Sovereignty

SOVEREIGNTY is an attribute of God. TOTAL free will, because INFINITE. For Sovereignty to go against Sovereignty is incompatible with His Essence. For Sovereignty to go against any of His Attributes is incompatible with His Essence.

Scripture is very detailed on the topic of God's Attributes. Only once those Attributes are seen TOGETHER will it be clearer why free will in man or angel never defeats God, nor is Christ's Atonement somehow "wasted" (e.g., because not all are saved).

God is TOTAL. His Being cannot be separated by His Attributes. This "TOTAL"ness is QUALITATIVE, not quantitative.

If you can grasp the Qualitativeness of God, you will be shielded from a plethora of false ideas about Him (from which all false doctrines spring). Abstract thinking is a must, in grasping the real nature of God. One needs to repeatedly go over the information, because Satan&Co. do NOT want you do understand God. They will interfere with your thinking. Keep using 1Jn1:9 repeatedly, doggedly, even -- keep pressing on to learn His Structure. Go somewhere to be alone, and think about this topic "out loud", talking with Him about it, to help your thinking stay focused. Don't give up. Take breaks when you tire, then resume. This is the MOST IMPORTANT SPIRITUAL TASK you can do!

Personhood, Personality, Attributes -- these are all Absolutes in QUALITY. Therefore God does not "possess" attributes, but IS them (see the Attributes, below). Personhood and Personality can be (and are) multiple, yet Identical Essence, because Personhood (etc.) is qualitative, not quantitative.

The difference between "IS" and "has" is the difference between Infinity and finity. God IS Life; we "have" life. God IS Love, Happiness, etc.; we "have" happiness. Is-ness is qualitative; have-ness is quantitative. Qualitativeness is SUPERIOR to quantitativeness. The latter can change -- the former cannot, if ABSOLUTE.

God thus either is or is not. One cannot say God has or has not: God is not bound by space-time characteristics, but rather created both space and time by just willing it to be! at a given "point".

So, for example, because God is Qualitatively Infinite, God is Immanent and Transcendent (the space-time subset word for this, as language of accommodation -- is "Omnipresence", to convey God as being "beyond" space and time ("beyond" being itself a spatial concept)). So, for example, God cannot be "emotion" -- which is inherently space-time bound. (Only finiteness can have feeling/emotion. Remember also that emotion is devoid of reason, a feeling reflex -- to say that any aspect of God is without reason is very clearly NOT true!)

It is space-time characteristics which limit us, and limit our thinking into quantitative terms -- so much so, we define quality in terms of maximum quantities -- which leads to all kinds of tangled notions about God, eventually.

Let's circle on this issue of emotion for a minute. Emotion is a state of having, not a state of being. We have emotions. They change in every possible way. We associate these feelings with "being alive", yet our highest-valued codes have to do with BEING (honest, virtuous, loving) -- not with emotions. To say one "is emotional" is usually not a compliment. Likewise, to say one "is unemotional" is also unflattering -- why? Because emotions are to be possessed, not too little, not too much.

Further, one is alive with or without these emotions. E-motion. 'Affective state of consciousness, as distinct from cognitive or volitional states (to paraphrase Random House Dictionary's definition of "emotion"). So, to BE emotion isn't even desirable in humans!

We have life, but we AREN'T life. Our is-ness is dependent (all having is dependent on the thing had, or on the giver of the thing possessed). God, by contrast, is INDEPENDENT: the very Sacred Tetragrammaton stresses His Absoluteness, His Absolute IS-ness. He doesn't need emotions: He IS Life. He doesn't need to "feel", to enjoy, because He IS Glory. He is Love; we have love (and thus need the emotional-reflex 'enhancer', as it were, to go with it). 

Due to our finiteness, of course, we keep learning; our living fluctuates. He doesn't need to learn anything. He is Infinite. So, His Living does NOT fluctuate. So, His GLORY, His LOVE, HIS HAPPINESS do not fluctuate, are never less than MAXIMUM (Infinite!), do not waver, cannot be diminished, nor increased, etc.

In short, emotion is too small, for God-ness: God IS Pleasure, doesn't merely "have" pleasure. 

