The Will of God

Posted on OAO Message Board, Topic: The future as both CERTAIN and CONTINGENT

I believe that God created the world, because that's what the Bible says. I believe that God has an elect and that He will lose none of them, because that's what the Bible teaches. But I think that we are missing something, all of us. How do we determine these ideas to be philosophically equivalent? But that is what God is calling us to. The Bible is true, it is God's word. We are required to understand His Word comparing scripture with scripture. I don't really have a great answer for the scripture you quoted (scriptures which seem to imply that man is a free moral agent), I can give you the textbook response:

God's eternal decreetal [perfect] will is what must happen because God has determined that it will be so. And yet nothing happens but by the will of God, thus it is by His permissive will that He foreordains that sin will enter the world and His plan of redemption executed (no pun intended).

God doesn't want some poor soul to be raped, murdered, mutilated, castrated or incarcerated/tortured. Except for the restraining work of the Holy Spirit, we would see quite a bit more evil in this world. It is not that he chose this person to be decimated, but that He chose you or me not to be...THIS is the grace of God...God hates sinners, while I was a sinner Christ died for me, Christ died for someone He hated. Love is a decision that God made according to His own pleasure.