To believe that God is perfectly good despite the sin, evil, and suffering that exists in this world is a challenge that every Christian must wrestle with to at least some extent. This is called the problem of theodicy.

I believe that it's only if God is fully good that we can feel safe putting all of our trust in God for our eternal future, as well as in God's guidance and provision for us in our earthly lives. It's also only if God is fully good that he would be worthy of receiving all of our praise and love.

Therefore, any idea which undermines God's goodness needs to be dealt with, in order for Christians (or at least, for me) to have a better relationship with God. This is why I study theodicy and other difficult theological topics.

One of the worst theological ideas which undermines God's goodness is the claim that God actually wants to predestine most of humanity to eternal torment in hell. This is the issue I addressed in my PhD dissertation, where I studied Jonathan Edwards' arguments for predestination and identified a number of flaws with them.

In contrast to predestination, I've written several blog posts that build a case for my theory of Christian inclusivism which says that everyone will truly have the opportunity to hear and accept the gospel at some point. I also argue that hell is best understood as eternal destruction, not eternal torment.

But another troubling idea that sometimes comes up in our reading of the Bible, or that has been put forward by both past theologians and modern Bible interpreters, is the idea that God is actually the ultimate cause behind at least some types of evil and suffering in this world.

For example, we might wonder about whether the instances in the Bible where God prophesies about evil things means that God had some role in orchestrating or causing these negative things to happen.

So in this post, I want to explain how I believe there are ways of looking at God's relationship to evil that do give God enough control over evil that he could prophesy about specific evil actions done by others, yet without God being the ultimate cause of these evil actions. This should help reassure us that God really is fully good and worthy of being trusted, even when we personally see and experience suffering in this world.

Does God Ever Cause Evil?

We all experience suffering in one way or another since our lives in this world will never be perfect. Because of this, I believe that correctly understanding God's relationship to these negative events that cause us to suffer is important to help us fully love and trust God.

Thus, it can be troubling when some Bible verses appear to support the idea that God does sometimes outright cause evil and suffering to occur. For example:

• "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" (Amos 3:6, KJV).
• "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7, KJV).
• "Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?" (Lamentations 3:38, KJV)

However, you may be relieved to hear that these old translations of these verses are not the best.1 Instead, more recent Bible translations substitute "disaster" or "calamity" for "evil":

• "Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?" (Amos 3:6, ESV).
• "I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things" (Isaiah 45:7, ESV).
• "Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?" (Lamentations 3:38, NIV)

These translations are more consistent with the idea that God never causes or does evil, although he does sometimes bring judgment on groups of sinful people for their evil ways (e.g., the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1-29)). But remember that whenever God ends people's lives in various ways, this is not an instance of God doing evil but is God carrying out his righteous justice.

We know that God never does evil because if he did, it would contradict other very important verses about God's goodness and righteousness, such as when we're told:

• "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5).
• "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17).
• "For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord" (Psalm 33:4-5).
• "Declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him" (Psalm 92:15).
• "For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations" (Psalm 100:5).
• "For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face" (Psalm 11:7).
• God is "of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong" (Habakkuk 1:13).
• At some points, God says the things evil people do are so bad that God could never have imagined commanding anyone to act in such ways (Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5).

So God definitely never sins or does evil. Yet at the same time, we must say that God has ultimate control over the evil that happens in this world. Otherwise, Satan, demons, or sinful humans would have more power than God, and that is not a comforting thought.2

So I believe that God does restrain and prevent many instances of evil that we do not know about because they did not happen. However, because free will is important to God in order for our love of God to be genuine, God does not prevent all evil from happening. Free will is the same reason why God cannot force anyone to be eternally saved.

What I haven't yet addressed in these previous posts, though, is the question of how God can prophesy that evil will definitely happen, despite God not being the ultimate cause of it, and despite God giving people and demons genuine free will.

There is also the related question of how God can restrain evil so that no more evil happens than he allows, and in situations where evil is necessary in order to fulfill Bible prophecy, that evil happens exactly as God requires it to, and right on schedule.

The Issue of How God Can Prophesy About Evil

When reading the Bible, Christians may wonder about:

• How Jesus could prophecy that Peter would deny him exactly three times before sunrise (John 13:38, 18:27).
• How Jesus knew that Judas would betray him (Matthew 26:20-25, John 13:18) as prophesied in Psalm 41:9.
• How Jesus was crucified at the exact right time the day before Passover, in order to fulfill the symbolism of this ancient Jewish feast.3
• How God could prophesy that Assyrian and Babylonian armies would invade and destroy Israel and Jerusalem and send the people into exile (e.g. Isaiah 10:5-11, 39:5-8).
• How God could prophesy that evil thoughts will enter Gog's mind to inspire him to attack Israel in the end times (Ezekiel 38:10-12).
• How God could prophesy that terrible things will happen to the people of Jerusalem during the battle of Armageddon (Zechariah 14:2).

We do not want to say that God actively caused these people to sin, because that would make God ultimately responsible for their sin.4

After all, God doesn't even tempt anyone to sin (James 1:13), which would certainly rule out God from ever being the ultimate cause behind someone's sin. So if God never causes anyone to sin, then how can we explain these prophecies?

First, we need to deal with the typical views held by many Christians that God can prophesy about things that will happen in the future because God either has perfect foreknowledge of the future due to God being all-knowing (omniscient) and/or because God exists outside of time.

