I’ve said many nice things recently about Timothy Keller, a Presbyterian Church in America pastor in Manhattan who is among my favorite Christian writers and thinkers. He recently sharpened my thinking about suffering and God’s sovereignty with his brilliant Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, as I’ve blogged about extensively. It probably takes a good Calvinist like him to fearlessly say what needs to be said about sensitive questions such as: Where is God when we suffer? How does God use suffering? How does God use even sin and evil for his purposes?
As I’ve said, my own theological education made me very reluctant to say much of anything about the second and third questions.
Nevertheless, I now gladly say that God does use suffering for our good; that if we suffer, God has his reasons for permitting it, whether we know what those reasons are or not. Similarly, because God permits sin and evil (because if he didn’t, what would become of free will?) he chooses to enfold it within his good purposes as well. This is completely consistent with Joseph’s words to his brothers in Genesis 50:20 and Paul’s words in Romans 8:28.
Personally, I find these ideas deeply comforting.
If we resist these ideas, however, what’s the alternative? That God doesn’t really have the power to change things in our world? If we pray for God to intervene or change something in our world—like, say, to cure a disease—and he doesn’t do it, is it because he doesn’t have to power to do so? I hope not! Most Christians would say that he has the power, but he often chooses not to. And when he chooses not to—even in spite of our fervent prayers—we can trust that he has good reasons. If that’s the case, then, there is a good answer to the question, “Why is this happening to me?”—even if we don’t know what it is.
This is all baby talk for a lot of Christians who learned these lessons a long time ago, but I’m just catching up. Forgive me.
All that to say, does my new thinking on this subject—so contrary to the spirit of what I learned at the Methodist-affiliated seminary I attended—gibe with Wesleyan (Arminian) theology?
And the answer is a resounding Yes. And I didn’t even need to learn this stuff from a Calvinist! Here’s Roger Olson, my favorite Arminian blogger (who’s Baptist, by the way), discussing the difference between God’s antecedent and consequent will in his blog post today:
Now, an Arminian begins with the fact that God only permits sin in general and specific sins and then says that, yes, God also uses sinners and their freely chosen sins for his purposes, but without sin being part of his antecedent will. Sin is only part of his consequent will—what God wills to allow because of the fall and its consequences. So, the men who crucified Jesus, for example, were only “destined” to sin insofar as they planned and carried it out freely and God permitted them to do what they wanted to do. But this was part of God’s consequent will, not God’s antecedent will. And God did not render their sin certain. He knew what they would do, but he did not effectually manipulate them to do it nor was their sin part of God’s “design” except consequentially.
So, the whole answer depends on recognizing the difference between God’s antecedent will and God’s consequent will and the difference between God rendering certain and God permitting. When Scripture refers to God foreordaining something that is obviously ungodly, it has to mean that God foreknew it and chose to use the ungodly dispositions and actions of sinful creatures for his purposes. Why does it have to mean that? Because otherwise God is the author of sin and evil—something few Calvinists wish to say.