I thought Ravi Zacharias's response at a university forum to a questioner who posed God's sovereignty as a direct contradiction of man's "free will" was brilliant. His brief response was that neither God's sovereignty nor man's freedom is absolute in this relationship.
Since Ravi didn't have time to make a complete response, I'll try to duplicate it in part and fill in the blanks in the argument from my perspective. To begin with, human beings are limited by their creaturely natures: genetics, parents, the laws of nature and many other things. Therefore, human choices are not entirely free, but are limited by God who has ordained all these things. Nevertheless, Adam at least was free to make the most significant choice of whether or not to obey God, to choose good or evil.
God, by contrast, is inherently completely free, but he freely chose to limit himself by making Adam a moral being with freedom to choose obedience and life or disobedience and death. Thus, God did not choose to impose his prescriptive will of obedience but chose to permit Adam's forseen disobedience.
At this point it should be clear that the contradiction is only apparent, a paradox, not a true contradiction. God freely limits his prescriptive will and man exercises his freedom to choose good or to choose evil. Adam, in fact, chose evil and thereby died spiritually, thus losing the ability to choose the good. Right here is where the real controversy begins. I'm not sure where Ravi goes with it, but I'll take this up again soon, D.V.
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That seems entirely reasonable; that is, up to the point where, as you point out in the last paragraph, the controversy begins. How would a Calvinist interprete a passage like Deut. 24:13 where returning a cloak held in pledge "will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the Lord your God."? I'm willing to concede that "all our righteousness is as filthy rags" and so will not save us, but it does imply that humankind can do some limited acts of good on their own just as they can do some limited acts of evil.
It's good to see some activity on your blog again.
Excellent question. If God says that an act of compassion and obedience to his will such as returning a cloak taken in pledge so that the worker will have it to use as a blanket against the cold of the night is a righteous act, it is a righteous act. Indeed, I would say that it is not in the "filthy rags" category if it is motivated by love for God.
And in the context, we are talking about a pious Hebrew who belongs to the covenant community established by Moses at Horeb. Israelites who not only are circumcised in the flesh, but who also "walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised" (who thus are circumcised in heart) are capable of acts of righteousness. Those lacking such a relationship with God are incapable of righteous acts even if they carry out the letter of the law. As Paul puts it in Romans 8:7-9: "The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law nor can it do so. Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are controlled not by the flesh but by the Spirit if the Spirit of God lives in you." So those given entrance into the covenant community by faith become capable of righteous acts as they are motivated by love for God instead of by pride or fear, which are sometimes enough to externally motivate the unbeliever to do the right thing--for which we must be thankful.
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