17,18 Apr -- Diagnosing Heart Disease
The readings for Tues 17 and Wed 18 April are -- Ex 9:1-10:20; Ps 18:13-19; Pro 4:1-2; Mt 21:28-46.
The story of the plagues and Pharaoh's responses to them raises some really difficult issues, doesn't it? Pharaoh seems to be confronted with a series of choices he needs to make. But at the same time God knows (and tells Moses) what Pharaoh is going to decide before he is even given the choice. We're told that the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart (9:12). But we're also told that his heart was hardened (9:7) and that he hardened his own heart (9:34).
Though it is difficult to fully understand, we have been created as moral agents with free will and the capacity to make decisions while still subject to the all-encompassing sovereignty of God. At times the Biblical record emphasises God's sovereignty and sometimes it emphasises our free will. They are two perspectives. Both are true.
Labels: sovereignty
posted by Ps John @ 7:57 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
It's time to trot out my favourite illustration of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart (apologies to those who have heard it before).
If we imagine God as the sun (but not Ra, the sun god), and Pharaoh's heart as clay, then we can say that the sun hardens the clay. We can also say the clay was hardened. (Given that Pharaoh is a person, not a lump of inanimate clay, it's easy to understand how he hardens his own heart, not necessary to use the illustration for this.)
But these are 3 ways of looking at the same process. It's not the fault of the sun that the clay is hardened by it, it is just a consequence of the sun being what it is (or of God being who he is). You could say to some extent that it is a consequence of Pharaoh being who he is that his heart is hardened by God. That is not to absolve him of responsibility, because it is his choice to be the way he is. If he was to change to be a different person, his heart would not have been hardened.
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