Dale, Rich, and Greg discuss providence and Genesis

[DaleCutler]

The question of free will and God’s sovereignty is parallel to the occasioning of his special providence, and abiogenesis and evolution are connected to the subject, as well.

First of all, we shouldn’t expect to be able to get our heads around God’s infinitudes since we are finite, as I have mentioned elsewhere. That means that there may be an apparent paradox or two that we will have to live with and not hubristically insist that there is an interpretation that explains it away and that our way is the only correct way of looking at it. The question at hand is precisely that, since the Bible teaches both God’s sovereignty and our free will and responsibility.

The essence of the issue is time – the linear sequential time that we exist in and time with respect to God’s nature. He is the always Now, the eternal I AM, the forever Present tense, and our language and minds cannot encompass him.

So how does he have a dynamic relationship with us if he is absolutely sovereign and things are predetermined? You might even say predestined. Oops, ‘predetermined’ and ‘predestined’ are past tense and are not a good fit to God’s dynamic real time relationship to us.

Now I’m going to give an example of God’s special providence in the way that he most frequently uses it in his people’s lives, not breaking any natural laws. So no, @Rich_Hampton, it is not a ‘supernatural’ miracle as you insist all special providence must be, but it does involve supernatural timing and placing, per my ‘private’ definition that you take offense at. Unbelievers are just going to have to suspend disbelief and take it at face value without objecting since of course you do not believe in the immaterial God who is and is in control of ‘chance’. Some of you will have seen this before.

It is a sweet example, one among a boatload, of his sovereign, dynamic, immanent, personal and interventionist activity into my life:

Request and Articulate Reply

A little background:

I leave earlier for church than Jeanne for a couple of different reasons, so she drives our older pickup and I take the car, also for a couple of different reasons. (And neither of the latter are because of her driving ability. )

I back the truck out of the garage because Jeanne is a little intimidated doing it since the clearances are tight. (I have dinged the garage door opening’s aluminum trim with the passenger side rear view mirror.)

Also, the concrete apron to our garage is a little steeper than some, so ice on it can be a problem, especially if you are not in a vehicle but trying to walk on the ice. Jeanne also has a knee issue which makes walking on ice even more treacherous.

My Co-instants Log entry:

1/3/16 While chipping some ice and spreading some Ice Melt on the garage apron so Jeanne could safely get into the truck, I was a little disheartened about an issue a family member had at another church, and I was consciously thinking that I would like some encouragement. So, as I was on my way to Sunday School, I asked the Lord to give me a co-instance before I got there (there were about five minutes left), thinking “You could do that, Lord.” In Father’s timing, not mine (and he’s never in a hurry, but he’s never late – it was right after I got there, not before) and Mike, the teacher, had completely abandoned the Sunday School lesson from the quarterly – he had decided instead to ask the class to talk about… coincidence! Was I encouraged and a little pumped?!

(He has given me other co-instances after I have asked for them, but this is the most notable and the most recent, as of this writing. )

So the question becomes ‘How did he do that?!’ The answer is that it is beyond our ken. Presumably you can see the parallels to free will and God’s absolute sovereignty and to abiogenesis and molecular evolution.