Posted on 06/28/2016 6:44:48 AM PDT by Salvation
One of the more difficult biblical concepts to understand is that of God hardening the hearts and minds of certain people. The most memorable case is that of Pharaoh: before sending Moses to him, God said that He would harden Pharaohs heart (Ex 4:21). And there are other instances in which biblical texts speak of God hardening the hearts of sinners, even from among his own people.
What are we to make of texts like these, which explicitly or implicitly speak of God hardening the hearts of people? How can God, who does no evil, be the source of a sinful mind or a hard heart? Why would God do such a thing when He has also said the following?
To be sure, these questions involve very deep mysteries, mysteries about Gods sovereignty and how it interacts with our freedom, the mysteries of time, and the mysteries of causality. As a mystery within mysteries, the question of God hardening hearts cannot be resolved simply. Greater minds than mine have pondered these things and it would be foolish to think that an easy resolution can be found in a blog post.
But some distinctions can and should be made and some context supplied. We do not want to understand the hardening texts in simplistic ways or in ways that use one truth to cancel out other important truths that balance it. So please permit a modest summary of the ancient discussion.
I propose that we examine these sorts of texts along four lines:
To begin, it is important simply to list a few of the hardening texts. The following are not the only ones, but they provide a wide enough sample:
I. The Context of Connivance – In properly assessing texts like these, we ought first to consider the contexts in which they were written. Generally speaking, most of these declarations that God hardens the heart come after a significant period of disobedience on the part of those whose hearts were hardened. In a way, God cements the deal and gives them what they really want. For seeing that they have hardened their own hearts to God, He determines that their disposition is to be a permanent one, and in a sovereign exercise of His will (for nothing can happen without Gods allowance), declares and permits their hearts to be hardened in a definitive kind of way. In this sense, there is a judgment of God upon the individual that recognizes the persons definitive decision against Him. Hence this hardening can be understood as voluntary on the part of the one hardened one, for God hardens in such a way that He uses the persons own will for the executing of His judgment. God accepts that the individuals will against Him is definitive.
In the case of Pharaoh (e.g., #1 and #2 above), although God indicated to Moses that He would harden Pharaohs heart, the actual working out of this is a bit more complicated. We see in the first five plagues that it is Pharaoh who hardens his own heart (Ex 7:13; 7:22; 8:11; 8:28; & 9:7). It is only after this repeated hardening by Pharaoh of his own heart that the Exodus text speaks of God as the one who hardens (Ex 9:12; 9:34; 10:1; 10:20; 10:27). Hence the hardening here is not without Pharaohs repeated demonstration of his own hardness. God cements the deal as a kind of sovereign judgment on Pharaoh.
The Isaiah texts (many in number) that speak of a hardening being visited upon Israel by God (e.g., #3 and #4 above), are also the culmination of a long testimony by Isaiah of Israels hardness. At the beginning of Isaiahs ministry, God describes (through Isaiah) Israels hardness as being of their own doing: For the LORD has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows his master, the donkey his owners manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand. Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the LORD; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him (Is 1:2-4). There follows a long list of their crimes, their hardness, and their refusal to repent.
St. John Chrysostom – Of the numerous texts later in Isaiah (and also referenced by Jesus (e.g., Jn 12:40)) that speak of Israel being hardened by God (and having their eyes shut by Him), St John Chrysostom said, That the saying of Isaiah might be fulfilled: that here is expressive not of the cause, but of the event. They did not disbelieve because Isaiah said they would; but because they would disbelieve, Isaiah said they would For He does not leave us, except we wish Him Whereby it is plain that we begin to forsake first, and are the cause of our own perdition. For as it is not the fault of the sun that it hurts weak eyes, so neither is God to blame for punishing those who do not attend to His words (in a gloss of Is. 6:9-10 at Jn 12:40, quoted in the Catena Aurea).
St. Augustine – This is not said to be the devils doing, but Gods. Yet if any ask why they could not believe, I answer, because they would not But the Prophet, you say, mentions another cause, not their will; but that God had blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart. But I answer that they well deserved this. For God hardens and blinds a man by forsaking and not supporting him; and this He makes by a secret sentence, for by an unjust one He cannot (quoted in the Catena Aurea at Jn 12:40).
