Yes indeed Swedish meatballs made from moose meat! Very tasty!

Happy New Year my friend.

I wrestled with similar questions as well. I found the book ‘Grace, Faith and Free Will’ by Robert Picirilli to be helpful.

I also tried to summarize where the thinking of each side breaks down on some key issues that kind of helped me. You may or may not find it useful but it’s here if you’re interested:

http://morostheos.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/calvinism-and-arminianism-contrasted/

As you said, both sides of the argument have scriptural support and reasonable explanations to account for apparently contradicting scripture so as someone else above said, we won’t know who’s right until we see Christ (and may it be soon!)

God Bless,

Mark

Congrats on your anniversary.

Thanks for the detailed response. First, I think we all will agree that the matter of divine sovereignty and human freedom is a subject that is very complex and, of course, has been hotly debated over the centuries. So, in that I will say again, that these are difficult issues and I don’t seek to oversimplify them or brush of the concerns/questions posed by Lionel, yourself, or others.

What I am personally saying is that, even in your explanation of foreknowledge – which seeks to remove divine intention from God’s future knowledge of events – does not remove the problem of the existence of evil. For you have not put forth a positive assertion of how evil has entered the world in relation to God’s sovereignty and the Scriptures saying that all things exist by Him and for Him.

I understand the difficult of my own assertion (though it was not fully developed since I posed it by way of question)…I am only arguing that the libertarian or advocate of middle knowledge does not have an adequate proposal for the existence of evil apart from diminishing the complete sovereignty of Almighty God (or excusing God’s complete determination of all things). For to say that something has occured within God’s sovereign purposes in which God has no intention (i.e., of good or bad) for those events is to say that there is some event in which God has no hand, thus diminishing his sovereignty over evil itself.

But the Scripture say that “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” Not only that, the whole question in Luke 13 regarding the tower that fell was predicated upon them believing it was God that was behind it in judgment (and Jesus did not deny this). There are many more examples of God’s ordination of every affair of human life (e.g., Ps 139:16). So the Bible is far from ambiguous on this subject.

So, while the libertarian/middle knowledge advocate diminishes the sovereignty of God over evil, the determinist or hard/soft compatibilist (which I am a soft compatibilist) also have the difficulty of explaining evils’ existence without somehow seeming to assign evil to God.

So, in essence what I am saying is that we don’t have the epistemic properties to judge (or logically deduce) God’s wisdom or morality in the existence of evil (whether we use the terminology of “allow” or “ordain). The existence of evil is within the good and wise purposes of God because He has declared Himself to be Good and Wise and through those purpose we know the wonderful joys of the love and mercy of God. Thus evils existence in the Sovereignty of God must be understood as mystery…we must also affirm as well as that it exists by God’s purpose and intention – yet God is not the author of evil. For if Satan and evil are not His servants then God is not God and the lives of Joseph and Job (and all who have endured and do endure attrocities) make no sense.

This is good and sharpening discussion. I will try to take time to give you a more detailed assessment of your thoughts later – today’s my 13th anniversary!

Jude 2,

Q

P.S. We should get together sometime at SWBTS.