If you don't care about this philosophical discussion, go ahead and click this link to skip down to where I explain why God's foreknowledge causes problems for God's goodness.

Philosophical Problems With Divine Foreknowledge

A very common approach to explaining these Bible prophecies is to say that God has perfect foreknowledge of the future because this knowledge is included in the definition of what it means to say that God is omniscient ('all-knowing'). If this is true, the God simply knows from all eternity past how sinful people will act in the future, despite God not causing them to act as they do, and the question is solved.

However, it turns out that God having this sort of foreknowledge wouldn't actually give God any sort of control over the world. Even before God created the world, God would know everything about the exact future of the world that he will create, but he would be totally unable to change anything about it.5

It would be like how, in fictional time-travel stories that actually do time travel correctly, nothing about the past, present, or future can actually be changed, because the time-traveler's actions in the past have already occurred.6

For example, let's imagine that a scientist invents a time machine so that he can go back into the past in order to change something about his present situation. But, to the scientist's dismay, he discovers that he can't actually change anything about his present situation, because his present situation is the way it is precisely because the scientist had already traveled into the past to try to make changes to his present situation. (Yeah, it's complicated, but it makes sense if you stop to think about it).

So likewise, if God wanted to change anything about the future of the world he already perfectly foreknows he certainly will create, he couldn't, because that change would invalidate God's own foreknowledge, which is impossible if God perfectly foreknows the future.

Even more problems appear if we claim that God is "outside of time" or "timeless", as a way of explaining God's foreknowledge.

Is God Timeless or Outside of Time?

If God is timeless, then God would basically know and experience all of history at once.7 That would mean that God could never experience anything new, and if God foreknew everything that everyone would ever say or do, then God could not have truly responsive relationships with his created people.8

It would also lead to the same philosophical problem for God's providence that was mentioned in the previous section where God could not change anything about the history of the world that in this case God already knows and is experiencing.

A more serious issue with God being timeless is that it would mean that from God's eternal perspective, God would eternally experience the agony of Jesus dying on the cross.

This is a deduction from the doctrine of the Trinity which teaches that God the Son, the second Person of the divine Trinity, who became incarnate as the human Jesus Christ is just as divine and eternal as God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, since they are three divine Persons who exist as one being/essence. But Jesus said just before he died that "It is finished" (John 19:30), presumably, for both himself and God the Father, since they are one (John 10:30), along with the Holy Spirit which is the Spirit of God/Christ (Romans 8:9).

A similar problem is that if God were timeless, he would also eternally experience his sadness and anger at every sin that has ever occurred. In fact, from God's timeless perspective, all these sins would actually continue to happen, forever. How then could God enjoy his sinless New Heaven and New Earth and have the final victory over sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:25, Revelation 20:14), if God is still eternally experiencing this fallen, sin-filled world?

The fact that God the Son became incarnate as the human Jesus at a specific point in history also seems to require for there to have been some period of time before the incarnation when God the Son had not yet assumed a human body/nature, contrasted with the time after the incarnation, when God the Son now does eternally have a human body/nature in addition to his divine nature.9 It would be a logical contradiction to say that God the Son could eternally experience both being incarnate and not being incarnate simultaneously. Thus, even God must be able to experience some sort of change in relation to his external situation, even though God's character remains constant and unchanging.

Therefore, it is better to say that once God created time, God also experiences time, so that past events like the incarnation and crucifixion are truly in God's past, as well as in ours.10 This means that the simple foreknowledge view of Bible prophecy seems to be eliminated as a biblical and philosophical possibility.

What About Middle Knowledge?

The next-best alternative to simple foreknowledge is the concept of middle knowledge. Middle knowledge is the idea that God knows for sure how anyone would freely act in any particular situation. In this case, it seems that God could providentially arrange everyone's lives in such a way that their free decisions would achieve God's desired outcome for history without God having to override anyone's free will.11

Yet middle knowledge also leads to a problem for the concept of human free will, since it appears that no one could choose to act differently than how God's middle knowledge foreknows they will act in that specific situation. So for genuine free will to exist, it is argued that God could know how likely it is that someone might act in a particular way, but God couldn't know exactly how anyone would definitely act in any situation.12

Foreknowledge Causes Problems For God's Goodness

In addition to these philosophical issues, there is also a problem for God's goodness in both the simple foreknowledge and middle knowledge views. The issue is that in both cases, God would be fully responsible for placing people in situations where God absolutely knew they would act in sinful/evil ways.13 For example,

If God foreknew that Adolf Hitler would send six million Jews to their death, why did he go ahead and create a man like that? If I unleash a mad dog I am certain will bite you, am I not responsible for my dog’s behavior? If so, how is God not responsible for the behavior of evil people he “unleashes” on the world — if, in fact, he is absolutely certain of what they will do once “unleashed”? 14

For all of these reasons, philosophically, I'm drawn to the theory of open theism, which is the view that God does not have perfect foreknowledge of anyone's genuinely-free choices. Thus, because these choices are not perfectly foreknown by anyone, including God, we can be assured that they are truly being made freely.15

And as I've explored previously in several blog posts, our free will is important to God not for its own sake but because it preserves God's goodness, and also because it is required for our love of God to be genuine so that we are not forced to love God. Without free will which gives us the option of saying "no" to God, our love for God would be totally meaningless to him.