In the text of 2 Thessalonians (# 5 above), God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie. While this verse speaks of God as having sent the delusion, the verses before and after make clear the sinful role of the punished: They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness (2 Thess 2:10,12).
St. Augustine – From a hidden judgment of God comes perversity of heart, so that the refusal to hear the truth leads to the commission of sin, and this sin is itself a punishment for the preceding sin [of refusing to hear the truth] (Against Julian 5.3.12).
St. John Damascus – [God does this] so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness (The Orthodox Faith 4.26).
The texts from Romans 1 (e.g., # 6 above) speak of God handing them over only after they have suppressed the truth (1:18), persevered in their wickedness (1:18), and preferred lust and idolatry (1:23-24). Hence, as a just judgment, God hands them over to sexual confusion (homosexuality) and countless other destructive drives. So here, too, though it is said that God hands them over, it is really not that simple. Again, God has cemented the deal. They do not want to serve Him and so God, knowing their definitive decision, gives them what they want.
Thus our first point in understanding the hardening texts is that the context of connivance is important in assessing them. Scripture does not assert that God takes a reasonably righteous man and, out of the blue, hardens his heart, confuses his mind, or causes him (against his will) to become obstinate. The texts are usually presented as a kind of prevenient judgment by God, such that the state of the persons hardness becomes permanent. God cements the deal and causes the person to walk in his own sinful ways since he has insisted on doing so.
II. The Mystery of Time – In understanding these hardening texts (which we have seen are akin to judgment texts) we must strive to recall that God does not live in time in the same way that we do. Scripture speaks often of Gods knowledge and vision of time as being comprehensive rather than speculative or serial (e.g., Ex 3:14; Ps 90:2-4; Ps 93:2; Is 43:13; Ps 139; 2 Peter 3:8; James 1:17).
To say that God is eternal and lives in eternity is to say that He lives in the fullness of time. For God past, present, and future are all the same. God is not wondering what I will do tomorrow; neither is He waiting for it to happen. For Him, my tomorrow has always been present. All of my days were written in His book before one of them ever came to be (Ps 139:16). Whether and how long I live have always been known to Him. Before He ever formed me in my mothers womb He knew me (Jer 1:5). My final destiny is already known and present to Him.
Hence when we strive to understand Gods judgments in the form of hardening hearts, we must be careful not to think that He lives in time the way we do. It is not as though God is watching my life unfold like a movie. He already knows the choices I will make. Thus, when God hardens the hearts of some, it is not that He is trying to influence the outcome by tripping them up. He already knows the outcome and has always known it; He knows the destiny they have chosen.
Now be very careful with this insight, for it is a mystery to us. We cannot really know what it is like to live in eternity, in the fullness of time, where the future is just as present as is the past. And even if you think you know, you really dont. What is essential for us to realize is that God does not live in time the way we do. If we try too hard to solve the mystery (rather than just accepting and respecting it) we risk falling into the denial of human freedom, or double predestination, or other misguided notions that sacrifice one truth for another rather than holding them in balance. That God knows what I will do tomorrow does not destroy my freedom to choose what I do. How this all works out is mysterious, but we are free (Scripture teaches this) and God holds us accountable for our choices. Further, even though God knows our destiny already, this does not mean that He is revealing anything about that to us, such that we should look for signs and seek to call ourselves saved or lost. We ought to work out our salvation in reverential fear and trembling (Phil 2:12).
The key point here is mystery. Striving to understand how, why, and when God hardens the heart of anyone is caught up in the mysterious fact that He lives outside of time and knows all things before they happen. Thus He acts with comprehensive knowledge of all outcomes.
III. The Mystery of Causality – One of the major differences between the ancient and the modern worlds is that the ancient world was much more comfortable dealing with something known as primary causality.
Up until the Renaissance, people thought that God was at the center of all things and they instinctively saw the hand of God in everythingeven terrible things. Job said, The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised if we have received good things at the hand of God, why should we not receive evil? (Job 1:21; 2:10) Thus the ancients would commonly attribute everything as coming from the hand of God, for He was the first cause of everything that happened. This is what is meant by primary causality. The ancients were thus much more comfortable attributing things to God than we are. In speaking like this, they were not being superstitious or primitive in their thinking; rather, they were emphasizing that God was sovereign, omnipotent, and omnipresent, and that nothing happened apart from His sovereign will. They believed that God was the primary cause of all that existed.