So, obviously, God is not a computer, because He is Absolute, nor is He a computer because He is way bigger than emotion. So, obviously He is MORE PERSONAL, not less, due to His NOT being emotion, not having emotion. [3]

Again, as language of accommodation, Scripture uses emotional terms metaphorically, to help us finite humans "relate" and understand God; similarly, God uses physical body parts to communicate. These two metaphorical uses are called, respectively, "anthropopathisms" and "anthropomorphisms". They are frequently employed throughout Scripture, to help us realize how God is -- yet always one will find Absolute definitions as well (i.e., "God is Love") -- so we don't mistake the anthro-metaphors for being God's real Nature! (You can trace all denominational differences to misunderstandings about the Nature of God.)

We humans try to logically categorize His Attributes, which Scripture shows, so to better understand Him. In doing this, we can't but use anthropopathic concepts to describe God...

Scripture reveals God is (at least) these Absolute Attributes: Sovereignty, Veracity(Truth), Righteousness, Infinity, Perfection, Love, Justice, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Eternal Life (no beginning, no end). No Attribute is unaffected by the others: no Attribute, therefore, can be taken out of context from the others, in the interpretation of how God is, or the Scripture He writes.

Such TOTAL Being-ness, TOTAL Personality means that nothing can even remotely change, influence, hurt, etc. His Choices, Goals, Desires, Plan. Why? Because God chooses in advance what will exist! 

Question is, how is this choosing done, and why? [4]

The answer to this two-sided question is also two sided: a) God is Triune, and b) Each Member's Essence "results" in certain attitudes, and therefore, certain "decisions".

Before elaborating on a) and b) above, we first have to remember -- again -- that "God" is QUALITATIVE -- therefore, there is no "movement": nothing is learned, or decided -- the Nature of God is one BIG "IS". This is-ness means that every choice always was choice; every bit of information about what could be or what couldn't be or what might be is "on-line" in God's "RAM", as it were. There is no processing, no accessing. Thus, in what follows, anthropopathic language must be used, to convey the idea of these Attributes in human language of accommodation.

Folks have long been confused about Trinity. The fact is, we humans are so limited by time and space that we misconstrue "oneness" as SOLELY a quantitative term despite the clear meaning of oneness as qualitative term in both Scripture and even in common modern English usage. Let's see if the confusion here can be alleviated.

First -- do a word search on all verses with the word "one" or "unique" or "only" in them. Also, do a search on words like "united", "agreement", and synonyms, because the words "echad" (Heb.) and "heis" (Greek) have these meanings, too.

Next, look at all the "in God", "in Christ", "in the Father", and "in the Spirit" NT verses. These are usually formed by the Greek preposition "en" plus the locative (meaning, place of dwelling, being 'in' something or someone). These verses all reference the fact that believers are Indwelt by All Three Members of the Trinity. This Indwelling is thus obviously a pattern, obviously something God can do and does do. Now, if God can and does Indwell us, so, as John17 puts it, we can be all "one", how much more would Each Member of the Godhead Indwell Each Other Member? Would God deny Himself?

The analogy to the "oneness" of marriage is very clear, isn't it? You will want to explore the Scripture on marriage, too. "Oneness" is always given for the reason why divorce is, absent a few exceptions, wrong; why sex was invented; why sex outside of marriage is wrong.

Modern English also has a number of "oneness" expressions: "to be of one mind", meaning two or more SEPARATE persons are of so similar an opinion as to be identical. You can think of other expressions..see that "one" is not a quantitative word in all cases?

I notice that religiously-trained folks turn colors at the very mention of certain words, and then blast the words with names of religious controversies of the past, as if any use of the offending word(s) can ONLY be defined one way: the heresy they have in mind. Such folks will not understand readily, for example, that "separate" does NOT mean that the Godhead are apart from each other. THEY CHOOSE to be united.

