Joseph, Free Will, and God's Sovereignty

Our faith family is studying Genesis, and this week we are studying one of the more famous and clear statements of God's sovereignty in the Bible.

So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. (Genesis 45:4-8, ESV)

When I read this passage not only do I marvel on what a mature believer Joseph is, but several questions about free will come to mind. Did God entice Joseph's brothers to sell Joseph into slavery? Did God orchestrate the caravan of Ishmaelites's arrival to coincide with the brothers' dispute about what to do with Joseph? How did God bring this about? Could Joseph's brothers have decided otherwise? If they decided otherwise, how would God have brought Israel's family to Egypt? If the brothers acted godly or even honorably, how might their lives been better?

Of course, how we view free will and God's sovereignty affects our missionary strategy. How does a strong view of God's sovereignty in everyday events affect our evangelism? If God has chosen His elect since before the beginning of creation, why evangelize? What about the believer's free will?

J. I. Packer proposes an intellectual framework that does not answer the question, but gives us a way to approach these kind of issues in scripture. Packer proposes that the free will versus God's sovereignty issue is an antinomy. J.I. Packer's book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God is a small, but very useful book about how to view evangelism within the confines of God's Sovereignty. Packer defines antinomy as

What is an antinomy? The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines it as 'a contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary'. For our purposes, however, this definition is not quite accurate; the opening words should read 'an appearance of contradiction'. For the whole point of an antinomy--in theology, at any rate--is that it is not a real contradiction, though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two apparent truths. An antinomy exists when a pair of principles stand side by side, seemingly irreconcilable, yet both undeniable. There are cogent reasons for believing each of them; each rests on clear and solid evidence; but it is a mystery to you how they can be squared with each other. You see that each can be squared with each other. You see that each must be true on its own, but you do not see how they can both be true together. Let me give an example. Modern physics faces an antinomy, in this sense, in its study of light. There is cogent evidence to show that light consists of waves, and equally cogent evidence to show that it consists of particles. It is not apparent how light can be both waves and particles, but the evidence is there, and so neither view can be ruled out in favour of the other. Neither, however, can be reduced to the other or explained in terms of the other; the two seemingly incompatible positions must be held together, and both must be treated as true. Such a necessity scandalizes our tidy minds, no doubt but there is no help for it if we are to be loyal to the facts. (pp. 18-19, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

Just to clarify Packer's example, all subatomic particles exhibit this Wave Particle Duality. You can go to a physics lab and ask a physicist to demonstrate the Wave Particle duality. The physicists would show you particles or photons exchanging momentum. Exchanging momentum would be in our day-to-day lives billiard balls bouncing off each other on a billiard table. Subatomic particles can collide too. This same physicist would then show you experiments where subatomic particles reflect, diffract, and show interference just like a wave. Through sophisticated experiments, physicists can demonstrate that even one particle exhibits the characteristics of a wave. This is one of the basic principle of quantum mechanics and this duality is not even close to being the strangest concept that quantum theory provides us.

To use a more theological example, I would say that the Hypostatic Union (Christ is fully God and fully Man) is an another example of an antinomy. Scripture argues both that Jesus Christ is fully man and he is fully God. If you deny His humanity, you start moving into heresies like Docetism and Gnosticism. If you deny that Christ is fully God you fall into Arianism or Adoptionism or even Mormonism. We must assert both Jesus's full humanity and full divinity to understand the full truths and promises of scripture.

Packer emphasizes that an antinomy is not a figure of speech like a paradox. Jesus uses paradoxes all the time to illustrates truths about what life in the Kingdom of God is like. For example, Matthew 10:39, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Although at first glance it seems contradictory, we understand what the paradox means and we can explain how the saying works. It is comprehensible. However, an antinomy is impossible to understand. Both opposing concepts are completely true.

Packer then asks the question, "What should one do, then, with an antinomy?" Packer simply encourages the reader to just accept it. Other theologians like R. C. Sproul think this is a cop out. Sproul claims that we can understand how God works through man's free will. However, Packer's concept of the antinomy is a great concept to move pass some sticking points people have about God's justice. We can them move to have discussions on how God's sovereignty is a great comfort to those who wait upon the Lord.

This idea of comfort brings us back to the Joseph passage. Joseph could comfort his brothers because he trusted in God's sovereignty and forgave them. Joseph had the brothers totally at his mercy, but Joseph saw God's hand in bringing Joseph down to Egypt and saw God's hand in the maturing of his brothers. Joseph forgave them because he understood God's sovereignty. As Allen P. Ross wrote in his commentary on this passage,

Reconciliation comes through forgiveness, and forgiveness through the recognition of God's sovereignty. (p. 675, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of the Book of Genesis, Allen P. Ross)