Yet despite God lacking foreknowledge of free choices, open theists say that God would still have total knowledge of all things that do not involve free will. God's omniscience of these things, when combined with God having many divine contingency plans to handle all possibilities of how someone could possibly freely choose to act, could enable God to accurately predict and prophesy about many things. I discuss this idea in more detail in my post about open theism and Bible prophecy.

Challenges To God's Goodness From Bible Prophecy

Unfortunately, none of the open theists I've read have good answers to the question of how God can prophesy about the times when God predicts that people will act in evil ways if God does not have foreknowledge of the future.

For example, we cannot say that God caused Judas to betray Jesus, or made Peter deny Christ in order to fulfill prophecy,16 or we would be taking away Judas’s and Peter’s personal responsibility for their behavior, and making God responsible for evil.

And while God could have known that Judas was considering betraying Jesus, open theists cannot say that God perfectly knew that Judas would actually go through with it. If Judas had freely chosen not to betray Jesus, then God would have needed some other way for Jesus to be delivered to the Sanhedrin in time to be crucified before Passover.17

Even if God knew that at that particular moment in time, Peter had the sort of character which made him likely to deny Jesus if he were pressured,18 it would have required God to coordinate all the circumstances that Peter was in that night in order to make sure he was asked by the right people at the right times to make it all happen.

However, after further reflection on this problem, I think I have two analogies that can help us understand how, even under an open theist paradigm where people have genuine free will and where God does not foreknow the outcome of any genuinely-free choices, and where God never actively causes evil, we can explain how God could prophesy about these sorts of evil and/or sinful actions.

Before this, though, I want to deal with one common approach to how Christians frequently say that God controls evil, which I think is somewhat challenging to accept if we believe that God is fully good and never does evil.

Does Satan Need God's Permission To Do Evil?

I think one of the mistakes Christians can make when talking about God controlling evil is that they assume that Satan must request permission from God before Satan can do any particular instance of evil. However, this assumption does have a Biblical basis.

In the Book of Job, Satan is depicted as coming to God and complaining that God has blessed the man named Job so much that Job only loves God because of all these blessings (Job 1:6-9). Satan whines that God has put a spiritual protective 'hedge' around Job, Job's family, and Job's possessions, so that Satan can't attack them (Job 1:10). Then Satan asks for God's permission to test Job's faith by taking away these blessings. God gives him permission, with the only condition being that God won't let Satan take away Job's health (Job 1:11-12).

Satan's goal, however, is actually carried out by other people (the Sabeans and Chaldeans) who attack Job's herds of animals and kill his servants. This is in addition to what we would say are 'natural disasters' that kill Job's children and other herds and servants (Job 1:13-19). Later on, Satan is allowed to afflict Job's health, but not kill him (Job 2:4-6).

Job ultimately does attribute all of these things to God (Job 1:20-21). When Job's wife tells him he should curse God and die, Job says "Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10). But Job never accuses God of sinning (Job 1:22, 2:10).

To me, the strange part about the introduction to the Book of Job is that it seems to imply that despite Satan being evil and completely opposed to God, Satan still obeys God regarding these particular limits on Satan's activities.

If that were true for every instance of evil in the world, then spiritual warfare would basically turn into God putting on a puppet show, with God as the puppeteer who controls both the 'good' puppet and the 'evil' one too. This would still be the case even if the puppeteer set it up so that the evil puppet is controlled by someone else who must still get the puppeteer's permission before it makes any move.

Such a scheme would seem to make God far more closely responsible for the evil that occurs than Christians might like to admit.

For example, in the Netflix show Black Mirror, there was an episode called the "USS Callister", which I think gives a good illustration of how some Christians depict God's total control over everyone, including Satan.19 In this episode, a disgruntled programmer has the technology to make simulated clones of his coworkers and import them into his favorite computer game, which is very similar to the original Star Trek TV show.

With his unlimited power over the simulation, the programmer appoints himself as the starship's captain. He then bullies his simulated coworkers into serving as his subordinate crewmembers who obey every command he gives because, if they don't, the programmer tortures them in terrible ways. The purpose of this simulation seems to be to make the programmer feel powerful and successful by living in his ideal fantasy world where everything happens exactly as he desires. He always wins, his subordinates always praise how great he is, and the women always act as if they find him attractive.

Even the 'villain' who the programmer ends up being victorious over is just another simulated coworker who is forced to play his role. After being defeated, the 'villain' says to the programmer with his last breath, "I've been a good villain for you, haven't I?". The programmer reassures him that yes, he has done a good job being a villain.

So we don't want to say that God is doing something similar. We don't want to say that God needs Satan to obediently play the 'villain' in order for God to defeat Satan and then feel good about himself and be praised by others for God's hollow 'victory'.

Open Theist Approaches to The Book of Job

Some open theists do address the Book of Job in regard to the problem of theodicy. For example, Gregory Boyd argues that it possible to interpret the Book of Job in a way that does not affirm that God controls Satan.

