Dr. Heiser,

I have read your preliminary manuscript all the way through. You have seriously overlooked something in your post, however your book did not reveal the conclusion you reached in the blog post. Consider your conclusion on pg. 55 in chapter 4,

“The fact that human beings and other heavenly beings have genuine free will means that the
potential is there for free acts of evil. In fact, God’s decision resulted in the entrance of evil
into his creation—as he knew it would, since the death of Christ was something God did
indeed ordain before the foundation of the world. But as we have seen, foreknowledge does
not necessitate predestination. How did Satan become evil? He chose to disobey out of his
own free will. Neither he nor other divine beings were created as evil beings. Did Satan have
a choice in tempting Adam and Eve? Yes, and he made his choice, and is fully accountable
for it. Was Satan compelled by God to do so because of predestination? No, the choice was
free, but God foreknew it and had already decreed that, when all is said and done, his Son
would be the key to undoing this evil. Were Adam and Eve forced by predestination to sin?
No, they made a choice, but again God had already made plans to atone for their choices.”

Yet you said in the blog post that, “Evil happens because people choose evil; because they exercise a communicable attribute (freedom) for their own selfish, rebellious ends. And yet this is preferable to the alternative of there being no imagers. And God, being able and willing to steer all things back toward his original, intended “heaven meets earth” life for humanity, considers suffering and death to have no meaning, knowing that all things will be made new.”

Suffering and death have no meaning! Then how do you explain the Jewish sacrificial system–did not death have meaning for the atoning of sins? Is not God’s law that sin cannot be pardoned without the punishment thereof is justly carried out, if not on the sinner, then on the propitiation? Your conclusion in chapter four of your manuscript is that God ordains the ends–and he ALLOWS his free-will agents to carry out the details. And this is true, how else could a holy God send out a lieing spirit and still be holy? The point is that God’s sovereignty is upheld by the fact that he ALLOWS evil, he still has control over it–his sovereign control is not discarded because imagers will not choose it. Nothing that happens is vain or meaningless! God ordains sin for His Glory. By the ordaining of the death of Christ, he ALLOWS the sin of the people who murdered Him. THIS DOES NOT MEAN that he had no control over the hateful, murderous choices of sinners. Rather he had all power over them, but God chose in his infinite freedom to withhold his power and allow the sins of free agents to carry out the very thing that he ordained–the death of his unique-one and only-only begotten Son. In brief, you conclusion in the blog posts is that evil is a necessary evil in order to allow free-will agents as imagers of God and therefore evil is meaningless because it will ultimately be abolished. But let me ask you, if evil is abolished, then does not that necessitate that free-will will be also? Otherwise would not heaven be subjected to the chance of evil because of the free-will of his imagers? This is my contention, your conclusion does not work…..My God has power over Tsunamis and Cyclones and earthquakes and tornadoes and death causing car crashes and cancer and murders and man’s free-will. I maintain that God has sovereignly chosen to withhold his glory from the world at many junctures in life FOR A PURPOSE AND MEANING according to his good will and pleasure. We cannot know the specifics of his will, Isaiah attests to this. But what we can know is that God allows evil for the overall reason that it in someway allows for the fulfillment of Romans 8:28. Think about it like this…..

The similarities between you and I is this: We both believe that evil is man’s fault, God cannot be blamed for evil, He ordains evil by allowing it as a function of not preventing it by wielding his sovereign power. We also both believe that evil exists because God holds something higher than absolute goodness throughout the whole earth–

Our differences are this: You say that God holds the free-will of man as imagers as a higher goodness than absolute benevolence.

However, I say that God holds himself, the Glory of His Son, as the highest goodness even above that of worldwide absolute goodness. Evil exists because it allows God to reveal his mercy and grace and goodness to his people and his justness and wrath to the wicked. Evil and suffering is full of meaning and that is the meaning of the utmost for his highest–even evil if it will bring him the maximum glory.

