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[Rock Steady]

God hardening hearts: examples of passive actions that produce results?

This isn’t so much a question as it is an exercise. We see how the Lord “hardens hearts” in the OT, some believe it was passively and some believe it was actively. I personally believe it was passively. Anyways, I had recently had an example of how humans can say or do something passively that produces active results and it was such a good picture of how I imagine God “hardening hearts” without causing any contradiction to His character. Of course, I’ve forgotten. I came up with a new one today and while it’s close, it wasn’t as good as the one I had thought of before.

Here it is:
I am a farmer and I grew this apple tree. Did I actually do the growing or did I place the seed or plant in the environment where I knew it would naturally blossom and grow (soil/earth)? Did I simply plant and then allow it to grow and when it decided to grow, let it continue growing until it finally bloomed, knowing all along that it would bloom like I wanted to accomplish without me coercing it to do so in any way outside of their will?

Do you guys have any other examples that come to mind?

[jimwalton]

It's a great subject of conversation. Maybe an explanation will help you frame some of your thoughts.

Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God says anything about it, showing that when God "hardened Pharaoh's heart," he wasn't doing anything actively (as you have implied), but merely let Pharaoh pursue the course Pharaoh had already decided to pursue.

Pharaoh reveals a hard heart from the starting line towards the people of Israel (Ex. 1.11-22). Pharaoh also shows a hard heart towards God in Ex. 5.2. Exodus 7.13 says Pharaoh's heart became hard and he would not listen to them. Exodus 7.14 says Pharaoh's heart was unyielding. Exodus 7.22 says Pharaoh's heart became hard. Exodus 8.15 says Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Pharaoh is said to have hardened his own heart in 8.32. And THEN we read that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. God hasn't done anything actively like interfered with his free will, but rather has left Pharaoh to harden his own heart. By the time in 9.12 it says for the first time "The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart," Pharaoh was resolved already to pursue the course he had freely chosen. God gave him over to it (as in Romans 1.18-32: when people exercise their free will in rebellion against God, he doesn't stop them but lets them do it. He doesn't interfere with their free will.) God is not forcing Pharaoh to be rebellious, Pharaoh has already decided that on his own. God isn't actively forcing Pharaoh to do anything against his will, but rather just affirming what Pharaoh has decided on his own. God "hardened" hearts that are already hard. They made their choices, God brought elements into their lives that should have turned them around but only cemented them further in their positions. It is only in that sense that God hardened hearts.

To me an example is like a parent whose teenager is making a terrible decision, and the parent fights with them for a while and threatens them, knowing that the decision is going to train wreck the situation and be hurtful of them. But eventually the parent has to back off, because of the resistance, and say, "Go ahead, but don't say I didn't warn you." The teen, with their even more hardened heart (hardened more by the parents' attempts to change them), goes and does it, the situation train wrecks, and people are hurt.

[Rock Steady]

I had never looked at the verses in procession like that before! Thank you for bringing it up! And thank you for your example.

[Swiss]

What great insights!

The deterministic view is that Pharaoh’s decision to harden his own heart was a product of the nature which God gave him at his creation. In that view, God actively hardened his heart, and interfered with his free-will. Determinists view this as a wholesale invalidation of free-will. Compatibilists do not.

The compatibilist view recognizes that creatures, by definition, must have a nature given by the Creator, and thus absolute freedom is impossible for any creature. Absolute freedom belongs to God, alone. Compatibilists recognize God’s active conduct which contributes to our decisions, but still hold that a creature may be authentically, if not absolutely, free.

In other words, freedom is not a binary quality. It is a spectrum. I believe that redeemed, transformed man is created in such a way to attain the maximum possible level of creaturely freedom.

It might seem like a technicality. But I love how God doesn’t hide behind it. He owns it. “Yeah, I had an active role in the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, so what? Can you show that I am thus unrighteous? No? Then trust in me.”

[jimwalton]

There are other parts of the "hardening" that people don't realize, though these don't seem to have anything to do with your question.

1. The Egyptians believed, as we do, that judgment took place in the afterlife. The Book of the Dead speaks of a scene in which the heart of the deceased is weighed on a scale to determine if it is heavier than a feather, representing the Egyptians' conception of right and wrong. If it is not (meaning, if the heart is light), the deceased is granted great favor. If it is heavy, they will be consumed. The biblical expressions about a "hard" or "strong" heart are actually about a heavy heart. Each time his heart is hard, it grows heavier, meaning he, the Pharaoh, becomes more guilty. At time, YHWH is said to make Pharaoh’s heart hard, which means not that God is making Pharaoh obstinate, but that YHWH is judging the Pharaoh as guilty, even though ancient Egyptians believed their king could do no wrong.

2. "Heavy-hearted" is also an Egyptian expression meaning that he has great self-control and is able to refrain from speaking rashly. Our expression for it would be "level-headed;" theirs was "hard hearted" (much like our "stout-hearted"). It's as if God is giving him over to his disposition and choices (Cf. Rom. 1.18-32). YHWH is giving the king exactly what he wants, and that which is prized in Egyptian culture. In this case, the Pharaoh leads his people into disaster.

There are evidences for either of these interpretations also. So we have any number of directions to go with "God hardened Pharaoh's heart," but the one that is definitely wrong is the way most people read it—that God is forcing Pharaoh to do things the king doesn't want to do, and then God blames Pharaoh for what God made him do in the first place!

[Swiss]

I really appreciate your insights and your approach here. I generally like to keep all possibilities on the table, only adopting a belief when a belief is actually required. It is always great to be able to remove a seemingly valid possibility from the picture. And I think in your last sentence you have isolated the specific possibility which can be eliminated. Fantastic!