Let's go over this point. Were this choice not possible, then God would NOT be God. Think this over: how sovereign is someone who can't choose to be separate? Not sovereign at all! Same for omnipotence: is God omnipotent, if He CANNOT separate? How would Love Love to be trapped? How Righteous is that? You can cycle the same question through the Attributes -- and see that no, God could not BE God if not Separate. Likewise, if God, would God ever want to be separaTED? Never! Thus: They Indwell each Other by CHOICE, and that choice never will change. So, to use the figure of "oneness" is apt.

They are Separate Persons who ARE NOT separaTED, by CHOICE. They have Exactly the SAME Attributes: QUALITATIVE Infinity means there can be more than "One" God. Yet, One -- in that they are Identical in nature, yet Distinct as Persons. Triplets, as it were. But, because they Choose to stay United (and never CHANGE), they are "one". It's really that simple.

Why is it, that some folks don't think through the "oneness" usage in scripture, instead throwing up their hands and saying, "It is a mystery"? Well, maybe Deut30:11-14 is their problem: giveup-itis. God is too high, etc.?! Granted, the knowledge of God by man's mind is impossible: "but for God, nothing is Impossible", so "we have the Mind of Christ" (1Cor2:16), via the Holy Spirit (1Cor2's on that topic; also Jn14:20ff, and all of 1Jn). So it IS possible, with HIS Brains, to understand. Not too far away/too high, after all. 'And not an "instant", soundbyte, here's-the-verse "quickie" understanding, either.

[Triunity paras. go here, once done: overlapping-circles metaphor, Trinity not hydra-headed, Personhood as Qualitative (with more elab on meaning of "absolute" and stasis, attribs, to develop parallel for analogy); "God" as a collective noun in Heb or Grk, examples (and other examples to show how "God" distinguished); the generic "He" and its play-on-unitedness; community-ness, corporateness; monadic definite article and the separative, "familiar" use; the "one" verses in scripture, Indwellingness, esp John 17 and the "cleave..become one" verse in Genesis to show "oneness" is a quality of Identical Essence and total rapport; review of the use of "one" in the languages as "unique", "united", not necessarily one-in-quantity. Also, the paras. proving why 3 Gods, versus other ideas, alone is correct, even if from sheer logic (as validation-check) about God's Attributes of Sovereignty and Justice/Mediatorship/Majority Vote, salvation's juridical independent judging; the GREEK of 2Cor13:14,1Jn5:7-8 showing how mistrans'd: that Hebrew juridical concept of "2 or MORE" SEPARATE Witnesses in v.7-8 are depicted. How when Christ used terms like "Father" and "Spirit" in the Gospels, everyone knew what He was talking about; so, the touted meaning of "one" as SOLELY quantitative depicts Satanic clouding, and depravity's negative attitude toward God.]

Here is an (anthropopathic) explanation of the interplay of Their Attributes (each Member of the Godhead has the same Attributes, in Deity). NOTE: For a much fuller explanation of Their Decisions and Plan -- to see how They interrelate to Each Other throughout history -- click on the "Thinking" link at the top of this webpage. (It's extremely long, because it takes a lot of explanation to illustrate the Relationship.)

Sovereignty WANTS to do what is compatible with Sovereignty's STANDARDS (which the traditional TULIP fails to recognize). That is, the STANDARD OF COMPATIBILITY with i) all other Attributes, and ii) the Sovereign Wills of the Other Members of the Godhead. So, Righteousness and Justice and Omniscience and Veracity and Love say, "Create free will creatures, because they ought to be enabled to enjoy God's Beauty!" So, creatures are created. This pleases Sovereignty. 

Let's go over the "why free will" from the viewpoint of God's Standards. God is SOVEREIGN. If God did not have TOTALLY Free Will, He'd surely not be omnipotent; He'd surely not be able to be totally RIGHTEOUS (maybe "couldn't help" being wrong); He'd surely not be Veracity (because not totally free to be able). One begins to see how TULIP was formed: since God is TOTALLY Free, only TOTAL Freedom can make for "free will".

• Ah, but then is God omnipotent, if He can't MAKE free will creatures? Of course He wouldn't be.
• Ah, but then is God omnipotent, if He can't MAKE free will "stick" despite the sin-taint He foreknows will occur in fallen man? Of course He wouldn't be.