Now consider some Scripture:

Lamentations 3:37-38
37Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?
38Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?

Proverbs 16
1The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD.

Proverbs 16:9
9A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.

Proverbs 16:33
33The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Proverbs 19:21
21There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand.

Jeremiah 10:23
23O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

Grace be with you,
Chris

to Chris:

(1) I was speaking of human death, not animal death, and so the issue of the sacrificial system is moot. I never thought anyone would be thinking of animal death there (but someone was!). Human death is “meaningless” only in the sense that the resurrection overcomes it - death has no finality in meaning.
(2) God does not ordain sin. Only someone who has not been able to see that foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination would conclude this – and yet my chapter demonstrates (or rather the Keilah incident demonstrates) pretty clearly that foreknowledge of an event does not its predestination.
(3) You also seem to confuse natural calamity with human acts of evil. I am referring to the latter.

Now for the Scripture passages you offered:

Lamentations 3:37-38
37Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?
38Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?

Not sure what the point is – seems it’s pretty clear that what a person plans won’t come to pass if God is against it. Doesn’t contradict anything I said in ch. 4. You must be assuming that this passage teaches God ordains everything that happens, but that isn’t what it says. God can step in and do whatever he wants whenever he wants (I said as much in ch 4), but he doesn’t have to, and he doesn’t bother to predestinate every event. That becomes clear once the foreknowledge and predestination “chain” is broken, as the Keilah incident shows. He can do what he wants, and I expect we’d agree on that.

None of these other verses contradict what I’m saying in ch 4 UNLESS you assume the verses mean God ordains every event. If you don’t there is no problem, since God is free to influence any outcome of any decision as he wants, or block any as he wants. He is truly free. If you take your position (and I am well familiar with it) that God demands or decrees everything, even the most heinous evil, then you have a God who wants those things to happen (how could God ordain what he doesn’t want – think about it), or he needs those things to happen to make a larger plan work. The first makes God cruel, or perhaps inept (couldn’t he find a better way?); the latter makes him dependent on sin once sin is unleashed. I don’t see the biblical God as either. But the Gnostics certainly saw God as your position leaves him, which is why they invented the Demiurge (the evil creator of our world) to explain evil.

Bottom line – if foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination, you don’t need the position you espouse (and I’m not sure why you’d want it). You must explain to me and the rest of the “lurkers” here how the Keilah incident supports your position. I can take every verse you offer and fit it into the resulting theology of my fourth chapter. You, on the other hand, are challenged now to fit the Keilah passage into your scheme. Are you up to it? (It’s okay if you don’t want to pursue it).

Mike

Dr. Heiser,

Thanks for your response.

1. But I did not intend for the sacrificial argument to be limited to animals because it is surely a foreshadowing of Christ. Jesus Christ death is eternally meaningful and I think you would agree with that, but you say merely that death is ultimately meaningless because the resurrection overcomes it. BUt is it really? Afterall, death has meaning because it is the result of sin. The reasoning is like this, Death must be meaningful, otherwise why would God choose it as the wages of sin? Why would he use it as punishment for Ananias and Saphira if it was vain?

2. You say God does not ordain sin. But my question is: How can God NOT ordain sin (I define ordain as decreeing as a function of allowing something to happen even though it could be prevented, rather than decreeing with approval) when he has the all power to stop it and yet does not?

3. My point is: If you try to save God from ordaining (decreeing by allowance) the sin of people, how do you save him from not ordaining the calamities that recently took thousands of lives in China and Myanmar without sinking into Deism?

