Broadlands Bible Church
September 6, 2023
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Thesis: The concept of "will" is rooted in (big T) "T"heology as an inherent attribute of God and in (little t) "t"heology as an inherent attribute of all created realities that have the capacities involved in the concept of "making real decisions" (i.e., "decisions" that, when acted upon, determine a "new" future reality).
- I. First, as a matter of major interest, we must hang our hats on some definition of "will".
- A. What is a "will"?
- B. What does it mean "to will"?
- II. There are, in the NASB translation, 5,808 uses of our word "will" in contrast with the KJV translation that uses our word "will" in only 2,925 verses.
- A. A major reason for this difference rests upon the KJV and its use of "shall" and its variations in contrast with the NASB which uses the word "will" and its variations.
- B. A second reason for this difference is the fact that shall/will is often not even in the text except as a part of the translational requirement involved in the various verbs that are involved: as an example, "poieo" is a verb that refers to "making" or "doing" and when it is used in the present tense it is translated "I am making" or "I am doing", but when it is used in the future tense it is translated "I shall make" or "I shall do" or "I will make" or "I will do" indicating a difference in "time" in respect to the statement of what is either declared to be going on now, or declared to be something that will be done in the future.
- C. In all of these translational choices, the noun "will" is assumed but not declared.
- III. Before this word is used in the English Bible (Genesis 2:17), there are records of what most of us would call "the exercise of will".
- A. The first of these records involves God taking action to "create what has not yet existed": "In the beginning, God created..." is followed by multiple statements of "new" realities: "Then God said ... and there was..." has to mean that what had not been now is.
- B. This involves a "perception" of God. This "perception" is what I call "T"heology. This perception is that God is not a "static" being, existing without "doing".
- 1. There are those whose philosophical reasonings have led them to think of God as incapable of doing because the ability to take action somehow, in their minds, means that God is "improving" something as though He is not already "perfect" in all ways.
- a. These "reasonings" are necessarily "philosophical" and, as such, are not tied to what we know of as "revelational" -- i.e., what God "has revealed to men" as the basis for all legitimate human reasonings.
- b. These "reasonings" have, in effect, created in men a concept of "an uninvolved Being", or, to say it another way, "God" has been turned to stone so that He is a hardened Perfection that cannot possess "will". These reasonings led to "Deism" and have no place in legitimate "reason" because the "revealed facts" involve a "revelation" of a God Who regularly and actively exercises the ability to take action in time and space resulting in "history".
- 2. Alternatively, there are some whose philosophical reasonings have led them to think of God as "evolving"...not already Perfect, but moving in that infinite direction.
- 3. There are other philosophical reasonings that allow that anything/everything God "does" is not an "improvement", but is the natural flow of a "Perfection" as it is expressed in the actions taken.
- 4. In every case of "philosophical reasoning", this "fact" stands out: God's "knowledge" is so far above man's that even with special divine revelation men are often "caught" by both their ignorance and their reversion to unhinged "philosophy".
- a. The infinity of God's knowledge is, when coupled to man's extreme limitations, necessarily revealed in a piece-meal way and is, thus, a matter calling for extreme caution on man's part.
- b. We cannot escape the need for "reason", but it has its limitations.
- IV. With all of this said, we can conclude that a "will" is the ability to make decisions and "to will" is to make decisions that become a basis for taking selective, future-affecting, actions.
- V. Matters that everyone recognizes:
- First, that "will", as it affects what is going to take place in "creation reality", is indisputable. It is impossible for "action in time" to occur without someone making a decision and taking active steps to pursue it.
- Second, that "will", as it is affected by its perception of both what "is" and what "may" be in the flow of "progression in time", is inherently involved in terms of "whether" one is going to take action, or refrain from taking action.
- Third, all of the "will" issues in the divine revelation that we have involve our "creation reality"; they do not address pre-creation truths, and we are wiser to limit our philosophical reasonings to the "after creation" realities in which we live and move.
- VI. Related concepts:
- Man as the image of God (with a focus upon "let him rule"): this inserts multiple issues, but in respect to "will" it has to do with the "flow" of time and the circumstances that develop as both God and man "act" in this "cause and effect" universe with its dual realities of both physical laws and relational laws.
- The words that are used to present this concept.
- The "heart" of this attribute has to do with how this works out in respect to creatures and time: "will" has to do with something on the horizon of consecutive actions (this puts "will" into the setting of creatures and time).
- The issue of the words is that there is more than one aspect of "will": desire and determination.
- The issues involved in the two primary words: the level of "desire" in the scope of all things desired and the corresponding level of "potency" in respect to whether the "desire" will overrule all other desires.
