Author God: Free Will and God’s Sovereignty

God speaks. And, according to Psalm 139:16, he also writes. In this series called Author God, we’re examining the parallels between the relationship that exists between an author and his writing and the relationship that exists between God and his creation. You’ll find the first post here.

This paradigm, while not perfect of course, has been incredibly helpful for me personally when it comes to understanding some traditionally difficult-to-understand characteristics of God. Last time we looked at how the purpose of any given detail in the story of history is akin to the purpose of any given detail in the story of a good author. While not always immediately obvious, good authors imbue every last detail with meaning that will by the end of the story become apparent and significant. Today we’ll consider how the paradigm of God as author sheds light on the idea of freewill versus God’s sovereignty.

Literally nothing about any character in an author’s story is outside the sovereign control of the author.

When an author writes, every last line, word, letter, and punctuation mark finds its way to the page precisely as the author decides. He is responsible for every last keystroke in his word processor. Period. If it’s in the story, it’s because he put it there. Not only does the author decide every detail regarding plot and storyline, he also determines every last trait of every last character in his story. All of them. He picks the characters’ physical, mental, and psychological traits. He decides the characters’ eye colors, the type of shoes they wear, what brand of coffee they drink, and what their mothers’ maiden names are. He picks their birthday, where they work, and how they vote. Literally nothing about any character in an author’s story is outside the sovereign control of the author.

Furthermore, not only is the author responsible for deciding all these aspects, he’s responsible for doing the hard work of putting those ideas into words and bringing those decisions into being, so to speak. He has to cause the characters to do what he’s decided they’ll do by actually writing their stories that way.

To speak of God as Author, then, is to imply that he, too, is in absolute control over every last detail of his story, the story called the history of the universe. He decided what you ate for breakfast this morning. If you accidentally put on mismatched socks while getting dressed, that’s because God wrote your story that way. Does your singing voice sound like a dying cat? Do you detest Brussel sprouts? Is your hair thinning? Do you have an irrational fear of spiders? God decided all that. And he decides bigger plot points as well. God wrote the story of the sinking of the Titanic, of the causes, events, and fallout of World War II, of the winner of every Super Bowl ever, and of the rise and fall of ISIS. It’s all his story, and every detail you could ever imagine has been written into being by his omnipotent pen.

To speak of God as Author, then, is to imply that he, too, is in absolute control over every last detail of his story, the story called the history of the universe.

And to push it even further, not only did he decide every detail, he has to do the work, if you will, of bringing those details into existence. He has to actually put those details on the page of reality just like an author has to actually write the words of his story on his physical page. That means that God is present and intimately involved at every moment of every last detail. Things don’t just happen, just like words don’t just passively find their way into a writer’s word processor. An author’s words happen because the author actively, consciously, and thoughtfully causes them to be there. And so it is with God when it comes to every detail of every event in the history of creation.

“What, then, becomes of free will?” you ask? “Are you not saying that we are, in effect, robots confined to an unalterable fate?”

It may be hard to imagine if you’ve never experienced it, but as a fiction writer, I have often had the following rather odd experience happen to me while writing: A character takes on a life of his own, and, despite the fact that I’m the one typing the story, it’s not uncommon for him or her to say or do something that surprises me. It feels like the character I’ve created in my mind is helping me write the story.

I’ve identified at least two factors that cause this phenomenon. One is my commitment as an author to continuity, and the other is that in creating characters, an author cannot help but endow them with parts of himself. Let me take those one at a time.

On Continuity

Good authors are consistent. In very simplistic terms, that means that a character’s eye color doesn’t start out blue and then suddenly turn green and then finish off brown—that is, unless changing eye color is possible in the world of the story and that fact is somehow significant to the plot. Otherwise, most characters’ fundamental traits remain consistent throughout the story. Even in the case of character-driven plots in which a character is left unalterably changed by the time the final curtain closes, most of a character’s core traits remain the same, and those that change are carefully planned on the part of the author, are generally very hard earned on the part of the character, and unfold slowly throughout the course of the story. And those changes are never willy-nilly.

