This is part 2 of our look at God’s sovereignty. Part 3 will soon follow.
Positions
There are several views on the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. We will look at the perspectives that God is not sovereign and man is completely responsible, God is completely sovereign and man is not responsible at all for his actions, and God is completely sovereign and man is completely responsible at the same time.
First we will look at the position that man is completely responsible to the point that God’s sovereignty is diminished. According to Finis Dake “It is only when man becomes a free moral agent that he is held responsible.”[1] By this Dake holds that God is not sovereign over the actions of man, but man has the ability to make decisions free of God’s control. Dake says:
“Is man a free moral agent? This is the first question to settle, for if man is not a free moral agent then God can be held entirely responsible for all sin, rebellion, sickness, and all the effects of sin, as well as for the damnation of men and angels….”[2]
Dake claims that in order for man to be held responsible and held accountable for his actions then he must have a “free will.” Dake continues to describe “free will” in his book God’s Plan for Man:
“Free will is the power of choice concerning moral law. It is man’s faculty of choosing good or evil without compulsion or necessity. It was originally created in man, and he will have it in all eternity.”[3]
This is a very dangerous statement to make. If man has the power of choice free of the sovereignty of God and has this ability into all of eternity then man is able to make decisions even after death to be able to choose to obey God or reject God. Dake claims that “A saved man has the same power of choice as he had before salvation…. If he chooses to sin again he incurs the same death penalty and will be damned as much as if he had never been saved.”[4] By this we would then be able, even after death, to choose to accept God or reject God. This would allow everyone who is in hell to simply decide to accept and obey God and then be accepted into Heaven and those in Heaven to be able to sin and thus be cast out to Hell.
A second viewpoint can be described as “hyper-Calvinism.” Hyper-Calvinism swings the pendulum in the opposite direction of Dake. This point of view is that since God is completely sovereign then man is not responsible for his actions at all. This is also a dangerous point of view because if man is not responsible for his actions then why should we be condemned by God? Hyper-Calvinism also takes the view that, as Christians, we do not need to share our faith with others despite the direct command of Christ. Dr. Ryland once told a young William Carey when he publically shared his burden for spreading the Gospel in India “Young man, sit down! When God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your help or mine!”[5]
The last view that we will discuss here is the view that God is completely sovereign and man is completely responsible for his actions. C.H. Spurgeon said it this way:
“From the word of God I gather that damnation is all of man, from top to bottom, and salvation is all of grace, from first to last. He that perishes chooses to perish; but he that is saved is saved because God has chosen to save him. Though some cannot make these statements agree, they are nevertheless equally true—“Thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help found.”[6]
We will endeavor to look at these points of view in light of Scripture and see what the Word of God has to say.