Since the Book of Job is written in the form of a poem, Boyd claims that the first few verses are simply setting up the narrative context of Job’s trials. Thus, Boyd says it's an interpretive error to try use these verses to answer questions such as "Does Satan always have to get specific permission every time he does something?" or "Is every affliction the result of a heavenly challenge to God’s authority?" Instead, Boyd reads the Book of Job similarly to how he reads Jesus’ parables, where what matters is the central point, not peripheral details.20

According to Boyd, the central point of the Book of Job is not that God controls Satan, but that as humans, we can't see all the complexity of everything that's going on behind the scenes which God alone knows about and has to deal with, including the naturally 'chaotic' elements of a fallen world, human free will, and spiritual warfare.21

At the end of the Book of Job, God gives many examples of such complexity and chaos, which corrects Job's mistaken assumptions about God (Job 38:1-40:2, 40:6-41:34). Job admits that he has spoken about things he has no real idea about (Job 40:4-5, 42:2-6). Thus, we shouldn't assume that everything Job says about God before this point is true.22 Instead, "Job passes his test not because his theology is correct but because he does not reject God even when his theology tells him he should".23

In general, I do like Boyd's approach to the Book of Job. However, I don't want to say that the biblical introduction to the Book of Job is inaccurate or is simply the literary setup for the rest of the book. I believe that all Scripture is true and inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16), who is God and so never lies (Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:18). That means we need to deal carefully with these verses, rather than dismiss them.

But I think there are other ways of looking at Satan's activities that could help us understand how God can be fully in control of evil without God being the cause of this evil, and without Satan having to actively obey God as if he is only another one of God's servants, even though God does, in a sense, give Satan 'permission' to act as Satan does.

So the challenge is correctly laid out by John Calvin, who asks regarding Job's afflictions, "How may we attribute this same work to God, to Satan, and to man as author, without either excusing Satan as [being] associated with God, or making God the author of evil?" 24

Part of Calvin's solution is to argue that the motives of each individual involved in Job's afflictions (i.e., God, Satan, and human sinners) are different, and so are the means by which they act:25

Regarding their motives:

• God's good purpose is to test Job's faithfulness and vindicate him against Satan's accusation.
• Satan's evil goal is to make Job turn against God.
• The sinful Chaldeans want to take someone else's property for themselves.

In terms of how they act:

• God gives permission to Satan to temporarily afflict Job.
• Satan tempts the Chaldeans to sin.
• The Chaldeans choose to sin and carry out the crime.

So far, I think this is relatively correct. In this case, we can see that God is not the cause of evil, but God does allow it, and the sin is fully attributed both to Satan and sinful humans.

Unfortunately, Calvin agrees with Augustine's claim that people don't really have free will. Instead of having free will, Calvin says that sinful humans' wills are either controlled by God or by Satan, depending on God's choice to 'abandon' certain people to Satan's control.26

However, most non-Calvinists would agree with the idea that humans must be the ultimate authors of our own actions in order for us to be held morally accountable for our actions, whether good or bad.27 The same would be true for Satan and demons.

But this again raises the question of how God can control evil so that no more evil happens in the world than God wishes to allow, despite sinful people, Satan, and demons all having genuine free will.

Two Analogies Of How God Might Control Evil

Here, I want to propose two analogies for how we might picture God controlling evil, yet without God being the cause of it, in such a way that God can still have precise control over exactly how much evil happens, and when.

Analogy 1: God Controls The Brakes on Evil's Car

In this analogy, let's work with the example of the crucifixion.

When I was learning to drive, my instructor used a car that had been modified to include an additional brake pedal on the front passenger's side of the vehicle. In this way, the driving instructor could force the car to stop at any time, regardless of what the student driver was doing.

So let's picture Satan and sinful human nature as sitting in the student driver's seat, and God the Father sitting in the driving instructor's seat, with access to an additional brake pedal.

Then let's say that Satan sees Jesus crossing the street up ahead, and so Satan intends to run him down. Therefore, Satan presses the gas pedal to the floor.

Yet God can push his brake pedal and bring the car to a total standstill whenever God wants. God can also press on the brake pedal to a greater or lesser extent, which allows the vehicle to move forward at whatever speed God desires, even though God is not the one in control of the gas pedal.

So, if God needs evil to occur to fulfill any particular Bible prophecy, God could simply decide to not restrain the evil that God knows Satan and sinful humans want to do. However, God is not responsible for the evil that happens, because all the evil that occurs is properly attributed to the misused free will of his sinful, rebellious creatures who did it. God is not to blame for it, even though God could theoretically stop it.

I believe we see this happening during Jesus' life. Satan was always aiming to kill Jesus right from the time when Jesus was a baby.

To do this, Satan likely tempted King Herod to send soldiers to kill all the toddlers in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16). Herod gave in to this temptation, perhaps out of Herod's own pride and fear of being replaced (Matthew 2:1-4). But God "put the brakes" on this attempt to kill Jesus by sending Mary's husband Joseph a dream to warn him about this attack, and, using the gold and other expensive gifts the wise men had given them, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were able to escape into Egypt and live there until Herod was dead, and it was safe for them to return to Israel (Matthew 2:13-15). And who knows what else Satan might have tried in the meantime that wasn't recorded in the Bible.

But Satan didn't give up. Later, during Jesus' ministry, there were times when Jesus was at risk of being killed by angry groups of people who didn't agree with his teachings (Luke 4:28-30, John 5:18, 7:1, 8:59, 10:31-39, Mark 14:1-2). But we can say that God's divine providence again stopped these attempts from succeeding until it was time for the crucifixion.

