I've read Miles Munroe's book Rediscovering The Kingdom and he made a good case for it there. God gave dominion to humans, and only humans to dominate the earth. God limited himself in his influence on earth by giving the job of dominion to Adam. Gods original plan was for him to rule over heaven, and or the spiritual realm while man was supposed to repressent God's Kingdom here on earth. He decreeded that legal action from his kingdom had to be presented by man and man alone.
I understand the view point, however, I think it is not really based on either much in the way of direct evidence, nor is it based on a good understanding of scripture as a whole.
I don't agree with the idea that God limited himself in any legal way at all, nor is there any basis for that idea in scripture, that I'm aware of. I believe this idea has come about as an attempt by people to explain why God does not do things the way they expect he would.
Speaking from my own experience, I was taught a vision of God's activity in which he does everything directly by his own direct intervention. If God is going to do something, it has to be miraculous and supernatural. To this view point, the idea that God works through intermediaries and uses the existing matter and natural laws etc, is often actually seen as a lack of faith.
This view struggles to explain why God doesn't take more direct action in the world. Why doesn't he intervene directly in the ways we expect he would?
I think that this view point is primarily a means of answering that question. God doesn't do what we expect him to do in the way we expect it, because he has limited himself from direct action in our world.
Aside from that issue, I don't think there is good basis in scripture for this view point.
As I began to widen my perspective... or more accurately as my perspective was widened for me... I began to see more and more in the bible, and in history that God is very active in our world, its just that he doesn't work in the ways many of us have been trained to expect. Far more often he works through intermediaries. He works through people, through circumstance, through angels (which many of us have probably encountered without ever knowing it). The fact that most often works indirectly, and through intermediaries and vessels is not because he can't act directly (especially since he does act directly on numerous occasions).
There are three reasons that I can think of, and that I believe why God acts this way most often.
#1 - Because he is a great sovereign and it is part of his glory that he acts through his servants. Many people would think of this as anthropomorphising God... making him out to be like a human king. I disagree, I think it is exactly the opposite.. the glory and pomp of human kings is an attempt to be like God.
#2 - God acts through vessels and intermediaries because he desires them to cooperate in his works. He literally wants to involve them, not for his benefit but for theirs. Like a Father might try and get his son to work with him simply because he wants his son to have part in his work and to benefit from it.
#3 - I believe that God often does not act more directly precisely because he does not want to reveal himself more directly. God desires to be sought after and loved. Frankly, he does not want to force people to acknowledge him because he wants them to seek him out. He wants them to desire him. Not to grudgingly admit.
In none of this does he need or get our permission. He does not, nor has he ever needed it. In fact, even given the legal doctrine you describe, there is no possible way to explain sensibly the idea that God could ever need permission to act. People who hold that view simply don't understand law or authority.
I'm not trying to make ad hominem attacks here, but the idea that people are basically putting forward in this view is that in giving authority to man, God removed it from himself. That is not how authority works, nor is it how law works.
Part of the problem here is that people today are steeped in democratic political philosophy, without ever really understanding the foundations of the ideas they hold.
We think of law as supreme. When a law is enacted, it becomes higher even than those who enacted it. We refer to this as the rule of law. In the United States we have an order of precedence of authority. Congress makes the laws, the president enforces the laws, the judges interpet the laws etc. At the top of all of this is the constitution which is supreme above congress, president, and courts. The constitution itself is essentially a contract. So where does the constitution get its authority?
If its a contract... who made it?
The answer is that the people made it. The constitution gets its authority from the people.
This in turn, was originally based on the idea of sovereignty. Most Americans today never use the word sovereignty and the idea of a true sovereignty has become pretty much foreign to them.
Most people identify the word sovereignty with Kings, and thus they relegate it to some outmoded, even backward social construct.
The association between sovereignty and kings was so strong that in fact kings were often referred to as "the sovereign". However, it was pretty much universally recognized, even by pagans, that King's were not sovereign in and of themselves. Rather, from the very beginning it was recognized that the sovereignty of kings was vested in them by God (or by the gods).
The revolution of political philosophy which eventually produced the United States was the idea that God did not directly vest Kings with sovereignty, but RATHER God vested PEOPLE with sovereignty, and it was the People who then vested the King with sovereignty.
If the sovereignty of the King came from the people, then the rulership of the king was essentially be agreement (or "social contract") with the people. If then the King violated that contract, the people had every right to remove sovereignty from the King and vest it either in some other King, or even in some othery type of government.
This is the foundation upon which America was based. The contrast with the French Revolution has been often used, because it is such a valid and striking contrast. American's did not deny sovereignty, but the French did. American's did not revolt against Sovereignty, but the French did. The results speak for themselves.
Now, the point of all of that is when we come down to today... very few people really understand any of that anymore. For most, the concept of authority exists only based on viewing the workings of the government.
As a result, they believe that authority is transitory, and when one person gives it to another, they give it up themselves etc. We tend to think that it is law itself that gives authority. For most people the ladder of authority stops at the constitution.. if it even gets that high.
So what they think is that the law gives people authority and the law takes authority away.
This is true only at the lowest level.
When we step back and begin to look at the higher levels, what we find is the universal truth that all authority, all law derives from sovereignty and sovereignty can not be given up, nor can it be taken away. When sovereignty confers authority, it loses nothing itself.
When the people of this country vested authority in the constitution, they did not lose their sovereignty. The Constitution itself is still subject to the sovereignty of the people.
Furthermore, it is true to say that we are bound because we entered into a contract... however, that is only true because we recognize that there is a higher law which from which our sovereignty comes and to which we are responsible.
That law in turn derives from a sovereignty which is above it. God is not under his own law. People think that because God is just, this means he is bound by his own law. That is not the case at all. God can change any law he wants any time he wants because he is an absolute sovereignty. There is NO authority above him and NOTHING that binds him.
What people get confused by here is the fact that they conflate God's nature, his being, with a moral law. In making this mistake, people imagine that there is a law which exists above God, to which God is responsible.
This idea is UTTERLY FALSE.
God is not bound by any law or any authority.
When the bible tells us things like, God does not lie, or God is love, or God is holy, God is righteous, God is just...
Those are not moral rules that he adheres to. Those are simply his nature. They are what he is.
Think of it like this... If I say my friend Dan is stubborn, it does not mean at all that there is a moral law, or a rule, or anything above Dan which compells him to be stubborn. It is simply a factor of who he is. It is part of his own character.
As a result... the idea that God even could limit himself by law is simply nonsensical. It CAN'T happen. It is as impossible as God sinning.
