well as healing, poverty as well as riches, disaster as well as peace these show the full spectrum
of life over which God has complete control. While I realize that it is extremely important how
we talk about the mechanics, as it were, of the exercise of this control, I believe that faithfulness
to Gods word requires our full and unqualified assent to Gods meticulous and exhaustive
control over all. As Paul summarizes this truth, God "works all things according to the counsel
of his will" (Eph 1:11).
nature of the divine sovereignty, as just discussed, requires that any and every aspect of the
created reality, including human freedom and moral responsibility, adhere with it. 2) A
compatibility of meticulous divine sovereignty and human freedom is required by Scriptures
teaching. Passages such as Gen 45:4-8; 50:20; Isa 10:5-19; Hab 1:6-17; Acts 2:23; 4:27-28;
Rom 9:6-26 demonstrate that Gods sovereign control must be compatible with the choices and
actions that human beings perform, and this must occur in such a way that humans fully carry out
what they desire most to do and they are fully responsible in so doing. To give just one example,
the men who put Christ on the cross will not be able to plead "not guilty" at the Great White
Throne judgment by pointing to Acts 2:23 and claiming, "See here, You say Christs crucifixion
was by Your predetermined plan and foreknowledge, so we are off the hook!" No, Christ was
put on the cross by the hands of godless men, says Peter; hence, they are guilty. To cite just one
other support here for the compatibility of divine sovereignty and human freedom, the doctrine
of verbal plenary inspiration is virtually inexplicable without this understanding. John Feinberg
argued in his essay in Predestination and Free Will years ago that the only way fully to account
for every word of Scripture, every grammatical construction, every syntactical arrangement as
both fully Gods word and fully human is by appeal to compatibilism. I simply do not think that
Bill Craigs appeal to middle knowledge here works; I have often wondered, when considering
his proposal, if God could succeed with a 100% success rate on Scripture using middle
knowledge, why dont we see that kind of record reflected more in other aspects of his
governance of the world (e.g., how many people, throughout the world today, are Christians)?
Third, human freedom that is compatible with Gods meticulous sovereignty, then,
That is, our freedom consists in our choosing and doing according to what we desire most to do.
I remain fully unpersuaded by the case made for libertarian freedom. If an action is free if, when
the action is performed and all things being just what they are, the agent could have done
otherwise, then there is no choice-specific reason for the action. Granted, the agent no doubt has
a reason or reasons when he acts. But, if all things being just what they are (i.e., all those
reasons are in place exactly as they are), he could have done otherwise, then it follows that any
reason or set of reasons for why the agent did what he did would be the identical reason or set of
reasons for why, instead, he might have done otherwise. More simply, no choice-specific reason
or reasons can be given for any so-called "free" choices or actions that we do. Of course, this
reduces all "free" choices and actions to arbitrariness and removes from us truly the bases for
why we choose and act. Compatibilist freedom, on the other hand, insists that regardless of what
struggles we go through in making our choices or deciding what action to perform, in the end,
when we choose and act, we do so from prevailing desires which explain exactly why this choice