That's why when it was finally time for Jesus to be crucified, all Jesus had to do was to not resist being arrested by Israel's religious leaders. Jesus said that it was the time for darkness/evil to have power (Luke 22:52-53), and Jesus allowed it because he could have called down angels to defend him (Matthew 26:53), but he didn't. Presumably, Jesus could also have come down off the cross whenever he wanted (Matthew 27:40, Luke 23:37), but he chose not to, because it was all part of God's plan for Jesus to die for the sins of the world (John 12:27, 10:17-18, 3:14-18).

The Bible also tells us that Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him from early on in his ministry, and even called Judas a 'devil' (John 6:70-71). At the Last Supper, Jesus gave Judas permission to go and betray him (Matthew 26:24-25, John 13:26-30).

But how did Jesus know that Judas would definitely go through with it?

We do know that Judas seemed to love money more than he loved Jesus, based on how Judas objected to Jesus being anointed with expensive perfume as a foreshadowing of Jesus' upcoming death and burial. We could speculate that Judas wanted the perfume to be sold so that he could then help himself to part of the proceeds, since Judas occasionally stole money for himself from the disciples' joint moneybag (John 12:4-6).

Matthew suggests that it was just after this incident with the perfume that Judas went to the religious leaders to see if they would be willing to pay Judas to betray Jesus (Matthew 26:14-16). So maybe this perfume incident, combined with Judas' pre-existing character flaws and some intense temptation from Satan (John 13:2) could have provided Judas with the motive to betray Jesus.

Then, once Jesus gave the word and allowed it, the Bible says that Satan entered Judas when he went off to inform the religious leaders about where Jesus was (John 13:27). We could question whether this was literal demonic possession, or something more metaphorical. Jesus did at one point call Peter "Satan" for expressing opposition to Jesus' prophecy of his upcoming death (Matthew 16:23), but it doesn't mean that Peter was literally possessed by Satan when he made that statement.

Given that Judas did seem to be repentant after he realized what he'd done, tried to return the money the religious leaders gave him, and felt so bad that he decided to commit suicide (Matthew 27:3-5), I don't want to say that Judas was pure evil. But Judas clearly did have character flaws that made him a good candidate for Satan to exploit, and God/Jesus seems to have allowed Satan to tempt and/or empower Judas to do what at least part of Judas wanted to do.

Similarly, Jesus could prophesy that Peter would deny him three times (Luke 22:33-34), because Jesus already knew that Satan wanted to test Peter and the other disciples' faithfulness (Luke 22:31). Just like Jesus knew Judas' heart, we can say that Jesus also knew that Peter was not as courageous as Peter wanted to appear. So the fact that God only allowed Peter to be tested three times before the rooster crowed would have been an instance of God graciously restraining all the other attacks that Satan probably had ready to use against Peter to try to make him abandon his faith in Jesus.

God also seems to have been able to use Peter's denials for good, to humble Peter and deal with his pride, knowing that Jesus could later forgive Peter and restore him in the sight of the disciples (Luke 22:32, John 21:15-19).

The same principle seems to apply to the events of the end times. In 2 Thessalonians 2:7, it says that something or someone called "the restrainer" is keeping the Antichrist from being revealed until the proper time. Thus, even as we see all the signs of the end times occurring around us, God can allow developments in international politics to progress at a faster or slower rate so that the Tribulation begins exactly on schedule.

So this car analogy basically just illustrates that as long as God always has ways to restrict evildoers' plans and activities, God can decide when and where any particular instance of evil is allowed to happen by letting up on the "brakes" that otherwise would prevent evil from occurring.

However, we may then ask about how God actually "puts the brakes" on evil without having to revert to the idea that Satan has to get God's permission every time Satan wants to do evil.

To start answering this question, let's briefly look at Jonathan Edwards' answer to the question of where evil comes from, despite God being fully good.

Jonathan Edwards' Approach to Theodicy

Jonathan Edwards, despite being a follower of Calvin, actually has an analogy that's somewhat similar to what I will be proposing for my second analogy.

On the topic of God's relationship to evil, Edwards says,

Thus it is certain and demonstrable, from the holy Scriptures, as well as the nature of things, and the principles of Arminians, that God permits sin; and at the same time, so orders things, in his providence, that it certainly and infallibly will come to pass, in consequence of his permission.28

The example Edwards uses is of the sun. He says the sun is the proper and direct cause of light and warmth, yet when it sets, it indirectly but necessarily leads to coldness and darkness coming over the earth, despite these attributes not being those of the sun itself.29

So likewise, Edwards sees God as being the proper cause of holiness and goodness, but when God chooses to withdraw his good influence, it inherently leads to sin and evil arising. But God is not to blame for this evil, since it did not come from him, but only from the lack of God's good influence.30

In an earlier work, Edwards made use of the same analogy:

When the sun withdraws, beasts of prey go forth to destroy, and that is the time for caterpillars and noisome insects, and hurtful vermin in general, to go forth to prey upon the trees and plants. But when the sun rises they retire, well representing the nature of evil spirits, and the corruptions of the heart, and wicked men, and the enemies of our souls.31

So to Edwards, the actual sources of evil in the world would be Satan/demons and also sinful humans' hearts.

Edwards' analogy does reveal the truth of how after the first sin of Adam and Eve, God partly withdrew his good and holy presence from the world so that we're now living in a perpetual spiritual 'twilight' of sorts, where both good and evil occurs. Edwards' view could also be taken to imply that whenever any evil event happens, it's because God has withdrawn some of his good influence and allowed evil influences (e.g. Satan and/or sinful human nature) to have more freedom to do what they naturally want to do.

