Why Pharaoh Falls Squarely Into the Calvinist/Arminianist Camp(s)

I just read Wink's post entitled, I'm Sorting It Out, on the topic of Our Free Will vs. God's Sovereignty.  I was going to add a reply there when I realized that what I'd really like to post is my "Pharaoh list" (which is in the form of a jpg). But I generally try to avoid adding html to other people's blogs (off Multiply, that is) because more often than not it's either rejected or causes the reply to get held for moderation.  So I decided to post it here along with an excerpt from the essay I wrote on the "Pharaoh list".  This excerpt was originally written in January 2002.

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At some point, in reading the story of Moses, I realized a little detail that comes up several times, but that had never jumped out at me before.  In fact, I’ve never heard this preached on nor have I ever heard anyone bring it up in discussion.  Its one of those little details that you don’t tend to notice when you break a story down into chunks to study and its one of those items that you tend to notice one side of more than the other (depending on your doctrinal leanings). The problem is this, when Moses asks Pharaoh to let his people go, at times the text says that Pharaoh hardened his heart and at other times it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  Here’s a chart showing the flipping flopping back and forth in the assigning of responsibility (as in, who made Pharaoh’s heart hard):

So, which is it?  Does Pharaoh have free will?  Is he able to decide when he is going to harden his heart and when he is not?  Or is he just a puppet and God can pull the right strings to make him harden his heart?

Perhaps both may be true.

First of all, let me point out that in Exodus 9:34 it not only states that Pharaoh (and his officials) hardened his heart, but the statement was also made that Pharaoh “sinned again.”  Very clearly Pharaoh is responsible for his actions.  He had the choice, he made it, he sinned, and he is therefore guilty.  If he had no say in what path he had chosen, then it would be unfair for him to bear guilt.  Pharaoh had the free will to choose whether he would harden his heart or not.  

But note that just a few verses later, in Exodus 10:1, God claims responsibility for what the text just got done saying was Pharaoh’s responsibility.  

But how can it be both that God has acted and that Pharaoh has acted in the very same situation (in the same act!)?  And how can one be responsible for what the other has done?  The Bible makes it very clear that both God and Pharaoh are fully responsible for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.  Now if that doesn’t give you a headache, you’re probably not getting it yet.

Those that say that people have free will are absolutely correct.  And those that say that God predestines our lives are absolutely correct.  Here, in one story, both sides are shown to be true.

Perhaps you could try thinking about it this way.  The Pointillists were known for painting pictures using only primary colors.  They would paint by using very short brush strokes (or points) and when the completed painting was viewed from a distance, the eye blended the colors bringing out a plethora of colors beyond the simple few that the artist used.  Imagine that any one of us is an ant and we are viewing the picture from several different parts of the room.  The ant on the far side of the room might see a spot of orange, whereas the ants that are crawling across that section of painting might instead see either only red, or only yellow.  Now imagine that red is predestined acts and that acts done of our own free will are yellow. The ant that sees the orange is the one that sees things most clearly, though really, its still a bit fuzzy.  Orange indicates that both colors are present. The ant standing on the red dot has a skewed view, as does the one standing on the yellow dot.

The analogy is certainly not perfect.  It might be more accurate to imagine an artist mixing both red and yellow paint together to create orange.  What is created is now predestination and free-will combined so seamlessly that they have formed a new color, or a new status of predestination and freedom of choice.  In orange, one could say that red is fully there and yellow is fully there.  And yet neither can be seen because they have become a third color.  Predestination can be “true” and free-will can be “true” but neither one is fully accurate on its own because they are only describing components of a more full reality.