Wow. You’ve given me much to think about here, Alastair. I have to admit that for almost as long as I’ve been a Calvinist there has been a real tension between the category of absolute sovereignty (which I had accepted as an a priori categor for God) and the story I see unfolding in my Bible. Your way of putting in in this post may lead to a ground for a sovereign God who is over everything yet not the efficient cause of everything without going the route of Open Theism. Lots to think about…and dangerous thoughts in the seminary circle where I live!

By Foolish Sage on 02.18.06 6:24 pm

AL,

Thanks for the transperancy with which you handle yourself and the issue in this post. As a ‘Calvinist’ who has begun really to think through some of the implications of the system, I find your insights and those to whom your thought is most a kin to be helpful on a number of fronts. Your insights into Gods sovereignty and that of scriptures testimony seem at points to contradict our systematic theologies, which is testimony to revision or greater clarification. Either way thank you.

By AH on 02.18.06 9:15 pm

To the extent that the cross of Christ is marginalized in our understanding of how divine sovereignty is secured, I believe that we have betrayed the Scriptures.

Al, while I appreciate your post in general and find it stimulates thought, I want to ask about your use of betrayal. I see no problem in suggesting that some folks may have misunderstood scripture’s teaching on sovereignty as it relates to Jesus’ death on the cross but doesn’t betrayal suggest an almost wilful neglect, a deliberate decision not to understand. Unless such folks were in your sights at that point, maybe ‘misunderstand’ would be better.

By Dick on 02.19.06 8:57 am

Dick,

Thank you for your comment. Yes, I think that you are right, ‘betrayal’ might not have been the best word to use. I did not intend to suggest that any willing or conscious betrayal had occurred. My concern for the centrality of the cross is one that has been largely informed by people who hold positions similar to the one I criticize in my post.

By Al on 02.19.06 9:07 am

Al,

Thanks for your gracious response. I’m actually preaching on Joseph’s words in Genesis 45:5-8 tonight and your post has given me additional grist for’t mill. Many thanks.

By Dick on 02.19.06 3:44 pm

You seem to be very much following the via Scotia propounded by Duns Scotus… I don’t think your formulations are without problems… You seem very much to be picking up on so-called “Calvinists” i.e. those who follow a “reformed” tradition who cannot cohesively argue or have read extensively in these areas. I must admit that sometimes I would like to argue against these people because I could make my arguments look just as tight. This isn’t a criticism… Just a note to your readers that whatever you say about “Calvinists” isn’t necessarily denigrating to a refomed theological tradition.

By Jon on 02.21.06 12:15 am

Jon,

Would you be able to elaborate on the sense that you believe me to be following Scotus?

Whilst my criticisms are levelled primarily against popular Calvinism, anyone who has read such as Calvin (e.g. III.xxiii.8) in any depth will know that they are very much in view here as well. Indeed, Calvin’s is a very good example of a position that I strongly reject.

I think that you will find that, as you study Reformed systematicians from all eras, that there is a general tendency to downplay the redemptive historical outworking of God’s sovereignty as God’s absolute determination of history is elevated to the central focus. Whilst Reformed theology is not without biblical warrant for many of its positions it is the disturbing lack of the balance that we witness in Scripture that is the real problem.

Just about every position that I attack in these posts has been advocated by some person or other within the mainstream of the Reformed tradition. I readily acknowledge that, in criticizing such positions, I have gained much from existing Reformed theologians who have already criticized them. Nevertheless, I have yet to encounter a Reformed theologian who really seems to do justice to these issues as a whole.

By Al on 02.21.06 10:04 am

Much of this series, so far, involves a rejection of some Reformed terminology in the interest of avoiding unbiblical and unwarranted inferences. Reformed teachers who retain such terms as “decretive will” would want to affirm with you that not everything in God’s decree is equally pleasing to him in his holy character, or has the same importance in his purpose.

The sovereignty “on the ground” is very much addressed by Reformed authors, but they usually speak of it as the “kingdom of God.” What Reformed teacher, preacher, or author “marginalizes” the cross of Christ in the establishment and advance of God’s kingdom?

