So what about free will and sovereignty? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
My principles on how this works out are pretty simple.
God is sovereign.
Man has free will.
“Okay. So how do you work those out?”
Don’t know. Don’t care. I just know both of them are taught in Scripture and on a practical basis, it makes no difference. Everyone lives as if they did have free will. All Christians agree to some extent at least that God reigns supreme over the universe He created. Is my day-to-day life going to change as a result of how I answer this question? Doubtful. There are far more important questions i have. I have my marching orders to go out and preach the gospel anyway, whether I do it freely or not, and whether God has predestined everyone who will believe or not.
But you’re here for Bates’s views, not mine.
He starts off with talking about Augustine who he says was the first one to really work out a soteriological system in church history and it has been the one adopted by most of the church. It’s called monergistic compatibalism. It says that God supplies everything that is lacking in personal salvation and organizes all the details to help people get saved.
This kind of system to some extent he says is still held by Calvinists and others today. The Reformers no doubt were very influenced by Augustine. Of course, a lot of non-Calvinists raise the question about God being the author of evil to some extent. If God is in charge of everything, how do we avoid God being the direct cause of evil and even of the human creature sinning?
Another system that came up later on was Molinism. Bates doesn’t say as much about this, but has it based on God’s middle knowledge. God knows what would have happened if X had happened instead of Y. Those wanting more on this should read the work of Tim Stratton for a positive viewpoint of it. I still have my own personal questions, but again, this is a topic I really don’t get involved with.
Bates does say that neither Jesus nor the apostles held to these views, but at this, I must offer some pushback. I am not saying this as one in agreement with these views, but could we get into problems if we say that Jesus or the apostles didn’t hold to the Trinity, in the sense that they didn’t come out quoting the Athanasiam Creed or something like that? We can all agree they weren’t speaking in those terms, but they had everything in their teaching that was needed for that system to flourish.
I don’t think we really can say for sure how they viewed these since their mission was never to spell out a doctrine of salvation, so much as just tell people what they needed to do to be saved. It is similar to how they never spelled out the nature of God, but they left enough for us to come to the conclusion I think they would have supported, the doctrine of the Trinity. That being said, the main emphasis Bates has in this is that the elect one ultimately is the Son. How we work that out, we should all strive to be faithful to Scripture in whatever we conclude.
And I hope we can all agree on that.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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