No Christian who has studied his Bible denies that God knows future events, but one of the most controversial topics among Christians is the question of "how?"--how does God know the future? While Bible scholars propose several possible answers to that question, here are the two most common positions: 1. God knows the future because, being outside of space and time, he can foresee everything that will happen. This perspective is often referred to as the "eternal now", where t

Recap: In the last post, I explained that a Calvinist pastor/friend took issue with a statement from my book that says, "the god of Calvinism [is] not the God of the Bible." This statement, he wrote, "put[s] Calvinists outside the pale of Christianity and under the judgment of the First Commandment." Here's a link to the previous post: Post 43: A Different God? - Intro . This, understandably, drew some strong reactions as I posed the question: At what point does a deity be

Recap: In the last post, I expressed a frustration with both Calvinists and non-Calvinists who seem intent on exposing the failures of the other side but neglect to be persuasive in their handling of the weaknesses in their own arguments. (Yes, both perspectives have significant, unconvincingly-resolved issues.) Previously we looked at the following "gotcha" question often posed by Calvinists to non-Calvinists: Question #1 - Why did you come to believe in Jesus but your neigh

As I mentioned in the previous post, one of the biggest frustrations in trying to understand a true-to-Scripture, non-contradictory perspective of God's purpose of election is that, while both sides seem eager to expose and exploit the obvious errors in the other’s interpretations, they are reluctant to deal with some weaknesses and unresolved questions in their own arguments. Also, both sides are really adept at "theological sophistry", posing barely plausible explanations