Since you use the term “sovereignty” with qualifiers for both the historical advance of sovereignty and also the universal sovereignty, it is important not to equivocate between the two. If the cross establishes God’s universal sovereignty (and is not simply the free manifestation of his universal sovereignty) he would be dependent on what he has created (an understanding outside not only Reformed views, but also most of historic Christianity).

By john on 02.22.06 1:12 am

I’ve often thought along these lines (not that it adds much to what’s already been said):

[1] if we don’t know Jesus, we don’t know the Father; [2] who God is in himself is unveiled ultimately in the cross; [3] the cross shows us the meaning of Jesus’ statement that he who rules must be the servant of all; [4] Jesus’ point isn’t simply that the cross is the way to dominion, but that that dominion itself is cruciform; [5] thus, when we speak of the sovereignty of God, that must always be a cruciform sovereignty, one that is understood under the category of self-giving love; [6] sovereignty is thus also trinitarian in shape and content for the power and rule of God is the rule of love among the Persons of the Godhead, where Each humbles himself unto the Others; [7] even the will and power of God in creation and providence, therefore, is to be understood in terms of being caught up into this Trinitarian movement of love - God’s gifting of himself unto the creation and the gifting of creation with the capacity to receive him.

Or something like that.

On such a view, of course, evil has to be see as fundamentally privative in nature, rather than substantive. Thus evil cannot be seen as “willed” or “decreed” by God in the same sense as that which is good since evil is not a “thing” to be willed or decree.

The cross then (whatever else it may be) is the overcoming of the privation of evil, the gifting-back of creation to God in and through the Person of Christ, God himself gifting-back and returning what had been lost through sin and death.

The cross then isn’t the establishment of God’s sovereignty, per se, but the restoration of what otherwise would have been lost, returning creation to the eschatological goal for which it had been created. Since that goal is incorporation into the life of the Trinity, the cross certainly remains a free manifestation of that prior Trinitarian sovereignty. But the restoration through the cross also must always already have been included in God’s free manifestation of his life in the act of creation itself. In that sense, God’s universal sovereignty over creation presupposes and is established by the cross.

That doesn’t make God’s sovereignty dependent upon creation any more than the God’s sovereignty over the created world is dependent upon the existence of that world.

By garver on 02.23.06 4:27 pm

I agree with Joel’s comments completely. They clarify some points that may have been ambiguous or otherwise poorly stated in my post.

By Al on 02.23.06 5:40 pm

Joel and Al:

Recently, as you may know, John Piper has been through a battle with cancer. The day before his surgery to remove his prostate, he wrote a letter titled “Don’t Waste Your Cancer” in which he lists ten ways he is determined to glorify God through his cancer. One of these is as follows:

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

What do you think of this challenge, that for an infinitely wise and powerful being to permit something to be is equivalent to his willing it (or “designing it” as Piper puts it) to be?

By the Foolish Sage on 02.24.06 1:42 pm

I would recommend Udo Middleman’s “The Islamization of the Church” as another important perspective. I’m sometimes troubled by Piper’s valorization of the categories of “sovereignty” and “glory” in a way that seems to short-circuit the Trinity and the Cross.

By garver on 02.24.06 3:04 pm

[...] Here, here, here, and here. [...]

By Movement and Repose » Alastair’s C-razy Calvinism Posts on 02.25.06 3:46 am

Joel,

The Middleman essay was intriguing reading, and the perfect contrast to Piper’s stance, as I blogged here.

Nevertheless, I’m not sure that answers my original question: if bad things happen, they are at least permitted by God. If God permits something, isn’t that essentially the same as his willing it to be? And if God is always good, then isn’t his willing it to be for a good purpose, as Piper purports?

By the Foolish Sage on 02.25.06 4:30 am

I don’t see how “permitting” and “willing to be” are at all the same thing, particularly when that which is permitted is a privation of the good and thus not substantive. And there’s a difference between saying that something is good and saying that something is permitted for the sake of a good.

By garver on 02.27.06 9:36 pm

I also suspect there is a mistake in Piper’s thought about the nature of divine causation so that he slides into treating God’s proper creative power (causing things to be) as univocal with God’s causing certain states of affair to obtain.

