Sovereignty and Simplicity: Why the Two Belong Together

Recently, when asked how God could be in the right in slaughtering women and children in certain OT narratives, John Piper responded, "It's right for God to slaughter women and children any time he pleases. God gives life and he takes life....So God is God! He rules and governs everything. And everything he does is just and right and good. God owes us nothing" (to read the text in full, see here). He goes on to underscore the pertinent implication of our sinful state, namely, that our sin is sufficient reason for God to deny us the gift of life.

Bracketing the unnerving effect of some of the language in this piece, I'm in agreement that God is blessedly sovereign over all of life and that he does not owe something to sinful humanity. However, Piper doesn't clarify how God's actions constitute enactments of justice, righteousness, goodness. Does God willing something render that something a righteous action (so nominalism). Or, does God submit himself to an external standard of righteousness and then act accordingly (so hard realism)? This is a well-known issue in both philosophy and theology often called the Euthyphro problem. Neither option seems to be satisfactory inasmuch as God is neither capricious (pace nominalism) nor subject to anything external to God (pace what I would call a hard version of realism about universals like justice and goodness). In my mind, the appropriate response is to maintain that God is subject to a standard of goodness and righteousness, but that this standard is his own nature. To confess God's simplicity is, negatively, to hold that he is not composed of parts. To unpack this, God is not really distinct from any of God's perfections but just is, when viewed under a particular aspect, his corresponding particular perfection (holiness, omniscience, love, goodness, etc.). So God's essence is his own righteousness and this righteousness, internal to God, is the standard according to which God must act and does act in the world.

What does this mean for Piper's statement? It means that, while God is free to act how he pleases, not least in relation to rebellious sinners, he is, contra nominalism's doctrine of God's absolute freedom, not free to contradict his own goodness and righteousness. The pastoral and apologetical import of God's sovereignty is more firmly established if God's sovereignty is wedded to God's simplicity and his commitment always to enact his own goodness in all his dealings with his creatures.

Any thoughts on this?

Between Extremes

Sometimes setting up one's own perspective as the mediating or "holistic" one can be a rather cheap way to win an argument. Two examples. (1) If the options are framed as hardcore fatalism, Calvinism, and the utter loss of divine sovereignty, Calvinism might prematurely appear best (this is not to say that it couldn't appear that way after further thought!). However, Calvinism and Arminianism both are probably somewhere in the middle with hardcore fatalism and open theism on the edges. Let the curious scrupulously explore Holy Scripture and the Christian tradition to weigh Calvinism and Arminianism. (2) If the options are framed as chauvinism, complementarianism, and over-the-top feminism, complementarianism might prematurely appear best (as with Calvinism, this isn't meant to imply that it couldn't appear that way after further thought). However, complementarianism and egalitarianism both are probably somewhere in the middle with chauvinism and over-the-top feminism on the edges.

Having said all of this, as I'm reading through Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, I pick up that he regularly situates his work between two extremes in such a way that it pushes him to take extra care in his theological formulations. In other words, in his case, a between-extremes approach proves beneficial. On the matter of the authority of Scripture and the relationship between word and Spirit, Bavinck masterfully avoids Rome's desire to ground the authority of Scripture in the authentication of the church and also Radical Reformers' desire to bypass the constraints of the word and view the Spirit's speaking apart from Scripture as the supreme authority for Christian belief and praxis. On the doctrine of God, Bavinck continually presses on between the blunders of deism and pantheism, maintaining God's immanence and independence and transcendence. On the matter of ecclesial power, he again walks the line between Rome and the Radicals and ends up arguing that both in their own way ascribe the state's power to the church!

Thoughts on doing "between-extremes theology" for refinement rather than caricature?