Chapter 11

A God Who Cannot

Dake keeps the word almighty and draws a boundary around it

Jeremiah prayed these words while he was locked in the court of the prison. The Babylonian army was camped around Jerusalem, and God had just told him to buy a field the enemy was about to take.

Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You. Jeremiah 32:17 (NKJV)¹

Finis Dake wrote the notes that fill the margins of the same Bible. In God’s Plan for Man, the fifty-two-lesson course he wrote to teach its doctrines, he put a limit on the God of Jeremiah’s prayer. Under the heading “God is Omnipotent,” he wrote that “there are certain spheres in which He does not and cannot operate.”² In his lesson on grace he gave the reason.

Thus God’s grace or love is naturally limited by the free moral agency of man. Finis Jennings Dake, God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Nineteen, p. 342³

On the page after his heading he had already said that God “naturally has had to limit Himself in His dealings with free moral agents.”⁴ The two sentences have different subjects. On page 342 it is God’s grace or love that is naturally limited. On page 64 it is God Himself, in His dealings with people. Put the sentences together, and what God can do in a human life depends on the human. Jeremiah’s prayer is in the Bible Dake annotated, and Dake’s sentences are in the course he wrote to teach it. They cannot both be right.

Dake’s teaching on this point is false. Many faithful Christians believe that God’s grace can be resisted and that God does not force anyone to love Him. That belief goes back to Jacob Arminius and John Wesley, it is held across the Wesleyan and Pentecostal churches, and it is not in dispute here.⁵ Arminius and Wesley taught that God freely chooses not to compel. Dake says something else. His words “cannot” and “naturally” put the limit in the nature of things, outside God’s choice. A God who freely holds back is still almighty. A God who is held back by His creatures has stopped being almighty, whatever He is called.

Why the limit matters

Picture a mother who has prayed for eleven years for a son who walked away from the Lord. If God is almighty, she is asking Someone who is fully able to reach her son. When, how, and by what means belong to His wisdom. The only ceiling on her prayer is God’s will, and God’s will is good.

On Dake’s terms her situation looks different. Her son’s free will is a real cap on what God can do, built into the way things are. She is no longer asking an able Father for help. She is hoping that a third party will cooperate, and God is waiting on the same thing she is.

The limit also moves the blame. Dake ties God’s help to conditions people must meet, and Chapter 18 shows how far he takes that idea in prayer. If God was willing but limited, and the answer did not come, then the missing piece has to be the person who prayed. That is a cruel conclusion, and it grows straight out of the doctrine. The limit reaches the future too. Every promise in Scripture, from the gospel going to the nations to the new heavens and new earth, runs through millions of free choices. If those choices cap what God can do, none of the promises is certain. Dake announced every one of them with full confidence, and that tension comes up again below.

Omnipotence inside a sphere

Lesson Four of God’s Plan for Man is Dake’s lesson on God, and it moves through God’s attributes one at a time.⁶ Early in the lesson he lists what the Bible says God is, and the list is ordinary. God is “infinite, eternal, immutable, self-existent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, invisible, perfect, impartial, immortal.”⁷ Any Sunday school teacher could sign it. When he reaches the heading “God is Omnipotent” on page 63, he explains what he means by that word.

Omnipotence, he says, is “unlimited and universal power and authority within a certain sphere, or of a certain kind.” Unlimited power inside a sphere is limited power described from the inside. A ruler with total authority in one province and none in the next is a governor, whatever title he uses. The prefix omni means “all.” Dake keeps the word and draws a boundary around it.

He also doubles his verbs. There are spheres in which God “does not and cannot operate.” Dake uses that pairing again and again, and the second verb is the one that matters. A God who does not do something may have chosen not to. A God who cannot do it has met a wall.

His Study Bible says the same thing more briefly. In the newer typeset edition’s summary of God’s attributes, the entry “Omnipotent” says that God “can do all things consistent with His nature and plan, but He cannot lie or act contrary to Himself and the best good of all.” Then it sends the reader to a list of “30 Limitations of God.”⁹

Two kinds of “cannot” in one list

Under his definition, still on page 63, Dake lists the things God cannot do. He runs the list as one long sentence.