Lastly, I totally agree with you that, “divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination. God foreknew what Saul would do and what the people of Keilah would do given a set of circumstances. In other words, God foreknew a possibility—but this foreknowledge did not mandate that those events be predestinated to happen. The events never happened, so they could not have been predestinated, despite the
fact they had been foreknown by God.” (Chapter 4, copyright Michael Heiser)

But this is not a problem with my scheme. My scheme says that God can see things that could or would happen given different situations (as 1 Samuel 23 attests to). The fact that David believed that about God caused him to not stay at Keilah, but left it and hid in the wilderness. This is not a problem at all–actually this passage refutes Open Theism, but not Calvinism. Calvinism reasons like this–
Premise: What occurs in this world God knew about beforehand
Conclusion: Therefore, God knew of evil that would happen
Premise: God could prevent all and any evil in this world, since he is omnipotent.
Conclusion: Therefore, God has allowed evil to occur.
Premise: God must have a purpose for evil since he allowed it to occur.
Conclusion: Therefore he ordained it by allowing it to occur.

Now you ask: how can God have two wills? How can he ordain evil, but not desire for it to happen? Think about it like this–a King allows the death penalty to occur on a hideous murderer. The King could remove the penalty with a stroke of a pen, but he does not. He agonizes over the thought that he is the final say as to whether the penalty is carried out or not. The King has two wills, one for justice to be carried out for the upholding of his name, and the other is compassion and the will to remove the punishment-he wishes none to die, but his name cannot be desecrated. The Bible attests very clearly to two wills in God. If you are interested in some scripture revealing this I can send it to you.

Now about predestination: predestination is a function of God’s foreknowledge. Since God is infinitely omniscient, he must predestine everything that DOES occur.

If you were the all-powerful ruler of this universe and you could see all things that COULD and that WOULD happen, then how could you not predestinate what WOULD happen? Because if you did not want what WOULD happen to happen, then you could just alter something to make something that COULD happen to actually happen. LOL….I hope you followed that logic ok :)

Finally, I attest that man does have free-will (if you can call it that) and that God is Sovereign by predestinating what would happen (again this is a function of his very character–if you say otherwise, than God would not be free, but limited by our free-will, but the Bible is so clear that he is FREE and NOT limited by our free-will). Yes this is a Paradox, but I am willing to let it stand because the Bible does.

Grace be with you and Thanks for the discussion, I Love it,

Chris

Chris - some quick responses:

1. All human death will be conquered and overcome by the resurrection - the dead who are not saved are in fact raised — but their fate is the “second death” (Rev. 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8) — that’s the death that “has meaning” in terms of its finality. BTW, I’m not a Christian universalist, but the non-finality of death and the distinction of a second death in Scripture is one reason why some argue for “universal reconciliation.” The wages of sin refers to the second death (it is the death that is actually contrasted with “the gift of God which is eternal life.” The referent is not physical death.

2. Your definition of ordain is far closer to my view than standard Calvinism. God is not the cause or instigator - or “before-the-world-began-decree-er” (how awkward is THAT!).

3. In my view, God doesn’t of necessity ordain natural disasters, though he CAN if he wants to. Natural disasters are a natural result of the nature reeling under the effect of the fall — there are no buttons God needs to push to make these things happen.

4. You are giving Calvinism too much of a pass. It would be rare to find a Calvinist theologian who would argue that foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination (or who would say the reverse). I’d be grateful if you can find one who denies the former and affirms the latter (send me the citation).

5. In your logic chain:

Calvinism reasons like this–
Premise: What occurs in this world God knew about beforehand
Conclusion: Therefore, God knew of evil that would happen
Premise: God could prevent all and any evil in this world, since he is omnipotent.
Conclusion: Therefore, God has allowed evil to occur.
Premise: God must have a purpose for evil since he allowed it to occur.
Conclusion: Therefore he ordained it by allowing it to occur.

I agree through your first conclusion. I don’t agree with the next premise and its conclusion. You assume that God must have a purpose for evil, but that is reasoning backward from evil. Your view has God in some way being discontent with paradise as initially created, or perhaps coming up with an even better plan for creation if evil were factored in. I just don’t think either notion is viable (or needed). If everything was “good” (which I define as “the way God wanted it”), what purpose could God have for evil? To make it better than what he wanted it? Doesn’t make sense to me.