By garver on 02.27.06 9:39 pm

Thanks, Joel. Very helpful.

By the Foolish Sage on 02.28.06 3:28 am

Helo Alastair
I have made some comments on all four posts on my own bog.

http://solly57.blogspot.com/2006/03/adversaria-on-calvinism.html

By Solly on 03.07.06 1:00 pm

Thanks for the plug!

By Al on 03.07.06 7:53 pm

Turning to some of the most explicitly Trinitarian texts in the Bible, isn’t the sovereignty of the Father rather distinguished from that of the Son, and depicted as operating precisely “from a great height”? I think of Psalm 2 — “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh”, while he calmly settles sovereignty on His son. Or Peter’s speech in Acts 4:27 “Herod and Pontius Pilate with the gentiles and the people of Israel gathered to do the things which Your hand and will had pre-determined to take place.” It seems, that is, that God the Father’s sovereignty really does operate from a great height, and that most of the struggle depicted, the holy war that Jim Jordan has written of so much, is really about the sovereignty of the Son, whether that be Adam, or Noah, or David, or Christ.

Or am I being insufficiently Christological in my understanding here?

By Matt on 03.07.06 8:16 pm

Matt,

Thanks for the comment. I agree that we need a Trinitarian account of sovereignty (that has been something that I have been thinking about). I also believe that we need to do justice to the testimony of the verses that you bring up. I believe that it is quite possible to do so without marginalizing the other verses that teach us about God’s sovereignty.

The other thing that I believe that we need to recognize about the verses that you reference is that they still can be read as referring to God’s acting within history and not just imposing His will upon it from outside. My point is that, although God’s sovereignty is never going to be thwarted by His enemies (the point in Psalm 2, I believe), the enemies of God are really working contrary to His will. What God does is use their weight against them. God deceives them and uses their efforts against His purpose as the very means by which His will is worked out (which is the point of Acts 4:27).

By Al on 03.07.06 8:24 pm

You must only be reading modern reformed folks.

Anything? What about the dozens of passages in the N.T. alone that encourage Christians by easing this tension?

I think you have a point here.

This is just plain silly.

Al, did you stop reading your Bible

Acts 2:23-24 “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 “whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.

Does Evil befall a city and I have not caused it?

By adam naranjo on 04.13.06 5:51 am

Sorry, my last post was a mess…this is what I meant:

“The sovereignty of God in popular Reformed theology is generally an unassailable sovereignty, acting from a great height. The image of a sweating and bloody Jesus, dying in agonizing pain on a cross as He engages in the great showdown with the Powers in the heat and dust of first century Israel is a largely a peripheral one within such an understanding of divine sovereignty.”

You must only be reading Piper reformed folks.

“As soon as sin ceases to be seen as problematic for divine sovereignty, we have a serious problem.”

“It is imperative that we feel a great tension between the way that things are and the way that God would have them to be. Anything that relaxes this tension can be dangerous.”

Anything? What about the dozens of passages in the N.T. alone that encourage Christians by easing this tension?

“The idea of divine sovereignty as an eschatological achievement or victory is troublingly muted.”

I think you have a point here.

“If our understanding of divine sovereignty is merely one of irresistible and comprehensive sovereignty operating from a great height, the drama of redemptive history will be lost sight of.”

This is just plain silly.

Al, did you stop reading your Bible

Acts 2:23-24 “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 “whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.

Does Evil befall a city and I have not caused it?

By adam naranjo on 04.13.06 5:54 am

[...] introduction to posts on election and related issues election, etc. - seeing the big picture election, etc. - some thoughts on election apart from sin election, etc. - the sovereignty of God [...]

By The Boars Head Tavern » Blog Archive » Anyone need some gray matter engagement today? on 08.24.06 4:02 pm

[...] Alistair, from a parallel post (Election, etc. - The Sovereignty of God)… It is imperative that we feel a great tension between the way that things are and the way that God would have them to be. Anything that relaxes this tension can be dangerous. [...]

