I liked this article since parts of it resonate with my own view of sovereignty and free will (the latter does not rule out the former) blogged long ago here at the Naked Bible. Genuine freedom is part of humanity because it is a communicable attribute we receive as imagers of God. You can’t image God unless you have real freedom, and that does not undo sovereignty or foreknowledge. General revelation gives us insight into the Creator and his ways.
God’s Sovereignty and Nature’s Freedom
“who is this, that hides council without knowledge ” Job 42:3
i have never really understood that verse ? but it seems that God doesnt go to any lenghts at all in the book of Job to explain to Job why ? I really like that God is not bound by our tantrums to explaine why ! (Says a man who has had little or no suffering !).
If “genuine freedom” is the freedom that God has, then we do not have “genuine freedom.” Nature cannot mount up wings and fly (unless God made them that way!), but God can. All of our freedom is contingent freedom. Nothing that we do is independent. Everything that we do is influenced by something outside of us. You need to read Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will. Logos has a discount going on his works…purchase it AND read it (every word and savor it).
@cwmyers007: no, Chris. How could you think that I’d say something so obviously silly? Really. Freedom is a communicable attribute, and communicable attributes are held in lesser ways than God has those attributes.
@Nobunaga: right – he doesn’t. God didn’t owe Job an answer and he doesn’t owe us answers. We may get them by his grace, but he’s under no obligation. We just have to trust that God is as good as he is wise as he is sovereign.
Some of us do demand answers and there is no question that is not answered in scripture. I am sorry, but I a surprised by the lack of answers I see on this site.
so what’s your question?
Oh my. I do enjoy touring your old posts.
Applegate writes about a topic I have brought up with a number of people. Like Dembski, I too have never understood “the freedom of nature” excuse since God obviously created those laws of nature to be free in the first place. He is still implicated. Now, she retorts by saying God gave us free will and we use those freedoms to commit evil. and since nobody can blame our evil on God, we can’t blame hurricanes on Him either. But this is a false analogy. Nature does not choose anything. Humans have a capability of choosing between good or harm. Humans choose and therefore since God is not to blame, humans are held in judgement. Is nature held in judgement for its destruction? Of course not. Therefore it has no freedom. It operates by pre-existing rules. And who created those rules to operate in those specific ways? Certainly, nature did not dictate those rules themselves. If it did, then you can indict nature of its own “evil.”
So why does she write a post like this? Because Applegate is an evolutionist that sponsors the ideas of randomness in evolution. Ask her if God directly intended for man as his goal and you may just get an uncomfortable silence. You and I might look at hurricanes and earthquakes and ponder God, but she looks at the biological evidence and sees chance, waste and disease and ponders how God could seriously have meant to form man. Hence, she uses the idea of freedom in nature as a defense for what she sees as “evil” in biological organisms.