LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Research Paper
The Character of God: The Sovereignty of God and the Free Will of Man
Submitted to Dr. Richard Elligson, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the completion of the course
THEO 525 – D06 LUO
Systematic Theology I
by
December 18, 2015
Thesis Statement
This paper will prove that if the Bible clearly describes God as absolutely sovereign, then most
popular views granting mankind free will to choose Him or reject Him are ultimately untenable
and must be rejected.
2
Contents
Introduction 1
The Character of God
2
God’s Sovereign Foreordination
2
God’s Sovereign Predestination
3
God’s Sovereignty and the Concept of Freedom
5
Exploration of the Problem 6
Popular Solutions
10
Open Theism 10
The Best Possible World Solution
11
Passive Knowledge
11
Molinism
12
A Solution in Compatibilism?
13
Conclusion
14
Bibliography 16
3
4
Introduction
The French author, philosopher and Noble Prize winner Albert Camus once stated, “Life
is a sum of all your choices.”
1
In making this superficial statement, Camus acknowledges the
reasonableness of the popular position in which mankind controls his own destiny, but fails to
address God’s sovereignty in his presupposition.
This variable of God’s character as it relates to
our self-perception of life and choice has proven to be rife with emotional, theological and
vexing personal identity entanglements.
Furthermore, the theological riff has contributed to
denominational divides and continues to pit the less defensible, but largely popular liberal
Christian viewpoint against those conservative Reformed Christians who do not fail to recognize
the ultimate sovereignty endowed in our Creator. Reformer and Theologian John Calvin even
believed in limited free will and defines the concept in an excerpt from his work,
Institutes of the
Christian Religion
stating free will is, “a faculty of the reason to distinguish between good and
evil, a faculty of the will to choose one or the other.”
2
George reinforces the ongoing
controversy stating few “people in the history of Christianity have been as highly esteemed or as
meanly despised as John Calvin.”
3
This historical conceptual understanding is a helpful preface
to the biblical exposition of God’s sovereignty and the resulting proportional extent of mankind’s
free will.
This paper will prove that if the Bible clearly describes God as absolutely sovereign,
then most popular views granting mankind free will to choose Him or reject Him are ultimately
untenable and must be rejected.
1
Albert Camus, .
2
John Calvin, Translated by Henry Beveridge,
Institutes of the Christian
Religion.
, accessed on December 15, 2015.
