Not Not
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote: “Had Jesus not been betrayed, God’s plan would not have been thwarted.”An old friend wrote me with puzzlement about that double negative. He is right to find it less than clear! So here’s an effort that, I hope, doesn’t dig the hole of confusion even deeper.
Theology needs to say the following:
1. Nothing that happens in creation can harm the creator. One creature can harm another. A child can break the heart of a parent. A government can bankrupt its citizens—and so on. But all these cases have creatures on both sides. It’s different with God. What it means to be creator is to give existence to creatures. If a creature could harm the creator, then the creator would to that extent cease being the creator, and become, to some degree, the creation of the creature that harmed it.
2. Insofar as God has intentions, he will succeed in carrying out those intentions. As things in fact happened, God’s plan to bring salvation to humanity was accomplished through the death of his Son, who was betrayed.
3. Human beings have the capacity to make choices freely. As a human being, Judas was free to betray Jesus. That freedom means he might have done otherwise. That he was an instrument of God’s plan does not take away his responsibility for what he chose to do.
4. It might seem that, had Judas not done the job himself, someone else would have. But again, given the human capacity to make choices, although it is highly unlikely, it is possible that no one would have betrayed Jesus.
5. That would not have thwarted the divine plan! God’s intention to save us would have been worked out another way.
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The problem here is the flip-side of an awesome reality. The problem is how to hold together both the reality of God as creator and the reality of our freedom. This is just about the most awesome thing about being human. Aquinas puts it this way: God causes my free actions, and his causation is precisely to make them free actions.
I don’t think it is possible to wrap our brains around this; our brains, after all, are part of the creation! But I have found it helpful to think of the life of the world to come.
Saints in paradise are perfectly human, and that means they are free, since real humans are free. And that means they could sin. Nonetheless, it is inconceivable that there would be any sinning in the life to come.
Well, I’ve probably just dug the hole deeper, but nonetheless I hope I have provided some helpful markers for thought—and indeed for more than thought: these matters take our minds to the edge of the divine mystery, to a place of awe that exists beyond all thought.
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Out & About. It was my pleasure to worship at the beautiful St. Anne Episcopal Church in DeSoto, Texas, last Sunday. My sermon on the Trinity and prayer is here: https://www.facebook.com/saintannedesoto/videos/1441118899598562
Also published on the web this week, my short piece on “The Trinity and Babies”: https://humanlifereview.com/the-trinity-and-babies/
This Sunday, June 6, I am to teach on C. S. Lewis’s essay “The Weight of Glory,” at Incarnation in Dallas at 10:15 a.m. No sign up necessary, and for those who are fully vaccinated against You Know What, no masks required.