So, without compromise to a single Attribute, the Sovereignty of God and the free will of man can co-exist. THAT is how INFINITE God is. (See how the traditional TULIP makes God too "small"?)

What about sin, and hell? The existence of these things do not please God. Nor do they pay Him anything. Ah, but Christ DID pay: that's why Atonement is "unlimited". The fact that man is not restored absent his free-will consent is thus no loss to God, NO MATTER WHAT man chooses. It's man, not God, who loses by saying a perpetual "no" to the Gospel (or to learning Bible Doctrine, for believers). Most Importantly, the STANDARD OF FREEDOM (inherent in the Attribute of Sovereignty) is preserved with no compromise. God is Free, man is free. All consequences are free to occur. Grace is Free, and Inalienable to everyone, without exception (greek word "pas" in the plural, is a substantive, and means "everyone/anyone/all ..without exception").

Let's now move on to the more general issue about how and why God wants what He wants.

Many of the questions folks have about God are rooted in a confusion over how God "decides" a thing. For example, the question is asked, "Can God make a stone too heavy for Him to lift?" Sovereignty looks first at Righteousness (a Standard Sovereignty WANTS met), and `asks', "Is it Righteous to make such a Stone?" If Righteousness answers "Yes", then such a Stone is made. All questions, as it were, go through Righteousness. God will NOT violate His Essence, His Standards, His Own Integrity.

Such as Stone was made: Christ. See, there are truly TWO things God "can't" do: 1. Make man free yet prevent him from sinning via coercion. Why? Because it's not RIGHTEOUS, to fetter. "Free" must include free-to-sin (see Part I of "Thinking" link at top of page for a LOT more detail on this topic.) 2. Paying for sins is the another thing God "can't" do, because for God to pay for them would not be Righteous. Christ was lifted up so that we could be created in the first place. Omniscience knew that Christ would be efficacious, if created, so -- all of us, from Adam to the last human born, could be justifiably created. (Again, the "Thinking" links have a LOT more detail on this topic.)

The Godhead enjoy Each Other Totally, and always have -- and always will. They are free to separate, but will never choose to do so. They are free to act independently, but never choose to do so. Thus They are, in Their very Essence, and Voluntary Unity, perfect Freedom -- so Their enjoyment is limitless!

They do not want to keep this enjoyment to Themselves! It would not be Righteous! says Righteousness (and all other Attributes "agree", as it were, each from the standpoint of that Attribute's nature). For example, Omniscience would be deprived having the reality of what it knows realized; Truth would be deprived of the reality of Truth becoming True. There would be no Jesus Christ?! Unacceptable!

Jesus Christ is the ENTIRE reason for the Godhead even wanting creature existence, from the standpoint of Righteousness being satisfied: see the "for Him" phrase in Colossians 1:16-17, and the entire Book of Hebrews. (By extrapolation, the entire world benefits from the Christians in it, because we are "in Christ": the "remnant" and "salt of the earth" and "Jeshurun" verses are but a few categories of verses illustrating this fact.)

The Attributes 'say' to "create free will creatures", because it is FOREKNOWN how such creation will GLORIFY God (which Righteousness demands, along with the other Attributes) -- which Sovereignty "next", as it were, chooses, and chooses the responses only God can make -- to GUARANTEE that this Glorification will be total, without compromise -- for Sovereignty's "good pleasure".

The Godhead enjoy Each Other Totally, and always have -- and always will. They do not want to restrict Their GLORY! It would not be Righteous! says Righteousness (and all other Attributes "agree", as it were, each from the standpoint of that Attribute's nature). For example, Omniscience would be deprived having the GLORY of what it knows realized; Truth would be deprived of the GLORY of Truth becoming True. There would be no Jesus Christ?! Unacceptable!

Using the Personality Metaphor of the verse, "Is My Arm too short???": What, is Sovereignty so small, is Righteousness so small, that it can be threatened??? By giving man free will? Is not God GLORIFIED by ALLOWING what is not compatible? Is not the Majesty MORE demonstrated by ALLOWING free will? Does not Sovereignty thus CHOOSE free-will creatures? Does not Righteousness thus INSURE, via Justice, Love, Grace, and all other Attributes, free-will creatures -- and INSURE the free consequences of their decisions? 'ALWAYS.

