I’ve been making my way through Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology again recently, since our pastor is teaching a systematic class for our mid-week Bible studies. I found Grudem’s discussion of divine providence to be especially helpful. In my teaching on Reformation doctrine for adult SS, we’re getting into this area of God’s sovereignty, providence and predestination, too. The following illustration of God as our divine playwright, has been especially helpful in thinking through the area of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. I thought I would share it here for the benefit of my readers.
It seems better to affirm that God causes all things that happen, but that he does so in such a way that he somehow upholds our ability to make willing, responsible, choices, choices that have real and eternal results, and for which we are held accountable. Exactly how God combines his providential control with our willing and significant choices, Scripture does not explain to us. But rather than deny one aspect or the other (simply because we cannot explain how both can be true), we should accept both in an attempt to be faithful to the teaching of all of Scripture.
The analogy of an author writing a play may help us to grasp how both aspects can be true. In the Shakespearean play Macbeth, the character Macbeth murders King Duncan. Now (if we assume for a moment that this is a fictional account), the question may be asked, “Who killed King Duncan?” On one level, the correct answer is “Macbeth.” Within the context of the play he carried out the murder and is rightly to blame for it. But on another level, a correct answer to the question, “Who killed King Duncan?” would be “William Shakespeare”: he wrote the play, he created all the characters in it, and he wrote the part where Macbeth killed King Duncan.
It would not be correct to say that because Macbeth killed King Duncan, William Shakespeare did not kill him. Nor would it be correct to say that because William Shakespeare killed King Duncan, Macbeth did not kill him. Both are true. On the level of the characters in the play Macbeth fully (100 percent) caused King Duncan’s death, but on the level of the creator of the play, William Shakespeare fully (100 percent) caused King Duncan’s death. In similar fashion, we can understand that God fully causes things in one way (as Creator), and we fully cause things in another way (as creatures).
Of course, someone may object that the analogy does not really solve the problem because characters in a play are not real persons; they are only characters with no freedom of their own, no ability to make genuine choices, and so forth. But in response we may point out that God is infinitely greater and wiser than we are. While we as finite creatures can only create fictional characters in a play, not real persons, God, our infinite Creator, has made an actual world and in it has created us as real persons who make willing choices. To say that God could not make a world in which he causes us to make willing choices (as some would argue today; see discussion below), is simply to limit the power of God. It seems also to deny a large number of passages of Scripture.
~ Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Zondervan: 1994), pg. 321-322
A friend at church commented on this analogy along the lines that we have a greater confidence in our God because he has written the script for everything that happens. And He has written in several times where he steps into the play himself. I agree, and want to stress that this whole concept of God being “our divine playwright,” should give us confidence in God and his power and an ability to endure suffering knowing He is on the throne. It should also make us humble and trusting, not proud and boastful. With tomorrow’s holiday on the mind, it should make us incredibly thankful. Thankful that God would intervene and care enough to craft “his story” – history – to include each of us and that He would work all things together for our good (Rom. 8:28).