God cannot: lie (Heb. 6:17-19); deny Himself, or act contrary to His own eternal truth (2 Tim. 2:13); have respect of persons (Rom. 2:11; Col. 3:25; 2 Pet. 1:17); save a soul apart from faith and grace in Christ (Rom. 3:25; Jn. 3:16; Eph. 2:8-9); bless men contrary to faith in His Word (Heb. 11:6; Jas. 1:5-8; Jn. 15:7); curse men who meet His conditions (Mk. 1:15; 16:16; Lk. 13:1-5; 1 Jn. 1:9); change His eternal plan (Act 15:18; Eph. 2:7; 3:11); save rebels who persist in rebellion, refusing to meet His terms (Pr. 1:22-33; 29:1); be tempted to do evil or tempt man with evil (Jas. 1:13-15); forgive unconfessed sin (Lk. 13:1-5; 1 Jn. 1:9); and keep one saved who turns back to sin and lives in rebellion . . . God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 63¹⁰

The list starts on ground every Christian shares. God cannot lie, cannot deny Himself, and cannot be tempted with evil. Those limits come from God’s own perfect nature, and the church has always confessed them.¹¹

Then the list moves. By the end it names things that depend on what other people decide. God cannot “save a soul apart from faith,” cannot “bless men contrary to faith in His Word,” and cannot “save rebels who persist in rebellion.” Those are claims about what somebody else chooses. The list never marks where the first kind of “cannot” ends and the second begins. Both sit in the same sentence under the same heading, so a reader who trusts the page comes away thinking they are one kind, and the difference between them is the whole question.

Grace that waits on the will

Lesson Nineteen is Dake’s lesson on grace, and he reaches the sentence about grace being naturally limited in steps. On page 340 he writes this.

That is, God is limited to what He can and will do for any individual by grace by the will, faith, and obedience of each prospective recipient of grace. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Nineteen, p. 340¹²

The doubled verb is back: what God “can and will” do. The measure of both is the person receiving the grace. On the next page Dake makes his best case, and it should be heard in full.

It is not so much that man’s will is greater than any attribute of God, but that God cannot do, and He has promised not to do certain things for man until man accepts of His grace and freely chooses and submits to the work of God in him. God simply cannot and will not break His own laws and be a despot for any man. He will not force any free moral agent to conform to His will. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Nineteen, p. 341¹³

Dake is guarding against a real error here. He does not want a God who bulldozes people, and he says plainly that man’s will is not greater than God. “He has promised not to” is the language of a promise, and a promise is a choice. Up to that point a Wesleyan could have written the paragraph. But the sentence carries two claims at once, “God cannot do, and He has promised not to do,” and Dake never says which one governs. Then the paragraph ends, and the next one drops the promise.

It takes both the will of God and the will of man in full co-operation to demonstrate the fullness of God’s love and grace. One cannot work for the good of one master when he is serving the other. Thus God’s grace or love is naturally limited by the free moral agency of man. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Nineteen, pp. 341–342¹⁴

The language of choice is gone. Dake does not say that God has chosen to limit His grace, or that God will not override a will. He says grace is naturally limited, and that word tells you where the limit lives: in the way things are, with God inside it. The first sentence goes further. If it takes both wills “in full co-operation” to show the fullness of God’s love, then the fullness of God’s love cannot be shown by God alone.

Thirty things grace cannot do

Right after that sentence Dake sets a numbered heading of his own, “Thirty Things Grace Cannot Do,” and the list runs from page 342 to page 345.¹⁵ Most of the thirty items concern whether a saved person can lose his salvation. Item 15 says grace “cannot guarantee that every saved man is going to be eternally saved.” Item 26 says grace “cannot guarantee unconditional eternal security to anyone.” Item 30 says grace “cannot cause God to be lenient with rebellion and sin.”¹⁶

Those are standard Arminian claims, held by Methodists, Nazarenes, Free Will Baptists, and most Pentecostals. Christians have argued about them in good faith for four hundred years, and I do not fault Dake for holding them.