In Edwards' larger theological system, unfortunately, this explanation does not work, because to Edwards, God is the ultimate cause of why everything happens, including sin and evil.32 But in a theological system that does acknowledge that God gives people and angels genuine free will, I think Edwards' analogy is a useful starting point.

However, I don't think Edwards' analogy is as helpful to explain how God can actually control evil to the extent that would be required for God to arrange the fulfillment of particular prophecies. The problem is that if God simply withdraws his influence and allows Satan, demons, or sinful people to have more freedom, then how can God guarantee how they will use that freedom?

This is where I think my second analogy is a little more helpful. In this analogy, spiritual warfare is completely real and is not just a sham or a puppet show. In fact, in this analogy, spiritual warfare actually becomes a critical part of divine providence.

Analogy 2: God Controls The Thermostat of Evil

In my apartment, I have a heater that I control by setting the thermostat to regulate to any temperature of my choosing. It does this by turning the heater's fan on or off to pump hot air into my apartment.

However, my apartment does not overheat because in the winter there is always a constant source of cold coming from the windows and exterior walls of the apartment. As long as the heater is functioning, the thermostat can control how much heat is pumped into the apartment, and thus, it can control the entire temperature of the apartment. This is true even though the thermostat does not have control over how cold it is outside, and it can't control whether I have any windows open or not.

So likewise, instead of God having to control both the good side and the evil side in order to have things work out the way that God has prophesied they will, I think it is actually possible for God to control only the good side, and yet, by extension, God's control over the good side also results in God having full control over evil.

In other words, God can control how much evil happens in the world not by controlling evil itself, but by controlling the amount of good that God's people or holy angels do to counteract, thwart, or oppose the evil that God knows is likely about to happen or that sinful humans secretly want to do. This is how spiritual warfare becomes a critical part of God's providence, and explains how God can "put the brakes" on evil without us having to say that God controls Satan like a puppet who must always go ask for God's permission before Satan can do any evil.

Are there any examples of this in the Bible? I think we can look at the Book of Esther.

At the time, the Jews had been exiled from Israel and many were living in the Medo-Persian empire. There, a high-level government official named Haman hated the Jews and wanted them to be destroyed, due to how he felt disrespected by a Jewish man named Mordecai (Esther 3:1-6). To carry out his plan, Haman convinced the king that the Jews were a threat to his rule, and persuaded the king to sign a decree that on a particular day, anyone who wanted to could legally attack any Jews living in the empire, kill them, and take their belongings (Esther 3:8, 3:13).

So how did God prevent this terrible event from happening?

God did not have to destroy Haman directly, or override Haman's free will. Instead, God seems to have dealt with the situation by using Mordecai's niece Esther's God-given beauty to move the king to choose her as his queen (Esther 2:17). Mordecai told Esther about Haman's evil plot, but Esther said that if she went to the king to protest this law, she risked being executed (Esther 4:8-11).

In response, Mordecai argued,

If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 4:13-14)

So even though it doesn't directly say that God was involved in putting Esther into position as queen as a way to deal with this situation, it is certainly implied. Yet as Mordecai said, if Esther had not freely chosen to speak to the king, then God would have had some other way of saving the Jewish people from being killed.

Even later in the story, the king didn't save the Jews from being killed by repealing the evil law that Haman influenced him to write, because repealing any law was illegal (Esther 8:8). However, the king could give the Jews the permission to fight back if anyone attacked them (Esther 8:10-12). This was enough, and it worked. The king also ordered Haman to be hanged (Esther 7:10).

So I see this as an example of God working through people who freely did good to oppose and thwart evil that was being planned.

Now there's only one last question we need to answer, which is how God can know that Satan, demons, or sinful people will definitely do evil if it is necessary to fulfill Bible prophecy.

The Sources of Evil

In both of my above analogies, God's ability to precisely control evil by choosing when and how to thwart the evil intentions of Satan and sinful humans only works if there is a guaranteed source of constant evil which is always attempting to do as much evil as it possibly can.

Yet given that I believe that God does give his creatures genuine free will, then in relation to the instances of biblical prophecies where God seemingly needs evil to occur, how could God absolutely know that sinful people and Satan/demons would freely do the evil that is necessary to fulfill prophecy?

It's easy to argue that because they have rejected God and God's goodness, Satan and demons always freely choose to pursue evil, since that is the opposite of God's goodness.

Thus, Satan and demons can always be assumed to pursue maximum evil in whatever ways they possibly can, at all times. This means that Satan does not take naps, does not go on vacation, and does not decide to 'play nice' on some days. God is then constantly thwarting the evil that Satan and demons are attempting to do, in order to enforce God's necessary limits on evil. God would prevent this evil either through the opposition of God's holy angels or the good actions that God can influence or cause people to do.

But how can God predict that people will definitely act in a sinful way?

In general, I think both Christians and non-Christians generally presume that most people are mostly good-natured. However, there are a number of Bible verses that explain that if left to itself, the sinful human heart is full of nothing but evil:

• The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).
• The intention of man's heart is evil from his youth (Genesis 8:21).
• The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV).
• Jesus said "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person" (Mark 7:20-23).
• But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire (James 1:14).

There are also instances where the Bible talks about God withdrawing his influence to give people over to their sin as a punishment for their earlier sinfulness:

• And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done (Romans 1:28).
• But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels (Psalm 81:11-12).
• And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil (John 3:19).