By » Sovereign Will on 01.01.07 8:56 pm

Wow. You’ve given me much to think about here, Alastair. I have to admit that for almost as long as I’ve been a Calvinist there has been a real tension between the category of absolute sovereignty (which I had accepted as an a priori categor for God) and the story I see unfolding in my Bible. Your way of putting in in this post may lead to a ground for a sovereign God who is over everything yet not the efficient cause of everything without going the route of Open Theism. Lots to think about…and dangerous thoughts in the seminary circle where I live!

By Foolish Sage on 02.18.06 6:24 pm

AL,

Thanks for the transperancy with which you handle yourself and the issue in this post. As a ‘Calvinist’ who has begun really to think through some of the implications of the system, I find your insights and those to whom your thought is most a kin to be helpful on a number of fronts. Your insights into Gods sovereignty and that of scriptures testimony seem at points to contradict our systematic theologies, which is testimony to revision or greater clarification. Either way thank you.

By AH on 02.18.06 9:15 pm

To the extent that the cross of Christ is marginalized in our understanding of how divine sovereignty is secured, I believe that we have betrayed the Scriptures.

Al, while I appreciate your post in general and find it stimulates thought, I want to ask about your use of betrayal. I see no problem in suggesting that some folks may have misunderstood scripture’s teaching on sovereignty as it relates to Jesus’ death on the cross but doesn’t betrayal suggest an almost wilful neglect, a deliberate decision not to understand. Unless such folks were in your sights at that point, maybe ‘misunderstand’ would be better.

By Dick on 02.19.06 8:57 am

Dick,

Thank you for your comment. Yes, I think that you are right, ‘betrayal’ might not have been the best word to use. I did not intend to suggest that any willing or conscious betrayal had occurred. My concern for the centrality of the cross is one that has been largely informed by people who hold positions similar to the one I criticize in my post.

By Al on 02.19.06 9:07 am

Al,

Thanks for your gracious response. I’m actually preaching on Joseph’s words in Genesis 45:5-8 tonight and your post has given me additional grist for’t mill. Many thanks.

By Dick on 02.19.06 3:44 pm

You seem to be very much following the via Scotia propounded by Duns Scotus… I don’t think your formulations are without problems… You seem very much to be picking up on so-called “Calvinists” i.e. those who follow a “reformed” tradition who cannot cohesively argue or have read extensively in these areas. I must admit that sometimes I would like to argue against these people because I could make my arguments look just as tight. This isn’t a criticism… Just a note to your readers that whatever you say about “Calvinists” isn’t necessarily denigrating to a refomed theological tradition.

By Jon on 02.21.06 12:15 am

Jon,

Would you be able to elaborate on the sense that you believe me to be following Scotus?

Whilst my criticisms are levelled primarily against popular Calvinism, anyone who has read such as Calvin (e.g. III.xxiii.8) in any depth will know that they are very much in view here as well. Indeed, Calvin’s is a very good example of a position that I strongly reject.

I think that you will find that, as you study Reformed systematicians from all eras, that there is a general tendency to downplay the redemptive historical outworking of God’s sovereignty as God’s absolute determination of history is elevated to the central focus. Whilst Reformed theology is not without biblical warrant for many of its positions it is the disturbing lack of the balance that we witness in Scripture that is the real problem.

Just about every position that I attack in these posts has been advocated by some person or other within the mainstream of the Reformed tradition. I readily acknowledge that, in criticizing such positions, I have gained much from existing Reformed theologians who have already criticized them. Nevertheless, I have yet to encounter a Reformed theologian who really seems to do justice to these issues as a whole.

By Al on 02.21.06 10:04 am

Much of this series, so far, involves a rejection of some Reformed terminology in the interest of avoiding unbiblical and unwarranted inferences. Reformed teachers who retain such terms as “decretive will” would want to affirm with you that not everything in God’s decree is equally pleasing to him in his holy character, or has the same importance in his purpose.

The sovereignty “on the ground” is very much addressed by Reformed authors, but they usually speak of it as the “kingdom of God.” What Reformed teacher, preacher, or author “marginalizes” the cross of Christ in the establishment and advance of God’s kingdom?

