Today’s post is adapted from an email I wrote to a former student. He was struggling with Calvinism and its approach to the Christian faith. I have changed my student’s name in order to protect his privacy.

My Dear David,

It is good to hear from you. You always ask really good questions that are not easy to answer. You may remember from our brief time in class at CCU (may it rest in peace), that I said, “I can answer any question that you ask, but my answer may consist of only three words: ‘I don’t know.’”

I have also struggled with Calvinism all my life. There have been times when I thought to myself, “I think the Calvinists are right.” And I still think so! At least I think they are partly right.

I believe it was Pascal who said, “Men are rarely wrong in what they affirm, but they are often mistaken in what they deny.” (I could not find the quote in Pascal, but I did find it attributed to H. Richard Niebuhr! So much for my memory. But no matter who wrote it, I believe that it is true.)

Here is the thing, David. I think that we all like simple truths, but the simple truth is that the simple truth is never simple. Truth always comes in twos—in couples, if you will. Since I assume that you are still moving toward your wedding this summer, I also assume that you can identify with the importance of the concept of couples!

Here is an analogy: in a navigable river, you will see marker buoys on both sides of the river. They mark out the channel where the ships can safely travel. Imagine a ship’s captain who decided that he must decide which buoy he should pay attention to. He would come as close to that buoy as he could. I suspect that, before long, he would likely run aground.

Calvinism, quite properly, emphasizes God’s sovereignty—the fact that, ultimately, God is in control. I also believe that this is so. If there is a God who created the universe, I suspect that such a God would have a difficult time not being in control, ultimately.

However, the word “ultimately” is crucial in what I just wrote. A God who is ultimately sovereign could still give his creatures free will. Such free will would be real, but exercised within the limits of God’s sovereignty, and such free will (and those who wield it) would ultimately be answerable to God.

The example is sometimes given of parents who want their teenage young people to clean their bedrooms. This is the will of the parents. However, the teenager can pit his/her own will against the parents’ will. And the teenager probably will.

But ultimately, since the parent is paying the mortgage on the house, there will be consequences to the teenager’s decisions. The car may not be available for a date, or the internet may not be available until the room is cleaned up a bit.

Of course, there are passages from the Bible that, when read in isolation, support either God’s ultimate sovereignty or human free will. However, my question is this: Should the Bible ever be read in isolation? You may remember that I taught you a saying which I didn’t come up with, but which I liked a lot. “Context Is Everything!” This is true of individual biblical passages, but it is also true of the Bible as a whole.

To choose either God’s sovereignty or human free will as our mantra is to take a couple who belong together and to forcibly divorce them. Very intelligent people have done such things, but  this is never the way of wisdom.

I close this rather long response to your brief email with a long quote from C.S. Lewis. Lewis himself wrestled with the very question that is troubling you. I sometimes think that Lewis struggled with everything!

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

. . . If God thinks this state of war in the universe [i.e., the war between good and evil, D.D.] a price worth paying for free will—that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings—then we may take it is worth paying. (Mere Christianity, pp. 52-53)

 I hope that this rather long response actually gets at what you are asking.