This week I’ve praised the political acumen of Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, and today I’d like to deal with one tangential note in the book that seems essential to a Christian understanding of politics and power.
Alberta writes, “Scripture has a funny way of cutting political leaders down to size.” He gives an example: “Pharoah, the most powerful man on the planet, is utterly impotent in the face of God’s plagues.” Then, writing about Christ’s crucifixion, Alberta notes that God “cast Pilate in these proceedings as an actor who would read lines from a divine script.”
True, but I’d like to put a question to Current readers: Actors generally say lines written by others. A few directors, such as Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese, are known for encouraging some improvisation. For example, Al Pacino on his own kept shouting “Attica” in Dog Day Afternoon. Alberta is right that God has written a divine script, but none of us has it. We have a brief look at what’s to come in Revelation, but no one knows much about the specifics or when those scenes in the divine drama will occur.
In short, we are all actors within an objective reality, but subjectively we are improvising all the time. The Bible teaches us about Acts I and II, and provides a synopsis of Act V, but we are making up Acts III and IV as we go along. It’s all within God’s objective plan, and all according to His objective will, but subjectively we have great liberty.
So we decide moment by moment what to say and do, and thus the script written by God before the earth began gets carved into stone. Sometimes we’re surprised as J.R.R. Tolkien’s character Bilbo Baggins is: “’Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true!’” To which Gandalf replies:
“Of course! And why should not they prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”
(To which Bilbo responds, “’Thank goodness!’) ###
Thanks, Dr O. Ah, the mystery of the interaction of God’s will and ours. Ironically (in God’s strange providence!) I was recently making a list of these surprising interactions in Scripture. God says to Abimelech (Gen 20:6), after the king decides to deal innocently with Abraham’s wife, ““Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her” — a concrete illustration of Prov 21:1, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;
he turns it wherever he will.” How God does this is a mystery, but I’ve got quite a list going, showing Scripture is replete with such illustrations of His control of everything — even of the subjective decisions we make! (The “compatibilism” of academics’ parlance.) Thanks for all your contributions to CURRENT.
— Rob Vaughn, Quakertown, PA