The Paradox of God's Sovereignty, Man's Freedom

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.