Since you use the term “sovereignty” with qualifiers for both the historical advance of sovereignty and also the universal sovereignty, it is important not to equivocate between the two. If the cross establishes God’s universal sovereignty (and is not simply the free manifestation of his universal sovereignty) he would be dependent on what he has created (an understanding outside not only Reformed views, but also most of historic Christianity).

By john on 02.22.06 1:12 am

I’ve often thought along these lines (not that it adds much to what’s already been said):

[1] if we don’t know Jesus, we don’t know the Father; [2] who God is in himself is unveiled ultimately in the cross; [3] the cross shows us the meaning of Jesus’ statement that he who rules must be the servant of all; [4] Jesus’ point isn’t simply that the cross is the way to dominion, but that that dominion itself is cruciform; [5] thus, when we speak of the sovereignty of God, that must always be a cruciform sovereignty, one that is understood under the category of self-giving love; [6] sovereignty is thus also trinitarian in shape and content for the power and rule of God is the rule of love among the Persons of the Godhead, where Each humbles himself unto the Others; [7] even the will and power of God in creation and providence, therefore, is to be understood in terms of being caught up into this Trinitarian movement of love - God’s gifting of himself unto the creation and the gifting of creation with the capacity to receive him.

Or something like that.

On such a view, of course, evil has to be see as fundamentally privative in nature, rather than substantive. Thus evil cannot be seen as “willed” or “decreed” by God in the same sense as that which is good since evil is not a “thing” to be willed or decree.

The cross then (whatever else it may be) is the overcoming of the privation of evil, the gifting-back of creation to God in and through the Person of Christ, God himself gifting-back and returning what had been lost through sin and death.

The cross then isn’t the establishment of God’s sovereignty, per se, but the restoration of what otherwise would have been lost, returning creation to the eschatological goal for which it had been created. Since that goal is incorporation into the life of the Trinity, the cross certainly remains a free manifestation of that prior Trinitarian sovereignty. But the restoration through the cross also must always already have been included in God’s free manifestation of his life in the act of creation itself. In that sense, God’s universal sovereignty over creation presupposes and is established by the cross.

That doesn’t make God’s sovereignty dependent upon creation any more than the God’s sovereignty over the created world is dependent upon the existence of that world.

By garver on 02.23.06 4:27 pm

I agree with Joel’s comments completely. They clarify some points that may have been ambiguous or otherwise poorly stated in my post.

By Al on 02.23.06 5:40 pm

Joel and Al:

Recently, as you may know, John Piper has been through a battle with cancer. The day before his surgery to remove his prostate, he wrote a letter titled “Don’t Waste Your Cancer” in which he lists ten ways he is determined to glorify God through his cancer. One of these is as follows:

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

What do you think of this challenge, that for an infinitely wise and powerful being to permit something to be is equivalent to his willing it (or “designing it” as Piper puts it) to be?

By the Foolish Sage on 02.24.06 1:42 pm

I would recommend Udo Middleman’s “The Islamization of the Church” as another important perspective. I’m sometimes troubled by Piper’s valorization of the categories of “sovereignty” and “glory” in a way that seems to short-circuit the Trinity and the Cross.

By garver on 02.24.06 3:04 pm

[...] Here, here, here, and here. [...]

By Movement and Repose » Alastair’s C-razy Calvinism Posts on 02.25.06 3:46 am

Joel,

The Middleman essay was intriguing reading, and the perfect contrast to Piper’s stance, as I blogged here.

Nevertheless, I’m not sure that answers my original question: if bad things happen, they are at least permitted by God. If God permits something, isn’t that essentially the same as his willing it to be? And if God is always good, then isn’t his willing it to be for a good purpose, as Piper purports?

By the Foolish Sage on 02.25.06 4:30 am

I don’t see how “permitting” and “willing to be” are at all the same thing, particularly when that which is permitted is a privation of the good and thus not substantive. And there’s a difference between saying that something is good and saying that something is permitted for the sake of a good.

By garver on 02.27.06 9:36 pm

I also suspect there is a mistake in Piper’s thought about the nature of divine causation so that he slides into treating God’s proper creative power (causing things to be) as univocal with God’s causing certain states of affair to obtain.

