Concurrence

How do we reconcile the sovereignty of God with agency of man?

What the bible teaches us is not that men are simply robots nor that God is powerless to direct their actions, rather we learn that both human responsibility and God’s foreordination work together in a manner often called concurrence.

Here the doctrine is spelled out in the case of what we might imagine to be the most sovereign of human wills, that of the king. His heart is compared to that of a river, which naturally flows because of gravity to the sea. The Lord though, is the one who directs the course of those waters. And it is fitting when we think of how each human will, itself only a tiny spring or trickle, which by itself could do very little is brought together with other human wills by God’s oversight to form a raging river which could turn the mighty wheel of God’s Providence.