like a portrait done in Silly Putty and mashed almost past recognition.

The portrayal of the father immediately sets things off on a wrong note. He rants and spews incoherent spittle and disdain, but there’s no hint of real strength as he’s harried through his house and repeatedly defenestrated by the menacing band members. Bullying and loud, yet ultimately impotent, he exemplifies our cultural perception of unreconstructed maleness. As such, he is interesting, but the main question at the moment is how this father will affect his son’s initiation into manhood.

A common theme of male initiation is violence on the part of the initiators. They kidnap the boy, take him to a strange place, wound him. The initiation is a thing to be desired, yet feared; entering the fellowship of men is a dangerous thing because a man is a dangerous thing.

Consciously or not, in the video Twisted Sister clearly echoes the image of male initiators. They appear at a critical juncture to pull the boy from his home and family and offer him a new life, represented by the later shot of him at a Twisted Sister concert as they roar, “We’re not gonna take it, no we ain’t gonna take it, we’re not gonna take it anymore.” The band’s stylized, disguised appearance and menacing behavior complete the picture of a band of initiators. Yet the initiators in this story do not kidnap the boy – they rescue him.

As the boy faces his threatening, angry father, the band rushes in to confront the man. Their challenge is for the father, and he becomes an object of mockery as they reveal his true weakness. Rather than a danger, these initiators represent safety and excitement, away from the unpleasantness of dealing with challenging maleness. Saved, the boy joins the ranks of their headbanging fans, cheering enthusiastically while the band cries, “Oh you’re so condescending / your gall is never ending / we don’t want nothin’, not a thing from you / your life is trite and jaded / boring and confiscated / if that’s your best, your best won’t do.”

While it’s certainly possible to read too much into an 80′s glam rock production, I would argue that the video offers a vivid picture of the state of male initiation in America. Today, the cultural energy that might go toward ushering boys into manhood is instead directed at rescuing those boys from a manliness that is seen as brutal and loutish, or at best merely outdated and unnecessary.

In a culture where child custody cases end with sole custody for the mother 70-80 percent of the time, manliness is not seen as beneficial, but as an inconvenient or offensive obstacle to teaching a boy to be gracious, orderly, studious, sensitive, open, patient, and civilized. Because of this, boys must be saved from masculine tendencies and influences by schools, family, and media. As Harvey Mansfield writes in Manliness, “Even when ‘man’ means only male, ‘manly’ still seems pretentious in our new society, and threatening to it as well. The manly man is making a point of the bad attitude he ought to be playing down.” Like the band in the video, these would-be saviors rush in to separate the boy from masculinity and set out to shape him according to their ideal in a sort of soft, amoeba-like initiation.

Such pressure creates several different types of young men. Some simply absorb the message, give up, and cease to be manly in any meaningful sense. Fight Club and Wanted are anthems to the awakening and late initiation of such men. They are usually very nice and very civilized; women often like them because women tend to be fond of children. Though these men sometimes become more manly as they age, even then there is always a hint about them of someone who is trying to remember where he left something important.

Other men absorb the message but do not quite cease to be manly, so they respond as a man does when confronted with badness: they fight. Of course, the badness they confront and fight is maleness itself. They become Twisted Sister: “This is our life, this is our song / we’ll fight the powers that be, just / don’t pick our destiny ’cause / you don’t know us, you don’t belong.” They stand up in manly disdain to disdain manliness. Much of the American intelligentsia – among them, perhaps, President Barrack Obama – falls into this category.

And finally, some men reject the devaluation of manliness and, in the absence of mentors, initiators, or instruction, try to make themselves manly. Sadly, they usually become some variation of the father in the video, desperately aping the most obvious characteristics of masculinity without the solid inner core that only comes by absorption through long contact with true manliness, and without which the superficial attributes of manliness easily cave into wrongness. The hip-hop culture, with its loud rebellion, glorification of meaningless violence, and hypersexualization of women, is the result of boys trying to create their own masculinity. Less dramatically, our society is full of fathers who respond with everything from withdrawal to violence as they come to the choking realization that they have no idea, on a level deeper than mere intellect, of how to actually be the man their wife and children need.

“If that’s your best, your best won’t do,” declares the song, and it’s hard to disagree. Yet, as the father asks, “What kind of a man are you?” “What do you want to do with your life?” there’s a thinness to his son’s defiant response, “I wanna rock.” He is looking for identity and meaning, but there is no one to guide him; only well-meaning rescuers who pluck him away from the danger, challenge, and responsibility of becoming a man.