Why author Randy Alcorn joined one of today’s fiercest Christian debates

[hrmjustin]

Jonathan Merritt

If God is sovereign and in control of the universe, do humans really have free will? If humans have free will to do as they please, can God really be in control? The debate over God’s sovereignty and human’s free will is one of the hottest among Christians perennially. And now Randy Alcorn, New York Times bestselling author of “Heaven” and “If God is Good,” has decided he wants in on it.

In Alcorn’s new book,”Hand in Hand: The Beauty of God’s Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice,” admits that this issue has become divisive among Christians. During the first decade he was a Christian, Alcorn says he was “mostly Arminian” (those who emphasize man’s free will). Now he is “mostly Calvinist” (those who emphasize God’s sovereignty). He says he learned much on his journey that others need to know.

Here, we talk about why Alcorn believes the traditional approach to the debate isn’t working, what he’s saying that’s new, and whether he agrees with John Piper that God is responsible for fatalilty-inducing natural disasters.

- See more at: http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2014/11/11/author-randy-alcorn-joined-one-todays-fiercest-christian-debates/#sthash.I9B5Ry8J.dpuf

[Bluenorthwest]

1. The 'faith community' where arguments about nothing go on for generations while injustice and

mistreatment of their neighbors continue unabated.

[hrmjustin]

2. Religious communities have been on the forefront of civil rights in this nation.

Not every faith community but many of them.

Religious people fight to make people's lives better every day in tnis world. You broad brush is wrong.

[Union Scribe]

3. You seem to have mistaken this

as one of the several groups on DU set up to trash religious people. It is not.

[hrmjustin]

4. Please consider self deleting this. This comment may upset several posters who post here.

Criticism of religion is not appropriate in this room.

[rug]

5. Oh, bullshit.

Trite, bigoted bullshit.

[el_bryanto]

7. Gosh - trashing religion with a broad brush - that's surprising. nt.

[rug]

6. I wonder if Alcorn recognizes the irony in this exchange:

RNS: Christians have been debating God’s sovereignty and humans’ free will for centuries, but you’ve decided to engage it now. What is your book adding to the debate that is new?

RA: I’m compelled to recognize that . . . . "

[AtheistCrusader]

8. I found that funny too.

I don't consider it difficult mental gymnastics to, hypothetically holding the claim of an all powerful supernatural god to be true, to consider that such a being might withhold exercising its power to protect us from our environment (Which is hazardous to us in some conditions), to allow us the full experience of our free will.

If you're not free to fail, you aren't free at all.

We know why 'bad' weather happens. It's the question of 'why no divine intervention' that seems to vex people. It doesn't seem a difficult leap that such a being might value our free will on principle, so highly, that it must allow us to struggle against, and sometimes, fail to compete with our environment.

I don't understand why this is a difficult question (again, hypothetically assuming such a being is real). Do we want to be pets/slaves, or do we want to be free and assume the risks? Just because a god is all powerful and CAN intervene, doesn't mean it should, or that the choice of non-interference carries a moral burden for that god.

If I believed, and thought I had a choice, I would choose the full richness of free will, and all the risks it entails. I'm disappointed people are still spending so many cycles debating over such a seemingly obvious question. From the excerpt, it looks like the author sailed right past it.


To wander further afield, this sovereign/free will debate seems to have brought the definition of 'portmanteau' from the preface to Alice in Wonderland to mind:

... take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards "fuming," you will say "fuming-furious"; if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say "furious-fuming"; but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious" (Gardner The Annotated Alice 195).

[rug]

9. “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

[AtheistCrusader]

10. Hah! I didn't even think of that line. Perfecto.