5. You wrote: “Now about predestination: predestination is a function of God’s foreknowledge. Since God is infinitely omniscient, he must predestine everything that DOES occur.”

No, he doesn’t. God’s exhaustive foreknowledge INCLUDES all possible events, and they (by your own agreement) are not predestinated - and so the fact that God has exhaustive foreknowledge is no proof for the necessity of predestination for things that happen. You need a different mechanism.

The key to yoru second last paragraph is re-imagine sovereignty/predestination as a term that applies to the END of all things, not the beginning.

How is my view not deism? Simply because I say God can and does intervene whenever he wants to. We have no right to presume he won’t break in at any time.

This is fun,
Mike

Dr. Heiser,

Excellent response.
1. Your point on death, I now understand. Although I think it is misguided to say the first death is meaninglessness! Makes you sound like Qoholeth. If you think about it, the first death does have meaning, in that there is no more chance for reconciliation with God after the first death.

I think you may misunderstand the Calvinists view of predestination or as they call it foreordination. Because classical Calvinism never labels God as the cause or instigator in the sense you seem to understand. Rather they understand the decrees before all creation to be the absolute PLAN by which this world is unfolding. This means that the evil that occurs is part of God’s plan BECAUSE he has allowed it. Because obviously, he has the power to stop it. You say that God does not have to push a button to make natural disasters happen and I AGREE, but I also realize that God needs to push a button to stop a natural disaster if he didn’t want it to happen. Therefore, God ordains it in the sense of ALLOWING it to happen and in this sense he can be said to ordain it. Your point is good–Creation is having reeling pains from the effects of the fall–but what you forget to consider is that God COULD at anytime STOP IT and TRANSFORM the effects of the Fall back into paradise, which he will surely do during the millenium. BUT he CHOOSES not to do this YET, and so he ordains for evil to go on for a time and a season–therefore, he ordains it. Now my writing is totally inadequate to hold up this doctrine of God’s absolute Sovereignty. I am totally inept to communicate this. So I will let Scripture talk, consider some verses:

Ordained and Predestined:

Acts 13:48
II Thessalonians 2:13
Romans 9:23
Ephesians 1:4-5
Romans 8:29-30

God’s absolute Sovereignty extends over:

Nature or the Physical world

Nahum 1:3
Exodus 9:26
Matthew 5:45
Genesis 41:32
Amos 4:7
Acts 14:17
Isaiah 40:12

over the animal creation

Matthew 10:29
Matthew 6:26
Daniel 6:22
Psalm 104:21
Genesis 31:9

Nations.

Daniel 4:17
Isaiah 40:15
I Chronicles 16:31
Psalm 47:7
Daniel 2:21
Psalm 33:10
Joshua 21:44
Amos 3:6
Habbakkuk 1:6

Individuals.

Proverbs 21:1
Psalm 37:23
Proverbs 16:9
James 4:15
Romans 11:36
I Corinthians 4:7
Psalm 34:7
Daniel 3:17
Psalm 118:6
Isaiah 64:8
Ezra 8:31
Nehemiah 4:15
Exodus 11:7
Acts 18:9

The free acts of man.

Philippians 2:13
Exodus 12:36
Ezra 7:6
Ezra 6:22
Ezekiel 36:27

The sinful acts of men.

Acts 4:27-28
John 19:11
II Samuel 16:10-11
Psalm 76:10
Exodus 14:17

To the chance happenings

Proverbs 16:33
Jonah 1:7
Acts 1:24-26
Job 36:32
I Kings 22:28,34
Job 5:6
Mark 14:30

God’s Plan is real and it displays his foreknowledge and foreordination:

The plan is eternal:

II Timothy 1:9
Psalm 33:11
Isaiah 37:26
Isaiah 46:9-10
II Thessalonians 2:13
Matthew 25:34
I Peter 1:20
Jeremiah 31:3
Acts 15:18
Psalm 139:16

