(a chapter from “How Long, O Lord: Reflections in Suffering and Evil” by D.A. Carson)

Compatibilism Defined: the bible as a whole, and sometimes in specific texts, presupposes or teaches that both of the following propositions are simultaneously true:

1. God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in such a way that human responsibility is curtailed, minimized or mitigated.

2. Human beings are morally responsible creatures – they significantly choose, rebel, obey, believe, defy, make decisions and so forth, and they are rightly held accountable for such actions; but this characteristic never functions so as to make God absolutely contingent (secondary, a responder, dependent upon us in some sense).

Compatibilism Assumed or Taught in Scripture
The Sweep of the Evidence
• Genesis 50:19-20
• Leviticus 20:7-8
• 1 Kings 8:46ff
• 1 Kings 11:11–13, 29–39; 12:1–15
• Isaiah 10:5ff
• John 6:37-40
• Acts 18:9-10
• Philippians 2:12-13
• Acts 4:23-31

Some Concluding Reflections

1. One of the common ingredients in most of the attempts to overthrow compatibilism is the sacrifice of mystery. The problem looks neater when, say, God is not behind evil in any sense. But quite apart from the fact that the biblical texts will not allow so easy an escape, the result is a totally non-mysterious God. And somehow the god of this picture is domesticated, completely unpuzzling.
After reading some neat theodicies that stress, say, that all suffering is the direct result of sin, or that free will understood as absolute power to contrary nicely exculpates God, I wonder if their authors think Job or Habakkuk were twits. Surely they should have seen that there is no mystery to be explained, and simply gone home and enjoyed a good night’s sleep.
It is better to let the biblical texts speak in all their power. Many things can then be said about the God who has graciously disclosed himself, but all of them leave God untamed.

2. It is essential—I cannot say this strongly enough—it is utterly essential to doctrinal and spiritual well-being to maintain the diverse polarities in the nature of God simultaneously. For instance, if you work through the biblical passages that bluntly insist God in some sense stands behind evil, and do not simultaneously call to mind the countless passages that insist he is unfailingly good, then in a period of suffering you may be tempted to think of God as a vicious, sovereign thug. If you focus on all the passages that stress God’s sovereign sway over everything, and do not simultaneously call to mind his exhortations to pray, to intercede, to repent, to examine yourself, you may turn into a Christian fatalist, and mistake your thoughtless stoicism for stalwart faith. The same lesson can be configured in many more ways: provide your own examples of distortion.

3. The mystery of providence defies our attempt to tame it by reason. I do not mean it is illogical; I mean that we do not know enough to be able to unpack it and domesticate it. Perhaps we may gauge how content we are to live with our limitations by assessing whether we are comfortable in joining the biblical writers in utterances that mock our frankly idolatrous devotion to our own capacity to understand. Are we embarrassed, for instance, by the prophetic rebuke to the clay that wants to tell the potter how to set about his work (Isa. 29:16; 45:9)? Is our conception of God big enough to allow us to read “The Lord works out everything to its proper end—even the wicked for a day of disaster” (Prov. 16:4) without secretly wishing the text could be excised from the Bible? We voice our “Amen!” to many truths written by Paul. Can we voice our “Amen!” to this? “One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?’ But who are you, a mere human being, to talk back to God?” (Rom. 9:19–20).

This side of glory, at least, there is no other answer.

Paul is prepared not only to live with it, but to tease out its implications: “ ‘Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” [Isa. 29:16; 45:9].’ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for disposal of refuse? What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory …?” (Rom. 9:21–23).

Of course, this would be intolerable, if it were all that Paul says about God, all that the Bible says about God. But Paul still assumes that the “objects of his wrath” are guilty, that God is holy, that God loves us, that God has disclosed himself to us, and so forth. He can let each relevant truth spring forth in power. And if that means he does not know, cannot now know, just how God operates in this fallen and broken world, or even why God sanctioned the fall in the first place, he refuses to domesticate God to get out of the dilemma. He is prepared to sound not a little like God addressing Job: “But who are you, a mere human being, to talk back to God?