But why is this the case? Why is it that when humanity is left to itself, we all become sinners who follow our inherently-sinful hearts' evil desires?

That all goes back to Adam and Eve. When they first chose to reject God, the Bible says they became sinners, and so all their descendants would also be born as sinners (Romans 5:19). We can in some way picture this as being because all humanity goes back ultimately to Adam, since even Eve was made from Adam's rib (Genesis 2:18-23).33

Jonathan Edwards compares the sinful Adam to a corrupt acorn, which then grows through time to produce a corrupt family tree of all the rest of humanity, who are essentially a continuation of Adam’s own being.34 Oliver Crisp argues similarly, which I covered in my post on what it means to be made in the image of God.35 Thus, each person is essentially just a different variation of Adam and Eve, and since Eve came from Adam, then ultimately we are all a variation of Adam himself.

Yes, we still have free will, but now that humanity has become sinners, if left to itself, our free will would always choose wrongly, so that we cannot choose to do anything that is good on our own. Theologically, this condition is called total depravity.

Total depravity is commonly known as being represented by the letter T in the acronym TULIP which is used to describe the basics of Calvinist theology. Yet the concept of total depravity is also affirmed by Arminians, just as Arminius himself did.36

God's Answer To Total Depravity

There are two forms of God's grace that can compensate for total depravity's negative effects on human free will: prevenient grace, and common grace. These are two more ways that God can add goodness into the world to give God more control over evil.

Prevenient Grace

Prevenient grace (a.k.a. "the grace that goes before") is the action of the Holy Spirit drawing all people to Jesus/God (John 1:9, 6:44, 12:32, Titus 2:11, 1 John 4:19, Romans 10:20).37 God does this because God truly wants everyone to be saved (John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 18:23).

Without this gracious divine influence, no one would ever have any interest in believing in Jesus (Romans 3:11, 8:7-8). Their minds would be spiritually 'blinded' by Satan's lies (2 Corinthians 4:4, John 12:40, 1 John 2:11) unless God opens them through prevenient grace (1 John 5:20, Ephesians 1:17-18). Even the disciples would not have chosen to follow Jesus without Jesus choosing them first (John 15:16).

But when the Holy Spirit is working as prevenient grace in our hearts, it opens up the possibility of making a genuinely free choice about whether to resist it or not.38 Unfortunately, some do resist it (Luke 13:34, 7:30, Acts 7:51).

If we do not resist this work of the Holy Spirit, then eventually, we will be brought to the point of believing in Jesus and being eternally saved. Thus, eternal life is opt-out, not opt-in. We do nothing to save ourselves, and eternal salvation is a gift, so that no one can boast about doing anything to save themselves (Ephesians 2:8-10), since not resisting grace is not a praiseworthy 'work'.39

Common Grace

Common grace is less obviously seen in the Bible, but due to total depravity, we know that common grace must exist. Common grace is the grace that God gives to all people, regardless of whether they are saved or not.

Common grace can include things like God's provision of basic physical needs for life (Matthew 5:44-45, Acts 14:17, Psalm 145:9). But most importantly, common grace is also what counters total depravity in human hearts, so that sinful people with totally depraved hearts do not act as sinfully and evilly as we possibly could.

This grace is necessary so that life can go on in this world, so that societies and families can exist, so that humanity doesn't totally destroy itself before God's plan for history is complete, as I argued in my post on why God doesn't prevent more evil.

This common grace that restrains sin should then also be attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit in people's hearts and minds. The Holy Spirit could inspire, motivate, and enable people to do good works that otherwise would never naturally occur to the sinful human heart afflicted with total depravity.40

As an example, God said that it was himself who kept King Abimelech from sinning with Abraham's wife Sarah (Genesis 20:6). The human conscience can also be seen as part of common grace (Romans 2:14-15), at least, when it's working properly (1 Timothy 4:2, Titus 1:15).

But the Holy Spirit's operation in sinners' hearts when acting as common grace is conceptually distinct from prevenient grace, since the outcome and purpose of each form of the Holy Spirit's operation would be different (e.g. drawing people to faith in God to gain eternal salvation versus enabling people to do good works to restrain evil in the world).

The Holy Spirit acting as common grace can also make use of sinful humanity's inclination towards selfishness, since even the worst of sinners can see the value in caring about others as long as these people are either helpful or useful to the sinner, or if these people love the sinner in return for the sinner's love (Luke 6:32-33).41 Yet this sort of selfish 'love' for others is not as admirable as loving others at cost to ourselves, which is what Jesus said is the greatest form of love (Luke 6:35, John 15:13, Romans 5:6-8).

Sometimes we do see the Holy Spirit's influence as common grace being removed from this world to a very great extent, so that people can sometimes act in fully-selfish ways. As a terrible example, in desperate situations, even mothers will kill and cannibalize their own babies (Lamentations 2:20, 2 Kings 6:28-29). Sorry for that image, but it is in the Bible, and it proves that there is no form of love that comes naturally to the sinful human heart — not even the love of mothers for their children.

