Acknowledge Your “Tilt” Between Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

When asked how he could reconcile the roles of divine sovereignty and human responsibility in earthly events, the 19^th century English Baptist pastor, Charles Spurgeon replied, “I’ve never had to reconcile friends.”

It’s true that Scripture upholds both. As to divine sovereignty, the God of the Bible is presented as in complete control over the events of earth, including the salvation of those he has chosen to rescue for the sake of his glory. As to human responsibility, the Bible holds men and women responsible for their choices, pronouncing disapproval for evil actions and commendation for honorable actions.

So, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are propositions that are both true. But it’s hard to maintain both of these propositions at the same time, and most of us invariably “tilt” our theology to one proposition or the other. I noticed it again in reading the excellent book by Thomas Schreiner and Ardel Caneday, The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance (page 327):

We should acknowledge that God is completely sovereign and human beings are responsible. Much can be said to account for how these two relate to one another, but ultimately and finally we must acknowledge that how both of these can be true is a mystery to us. We do not fully understand how absolute divine sovereignty and human responsibility can both be true. Scripture teaches that they are, and we rest in that fact.

Notice that, while the authors acknowledge that both divine sovereignty and human responsibility are both true and should be held together, only one side of that tension is described with the words “completely” and “absolute.” Look at the first sentence of the excerpt again. So, it is true that humans are responsible but not as “completely” as it is true that God is sovereign?

Now, the excerpt above is from a book that does as well as any book I’ve seen to uphold divine sovereignty and human responsibility in Christian perseverance. And yet, to the authors, only one of the two propositions is qualified by the words “completely” and “absolutely.” In the end, there’s that tilt.

I’m not sure we can ever be free of this tendency to “tilt” to one proposition over the other. I know I can’t. (I tilt in the same direction as Schreiner and Caneday, by the way, being Calvinistic long before Calvinism was, um, cool.)

But I do believe that if that tilt is left unchallenged, we end up struggling to find a consequential role for the proposition we regard as lower than the other. And the longer we fail to ascribe the same level of importance to the one proposition as we do to the other, the more errors can slip into our thinking. We can insist on human programming to the neglect of prayerful dependence, or we can object to any version of human programming with the claim that we’re trying to manage without God.

This isn’t a post about Schreiner and Caneday’s book, which, as I’ve said, comes as close as I’ve seen at upholding both propositions as they relate to our race for eternal life. I’ll review it in a later post.

This is, rather, a post about the need to acknowledge our “tilt” toward either divine sovereignty or human responsibility as an explanation for earthly events--and our need to resist the constant urge to resolve the tension between the two.

In what direction do you tilt, and how do you guard against letting your tilt lead you into error?