As Basic as it Gets

Paul’s letter to Titus is full of commands to a young man acting as the apostle’s agent among the congregations in the towns of Crete; commands he intended Titus to pass on to new believers he hoped and prayed would grow in the faith and in godliness as the Lord intended. What should maturing faith look like at various ages and in different contexts? Titus received instructions for young and old, men and women, elders and children alike.

So we read words like “remind”, “teach”, “declare”, “urge” and even “rebuke”. Yes, there had to be a little bit of that too.

Let me digress. I have said more than once in this space that my primary difficulty with an ultra-deterministic understanding of the sovereignty of God is not about the interpretation of this verse or that one. It’s far more basic than that. It’s as basic as it gets.

A Refresher

For those who have missed prior discussions on the subject, John Calvin wrote in his Institutes of the Christian Religion that:

“… who has learned from the mouth of Christ that all the hairs of his head are numbered (Mt. 10:30), will look farther for the cause [of tragic happenings that appear random], and hold that all events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God.”

Calvin goes on to depict God as the heavenly equivalent of a micromanager, and in this conviction he finds solace:

“Those moreover who confine the providence of God within narrow limits, as if he allowed all things to be borne along freely according to a perpetual law of nature, do not more defraud God of his glory than themselves of a most useful doctrine; for nothing were more wretched than man if he were exposed to all possible movements of the sky, the air, the earth, and the water.”

So then, John Calvin had what I would call an ultra-deterministic view of the universe. He believed God was both functionally and consciously responsible — if I may put it this way — for every single transaction, however microscopic and atomic, throughout the universe he created. Many of Calvin’s followers therefore attribute evil to God. Indeed, if “sovereignty” means what Calvin thought it meant, we can hardly come to any other conclusion.

On Being Dead

This sovereign control of the material universe, in determinist thinking, extends to the choices apparently made by men. Christian determinists believe the word “dead” in the phrase “dead in trespasses and sins” in Ephesians 2 properly connotes an utter inability to respond to the gospel. This is “total depravity”, the ‘T’ in ‘TULIP’, consistent with Calvin’s teaching that God is not only the First Cause of everything, but for all practical purposes the Only Cause. (I debate that idea here. Paul is using death is a metaphor, and it’s necessary that we ask the question, “A metaphor for what exactly?”, rather than simply insisting Paul means whatever is currently convenient to our theological system.)

In any case, what I’m trying to get across is that in regenerating men, determinists teach that God, and only God, picks and chooses who will be saved and who will not. The dead cannot respond, so God essentially responds for them. In this, they say, he is expressing his sovereignty and bringing glory to his name.

Okay, let us walk with them up to that point and see where it takes us.

On to the Issue at Hand

Back to Titus. It appears from the letter that God saved many souls in Crete, and Paul was concerned that these mature in the faith, hence his three chapters of instruction to the man after whom the book is named. God, who saved each of these souls by his sovereign choice, is, in Paul’s way of thinking, working in them to produce conformity to the character of Christ. As he writes in Philippians, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Again, “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Yet again, in Romans, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” These are not unfamiliar concepts to most believers.

So then, according to Paul, God is sovereign not only in salvation but also in sanctification. As Christians mature, like the new believers in Crete in the first century, we are all being conformed to the character of our Lord Jesus Christ day by day. This ongoing, inevitable process in all who are genuinely children of God is just as much his sovereign work as was the moment of our salvation.

The Difficult Part

Here’s the difficult part (for the determinist at least). The letter to Titus (and, indeed, every command in the New Testament given by everyone ever), assumes at the most basic level of language and meaning that God’s sovereign purposes in sanctification and the maturity of his children may be thwarted by incomplete surrender of the part of the believer on whom the Lord is working. To say to anyone “Behave in such and such a way” takes for granted that the person has the option of behaving wilfully and contradictorily, of failing to allow God’s intentions to be realized in their lives. Paul plainly teaches this truth: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” he writes, “by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Again, to the Thessalonians, “Do not quench the Spirit.” If refusing to conform to the plainly stated will of God for me were impossible, there would certainly be no need for Paul to warn against it.

The obvious conclusion is that the Christians in Crete and everywhere else were and are possessed of agency, an agency that in Calvinist theology they cannot and did not possess in the moment of salvation.

So Here’s My Problem …

So my (compound) question for Calvinist theologians is this: When did I gain that agency? When did God stop “micromanaging” me? In doing so, does he not become less “sovereign” in the Calvinist sense? Moreover, if God has ceased to operate fully deterministically in my experience as I mature, is he somehow less glorious as a result? After all, the more “sovereignly” God behaves — the more he personally and comprehensively controls moment by moment — the more glorious he is, correct?

Alternatively, are all these commands in Titus to do certain things and not do others simply window dressing on a world in which nobody can actually obey or disobey them, and God continues to govern “all events whatsoever”, including my disobedience and reluctance to allow him to perfectly conform me to the character of his Son? Is he then responsible not only for my spiritual successes, but also for my failures to progress in maturing?

It’s that basic, and I’m asking sincerely, not to mock a group of fellow believers of significant size and, in many respects, of commendable faith. I am just not seeing it. If God is truly “sovereign” in the sense Calvin thought, surely language has no meaning and Paul’s letters served no purpose.

Perhaps there is an obvious rejoinder. I’d love to hear it.