God’s plan is unchangeable

James 1:17
Isaiah 14:24
Isaiah 46:10-11
Numbers 23:19
Malachi 3:6

The divine plan includes the future acts of men:

Daniel 2:28
John 6:64
Matthew 20:18-19

Some events are fixed as inevitably certain:

Luke 22:22
John 8:20
Matthew 24:36
Genesis 41:32
Habbakkuk 2:3
Luke 21:24
Jeremiah 15:2
Job 14:5
Jeremiah 27:7

Even the sinful acts of man are part of his plan:

Genesis 50:20
Isaiah 45:7
Amos 3:6
Acts 3:18
Matthew 21:42

and they are overruled for good:
Romans 8:28

Your view could never hold up to Romans 8:28–If Romans 8:28 is true, then God must have absolute control over all events and foreordain that which does happen, since somehow evil must be overruled for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

Indeed, your view is half Deism-Because in your view God does not cause the rain, but scripture says he does–he is recognized even to be behind the natural laws of this world. God does not just let things run like he designed it to work, he must also uphold everything together, so that they do work. In this way Calvinism provides the absolute immanence that scripture requires of Him, but your view is a God that sits back and is only immanent when he wants to be. My God is a God that is intimately involved in all events working all things together for good for those who are his people, US!

Grace be with you–you were by far the best professor I had at Liberty thus far, because through your interaction I learned–just as I am now,

Chris

some quick notes:

Like I said, I don’t disagree with any of these categories or verses. I’m not sure you are wrapping your mind around my position, and I don’t think I can say it any simpler:

God is sovereign = God steers (influences) everything to the ends he desires. He does this without ordaining everything on the front end. He could have ordained some things on the front end as part of his response to the fall, an event he foreknew, but did not ordain / cause. I’m thinking here of a decree to always have a remnant of loyal imagers (believers, whom I think he did predestinate). My view is basically that God predestinated what he wanted to but didn’t bother to predestinate everything, since he doesn’t need to, and since that corrupts imaging. This position — which reconciles predestination and genuine free will — is derivable from the scriptural disconnect between foreknowledge / omniscience and predestination. When you say “sinful acts are part of his plan” I can agree, though I don’t believe he ordains any sin - but he transforms it and manipulates it (in a good sense, for he is good) toward his own desired conclusion. All of this is an extension of God’s decision to give us freedom, which he had to do, once he decided he wanted us to image him — to be him as though he were physically present; to represent him as steward-kings of his creation. We can’t be like God without freedom, for he is free. It’s a communicable attribute “for real” - it’s not the appearance of freedom, like so much of calvinism argues (I used to argue it). God didn’t want or need evil and sin in his plan, but at its entrance, he is sovereign over it, moving people and non-human entities (angels) to influence people to make right choices, and influencing them through his word and Spirit. My view means that we truly are in a spiritual war, and the side of evil does have victories (many), but will not have the ultimate victory. Satan and those allied with him truly think they can win, since they have freedom to attack the people of God and the program of God. They think they can still pull it out, having the hubris to refuse to believe God will have his way, ultimately. Having every event ordained from the beginning makes the spiritual war Paul describes a bit pointless (why do THEY bother and why do we bother worrying about it if everything is decided?).