The list belongs in this chapter because of the sentence that introduces it, and because some items step past that old argument. Item 21 says grace “cannot operate in the life of the free moral agent without his consent.” Item 3 says grace “cannot do away with the free moral agency of saved men.”¹⁷ Read alone, those could still be in-house claims. But Dake sets all thirty directly under the sentence that says grace is naturally limited, as its working out. That placement turns a list of conditions into thirty proofs that the limit lies in the nature of things.

Laws that bind God

Dake teaches that God has laid down fixed laws and keeps them. Chapter 18 takes up how those laws work in prayer. The question here is simpler: do the laws bind God? In the first supplement of the course, Dake tells new students what to expect.

He has made plain in His Word what you must do and also what He promises to do if you will do your part; so He cannot break His own laws and He will not fail to meet his own obligations to you. God’s Plan for Man, Supplement One, section I, “God’s Promises,” p. 28¹⁸

In his lesson on faith he says it from the other side.

He longs to do what He has promised to do. He desires to supply all needs of men, but He will not break His own law by blessing those who do not have faith. He has laid down plain laws of faith whereby any and every man can get what he wants in life, and He is going to hold man to obedience to these laws before He grants the desires of man. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-Eight, p. 506¹⁹

God is the lawgiver in both passages. He “has made plain” what people must do, and He “has laid down” the laws of faith. That much is sound. But the verbs that gather around God in these lessons tell a different story. He “cannot” break His laws. He “must limit” His faithfulness, He “has to limit” His fatherhood, He “has been forced to be impartial,” and He “naturally has had to limit Himself.”²⁰ That is a great deal of compulsion for a God who has no one above Him.

Dake supplies the test that these sentences fail. Explaining what a miracle is, in Lesson Twenty-Six, he writes this.

When God sets aside His laws or suspends the laws of nature, this action is a miracle. God is not bound by natural laws of His own making, else this limitation would reduce Him to the plane of a creature and do away with His sovereignty. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-Six, p. 473²¹

That rule is right. A God bound by laws of His own making would be reduced “to the plane of a creature.” Dake applies the rule to the laws of nature and sets God free of them. He never applies it to the spiritual laws of grace and faith, and there he leaves God bound. The logic does not care which kind of law it is. If being bound by His own law would make God a creature in one case, it would in the other.

Where Dake sounds like an Arminian

Dake’s pages do not all say the same thing, and the other voice belongs on the record. In the box above he says that God “has limited Himself in His dealings with free moral agents,” and a God who limits Himself is the Arminian God. His Bible’s index entry on the word leans the same way.

God’s infinite power must be sensibly understood as operating within the bounds of His own revelation of Himself. According to Scripture God has limited Himself to working within certain limitations in some realms. Perhaps, it is not so much a question of what He could possibly do, but what He morally allows Himself to do. Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, Concordance and Cyclopedic Index, “Omnipotent”²²

“What He morally allows Himself to do” is the nearest Dake comes to the historic view. On page 64, at the end of the section where he defines omnipotence, he says it more plainly still.

We can still believe that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, impartial, longsuffering, etc., by nature, but that He limits Himself according to His plan of dealing with other beings who are capable of free action. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 64²³

Omnipotent by nature and limited by plan: that is the Arminian position in one sentence. On page 660 he adds that a person’s power of choice “does not make will power more sovereign than God’s own power or grace.”²⁴ On page 618 he denies that God lacks power over the lost, though only after saying something else first.

Is it solely because of God’s choice? No! It is solely because He cannot save all because all will not believe and conform to the gospel. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Thirty-Three, p. 618²⁵

Three sentences later, on the same page, he says that if anyone is finally lost it is not because “God did not have power to keep them contrary to His plan.” So God “cannot save all,” and yet God did not lack the power. Dake reaches for two accounts that do not fit together. In the section where he defines omnipotence, he even admits that he has not settled between them.

God limits Himself, according to His own revelation of Himself, along other lines, whether by nature or by choice is not always stated. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 63²⁶

Whether by nature or by choice is the whole question, and Dake leaves it open. If the limit is by choice, God is a King who stoops. If it is by nature, God is a King under a constitution He did not write. These Arminian-sounding sentences are real, and they are his. They do not change the verdict, because the system he built does not run on them. The thirty things grace cannot do, the laws God cannot break, and the cooperation God’s love has to wait for all run on the limit. When Dake summed up his teaching on grace, the word he chose was “naturally.”

