God’s Sovereignty in Salvation and the Best Possible World

“As a loving God, God wants as many people as possible to be freely saved and as few as possible to be lost. His goal, then, is to achieve an optimal balance between these, to create no more of the lost than are necessary to attain a certain number of the saved. It is possible that in order to create this many people who will be freely saved, God also had to create this many people who will be freely lost.” - William Lane Craig

I just read this a few minutes ago during a leisurely sifting of The Apologetics Study Bible (page 1696). My first reaction to the first sentence was, “Man! If only God was sovereign, then he would win!” Sigh.

Sadly, this soteriology briefly outlined by Bill Craig is standard for perhaps the majority of what we might call “evangelicalism.” God wants as many people to be “freely saved,” but, given the way He has limited Himself (in order that we might be “free”), God simply can’t pull it off. We make the “final vote,” as the analogy goes. Jesus runs around equally knocking on everyone’s door only to be rejected with a slam, except for the smart and spiritually sensitive people, who ask Jesus in their heart. How any of this is biblical theology (or grounds for not being able to boast) is beyond me.

The fact is this: Jesus is not the timid fellow who quietly knocks on the door of everyone’s heart asking to come in. Jesus is God in the flesh who says nothing more than “Come forth!” to raise the dead, “Be Still!” to calm the sea, and whose Father can say “Let there be” to create absolutely everything from nothing. What He says happens. Always.  That’s what it means to be God. Jesus never fails. And if “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (I Tim. 1:15), Jesus Christ came into the world and saved sinners. And in His eternal plan, God has decided to give justice to some and grace to others;  “He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires,” (Rom. 9:18). This glorifies God – maximally.

The underlying objection in Craig’s assertion is that of Norman Geisler in his various publications: forced love isn’t true love, and a forced decision isn’t a “genuine” decision. It’s not “genuine freedom” if we never had a “choice” to do option A as much as option B. Forget the fact that some kind of “force” is needed to change a hard heart of stone into a living heart of flesh, evangelical Arminianism insists that true love can only be expressed through libertarian freewill choices, not some external force.

But, consider the following:

“A small child was playing in the middle of a busy street one day. Alarmed of the situation, his mother immediately ran out and told him to come back into the yard. He was oblivious to the danger of cars driving by, so he did nothing. She kept calling and still, he continued playing in the street. At one point, he even looked at her and said “not now mom!”

Now, would it be “loving” for the mother to yield to the will of her son and leave him dangerously in the street? Or would it be “loving” to supersede his power – regardless of whether he likes it or not – and intervene for his protection?” Light Up the Darkness, 77.

The answer is clear. The loving thing for the mother to do is to run out into the street and pick up her son and rescue him, whether that means respecting her son’s libertarian freewill choice or not.

Salvation in this life is quite similar. We don’t want God. We want to play around in our sin, ignoring all wisdom while living on the very edge of death. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ”! (Eph. 2) God rescued us, using the loving force of His Holy Spirit (Tit. 3:5, I Pt. 1:1-3, etc.) to change our heart and give us the desire to believe in the one who saved us (Eph. 2:8-9). That’s real Christian theology. It speaks. It inspires. It’s the truth. (We typically call it “monergism” or “Reformed theology.” 100% Grade-A God.)

Best Possible Worlds?

Craig has gotten a lot of credit for distracting Christians with “best possible worlds” arguments. Instead of looking towards the Word of God to develop a good theology of salvation or even a good philosophy (!), Craig, being a “Christian philosopher,” takes the more complex route:

Let us suppose for the sake of the argument that there are possible worlds that are feasible for God in which everyone hears the gospel and freely accepts it. Does God’s being all loving compel Him to prefer one of these worlds over a world in which some persons are lost? Not necessarily, for these worlds might have other, overriding deficiencies that make them less preferable. For example, suppose that the only worlds in which everybody freely believes the gospel and is saved are worlds with only a handful of people in them. Must God prefer one of these sparsely populated worlds over a world in which multitudes believe in the gospel and are saved, even though other persons freely reject His grace and are lost? No. Thus the universalist’s second assumption is not necessarily true, so that his argument is doubly invalid.

Craig is absolutely right: universalists have bad arguments. But the reason they are bad is because they aren’t Scriptural, not because they’ve failed the test of Craig’s argument. Is not Scripture the objective norm for truth claims? If so, why is it given secondary status, as if man can somehow create a response to universalism more effective, more sufficient, and more true than God?

It’s high time a presuppositionalist apologist stated the obvious when it comes to all talk regarding “best possible worlds.”