God does not cause every rain fall in an immediate sense. He does so in an ultimate sense because he created the processes to do so. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but using the Colossians reference as you do (which is common) is simplistic. In fact, I think it makes him an inept creator. God doesn’t, eg, cause my cat to pee. My cat pees because its body works as it should, as designed by God. Most people think of big events when they talk about God holding everything together, but iwhen you get down to the mundane, it becomes absurd. And then there are things like genetic defects — couldn’t God hold that one together? An organism is defective because of the distance from Eden - the effect of the fall. If we as creationists believe in entropy (and I don’t know any that don’t), that all things are headed toward decline, is God’s ability to hold everything together waning? Is he getting tired or maybe less interested? No - it’s heading that way because the system is breaking down. It functions as it should, but it the system weakens and can break down more easily, or for more reasons, as time moves on. None of this makes any sense with the typical reading of Colossians. If you want to read scripture that literally, you of course can, but you’ll always be inconsistent, because you’ll stop at verses that are uncomfortable, like the skies really having floodgates, the earth really having pillars underneath it, etc. These aren’t scientifically precise statements, and weren’t intended as such. We just like to make things “poetic” when we run into something we don’t want to be literal when it sounds weird - and then accuse the guy next door for being less of a literalist. The truth is that everyone makes their own literal vs. non-literal list and pretends they’re biblical.

One last thing - you make your view sound as thought it results in a more intimate God. This is a pointless approach since it involves a value judgment on OUR part toward God. We have no right to tell God how intimate he ought to be toward us or anything else. I could just as easily say your view makes God an inept creator (”couldn’t you just make something that worked by itself pretty well? Goodness, I can do that much”) or somewhat sadistic (”Why are you still holding together all those viruses that just keep morphing so as to avoid medical treatment? Why not just stop keeping them around”). But if you believe God ordains evil, I guess this is no problem. I think it denigrates God’s goodness to have him ordaining evil and maintaining destruction.

Dr. Heiser,

You are a very clear and good writer. I see now that your position is that God is indeed Sovereign and in control of all things that he wants to be in control of. He ordains what he wants to ordain. He ordains the ends, but not necessarily the means, unless he wants to or has to in order for the ends to come about. But tell me, how does your view square with what Jesus says?

Matt. 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

The falling of a sparrow is mundane, is it not? Could not we insert into this verse that “not one cat will pee apart from your Father”? You say that your view reconciles the tension between man’s free-will and God’s Sovereignty, but does it really? It is only logical that for God to ordain the ends, he must ordain the means that brings them about. I think your view is that God ordains only those things that are necessary to ordain in order for the ultimate ends to occur. But is that true? How does a dead sparrow affect the ultimate ends? Additionally, the very nature of ordaining is certainty. If God ordains something, then it is certain to happen. If God does not ordain something, then it is uncertain as to whether it will happen or not. Therefore, could God be all knowing if there were uncertainties in his creation? You say you maintain the absolute foreknowledge of God and yet decline his absolute foreordination of all things. The easiest way to understand how God could ordain the mundane is to think of him viewing the infinity amount of plans by which he could choose to go about creating and ending this world. Like a movie that we watch he views all of the details, all of the ends and all of the means and all of the mundane (even the time, place, and saturation potential of the pee of your cat) and he chooses ONE plan, and therefore, ordains that this will be the plan and the means and the ends and the mundane which will occur when he creates his creatures; he knows exactly where he will allow evil by withholding his glory and immanently move his creation toward his pleasures. As to how this would desecrate our imaging–I do not understand how you can propose this? Scripture makes it clear that God’s absolute Sovereignty does not denigrate the free-will of man, although it does not explain how this is true in detail, it remains a scriptural mystery.

Again, ordain does not mean ’cause’ per se, but rather it is a function of his Sovereign will and foreknowledge. He chose ONE plan and that ONE plan is certain in not just the ends, but the means also, even the mundane. He ordains by allowing or by moving, either way should not cause us to confuse the definition of what ordaining means.

You say, “I don’t believe he ordains any sin - but he transforms it and manipulates it (in a good sense, for he is good) toward his own desired conclusion. All of this is an extension of God’s decision to give us freedom, which he had to do, once he decided he wanted us to image him — to be him as though he were physically present; to represent him as steward-kings of his creation.”