Nothing too hard for the LORD

Jeremiah’s prayer did not go unanswered. Later in the same chapter God speaks to him and turns his praise into a question.

Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me? Jeremiah 32:27 (NKJV)

The question has no sphere attached to it. God asked Abraham the same thing when Sarah laughed at the promise of a son: “Is anything too hard for the LORD?”²⁷ Each time the setting is a promise people could not bring about themselves, a barren womb or a city under siege. Each time the size of the obstacle makes no difference. Job reached the same conclusion at the end of his long argument with God.

I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. Job 42:2 (NKJV)²⁸

Nothing, including our own wills, can withhold a purpose of God’s from Him. The Psalms say it as settled fact: “But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.”²⁹ Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, learned it the hard way. God humbled him until his reason left him, and when his reason returned, he confessed this.

He does according to His will in the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand Or say to Him, “What have You done?” Daniel 4:35 (NKJV)³⁰

No one can restrain His hand, and that includes a free moral agent. Jesus said the same thing at the very moment a free human will had turned away from Him. The rich young ruler went away sorrowful, the disciples asked who then could be saved, and Jesus answered, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”³¹ He was answering a question about salvation, moments after a man had freely refused Him. Gabriel told Mary, “For with God nothing will be impossible,” and Paul praised the God “who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.”³² Set those beside “unlimited and universal power and authority within a certain sphere.” Dake draws a line around God’s power, and Scripture says there is no line to draw.

What “almighty” has always meant

Dake sometimes writes as if his critics think God can do anything a person can put into a sentence. The church has never taught that. It has taught that God can do all that agrees with His own nature. He cannot lie, because He is truth, and He cannot deny Himself, because He is God. A God who could lie would be less than God. The impossibility of lying is a perfection.³³

Three terms help here. Omnipotent comes from the Latin words for “all” (omnis) and “powerful” (potens), and it means able to do all things that agree with who God is. The New Testament word behind “Almighty” is the Greek pantokratōr, the one who holds all things in His grip. Self-limitation means God choosing not to use power He fully has, the way a king may sign a treaty he could refuse. A limit God chooses and a limit God is stuck with are two different things.

So the historic faith has a place for “God cannot,” but everything in it comes from God’s own nature. The creeds call God “Almighty” and add no qualifier, and the Protestant catechisms say He is infinite in power as in being, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.³⁴ No one adds a sphere. Dake’s list of things God cannot do begins inside that tradition and walks out of it. Lying is a limit from inside God, and human unbelief is a limit from outside. When the two share one sentence, the reader learns to think that other people bind God the way His own truthfulness does.

Where Arminius and Dake part

Both historic sides in the old argument about grace confess an almighty God. The Reformed say that God’s grace is not finally resisted by those He effectually calls. The Arminians say that His grace can be resisted, because God has sovereignly chosen to make it so. He wants love, not mere compliance.³⁵ The two sides disagree about a great deal, but neither says God’s power is capped by His creatures.

Ask a thoughtful Wesleyan whether God could override a human will. He will say yes, God could, and He has chosen not to. That answer keeps the word “almighty” whole, because God’s restraint is His own decision. Dake’s adverb changes the claim. “Naturally limited” moves the limit out of God’s will and into the structure of reality. It sits beside “He naturally has had to limit Himself,” “He has been forced to be impartial,” and “unlimited and universal power and authority within a certain sphere.”

So there are three positions here. The Reformed say God’s call is effectual. The Arminians say God will not override the will. Dake’s pages reach for the second position and, when he sums up, land on a third: God cannot. The line runs between everyone who says God will not and the pages that say God cannot and mean it.

