Book Review - God's Greater Glory by Bruce Ware

I reviewed the book for Systematic Theology II. Foot-notes will be in [brackets] and have been converted to end-notes.

Paul Helm also provides a particularly helpful overview and critique of Ware's "Compatibilist Middle Knowledge" aka "Calvinist Middle Knowledge" aka "Modified Calvinism" here, an excerpt from the forthcoming book Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views, featuring Roger Olson (Arminianism), John Sanders (Open Theism) and Bruce Ware.


Ware, Bruce. God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith. Wheaton: Crossway, 2004. 254 pp. $18.00.

Joseph was thrown into a pit and sold into slavery by his brothers. Jesus was beaten and killed on a cross at the hands of wicked men. These horrible evils were committed and the Bible says, “God meant [Joseph’s sufferings] for good” (Gen. 50:20) and that Jesus’ killing happened “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). If God is sovereign and “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11), how can Joseph’s brothers and Jesus’ killers be held responsible for the sins they committed when they acted in accordance with God’s plan? If these men sinned according to God’s will, how can God not be evil in ordaining the wickedness he condemns?

God’s Greater Glory is Bruce Ware’s attempt to provide a right understanding of God’s providence, or how we should “conceive of the divine-human relationship” (23) by reassessing classical and contemporary approaches to God. In removing the “duality reductionism” (56) of both classical and modern theism, Ware believes one will arrive at a more healthy, robust, scripturally accurate and worshipful knowledge of God’s glory. God’s Greater Glory is a systematic and philosophical treatment of the doctrine of God including His incommunicable attributes: immutability/mutability, impassability/passability, eternality/temporality, aseity, and omnipresence; and His communicable attributes: omniscience, providence, and omnipotence. Ware argues that “methodological balance in our doctrine of God” is the place to start (36).

According to Ware, the framework for an accurate view of providence is devoid of “duality reductionism” where “one conception of God [is] given normative status as the ‘prime datum’…under which all other conceptions must be adapted and conformed” (36). Ware argues that both classical and modern approaches are guilty of reductionism concerning primarily God’s “transcendence self-existence and His immanent self-relatedness” (56), and respectively, God’s ontologically and ethical immutability/relational mutability, impassability/passability and omnipresence/omnitemporality. He claims that “no scriptural warrant can be found to give either of these major truths a regulatory principle by which one effectively cancels out or minimizes the other” (57). Only after removal of methodological bias can one approach the God-human relationship in balance.

Concerning the God-creature relationship, Ware first affirms God’s “exhaustive, meticulous sovereignty” (67) where “God’s will encompasses all things that occur in the universe, and…is efficacious in that God works all things in fulfillment of his purpose” (emphasis in original, 69). The second affirmation is a compatibilist view of human freedom and divine sovereignty understood as “freedom of inclination” (80) or “the power to choose according to what we are most inclined to do” (79), and is absent of coercion or being “forced to act in ways contrary to what we most want to do” (80). The third affirmation is “God’s asymmetrical relationship to good and evil” (102) such that “God controls good in a ‘direct-causative’ divine agency” and controls evil “as his ‘indirect-permissive’ divine agency” but, both in His exhaustive, meticulous sovereignty (106). The fourth affirmation is a compatibilist middle-knowledge by removing the “grounding-objection”[1]. Following Luis de Molina,[2] Ware strongly emphasizes one aspect of God’s prevolitional knowledge (knowledge prior to creating the universe [110]) known as middle knowledge, or the knowledge of “what would be if circumstances were different from what they in fact will be in the actual world” (110). The “grounding objection” states that if man has libertarian free-will then “nothing grounds God’s knowledge of what free creatures would do in various possible sets of circumstances” (112). However, Ware claims to circumvent this objection by means of a “freedom of inclination” or compatibilist freedom, rather than libertarian free-will or a “freedom of indifference”. Next, Ware explains “God’s purposeful relationship with creation” (131) in “real relationality” between God and man (132).

After removing duality reductionism and affirming an asymmetrical, “Calvinist middle knowledge” (27) with exhaustive, meticulous sovereignty, Ware believes one has a proper framework for understanding the telos of life, “the uncontested supremacy and unrivaled glory of God alone (159). In this framework one can trust God and His sovereign purposes in suffering, through prayer can trust God’s self-sufficiency and sovereignty and, finally, can serve the Lord with gladness. However, the question arises, “Is this the right framework for knowing God and relating to Him?”

Compatibilist middle knowledge is a fairly recent addition to the theological family of God’s knowledge and providence. Proponents include Terrance Tiessen,[3] John Frame[4] and John Feinburg[5] to name a few. Ware seems to follow much of Tiessen’s methodology of reassessing the attributes of God then arguing for a compatibilist middle knowledge. There are, however, dissenting views as well.