Notice, too, how STRONGLY Love is demonstrated: Romans 5:8. God is Free to Love. Man is free, too. Man's judicial, unpayable debt for the self-murder called "personal sin" was completely and utterly NAILED to the Cross. THAT is the "good news"! ("gospel" means "good news") Sin is NO LONGER an issue. THAT is LOVE. Man doesn't owe God, because Christ paid FOR us.

KEY==> Thus: God, who from Love would be totally unwilling to "collect", and instead wants only a FREE relationship, gets what LOVE wants: uncoerced beings who freely choose Him. THIS IS WHY WE WERE MADE! THIS IS THE GLORY WE CAN RECEIVE! Not the mere pettiness of human living, with its frustration, its tit-for-tat relationships and constant mending of the world, but an ETERNAL and INVIOLABLE intimacy with God forever!

Christ CHOSE FREELY to PAY...because He so loved the Father, He so loved Himself, he so loved all of us. ALL of us. No one forced Him to do it. No one forced the Holy Spirit to empower His Humanity. No one forced the Father to judge Him. FREE FREE FREE. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

Even no human wants something forced. How much fun is "love", if the person only marries you for your money? So if we, mere humans, do not want a relationship which is forced, how much more God! THAT is LOVE. (See how the traditional TULIP makes "LOVE" too small?)

THAT is why Paul WANTED to suffer (Philli3:8,10). That's why Christians WANT to be tested. For Love. Not for owing. Owing is now an excuse, a handmaiden of Love. THAT is FREEDOM.

Hopefully the foregoing dramatization of Their Attitudes (the tone of which was borrowed from the tenor of many OT passages where He speaks to Israel) has helped you see how Their "decisionmaking", as it were, functions.

In short, God creates what is compatible with His Attributes, which are HIS STANDARDS. So, man has free will. Man thus having free will is God's choice: so no use of free will can remotely do anything but praise God. So, it is a question of whether man chooses to ACCEPT God's STANDARDS. God is not compromised whether man accepts or rejects, because of the Cross. THAT is His Standard. So, it is a question of whether man wants relationship with God -- not sin. Man can do nothing to compromise the Integrity of God. No creatures, even all put together, even remotely affect the smallest "fingernail" of even One of God's Attributes.

In any and all creatures, free will is thus NONmeritorious. God ENABLES free will to be free, and insures it so -- by making free will an attribute of the Divinely-created soul. (Why do Calvinists have the goofy idea that free will, which is immaterial, can be destroyed or corrupted by what is merely material?)

The Total Depravity of the body, being genetic, exerts an insistently-depraved impulse, alright, but its mindlessly-material congenital defect canNOT hurt free will, because God made it. The soul's contents can only be trashed, and even THEN only because free will, BECAUSE inviolate, agrees to the depraved-brain's impulse. Free will is NOT soul content, but an indestructible soul attribute. So, Hell must be allowed to exist, and must be created, so that free will is not denied the free consequences of its choices.

Let us remember: God SEES all. This freedom standard is God's! He would not tolerate a lesser standard for His Creatures -- He would not allow a lesser standard to be SEEN by Himself: He will not tolerate VIEWING a lower standard. Thus, Sovereignty wills to ENABLE all angels and men to know the Gospel, to know the Godhead: that such creatures are free to reject such knowledge, and thus receive the free consequences of such rejection, whether punctiliar or in aggregate, is His Choice. We are truly free: that is Sovereignty's Choice.

When Adam lost his human spirit at the Fall, he lost the ability to know and comprehend God. God the Holy Spirit makes up for this deficiency, by:

1. ENABLING everyone to know the Gospel (He functions as a human spirit for the unbeliever, and as Transmitter of ONLY the correct info) and 
2. CREATING the human spirit the moment one believes in Christ (which is the fundamental reason why salvation cannot be lost), and 
3. RUNNING the spiritual-perception system (accessed by use of 1Jn1:9) which ENABLES one to "grow in grace and in the knowledge of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2Pet3:18) and all the way up, to "all the fullness from God" (Eph3:19). The person thus growing is "transformed by the renovation of thought (bible doctrine)", as Romans 12:2a puts it.