Of this ancient and scriptural way of thinking the Catechism says, And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes [e.g., human or natural]. This is not a primitive mode of speech, but a profound way of recalling Gods primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world, and so of educating his people to trust in him (CCC # 304).
We need to understand that the ancient biblical texts, while often speaking of God as hardening the hearts of sinners, do not mean to say that man had no role, no responsibility. Neither do they mean to say that God acts in a merely arbitrary way. Rather, the emphasis is on Gods sovereign power as the first cause of all that is. Hence He is often called the cause of all things and His hand is seen in everything.
After the Renaissance, man moved himself to the center and God was gradually escorted to the periphery. Mans manner of thinking and speaking began to shift to focusing on secondary causes (those related to man and nature). If something happens we look to natural causes, or in human situations, to the humans who caused it. But these are actually secondary causes, because I cannot cause something to happen unless God first causes me.
Today, we have largely thrown primary causality overboard as a category. Even believers do this (unconsciously for the most part) and thus exhibit three related issues:
The point here is that we have to balance the mysteries of primary and secondary causality. We cannot fully understand how they interrelate, but they do. Both mysteries need to be held. The ancients were more sophisticated than we are in holding these mysteries in the proper balance. Today, we handle causality very clumsily; we do not appreciate the distinctions between primary causality (Gods part) and secondary causality (our own and natures part). We try to resolve the mystery rather than holding the two in balance and speaking to both realities. Thus we are poor interpreters of the hardening texts.
IV. The Necessity of Humility – We are dealing with the mysterious interrelationship between God and Man, between Gods sovereignty and our freedom, between primary and secondary causality. In the face of such mysteries we have to be very humble. We ought not to think more about the details than is proper for us, because, frankly, they are largely hidden from us. Too many moderns either dismiss the hardening texts outright, or accept them and then sit in harsh judgment over God (as if we could do such a thing). Neither approach bespeaks humility. Consider a shocking but very humbling text in which St. Paul warns us about this very matter:
What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. It does not, therefore, depend on mans desire or effort, but on Gods mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will? But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, Why did you make me like this? (Romans 9:14-20)
None of us can demand an absolute account from God for what He does. Even if He were to tell us, could our small, worldly minds ever really comprehend it? My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, says the Lord (Is 55:8).
Summary In this (rather too long) post, we have considered the hardening texts, in which God hardens the hearts of certain people. But texts like these must be approached carefully, humbly, and with proper distinctions as to the scriptural and historical context. At work here are profound mysteries: Gods sovereignty, our freedom, His mercy, and His justice.
We should be careful to admit the limits of our knowledge when it comes to interpreting such texts. As the Catechism so beautifully states, texts like these are to be appreciated as a profound way of recalling Gods primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world, and so of educating his people to trust in him (CCC # 304).
This song says, Be not angry any longer, Lord, and no more remember our iniquities. Behold and regard us; we are all your people!
Perhaps it’s that old protestant thread of resistance that still runs through when I see God’s Word described with “but”, followed by examples of “balance”, as opined and expressed by Monsignor Pope.
I have no problem taking God’s Word more literally and believe we would have all been better off if through the ages we had done just that.
The saints and Apostles and their priest successors were closer to the times of Jesus. Therefore, I find comfort in reading the teachings of the Early Fathers and the saints own writings about some of these “questions”, and where they do not address something, for me I am pleased to let it remain a mystery.
Clearly, we accept that we seek and strain toward and for conversion of heart daily, among those of us who understand that we “all fall short of the glory of God”, certainly imperfect and unfit for Heaven, where God’s Glory resides.
I believe for myself that I understand the obligation to distinguish between my faults and my venial sin from mortal sin, which with any mortal sin brings with it first my own rebellion against God and a purposeful complicity with Evil.
Msgr. Pope makes that point, but Pharaoh had his heart “hardened by God”, and permanently so. Sacred scripture is quite explicit about that. Msgr. Pope says, here, that the Pharaoh “hardened his own heart”.
No. That is not even remotely what God said.
I've been having an ongoing mental argument in my imagination with someone once on FR who said that there is no such thing as free will.
Msgr. Charles Pope says what I've been trying to say in my mental arguing. Very helpful!
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