“Babae, Don’t You See?”

While I was praying, Stephenie had a massive cerebral hemorrhage.  We rushed to the hospital.  I rode in the ambulance while our son Jaime and Ginny and Mincaye followed us in the car.  Grandfather Mincaye had never seen this type of vehicle with the flashing lights, didn’t understand why strangers had rushed into the house [...]

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The Death of My Dad

If God could plan the death of His own righteous Son, why couldn’t He plan the death of my dad?
–Steve Saint
Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (2006, p.117)
read 6-18-08

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We Lack the Conceptual Wherewithal

Thus Scripture reveals that both human agency and divine agency are to be fully affirmed without attempting to tell us how this can be, because we have no way to understand it, no matter what Scripture would say: all of our analogies concerning different agents or different kinds of agency must be drawn from what [...]

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We Can Understand Why We Cannot Understand

“But,” you ask, “how can this possibly be?  How can Joseph’s brothers have acted freely and responsibly if what they did was what God had previously ordained?  How can Pilate and Herod and Judas and the Jewish people be properly blamed fror what God had predestined to take place?  How can God govern the choices [...]

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God Is the Primary Agent

So the biblical view is this: God has ordained or willed or planned everything that happens in our world from before creation, from before time began.  God is the primary agent – the primary cause, the final and ultimate explanation – of everything that happens, yet the causal relationship between God and His creatures is such that [...]

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God Sustained Them in Their Sin

God, as the One who actively sustains all things (see again Heb. 1:3 with Col 1:17), was the source of their being.  But they, as Adam’s descendants, were the sole source of their sin.  Their sinful inclinations made them the authors of their own sin.  And, consequently, they did evil while God did not, for [...]

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He is Never Absent or Inactive

All of history is composed of this sort of dual explanation: God foreordains what humans choose.  He is never absent or inactive when human beings hurt each other or themselves.  In the person of His Son, He is always in our midst, as the One who holds each and every aspect of creation, including all [...]

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Paul’s Shipwreck and God’s Foreordination

The story of Paul’s shipwreck in Acts 27 involves the same sort of dual explanation [of both God's sovereignty and man's choice].  In verses 22-25, God promised categorically through Paul that no one on the ship was going to be lost.  Yet later when some of the sailors were secretly trying to jump ship, Paul [...]

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True Freedom of the Will

Perhaps it is not too much to say that it is only after God has regenerated us that we possess true freedom of the will, for it is only after our spiritual rebirth that we are able through the power of God’s Spirit living within us to choose anything other than sin.
–Mark Talbot
Suffering and the [...]

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His Purposes Will Ripen Fast

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace,
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.
–William [...]

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