Deus vult! Or deo volente! - Lee Shelnutt
Deus vult! Or deo volente!
Deus vult! Deus vult! Deus vult!, the congregants shouted in response to the fiery sermon of Pope Urban II in 1095. Urban had fired the crowd up, proclaiming:
“A horrible tale has gone forth, an accursed race utterly alienated from God…has invaded the lands of the Christians and depopulated them by the sword, plundering, and fire…Tear that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves.”
And Deus vult!, meaning “God wills it!” became the battle cry of the Crusades.
And many of us recoil and with the hindsight of history say, “Oh really? How utterly medieval!” It is easy to do a bit a modern judging of the bravado and audacity of our forebearers. C. S. Lewis would have said it is a part of our tendency to engage in a bit of “chronological snobbery.”
Yes, that may be. But as believers maybe we recoil not just as moderns but as believers, rightly thinking:
I know God wills that I should love Him and my neighbor. I know that He wills that I should love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me and that yes, He was speaking of personal relationships and not necessarily about something that might be construed as just war. But the point is, I know God wills these things because He has specifically said so in His Holy Word. And the Crusaders could cry Deus vult!, to all of that but how could they be so certain that God had willed that Jerusalem be torn from Muslim conquerors and given unto them.
If crusading was to be undertaken, wouldn’t the Latin phrase Deo volente, God willing, have been more appropriate? Certainly.
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
James 4:13-17
Yes, that’s right. Deo volente. D.V. Lord willing. Maybe you are like me and you try to bear what James says in mind, adding “D.V.” in your writing where appropriate, or “Lord willing,” after you discuss some future plans with others. It’s a good habit to get into but like all good habits it can become something we say, while all the while planning, strategizing, making contingency plans, doing our due diligence, as if we are actually controlling the future. The phrase, the letters, can become devoid of any real meaning. Sounding pious yet not matching the actual foolishness and vanity of our own hearts. Despite our best protests, might we all be under the illusion that we can and do control what tomorrow will bring? Arrogantly?
Then 2020 comes along and it hits us modern, Western, Christians right in the face. As we ARPs are aware, we are now on our 3rd scheduled and hoped for time to meet for General Synod. How many of your own plans were changed this year? Something out of our control has repeatedly foiled our plans. Frankly, we are not used to such. We give lip service to Deo Volente, while if you are like me, we actually think, “but I have willed it.”
Yet, James tells us that all our hoped for “this and thats” are ultimately beyond our control. For all the planning and strategizing we might do, it is still and forever will be, Deo volente. Yes, as Christ would have us, we count the cost of discipleship and that includes doing our due diligence. And yes, the wisdom of Proverbs warns us of the foolishness of not planning. The foolish, illusion of control, that James speaks of arrogantly ignores God.
The heart of man plans his way,
but the Lord establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16:9
If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.
James 4:15b
May one of the divine gifts we all receive and cherish in 2020 be the destruction of any arrogant illusion that we will dictate and control our futures even by our most noble efforts. In its place, may there be an ever-deepening awareness that there are myriads of factors outside of our control that play into our “this and thats” and that ultimately our good and gracious God is sovereignly orchestrating those factors for the good of His people and for His glory. May we truly become Deo volente people.
To my fellow ARP ministers and elders, I will see you at Synod, Deo volente.
1 See Lang, J. Stephen, “1095 Pope Urban II Launches the First Crusade,” Christian History, Issue 28 (1990).
2 See C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1966) ch. 13, pp. 207-8 and Lindsey, Art, “C.S. Lewis on Chronological Snobbery,” Knowing and Doing, C.S. Lewis Institute (2003)