I believe this to be your explanation of how Romans 8:28 and other like texts can be true. Tell me, if God truly foreknew this sin, then why did he allow it to happen just to later transform it and manipulate it when he could have stopped it in the beginning so that manipulating and transforming and the sin itself were not necessary? It seems that your answer is that because HE HAD TO in order for decision to hold for his imagers to be free. But does that conclusion work? Especially since God is often seen in Scripture to overrule man’s will in many cases when it is not going according to his plan or will. The Calvinists conclusion is more sound because it does not make God choose to relinquish his Sovereignty to maintain man’s free-will. Rather it concludes that God’s Sovereignty allows the evil by withholding his glory and power and allowing men’s will to have their way (for a time) and then to rescue man (from man’s own evils) for the exaltation of his name. So in light of this conclusion can we answer your troubles? Can God allow (ordain) viruses to reign on this earth as a result of sin from the fall of man? Yes, because the viruses are a testimony to the depravity of man’s sin, it has no origin in God–to ordain is not to cause or to originate from, but to allow for a given wisdom within God–perhaps viruses testify to the utter depravity of man and therefore point man to God’s grace–the viruses are not from God, but from man and the evil one. Is God definitely not holding all things together because of the fact of entropy? NO, rather he allows creation to be in a constant state of entropy because of man’s constant state of sinful desires. But God still holds all things together, entropy does not mar this, Michael Heiser still exists, his protons and neutrons still bind together and the proton and electron still attract one another in such a way that the electron orbits the nucleus within your cells so that you can think, move, and live.

Yes, you are right, I should not judge God and say that he is more intimate according to my standards, but I hope I did not come across that way. I simply meant that my view of God is more in line with the revelation of God in the Scriptures. He is such an immanent God in Scripture, sending his own Son to die in the place of despicable sinners–even one as despicable as me–truly he is a God big enough to ordain the mundane simply because of his infinite knowledge and wisdom! It makes me want to break out into doxology as Paul did contemplating this very same thing. Romans 11:33-36

One last thing–you say, “I think it denigrates God’s goodness to have him ordaining evil and maintaining destruction.” I guess I cannot say it more clearly than this–God allows according to His purposes. God does not cause or uphold or maintain or feed evil, only man does. God sovereignly chooses to withhold himself, the only perfect good that exists, and simply allows evil to occur according to the very nature of his free creatures and then he sovereignly chooses to rescue many from their own lustful worldly desires. That does not denigrate God, but brings him the most glory–more than any other plan, even the salvation of the whole world universally–we must trust him that this plan that we currently live is truly the best for his ultimate glory.

Grace be with you, I know your time is very constrained and therefore, I appreciate your musings on this fascinating doctrine.

Chris

I think I should tell you that you’ve been keeping me from finishing my Lord’s Supper theme and from getting back to the ghosts thing. There! All you that read these comments I have now shifted the blame!!

The issue with your verse (and my response) has to do with the phrase, “apart from your father.” I see this as a reference to God’s omniscience. I’m guessing you see it as predestination. I think we can both certainly see omniscience here. I don’t see any language that speaks of predestination. You keep trying to merge omniscience and predestination (or to define one as the other), but that doesn’t work (as noted before), since God’s omniscience includes events that don’t happen - therefore it cannot logically (or theologically) require predestination.

Second - Romans 8:28ff. deals with PEOPLE (specifically, the elect). You have inserted sin into the passage, but the passage never says God predestinated sin. He predestinates the elect. I think you’ll be able to fill in the rest from of my thoughts on this from the other stuff I’ve written here.

These are good examples of my operating method. I really try hard to not make passages say things that aren’t in the passage. That is, our minds may build logical bridges to some thought from what we see in a passage (it’s a human thing, at least for someone using their brain), but that’s quite different than a passage actually containing that bridge. We have to keep them separate. One is the text, the other is the activity of our mind as we think about the text. I try to stick with what’s actually there (or not there).

If you think my views on THIS (free will and sovereignty) are off the beaten path, you’d love what I think of original sin! I’ll eventually get to that one on the blog.

Incidentally, where do you live? Send me an email. You really should be going to the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). You’d enjoy them. I can send you information.