By garver on 02.27.06 9:39 pm

Thanks, Joel. Very helpful.

By the Foolish Sage on 02.28.06 3:28 am

Helo Alastair
I have made some comments on all four posts on my own bog.

http://solly57.blogspot.com/2006/03/adversaria-on-calvinism.html

By Solly on 03.07.06 1:00 pm

Thanks for the plug!

By Al on 03.07.06 7:53 pm

Turning to some of the most explicitly Trinitarian texts in the Bible, isn’t the sovereignty of the Father rather distinguished from that of the Son, and depicted as operating precisely “from a great height”? I think of Psalm 2 — “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh”, while he calmly settles sovereignty on His son. Or Peter’s speech in Acts 4:27 “Herod and Pontius Pilate with the gentiles and the people of Israel gathered to do the things which Your hand and will had pre-determined to take place.” It seems, that is, that God the Father’s sovereignty really does operate from a great height, and that most of the struggle depicted, the holy war that Jim Jordan has written of so much, is really about the sovereignty of the Son, whether that be Adam, or Noah, or David, or Christ.

Or am I being insufficiently Christological in my understanding here?

By Matt on 03.07.06 8:16 pm

Matt,

Thanks for the comment. I agree that we need a Trinitarian account of sovereignty (that has been something that I have been thinking about). I also believe that we need to do justice to the testimony of the verses that you bring up. I believe that it is quite possible to do so without marginalizing the other verses that teach us about God’s sovereignty.

The other thing that I believe that we need to recognize about the verses that you reference is that they still can be read as referring to God’s acting within history and not just imposing His will upon it from outside. My point is that, although God’s sovereignty is never going to be thwarted by His enemies (the point in Psalm 2, I believe), the enemies of God are really working contrary to His will. What God does is use their weight against them. God deceives them and uses their efforts against His purpose as the very means by which His will is worked out (which is the point of Acts 4:27).

By Al on 03.07.06 8:24 pm

You must only be reading modern reformed folks.

Anything? What about the dozens of passages in the N.T. alone that encourage Christians by easing this tension?

I think you have a point here.

This is just plain silly.

Al, did you stop reading your Bible

Acts 2:23-24 “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 “whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.

Does Evil befall a city and I have not caused it?

By adam naranjo on 04.13.06 5:51 am

Sorry, my last post was a mess…this is what I meant:

“The sovereignty of God in popular Reformed theology is generally an unassailable sovereignty, acting from a great height. The image of a sweating and bloody Jesus, dying in agonizing pain on a cross as He engages in the great showdown with the Powers in the heat and dust of first century Israel is a largely a peripheral one within such an understanding of divine sovereignty.”

You must only be reading Piper reformed folks.

“As soon as sin ceases to be seen as problematic for divine sovereignty, we have a serious problem.”

“It is imperative that we feel a great tension between the way that things are and the way that God would have them to be. Anything that relaxes this tension can be dangerous.”

Anything? What about the dozens of passages in the N.T. alone that encourage Christians by easing this tension?

“The idea of divine sovereignty as an eschatological achievement or victory is troublingly muted.”

I think you have a point here.

“If our understanding of divine sovereignty is merely one of irresistible and comprehensive sovereignty operating from a great height, the drama of redemptive history will be lost sight of.”

This is just plain silly.

Al, did you stop reading your Bible

Acts 2:23-24 “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 “whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.

Does Evil befall a city and I have not caused it?

By adam naranjo on 04.13.06 5:54 am

[...] introduction to posts on election and related issues election, etc. - seeing the big picture election, etc. - some thoughts on election apart from sin election, etc. - the sovereignty of God [...]

By The Boars Head Tavern » Blog Archive » Anyone need some gray matter engagement today? on 08.24.06 4:02 pm

[...] Alistair, from a parallel post (Election, etc. - The Sovereignty of God)… It is imperative that we feel a great tension between the way that things are and the way that God would have them to be. Anything that relaxes this tension can be dangerous. [...]

By » Sovereign Will on 01.01.07 8:56 pm