A clarification on sovereignty

is in order. 3 responses to my recent post, God's sovereignty and glory, while accurate, did not quite focus on what I was trying to say.

It is not that I think God gives us some freedom and still retains his sovereignty, even though that is true.

Rather, I think that if God makes us free agents then it is impossible for him to make us love him. Love is a free expression. If determinism is true then we can act affectionately (or in a way that has that appearance) but we a little different from programmed robots. If we are free to love then we either do or we do not. If we choose to reject God then God cannot make us love him. It is not a question of sovereignty. It is a question of logic:

If freewill then not forced love.

The nature of love means it is our decision to make.

A couple of side notes. I am not saying freewill equates to being able to do or think anything. We cannot do many things. It may not occur to us to think of many things. We cannot process ideas that are beyond our comprehension. And God is able to act on our thoughts (give us ideas or prevent us thinking something); and on our actions, force or prevent a certain action. Freewill means the ability to make some decisions independent of God. We may make some of these decisions contradictory to God's preferences.

And even though God cannot make us love him he can prove his existence to us and he can act in such ways as to maximise the chances that we will desire him. He can pursue us to depths unimaginable.