Not only do characters’ traits remain consistent, but characters also think and feel and speak and act according to those traits, and they do so consistently. For example, once I as an author have created a character whose arrogance is a key characteristic of his makeup, that character’s actions must reflect that trait, and his nature helps me write the story. When I write dialogue for such a character, I think through how this character would speak in this particular situation. What would he do with his hands and eyes? What would the tone of his voice sound like? Once I think in such terms, the character’s words and actions flow quite easily off my fingertips, and in a strange but very real sense, though I’m the one typing, the character is dictating to me what he says and does. Consistency to his character as I’ve designed it demands it.

This is especially true for characters I’ve thoroughly developed, either on paper or in my mind. The more details I’ve specifically decided on for any given character and the better I know the character and the richer the character’s history is, the easier it is for all those factors to converge when writing a scene and for truly magical things to happen. Again, I’m typing the words, but the character is truly doing his own thing. It’s kind of like I’m just watching my creation walk around on the page and interact with other characters. If you don’t believe me, try it sometime.

On Giving Characters Life

How is it possible for a character to take on a life of his or her own? I think it’s possible because when an author endows his characters with certain traits and characteristics, in essence, he’s infusing them with little parts of himself. Authors just can’t help it. Characters reflect the thoughts, desires, actions, speech, and traits of their author. You’ll find them, if you look. For example, one time a friend of mine read a piece of fiction I wrote and told me, “I could hear you saying some of the things that your characters said.” I hadn’t done that intentionally, but it was true that in some instances my characters talk just like me. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I think that’s the nature of an author creating characters. That’s just how it works. When it comes to inspiration for how a character should be, where else is an author going to draw from more naturally than from the well of his own nature?

Now, think for a minute how deep a living, breathing, feeling human being is. I’ve heard it said that every man is a universe, something I’ve interpreted to mean that inside every last person there are worlds and worlds of depth. If pieces of the essence of the craftsman are left in his handiwork, then just imagine how profound those pieces must be. They’re not his entire essence, of course. They’re echoes. But the louder the original sound, the louder, too, the echo. Because the nature of an author is unfathomably deep, though the traits an author endows to his characters are not equal to his own nature, they are nonetheless profound in their own right. Though a character will never be more witty than his author–since the character’s wit is derived from wit of the author–the wittier the author, the wittier the character is able to be.

For me at least, this helps me understand how it can be that sometimes characters do things that surprise me, even though I’m the one who types their every last line, word, thought, and action. I’m a free being capable of making my own decisions; therefore, as mirrors and echoes of me, so are my characters. It’s an ability that I in some mysterious way am able to endow them with. They share my essence since I was the one who conjured them up and out of the deepest parts of me.

Since God is free, it should be expected that he has endowed his characters with an echo of that freedom, an echo that is not on par with the original but nonetheless real.

What does all this have to do with free will and predestination? I’m arguing that understanding God in terms of an author who pens history is a very helpful paradigm through which to understand how free will and predestination work together are not mutually exclusive. When God created humanity and wrote the pages of our lives in his book (Psalm 139:16), he infused pieces of himself into us, just like what happens when a human author pens his characters. God is free, and he is free in the ultimate sense. He can do whatever he wants, just like an author can do whatever he wants when it comes to writing his story. It is a part, not the whole, of that trait that God has endowed to his creation. We are free not exactly in the same way that God is free, but a piece of his free will nevertheless exists in us precisely because it exists in him and we are created in his image.

To us biblical language, just as characters are created in the image of their authors, so, too, are all human beings created in the image of their free Creator God. Since God is free, it should be expected that he has endowed his characters with an echo of that freedom, an echo that is not on par with the original but nonetheless real.

An Example

Perhaps an example would be helpful. Here’s the scene: Moses had just received the law written on tablets of stone with God’s very finger. Back at the bottom of the mountain, the Israelites were getting tired of waiting for Moses to come back down, so at the people’s request, Aaron formed a golden calf for the people to worship. Back on the top of the mountain, God told Moses what the people had done and then said the following: “Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” In essence, God told Moses to stay out of the way so that he could utterly destroy the people.

