God's decrees foreordain, and his creative act brings into actuality, beings other than God. Creation marks the beginning, therefore, of non-divine "otherness." Now of course otherness does exist eternally within the divine nature. But creation is the beginning of something new: a non-divine otherness, a creaturely otherness. Creatures are the work of God, fully planned by God, dependent on him, and under his control. But they are not God, not extensions of God's nature.

The Aim of the Chapter
My aim in this chapter is to show from Scripture that the simultaneous existence of God's will for "all persons to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:4) and his will to elect unconditionally those who will actually be saved is not a sign of divine schizophrenia or exegetical confusion. A corresponding aim is to show that unconditional election therefore does not contradict biblical expressions of God's compassion for all people, and does not nullify sincere offers of salvation to everyone who is lost among all the peoples of the world.

#1 Hezekiah's Repentance and 15 Added Years

Isaiah 38:1-5

In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.'" 2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, 3 and said, "Remember now, O LORD, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in Your sight." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah, saying, 5 "Go and say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.'"

"Determinism, Chance and Freedom," for IVP Dictionary of Apologetics.

Determinists believe that every event (or every event in a certain category) has a cause that makes it happen exactly as it happens. Among the varieties of determinism are the views of (1) Plato, who held that one's ethical choices are determined by his view of what is good, (2) B. F. Skinner, who believed that stimuli, dispositions and motives govern all human behavior. (3) Democritus, Hobbes, Spinoza, and many others, who have held that every event in the universe is determined by a physical cause. Of special interest to us are (4) theological determinists, who hold that all events occur exactly as God has foreordained them. These would include Calvin and others in his tradition. The classic exposition of theological determinism is Jonathan Edwards' Freedom of the Will. Note that it is possible to be a determinist in sense (4) without being a determinist in sense (3). That seems to be the position of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says in 3.1 that "God did... ordain whatsoever comes to pass," but also says in 9.1 that man's will "is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil" (compare 5.2).

In his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Chicago: InterVarsity Press, 1961) J. I. Packer argues that the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man is an antinomy. He defines "antinomy" as "an appearance of contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary" (p. 18). It "is neither dispensable nor comprehensible...It is unavoidable and insoluble. We do not invent it, and we cannot explain it" (p. 21). God "orders and controls all things, human actions among them"...yet "He holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action he pursues" (p. 22). "To our finite minds this is inexplicable" (p. 23).

If you are reading this article it is most likely for one of a few reasons. First, like me you are struck by the shear numbers that have died as the result of last months (December, 2004) disaster in the Indian Ocean, and secondly you are searching for answers as to why this happened, and what kind of God do we believe in? Then I believe there is a third potential for reading this post; you are a skeptic looking for canon fodder to lash out in righteous indignation against all the "morons" that could conceive of a god that would allow this to happen. Well I write to all of the above, and am fully aware that no matter what I write, the skeptic will not accept it (nor do I expect them to), and this post, as you will see, is clearly not an attempt to make soft sell apologies for God, but an attempt to bring the light of truth from God's word on such a horrible subject.

Sooner or later, every believer in the sovereignty of God's grace comes face-to-face with a two-edged theological problem that has great practical implications. One edge is this: "If God is really sovereign, then why pray?" In other words, why should we pray if God has already predestined whatever will come to pass? Will He not do whatever He pleases anyway without consulting us? The second edge is this: "If we are commanded to pray, how can it be said that God is sovereign and has foreordained everything that will happen?" How do we reconcile divine sovereignty and human responsibility in this thorny dilemma? And how do we pray with real feeling and passion with a clear view of God's sovereignty?