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Oct
22
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The Pre-Existent Will of God

 

The Pre-Existent Will of God

I’ve referenced John Piper’s proof of a selfish God a lot in the past few articles, and once again it is the starting point of this one. To reiterate, if God is good, and Himself the ultimate good in the universe, He can only have Himself and His own glory as His highest goal. This is posited as the motive of God working through history in the redemption of mankind, that His mercy and justice may simultaneously be exemplified.

But does this mean that God is bound by higher notions of ‘glory’ and ‘good’? It would certainly seem so if we are to apply the self-interest model of free will to God. We are bound in our behavior by our knowledge, our values, and our interests. Obviously God has infinite knowledge and thus entirely correct values, but does God have interests? Being omnipotent, can He ever improve His lot?

This concept can be compared to human government in a way: there is no rule of law in Heaven. “L’État, c’est moi” was a heinous thing for Louis XIV to say to modern liberal (in the classical sense) sensibilities, because there was nothing inherent in his own humanity to give him such authority over others of equal humanity. Not so with God. By virtue of having infinite authority and infinite knowledge, God is not bound by restrictions that He may place on us, whether moral or physical, and He is good in doing so.

We can then say that “God is good” is a tautology. Whatever God is, is good, and all that entails. Whatever we say is good here on earth is perfected and fulfilled in God: we say Pizza is good insofar as it is filling; God is infinitely filling. We say that the Mona Lisa is good insofar as it is beautiful and exemplifies talent; the world and the universe are crafted with unfathomable talent: His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made (Romans 1:20). Furthermore, God Himself, being good, is more beautiful than anything seen on this earth. The very nature of God as the omnipotent creator does not bind Him to a notion of ‘goodness’, but binds us to Him in that our highest good is only found in Him.

Glory can be understood then not as a separate attribute of God, but as a manifestation of ‘good’. In fact, all of God’s attributes - mercy, justice, love, jealousy, holiness - are not conflicting inclinations like we humans may have, but manifestations of the singular attribute that God is good. As Tozer said in The Radical Cross, “When God sends a man to die, mercy and pity and compassion and wisdom concur - everything that’s intelligent in God concurs in the sentence”. Likewise, when God redeems a man from judgement, it’s not as if God’s justice cries out for death but mercy overrides it. God’s attributes are never conflicted; that was the point of the Cross: to demonstrate that justice is not put aside in the redemption of mankind; that God does not contradict Himself.

So if God is thus not bound by values or self-interest, then what motivates God to act?

God’s unchanging nature (Malachi 3:6) and total sovereignty mean that He is not constrained by, and exists outside of, time - in that there is no past, present, or future to God (2 Peter 3:8), and is thus unchangeable, as change requires the passing of time. God at the very same instant creates the world as He redeems it and destroys it, even though it seems to us that there is a very large intervening period among these. As God Himself is pre-existent with regard to time (John 1:1), so the will of God is pre-existent with regard to concept and constraint. Nothing within time has given rise to God, and no concept or constraint has given rise to or can constrain the will of God.







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