Can We Still Believe in God? by Craig L. Blomberg

Author:Craig L. Blomberg [Blomberg, Craig L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: REL006080, Bible/Apologetics, REL067030
ISBN: 9781493423590
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

Neither prayer nor predestination, then, need prove to be a stumbling block to Christian belief in God. Certain ways in which these two doctrines can be misunderstood may well become such obstacles, but they are neither the only ways to interpret them nor even what the biblical writers most likely intended. Prayer is not a blank check. God’s will is so often so different from ours that unanswered prayers (in the ways we wish they would be answered) should cause no surprise. But there are enough times that his will and ours coincide and do not require overriding anyone else’s freedom that prayer is still well worth undertaking. In his inscrutable wisdom, he has determined that there are many good things that he will give to people if and only if they pray, and sometimes if and only if they continue to pray over a period of time or involve others in praying as well. A responsible articulation of the biblical teaching on predestination will likewise preserve God’s sovereignty, without making it arbitrary or overriding free agency. It is based on his foreknowledge, but that foreknowledge is not limited, as in open theism. It is in fact magnificently expansive, encompassing all possible actions of all possibly created beings (middle knowledge). As long as God has created only a subset of that set of all possibly created beings, his initiative-taking action still outstrips our genuine human freedom in the same way that all infinite sets vastly exceed in size even the biggest finite sets in comparison, however large they may be in their own right.

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