Several scholars have logged critiques of this particular form of compatibilism. John Laing asserted that the “proponent of a Calvinistic-Middle Knowledge position seems to be caught between the horns of a dilemma.” [6] Ware unconvincingly attempts to deny his running with the bulls on the streets of Pamplona, Spain in an extended footnote on page 115. Both Steve Lemke[7] and David Werther [8] have evaluated several issues in Tiessen’s work, and thus, Ware’s indirectly through doctrinal association. However, by far the most comprehensive critique of Ware’s theological embracement of middle knowledge is Travis James Campbell’s Middle Knowledge: A Reformed Critique. [9] Campbell gives “five theologico-philosophical considerations which have convinced many that God does not possess middle knowledge.” [10] Now we shall turn to two major objections.

Objection 1: Ware’s duality reductionism violates aseity because it pares the divine attributes. Ware’s redefining of classical theism by removing duality reductionism leads him to affirm God’s relational mutability[11] or God’s passability, thus leading him to attribute to God contingent emotional qualities where God “ ‘responds’ to situations that arise” (29). [12] God is the only necessary being and not contingent as he holds all His attributes interconnected. Starting at aseity imposes no methodological problem because any doctrine of God rightly starts with God’s self-existence. The premodern method is proper. When talking of God one has to start with an attribute, and according to Van Til, “First and foremost among the attributes, we therefore mention the independence or self-existence of God” and, “we must take the notion of the self-contained, self-sufficient God as the most basic notion of all our interpretive efforts.”[13] Ware commits the fallacy of self-contradiction. By starting with transcendence he has a normative attribute (46). If Ware is saying that we should not give priority to any of God’s attributes then why would he start with transcendence? It seems arbitrary and ungrounded. Why not start with love as a normative attribute, why not holiness? Ware tips his hand as to why he is calling for his form of methodological balance – God’s aseity must be compromised in order to affirm middle-knowledge. Dutch reformer Herman Bavinck has a word for Ware.

In middle knowledge…God does not derive his knowledge of the free actions of human beings from his own being, his own decrees, but from the will of creatures, God accordingly, becomes dependent on the world, derives knowledge from the world that he did not have and could not obtain from himself and hence, in his knowledge, ceases to be one, simple and independent – that is, God. Conversely, the creature in large part becomes independent vis-à-vis God.[14]

Objection 2: Calvinist-middle knowledge is to be rejected as self-referentially incoherent. The first confusion is in Ware’s attempt to maintain a meaningful distinction “between God’s direct-causative agency and his indirect-permissive agency” (110) or what he calls “asymmetrical divine agency” (26). However, in Molinism God decrees whatsoever comes to pass by means of actualizing counter factuals of creaturely freedoms, He does not permit through an indirect agency. [15] Ware’s second confusion in his Calvinist middle knowledge discredits Calvin’s own teaching. Calvin attacked the carnally devised distinction “between doing and permitting” and said “they babble and talk absurdly who, in place of God’s providence, substitute bare permission – as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events, and his judgments thus depended upon human will.” Fittingly he titled this section, “No mere ‘permission’!”[16] The third confusion is the fact that Ware elevates the acceptance of middle knowledge into the reformed tradition. This theory came about not from reformed thinkers but “its purpose [was] to harmonize the Pelagian notion of the freedom of the will with God’s omniscience.”[17] There are other arguments but these should suffice for now as we move to the book’s impact on the field and its readers.

Ware critiques and reassesses the behemoth doctrines of classical theism in a condensed amount of space. In this scenario, precision often is the handmaiden of brevity. Taking on the doctrine of God in this fashion is not advisable. Readers of a work of this method can be left frustrated due to inadequate treatment leaving historical gaps in theological and philosophical assessments, and/or misled by not having access to some range of the arguments.

God’s Greater Glory will require its readers to dig through classical theologies and philosophies in order to interact on its level. While there exists several articles discussing most of the topics in Ware’s book, a pointed treatment of his progression from duality reductionism in tradition to affirmation of compatibilist middle knowledge would be well received. It appears that compatibilist middle knowledge will not be passé any time soon.

Ware’s purpose for this work is laudable – man’s trusting in the glory of a “real relational” God both now and eternally. Though Ware has several rough spots in his treatments of God’s attributes, his strengths rest in his practical instruction for living in fellowship with God. In this regard Ware’s pastoral and doxological instruction is encouraging and revealing of the greatness of God’s glory.

FOOTNOTES
1 Steven B. Cowen, "The Grounding Objection to Middle Knowledge Revisited," Religious Studies, 39. 1 (2003): 93.