How does Moses respond? Or, in terms of our author-character paradigm, how did God write Moses’s response? Moses “implored the LORD his God and said, ‘O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, “With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, “I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever”‘” (Exodus 32:9-13).

Appealing to God’s covenant faithfulness to his people, Moses begged God not to destroy his people so as not to give the nations reason to speak poorly against the living God.

And what did God do? Incredibly, “the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people” (32:14). The King James translation says that “the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.” God repented!

How are we to understand this passage? Did Moses change God’s mind? Did Moses actually influence the outcome of history by saving Israel? Would God have relented (or repented!) of his plan to destroy Israel had Moses not begged for mercy based on God’s faithfulness to his promises? What would have happened had Moses said, “You know what, God? You’re right. I’m sick of them, too. There’s nothing more we can do with them. I accept your offer. In faith I’ll trust you to fulfill the covenant promises you made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through me instead of through the nation there at the bottom of this mountain”?

I think this paradigm of God as author is very helpful in understanding the interaction that took place between God and Moses at this point. On the one hand, God wrote Moses’s every word. God is 100% responsible not only for how Moses reacted to God’s statement that he was going to destroy Israel, but God is also responsible for designing Moses in such a way that he would naturally and consistently have such a reaction. That is, God designed Moses’s character in such a way that it is not surprising that Moses would say something like this. Moses believed that the God who was talking to him was the God of his forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses believed that God was going to be faithful to bring about all the things that he had promised to both to his people and to him personally. Moreover, Moses loved these people and wanted to see God’s name honored. And why did Moses possess these traits? God wrote those traits into him.

At the same time, and in no way contrary to all that, I can imagine God writing this scene from before the world began and in a very real sense, thinking, “Hmm, what will I write next? How will I finish this scene?” And I can imagine God looking at who he’d made Moses to be and taking into consideration Moses’s past and his characteristics as well as the entire past of his covenant people as a whole and all that God had said and done up to that scene, and I can imagine God’s fingers beginning to type into his great, cosmic word processor. In my imagination, the moment was very dynamic and interactive, just as I regularly have very dynamic, interactive experiences when I’m writing fiction. In a very real sense, because of the life God had endowed to his character Moses, Moses took up that life and truly spoke for himself, and I can imagine that God listened and typed the scene accordingly. God didn’t take his fingers off the keyboard for even a moment. Yet, Moses’s character worked in perfect concert with God to write the scene that we now have as a part of our collective history.

Do characters, having been imagined and then written into being in the image of their free authors, work together with the author to write scenes and work through plot points? As an author of fiction, I can honestly say, Yes.

We see that God wrote Moses’s every last word, thought, and feeling, yet due to the fact that Moses possessed the traits of his Author God, Moses’s words really were his own, his prayers really were his own, his pleas really were his own, and his God-given free exercise of his God-endowed characteristics ended up aiding God, so to speak, in the writing of that particular event. In a sense, that event could have gone another way. In another sense, based upon the character of Moses as God had designed him, Moses could have acted in no other way and there could have been no other consistent outcome.

According to this paradigm, does an author predetermine every last sigh of his characters? Yes. Do characters, having been imagined and then written into being in the image of their free authors, work together with the author to write scenes and work through plot points? As an author of fiction, I can honestly say, Yes. I think that’s how God interacts with his creations, just like an author interacts with his characters.

I feel like I’ve caught a glimpse of something here, though I admit I’m still seeing it dimly as through a glass. I’m looking forward to the day when I will see face to face.

How about you? Do you find this paradigm helpful in understanding how free will and God’s sovereignty fit together? Is there any other paradigm that you’ve found helpful? If so, I’d love for you to share it in the comments below.

Stay turned for more posts in the series God as Author.

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Read the first post in this series here: Author God: Writing with Purpose.