A well known author who holds to Open Theism and who took an essentially Anabaptist view toward Christian ethics once made the argument that “All political involvement is evil.” He had a short list of reasons for this, most of which are a subject for another day. However, one of the reasons struck me as odd, until I related it more to his Open Theism. The reason was found in Matthew 4. There we will recall that the devil had tempted Jesus in the wilderness. It was the third of the temptations that is relevant to us:

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me’” (Mat. 4:8-9).

So the thinking went like this: How could the devil offer all of this to Jesus if it did not belong to him in the first place? Or, on the other hand, if we want to assume that the devil is lying anyway, would this not have been a good time for Jesus to correct him on this very point? 

That might seem like a reasonable question at first glance. However, when we compare the common elements in the three temptations, it is fair to say that the devil’s claims on temporal kingdoms are far removed from the foreground of the context. It was not even an afterthought. The issue was Christ’s own mission — whether or not its glory would be traded in for any lesser glory. Such things may not matter much to skeptics, but they ought to matter a great deal to us who follow the biblical storyline. 

And speaking of that storyline, what about the devil’s power? Suppose that we have this text resolved in Matthew 4. Are there not other places that call the devil “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4) or “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2) or “the ruler of this world” (Jn. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11)? Indeed such labels are freely used by Jesus and the Apostles. A pair of ordinary adjectives will help guide us here.

Ultimate and Proximate Rule

Perhaps we have heard the labels “ultimate” and “proximate” in other areas of Christian doctrine. It may have been in relation to causality, how God is sovereign and man is yet responsible for his actions. Or perhaps it was something more specific to the Christian life, such as whether a man belongs more to the church or to his own family. These can represent conundrums, or else needless controversies that are only resolved when one realizes that there is an ultimate answer and a proximate answer that are each dealing with different levels of the question and are in no real conflict at all. 

The other words often associated with these are primary and secondary. We usually use these words when we are talking about causality. However the same goes for when we are talking about two “realities” or “realms” such as the ownership of the kingdoms of this world. We can understand this when we compare Caesar to one of his provincial governors. Admittedly it is more difficult to conceive when the lesser ruler seems to be ruling over all that we see and when he is opposing the rule of his superior!

But so it is, that God is always using the worst of the devil’s rebel rule for the perfect ends of his righteous rule (cf. Gen. 50:20; Rom. 8:28). Unlike a merely earthly ruler, God has total causal power over his lesser agents. They are always His means, no matter how “more real” their immediate causality may be bearing down on us; as the Lord described Assyria, “the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!” (Isa. 10:5)

So it is in the question of whether Satan is the “ruler of the world,” or whether in fact it is God who is sovereign over all. When we gather a sufficient amount of data from the Scriptures we can comfortably say this:

God runs the world ultimately and finally, and Satan runs it proximately and temporarily, and with a sphere of power entirely conditioned by God. In other words, God is still fully sovereign. He has all power. The devil can do nothing in his rule that God does not permit in his decree.

We have a picture of this in the “lying spirits” of 1 Kings 22:20-23, the summons of God to Satan to instigate suffering in Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7, and in the “strong delusion” of 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12. We see this preeminently in Christ’s defeat of the devil by the work of the cross. Paul uses the language that Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Col. 2:15).

So about those labels assigned to the devil’s lesser rule, there is not only a limit in terms of God’s power but also in terms of God’s plan. In fact, the devil had a greater rule even within that secondary sense, in between the fall of Adam and the ascension of Christ. When Adam abdicated his responsibility in Eden, it was a kind of lesser throne from which the first man fell. He was to exercise dominion in every sense of that idea in this world. He was to represent God in this created realm. In Adam’s abdication, there was simultaneously the serpent’s usurpation. The devil was never a rightful heir. Nonetheless, the rightful king of Eden handed over all of his seed (the nations) over to the arch tyrant. 

Now this kind of rule was affected when the devil was cast down (Rev. 12:4) or thrown down like lightning (Lk. 10:18), but it was dealt a mortal wound at the cross and resurrection (Col. 2:14-15; Heb. 2:14) in his First Advent (1 Jn. 3:8), and now only awaits the triumphant consummating return of the rightful King on the Last Day (2 Thess. 1:5-10, Rev. 19:11-21). 

To the Open Theist, the future is “open” to God. In this model we have no assurance that Christ wins in the end. The advocates of this view deny such a consequence. But it is difficult to see why a view that makes the free will of creatures the “dead end” to omniscience, can also somehow leave God too many options when it comes to the most decisive actions by the most powerful creatures.

To the Anabaptist, this world is evil in such a way that God’s original design is lost. To be a Christian is to be separated from “this world” in a sense very similar to the Gnostic view. The Open Theist takes the divine Driver’s hands off of the wheel and the Anabaptist calls the directions in the GPS a lie through and through. We can see how there is no one left to call the shots but the devil on such a road trip.