2 Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988).

3 Terrance Tiessen, Providence and Prayer: How Does God Work in the World? (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000), 290.

4 John Frame, The Doctrine of God: A Theology of Lordship (Philipsburg, N. J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2002), 501.

5 John Feinburg, "God Ordains all Things," in Predestination & Freewill: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, ed. David Basinger and Randall Basinger (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity, 1986). idem, No One Like Him (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 752.

6 John D. Laing, "The Compatibility of Calvinism and Middle Knowledge," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 47, 3 (September 2004): 467.

7 Steve Lemke, Providence and Prayer: An Evaluation of Tiessen's Proposal (A Paper Presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society).

8 David Werther, "Calvinism and Middle Knowledge," Ars Disputandi 3 (November 2003).

9 Travis James Campbell, "Middle Knowledge: A Reformed Critique," Westminster Theological Journal 68, no. 1 (Spring 2006).

10 Ibid., 22.

11 A change “of his attitude and disposition toward his moral creatures in ways that are commensurate to changes that happen in them” (142). Hodge’s classical definition of immutability: “God is absolutely immutable in his essence and attributes…He can never be wiser or holier, or more righteous or more merciful than He ever has been and ever must be.” Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Theology (Hendrickson, 2003), 390.

12 Perhaps Ware's best summary of this train of thought is found on page 145, emphases are mine. “On metaphysical and moral grounds [classical theologians] denied of God variable emotions. But metaphysically, we have already seen good reason to question these traditional conceptions of God that remove him entirely from any possibility of real relationship with the world. Yes, God is timelessly eternal, but he is also omnitemporal, entering fully into the moments of creaturely existence. Yes, God is absolutely immutable in the essential character qualities that are his by virtue of his being God, but this does not require immutability in all respects. While upholding the full transcendence of God in every way that Scripture demands, we should not conceive of God's transcendence so that other clear teachings of Scripture have to be eliminated–as I fear some have done with Scripture's teaching about God's emotions.”

13 John M. Frame, Divine Aseity and Apologetics (Reformed Theological Seminary, Prof. of Systematic Theology and Philosophy), 4.

14 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt and John Vriend, God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Michigan, 2004), 201.

15 Thomas P. Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. William P. Alston (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 40-48.

16 John Calvin, Library of Christian Classics, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville & London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 228-231.

17 Bavinck, God and Creation, 200. See also Muller, Richard A. Grace, Election and Contingent Choice: Arminius's Gambit and the Reformed Response, ed. Thomas Schreiner and Bruce Ware (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 265-266. For discussions by reformed theologians on middle knowledge see Hodge, Systematic Theology, 398-400. Shedd, William G. T. Dogmatic Theology. Edited by Alan W. Gomes. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2003), 287.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Edited by John Bolt and John Vriend. God and Creation. Grand Rapids: Michigan, 2004.

Calvin, John. Library of Christian Classics. Edited by John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Louisville & London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960.

Campbell, Travis James. "Middle Knowledge: A Reformed Critique." Westminster Theological Journal 68, no. 1 (Spring 2006).

Cowen, Steven B. "The Grounding Objection to Middle Knowledge Revisited." Religious Studies, 39, 1 (2003): 93-102.

Feinburg, John. "God Ordains all Things." In Predestination & Freewill: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, ed. David Basinger and Randall Basinger, 17-44. Downer's Grove: InterVarsity, 1986.

________. No One Like Him. Wheaton: Crossway, 2001.

Flint, Thomas P. Divine Providence: The Molinist Account. Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. William P. Alston. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Frame, John M. Divine Aseity and Apologetics. Reformed Theological Seminary, Prof. of Systematic Theology and Philosophy.

Frame, John. The Doctrine of God: A Theology of Lordship. Philipsburg, N. J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2002.

Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. Theology. Hendrickson, 2003.

Laing, John D. "The Compatibility of Calvinism and Middle Knowledge." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 47, 3 (September 2004): 455-467.

Lemke, Steve. Providence and Prayer: An Evaluation of Tiessen's Proposal. A Paper Presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Molina, Luis de. On Divine Foreknowledge. Translated by Alfred J. Freddoso. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Muller, Richard A. Grace, Election and Contingent Choice: Arminius's Gambit and the Reformed Response. Edited by Thomas Schreiner and Bruce Ware. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995.

Shedd, William G. T. Dogmatic Theology. Edited by Alan W. Gomes. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2003.

Tiessen, Terrance. Providence and Prayer: How Does God Work in the World? Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000.

Werther, David. "Calvinism and Middle Knowledge." Ars Disputandi 3 (November 2003).