On the Will of God

Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin)

 

What does the will of God mean? Theologians distinguish two aspects in the will of God: the desire of God and the allowance of God. The desire of God is the absolute will of God, which desires the eternal salvation of the crown of His creation – man. God wants good for us more than we ourselves want it. But the absolute will of God meets an obstacle in the free will of man, which wavers between good and evil. Here it is necessary to dwell in more detail on the question of free will, which is the cause of many perplexities.

Free will is given to man as the image and likeness of God. Without the possibility of freedom of choice, there would be no good as such, and the actions of man, and even his inner actions, would be directed by necessity. Free will is one of the chief virtues of man, and at the same time, a great responsibility for him. Some ask, why then is free will given if the majority of people abuse it? The fact is that without free will, the very salvation of man cannot be accomplished, since salvation is communion with God – life with God, eternal drawing near to God, the illumination and enlightenment of man’s soul by the divine light. Man must voluntarily choose the path of salvation – to have God as the chief aim of his life. Salvation itself is the love of the Creator for His creation and of the creation for its Creator. Therefore, salvation has a deeply personal character. Theologians use here the term synergy, that is, the cooperation of two wills – the divine and the human.

If a man is deprived of free will, then he turns into an automaton with a built-in program. No sinner would want to turn into a computer, even the most perfect one, and from a man become a machine. Therefore, free will is one of the chief properties of man; it is called the God-likeness. Whoever says, “Why was free will given to me?”—such a one, without understanding it himself, from a living person wants to become a corpse. Misfortune comes not from free will, but from the fact that people misuse this gift of God, having subjected their will not to their spirit but to their passions. God created man as a morally autonomous being; He does not take His gifts back. When man goes against the will of God, sin condemns him to suffering, not only in the future life but also in the present one, because within man is implanted an inner criterion of good and evil—the voice of heaven, called the conscience.

Some think that free will is the ability to do whatever one wants. But this is not so. Here there is an illusion of freedom. Without grace, the will is subjected to the passions; sin, becoming a habit, to a significant degree determines the human will. And thus, the conflict between the divine and human will produces that relative will of God which is called allowance. God allows the direction of the human will not only toward good, but also toward evil. If God were to physically cut off evil, then freedom would become a fiction; moreover, all humanity would be doomed to destruction, for each of us has committed grave sins, where only the longsuffering of God has saved him.

Individual sins, joining together like drops of rain into a stream, turn into social disasters and cataclysms – and this is the allowance of God. A man loses that which seemed to him the dearest in life – and this is the allowance of God. But allowance is not always only the consequence of sin. Temptations, trials, and sorrows can be sent to a righteous man so that in patience and in resisting sin his holiness might shine forth even more.

Now let us turn to the question of the providence of God. God does not forcibly invade the inner world of man, but from all the cases and countless situations in which a man may find himself, He gives the one that is best for him, corresponding to his inner spiritual and moral state. Every day a man receives a lesson of life, but this lesson must be understood and assimilated; then he will look with different eyes at the everyday course of his existence. The providence of God involves the foreknowledge of God: God knows not only the past and the present, but also the future—He stands above time and eternity. Therefore, one of the high impulses of the human soul are the words: “Thy will be done.” By His providence, God guides man, concealing from him His face.

Some will object: and what providence of God was there concerning those who did not hear the teaching about the True God, who lived and died in delusion; where then is the good of divine providence here? It may be said that if such people had heard the preaching from the apostles themselves, they would not have accepted it. If an angel had descended from heaven and with a sign borne witness to the truth of Christianity, they would have rejected the angel. Therefore, for many people it was a lesser evil to remain in ignorance than, having learned the truth, to turn away from it. This is the utmost limit of a corrupted will—to know the truth and resist it.

Some say: “Where then is the providence of God, allowing a suicide to lay hands upon himself? Why did the Lord not send him people who would have prevented the committing of this crime? After all, the suicide died in mortal sin; his name is erased from the Church. Where then is the good here?”

It must be remembered that even in the sin of suicide there are various inner states and external circumstances which either somewhat lessen or greatly increase the gravity of this sin. Suicide is one of the forms of God-fighting, the mad thought that life itself is evil; thus, the Creator of life, if a person believes in God, is associated by him with evil. There are varying degrees of being possessed among suicides, and if the Lord, Who sees the future, had prevented a man from killing himself, then he would have committed this crime with still greater hatred toward God and toward life itself, which to the suicide seems meaningless, a dead end, the ruin of hopes, a monster from which he flees into his own death. Even if he were chained so that he could not physically kill himself, this man would, with even greater force, dream of suicide and curse his life and his Creator—that is, he would become even more possessed.

It must be remembered that God is not only Love, but also the highest Justice. In the providence of God concerning men, according to the foreknowledge and omniscience of God, all factors, possibilities, and the moral potential of a person’s life are taken into account. Moreover, humanity is oneness in multiplicity and multiplicity in oneness, where everything, in some way unknown to us, is reflected in everything, and the deeds of each are reflected upon all, although this does not determine nor condition the will of man. The complete and final separation of good and evil will take place at the Last Judgment.

In the providence of God everything is taken into account: both the potential of evil committed on earth, and the prayers of the Heavenly Church for peace, and the sins committed in the depths of the heart, and the sigh of repentance of the sinner. The providence of God includes such an innumerable multitude of factors that all the computers existing in the world could not contain even a small part of them. Therefore, the providence of God always remains a mystery, before which we can only stand in reverence and thank God for all things. Moreover, the providence of God cannot be comprehended in its depth even by angelic minds. In the church hymns it is sung that the angels are amazed at the dispensation of God concerning man. When Venerable Anthony the Great in prayer asked God: why do some die in infancy, and others live to old age; why do the righteous suffer and fall ill, while sinners enjoy health and prosperity, as if misfortune passes them by, the Lord answered: “Anthony, remember that you are a man, and attend to yourself.”

The providence of God, in which love and truth are united—we cannot understand: divine Love is not human love, and divine Truth is not human truth. But the little that we know should move us to thank God for His inexpressible mercy. And the mystery of the providence of God over all mankind and each of us, we shall learn only in the future life, to the degree that is accessible to man.

 

Source: Наша вера – православная [Orthodox Faith is Orthodox], Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin), Moscow: Church-Historical Society, 2018, pp. 159–169.