Brad Andrews January 5th, 2008
God’s Providence Defined
The Scriptures clearly teach that all things outside of God owe their continued existence to the will of God. [1] And in the work of redemption, while the Bible teaches that this providential control is universal, powerful, wise, and holy, it nowhere attempts to inform how it is reconciled with man’s free will. What the Bible is clear on is God’s character precludes Him to govern His creatures and control them in a way where no violence is done to their natures.
God’s Foreknowledge Defined
What God foreknows must be as fixed and certain as what is foreordained. Foreordination makes the events certain, while foreknowledge presupposes they are certain. Another way of saying this is to say if future events are foreknown to God, they cannot take a turn contrary to His knowledge. The Calvinistic doctrine of the foreknowledge of God proves also His predestination. Boettner says:
“Since these events are foreknown, they are fixed and settled things; and nothing can have fixed and settled them except the good pleasure of God – the great first cause – freely and unchangeably foreordaining whatever comes to pass.”
[2]
[1] Acts 17:28 NIV; Col. 1:17 NIV; Heb. 1:3 NIV.
[2] Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company), 46.
Honzo December 14th, 2007
Given the shift in the way the Bible portrays Satan from a member of God’s royal court in Job to leader of the rebellion against the Kingdom of God with Paul, how do we, as Christians, construct our concept of Satan?
I think this is a great question on two levels, i) what the heck is Satan and how does it function? and ii) how do we interpret scriptures that have varying views on religious phenomena?
I have some suggestions, but I have a couple of hours to iron out a paper proposal, a panel proposal, and have lunch with Meredith, so I will leave mine later.
Honzo December 9th, 2007
The sometimes funny WuzzaDem looks at Hitchens’ reply to Romney’s Mormon speech: Shocker: Christopher Hitchens Bashes Mitt Romney Speech.
According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater?
What better way to make this point than by mocking and ridiculing Christians?
I think what I like the most about this quote from Hitchens (the first part) is that he is completely anthropomorphizing God here; something the new atheists are always complaining about theists doing (and rightly so!). God must act in the ways that Hitchens thinks that God should act, or the God that others posit does not match Hitchen’s imagined God and therefore does not exist (is there a man of straw in there somewhere?).
C/P at Hundiejo.com
Hank November 28th, 2007
Last December I had to opportunity to speak and engage some Mormon missionaries here in KC Northland (Read my two posts Two Unexpected Visitors and The Visitors Return for my summary of the events). Shortly after that, I received two emails from one of the missionaries, I don’t remember his name and I also want to keep him anonymous. For the longest time I couldn’t find them and I really wanted to post them to see what other Christians thought of it. The following is the first of the two emails. I am curious to see your reactions to this understanding of grace and salvation (Honzo, sorry I hijacked your “What is Grace” post series but I thought it applied; you can feel free to remove it from the series).
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