First, God determines what is possible and impossible in created reality, not man. This always bothers me when someone talks about “possible worlds,” because no one ever really says who they are possible for. If they are possible for us, how do we measure such a lofty assertion? Who cares what is possible for man, as if what I think is possible has some binding effect on reality?  If they are possible for God, on the other hand, where can we find the presumption that God, at anytime, chose one “world” over another? Scripture nowhere indicates – even in “if this, then that” passages, which (if not simply anthropomorphisms) do nothing more than indicate cause and effect relationships, especially with regards to covenantal conditions – that God has ever thought of creating the world differently than he actually has.

Genesis 1 does not begin with “God gathered together a giant list of possible worlds and chose the one labeled ‘best possible world.’” Scripture does, however, assert that the way creation is (which is the only knowledge we have; we have no knowledge about any other creation or world than our own) is the way God has planned it to be. Everything is as God wants it to be, the way things were then, the way they are now, and the way they will be tomorrow. What does this mean? Since we are the one’s posing “possible worlds” arguments, as if such a different world were possible, all “possible worlds” arguments are the product of the creature’s understanding and not God’s.

That is, “possible worlds” on the surface, seem to be “possible worlds” for God, but in reality, they are nothing more than what the creature thinks is possible, because we are the one’s talking about what is possible in a world and what isn’t, not God. We can only know what is possible according to what is actual, and what is actual is the only world that exists, and the only world that we have knowledge about. Possibilities only have meaning – and indeed, existence – against the backdrop of actualities, which is precisely where our arguments have meaning. Thus, Craig and the other classical apologists who continually implement “possible worlds” arguments run directly contrary to the fact that God, first and foremost, determines what is possible and impossible in created reality and not the creature, and He has revealed nothing in the entire expanse of the universe that would indicate that the creation we are in does not maximally glorify God. Indeed, all things (as is) will result in the glory of God.

Therefore, “possible worlds” arguments are generally quite fruitless, and not consistent with a biblical mode of thinking. It would not be surprising then, to see Craig arrive at dubious theological conclusions entirely apart from Scriptural exegesis or a systematic biblical theology. For example, he argues God is “in time” according to the following:

First, Craig argues that if a temporal world exists, then in virtue of His real relations to that world God cannot remain untouched by its temporality.  Given His changing relations with the world, God must change at least extrinsically, which is sufficient for His existing temporally.  Second, Craig argues that if a temporal world exists, then in virtue of His omniscience, God must know tensed facts about the world, such as what is happening now, which is, again, sufficient for His being temporally located.  Since a temporal world does exist, it follows that God exists in time.

You won’t find a biblical theology of “God in time” or what have you behind Craig’s highly theological conclusions, simply because, as a “philosopher,” that’s not his best interest or his audience. But, I wonder how much closer it brings him to the truth. I mean, wouldn’t God’s Word be the first place to look when talking about God’s relationship with creation? Shouldn’t we start with that thoroughly exegetical, systematic theological foundation as a launch pad into philosophy, instead of the other way around?

Scripture orients our minds around the providence of God in creation, a concrete reality that drives all of the universe – Scripture only poses possibilities to express the consequences of sin or covenantal faithfulness, not to argue against false teachings like universalism. Christian apologists, then, will find possible worlds arguments both tiring and fruitless in the long haul.

To the Glory of God?

Second, since creation itself is created for no other reason than to glorify God maximally, there is no such thing as a “best” possible world. If it’s created by God, it’s inherently “the best possible world” because God does not create if it does not efficiently glorify Himself. God creates nothing – and indeed, does nothing – unless it most efficiently glorifies Himself. There is no “waste” in creation. God does everything perfectly, including creating and governing the universe.

Of course, we should all be familiar with the arguments against this position by now. They go something like this:

A 12 year old girl got raped everyday by her uncle. On one day, she prayed, “God, not tonight, please.” She prayed all day, every hour. Finally, her uncle came back from work. She was raped. Again.

How on earth does this “glorify God”? How can we say God is sovereign over such events? If God planned that, and refused to answer this girl’s prayer, surely God is a monster…You can’t tell me you really think Calvinism is the truth.

This is essentially what my apologetics professor told me at Bethel Seminary a few months ago. I didn’t have the chance to voice my response, but I’d like to now respond with equal honesty – and, if it doesn’t invoke worship, then I’ve failed to communicate.

Folks, I have no idea what God was thinking when he planned or made the world. No idea. Rape. Holocaust. Oceans. Beetles. Physics equations. Sex. Information. Solar system. Proton, neutron, electron. Language. Warmth. Britain. Showers! Depression! Trinity! Joy! War! Sneezing!! Sleeping!! Chemical reactions!!! Covenant feast!!! Scrambled eggs!!! Air!!! Green!!! B flat!!! Breathing!!! I DON’T GET IT! Who made all of this? Who is the…the…the indescribable Mind behind such variety and infiniteness!?!?

“WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR?  Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” – Romans 11:34-36

Amen.