Found this quote:
God’s omnipotence means [His] power to do all that is not intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it”, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.” It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives — not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God. -C.S. Lewis
I like this quote, it’s a piece of very sound rationalism. Remembering this can keep us from holding on to some of the silly ideas we come with about God. However, that’s all it is: rationalism. It can only be applied correctly to the degree that you really understand what you are talking about. Watch out, for the free will of God’s creatures is a deep and rather mysterious thing; a confusing thing when viewed from the perspective of the creatures (us). It would be wise to reckon there is more to it than you may grasp.
Someone with a straight-forward view of predestination would look at this quote and say, “Well of course. Duh! Is God in control? Well, yes, of course he is. So your not. They’re mutually exclusive. End of discussion.” That’s pretty sound now, isn’t it? Except wait. God’s sovereignty versus our free will is a false dichotomy. It’s possible to have both (in some way), because they are apples and oranges. Now what way is that? It’s a mystery.
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December 14th, 2007 at 5:40 PM
I love Lewis! He always makes so much sense to me. And this is a pretty good answer to the old questions, “Can God make a rock so big He can’t lift it?” I agree about free will though. I just read a verse recently where Jesus says, “I only do the things I see my Father doing.” I suddenly saw that with new eyes as applied to grace. Jesus wasn’t talking about salvation, but He was talking about Free Will. He could have chosen NOT to do the things the Father was doing but instead He chose to do them. In a sense the Father was in control as He demonstrated the actions Jesus was to follow, but in a sense, Jesus was as He chose to follow or not. Definitely not two mutually exclusive things.
Now, this begs the question, “What if Jesus had NOT followed God’s leading?” The pragmatic side of me answers simply, “He did. It doesn’t matter.” Still, I think we have the answer in Hebrews, pointing back to Genesis. Adam, the first Man, was given the same set of parameters. He chose to stray. The result: sin, death and suffering entered the world, trickling down to all later generations. In a way, this is almost as important as Jesus choosing the other route because it shows that the other route can be chosen. Jesus is described as the second Man. He is a parallel to Adam. He was faced with the same choices. He was tempted by the same snake as he sat starving in the desert. There the similarity ends. Jesus used his own free will to choose to follow God and in His divinity, He reversed the effects of the choice made by the first Man. So what would have happened? More of the same. More sin, more death. Instead, what DID happen? Life. God’s sovereignty did not change through all of that. In a way, Jesus completed the free will that is given to us. We now have more options. We have the option to choose to be covered with the Blood He shed, to take upon ourselves the choices He made and to be free from the choices Adam made. So is that Grace? Yes. Is it Free Will? Yes.