Adam's loss, due to his "fall", of the ability to know and process information of God is thus restored, and -- much, much more. One learns of this "much, much more" as one "grows up in Christ".

The thing Adam 'gained' in his fall was the "knowledge of good and evil", which, as Romans 7 and 8 depict, constantly war with the knowledge of God that the Holy Spirit enables. Such fallen knowledge is what accounts for the slavery: a pushy, addictive proclivity to human good, sin, and evil; plus, the degeneration of the body, since the sin nature is genetic. ('Want an easy, big clue that free will exists? We aren't ALWAYS engaged in human good, sin, or evil; we eat and sleep, for example.)

The believer, of course, is still in the same body; so, the proclivity remains -- however, he now has the freedom to learn Christ -- a freedom which, as he learns, increases, thus breaking the addiction, eventually. However, one never totally stops sinning -- as is demonstrated even in Moses' sin at 2nd Meribah, or Paul's trip to Jerusalem.

Thus, God's standard that Freedom be! is met: thus, it pleases the Godhead, even though the uses of that freedom are not individually each pleasing to Them. The Godhead will not sacrifice the Standard of Freedom, even at the cost of sacrificing the Christ, Our Mediator and High Priest: Gal5:1.

So, as Paul likes to say, in the Greek of Romans 6-8, "to what conclusion are we forced? Shall we sin, that grace may abound? Hell No!" (the Greek words 'me ginoito' have the force of the English "Hell, No!") Sin refused is the 'glory of the unused', as it were. So, here we see that even sin has a compartment of glory (refusing it), which, absent freedom, could not exist.

See how God takes everything, even sin, into account and makes Glory from everything, without gerrymandering? How can anyone say either God or man has some sort of restriction on free will?

Let us look now, at the Decree of God, to see how Glory is displayed -- how "decisions" are structured. Theologians use the term "Decrees" for the sake of logically categorizing -- but, as we have seen, God doesn't have to go through any processing: all His Views, like His Omniscience, are 'on-line" at all times.

This categorizing of theologians is the subject of much debate over the logical ORDER of the Decree. Scripture has the word Decree in it, but doesn't lay out all the Decree in one place in one order. So, folks extrapolate, and guess what is the logical order, in an attempt to better understand God. Obviously, the incorrect order would lead to misunderstandings about God.

[Decree paras. go here, once finished.]

What makes for a person is free will. Will requires thought; bodily reflexes and instincts are not thought -- the brain of a person receives these impulses and converts them to thought, so to communicate them to the soul. Thought resides in the soul; the brain is merely an interface, a translating device, so that soul and body are "one" together.

God's Will is Absolute; so is His Will NOT-ness. Absolute Personhood, Personality, WAY beyond emotion, which is by nature finite. This Absoluteness would mean NOT impersonal, but instead, TOTALLY Personal, way beyond --- way, way beyond -- us.

Our wills are finite, because our personhoods are finite, so we have emotion. As we mentally mature, the growing integrity of thought rules and rules OUT emotion, dominates it, husbands it. Thought is greater than emotion by design. Love is really an attitude, not an emotion, even in mankind. Emotion is a response to thought, actually. Emotion responding to arrogant thought runs amok; Emotion responding to non-arrogant thought is controllable. Emotion also responds to body's feelings, to communicate between body and soul. Thought, however, can always superimpose itself over emotion.

Thus, the emotion of battle in wartime can be superimposed by the thought of love-for-country, which exhibits itself in self-discipline, professionalism -- not in warm fuzzies, which would get in the way of love.

The strongest love is usually manifest in honor. Sadly today people think the expression of honor arrogant, and cold. One is thus reminded of the verse a man wrote to his wife, from far off on a battlefield, explaining why he "deserted" her to go to war: "I could not love thee, dear, so much -- loved I not Honor, more..."

That answer will take awhile to think over, to see how accurate an answer it is.