If God’s power waits on man

The limit also undercuts Dake’s own teaching about the future. He staked a great deal on fulfilled prophecy, and he wrote about what was coming with complete confidence: the Antichrist, the trumpet, the resurrection of the dead, the new earth. Every one of those runs through free human choices. Someone has to preach the gospel and someone has to believe it. Empires have to rise, and treaties have to be signed and broken. If free wills naturally cap what God can do, God cannot guarantee any of it, and the most He can do is hope it holds together. Chapter 10 found the same crack under Dake’s teaching on God’s knowledge. Certainty about the future needs a God who both knows and can, and Dake’s teaching denies Him both while assuming He has them.

When Dake is helping a struggling believer, the sphere disappears. On page 596 he writes, “When you realize fully that God is capable and that all things are possible with Him, then in a like manner you should settle it that all things are possible with you as you cooperate with God.”³⁶ All things are possible with Him, with no fence around them. That sentence shows where Dake’s heart was when he was trying to help someone, but his system cannot carry it.

What a God who can gives

A leper came to Jesus and worshiped Him. He had already settled the hardest question.

Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean. Matthew 8:2 (NKJV)

The leper did not ask whether Jesus could. He asked only whether He would. Jesus put out His hand, touched a man no one else would touch, and answered the question that had been asked: “I am willing; be cleansed.”³⁷ That is the prayer an almighty God makes possible. The only question you bring Him is whether He will. When the answer is no, you are not left to work out what went wrong with your own faith. You stand before a good Father who said no for reasons of His own. Paul asked three times to have his thorn removed and was told no, and what came with the answer was a promise: “My grace is sufficient for you.”³⁸

Isn’t this Calvinism in disguise?

Some readers will say that free will is real, and that any criticism of Dake’s limit is Calvinism slipped in through a side door. The argument here does not need irresistible grace and does not assume it. Wesley’s heirs and Calvin’s heirs both confess an almighty God whose power no creature caps, and that shared ground is where I stand. The target is a claim that neither camp owns: that God’s grace is naturally limited, and that there are spheres where God cannot operate.

But God binds Himself to His word

Others will point out that Scripture itself says God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and that it is impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18). Dake is right to put that on his list, and right to say that God keeps His covenants. But Titus 1:2 describes God’s nature. His truthfulness goes so deep that a lie is simply not available to Him, so that limit comes from inside. Page 342 describes a limit that comes from a creature’s response. The first is God being fully Himself, and the second is God held back by someone else. Calling both of them “God cannot” hides the difference under one verb.

God’s binding of Himself is also an act of His power. He chose to make the covenant, and He chose to swear the oath. A promise God cannot break is a promise God freely gave, and that is why it is good news.

Doesn’t the limit protect God’s goodness?

The hardest objection is a pastoral one. When the healing does not come, a believer may reason that a God who could have helped and did not is hard to trust. Dake’s limit, the reasoning goes, at least keeps God good. People usually raise it out of real pain, and it deserves a real answer.

Compare the comfort each account gives. In Scripture, unanswered prayer meets a wise refusal from a good Father, and sometimes a purpose we are not shown. Paul’s thorn stayed, and God’s answer was “My grace is sufficient,” not “I could not.” In Dake’s account, God was willing but limited, and the limits were the conditions. The failure has to land somewhere, and it lands on the person who is already hurting. That moves the blame without protecting God’s goodness at all. Chapter 18 shows what Dake’s laws of faith do to people who cannot meet them.

The Lord God omnipotent reigns

Dake defined omnipotence as unlimited power inside a sphere. He taught that God’s grace or love is naturally limited by the free moral agency of man. He taught that it takes both wills in full cooperation to show the fullness of God’s love, and that God cannot break His own laws. In other sentences he called God omnipotent by nature and limited only by plan, but he left the question open and built his system on the harder word. A God whose power waits on His creatures is smaller than the God of Jeremiah’s prayer, and the teaching that makes Him so is false. If the limit is inside God, it is a perfection. If it is outside God, it is a cage.

Dake himself, working through the nineteenth chapter of Revelation, copied out the song of the great multitude: “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”³⁹ The song puts no sphere around that power. The multitude sings because nothing is too hard for Him, no one can hold back His hand, and what He planned before the world began will be done. That is good news for the mother still praying for her son. God does not need her son’s permission before He can act. She is asking a Father who is able, and the only question she brings Him is whether He is willing. At the cross He answered that question for good.