Therefore, due to common grace, we can say that whatever good anyone does is attributed fully to God, who is the source of all good (John 3:21, James 1:17, 1 John 4:7, 3 John 1:11, Mark 10:18).42

Still, God graciously chooses to reward his people for the good things we freely do (Matthew 6:3-4, 6:6, 10:42, 25:14-23, 1 Corinthians 3:11-15), even though the ability, inspiration, and motivation to do these good works came only from God in the first place, not from ourselves (Ephesians 2:10). Thus, Paul could say that the good things he does is only because of Christ in him (Galatians 2:20), and the same goes for all Christians (Philippians 2:13).43

I've also mentioned in my other post on open theism and Bible prophecy that I believe it is no problem for God to actually force someone to do good or morally-neutral actions, if there were absolutely no other way for God to either restrain evil or fulfill Bible prophecy. However, in this case, these non-consensual good works would not be worthy of being rewarded since the individual's own free will wasn't involved.

Free Will Despite Total Depravity

Just as prevenient grace enables human free will to not resist the Holy Spirit drawing people to put their faith in Jesus, common grace enables human free will to resist being fully enslaved to sin and evil (John 8:34, Romans 6:6) and opens up the possibility that sinful humans can choose to do good instead.

Thus, I do agree with a decent amount of what Calvin says about no one having any free will to do good or believe in Jesus apart from God's grace.44 Therefore, there is nothing left for any Christian to brag about, whether our faith in Jesus, or our good works, since both of these are gifts from God and are only possible because of God's grace, even though we do participate in these things using our free(d) will.

So in summary, total depravity in sinful human hearts, along with the utter rebellion of Satan and demons who are filled with hatred for God and all things that are good, are the constant and predictable sources of evil that oppose God's goodness and love.

By choosing when and where to restrain this evil through spiritual warfare or God's common grace, God can have complete control over evil, without God being the source of this evil.

But we must remember that God doesn't owe sinners anything. Therefore God can, if he so chooses, justly withdraw his common grace from human hearts in order to let people act as they would under total depravity and the tempting influences of Satan/demons. But even in this situation God is not the source of these sinful or evil thoughts or actions, even though he allows them to occur.

It would be the same thing when God withdraws his protection or blessing from groups of people or individuals, either as punishment for their unfaithfulness (Deuteronomy 28:15-68, Isaiah 5:5-7), or as in the case of Job, for the purpose of spiritual testing (Job 1:8-12).

Satan can then tempt people to give in to their existing sinful desires (James 1:15, 1 Peter 5:8), but if Satan could force anyone to sin, then they would not be personally accountable for their sin.45 So as long as nothing outside of the sinner makes them sin, then libertarian free will still exists, even for Satan, demons, and human sinners in a state of total depravity. That means they can be held accountable for their sin.46

Even Christians are still under the influence of sin, even though we now have a dual nature — our inner regenerated spirit which is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and does not sin (1 John 3:9, NKJV),47, and our 'flesh' which is still under the influence of sin (Romans 7:14-20, Galatians 5:17, 1 John 1:8). This is why I like Gregory Boyd's view of sanctification. He says it is our 'flesh' that causes us to still sin, due to our upbringing in this sinful world that has ingrained sinful patterns of thought into our brains.

But, returning to those verses I quoted at the start of this post about God being the cause of 'evil' or 'calamity'/'disaster', we can explain these by noting that God does, in a way, take responsibility for these evil things that happen when he withdraws his grace and protection from Israel. This is because in the situations when God is judging his unfaithful people, it is necessary that they know their suffering is because they have abandoned God, rather than it simply being a case of bad luck, or because their army didn't train hard enough, or because God had been bested by some other deity, etc.48

However, these verses don't mean that every instance of suffering in the world is due to God's punishment for sin (Luke 13:1-4, 13:10-16, John 9:1-3). And we can have confidence that because of God's omnipotence, he is able to bring good even out of evil (Romans 8:28), even though it wasn't intended for good (Genesis 50:20).

How Can God Fairly Punish Sinners Who Can't Avoid Sinning?

As a final question, then, we may ask how is it fair for sinners to be punished for their sins if they cannot avoid sinning without God's common grace enabling them to overcome their inherited total depravity?

First, I don't want to say that anyone is ever forced to sin against their free will. Otherwise, they could not be held responsible for it. As noted above, even sinners subject to total depravity still have free will, since no one outside of themselves and their own sinful nature is causing them to sin.

The exact way that any individual chooses to sin would also depend on his or her free will which could freely choose among the number of different sins that God has left open for this individual to potentially commit.

So it is fair for God to inflict temporary punishment on people for their sins in this life, if God judges that this punishment is necessary. But what matters far more than temporary punishment for sin is the eternal punishment for sin, which is eternal death (Romans 6:23, 2 Thessalonians 1:8-10, Revelation 20:14-15).

However, because the eternal punishment for all sin has been experienced by Jesus on the cross on behalf of all sinners (1 John 2:2, Hebrews 2:9, 10:12), now there are only three possible categories of sinners who will face the punishment of eternal death for their sins:

A. Those who continually resisted the Holy Spirit's work as prevenient grace, and so ultimately rejected Jesus' offer of eternal salvation.

B. Those who freely took the Mark of the Beast (Revelation 14:9-11) during the upcoming seven-year Tribulation that happens after the Rapture.

C. The two individuals who will become either the Antichrist or the False Prophet (Revelation 19:20-21, 13:11-14), who would also be included in category A.

Prevenient grace enables all people to make a free choice to believe in Jesus or not, either in this life when they hear the gospel, or as I argue in my theory of Christian inclusivism after death when they face God at the final judgment (Revelation 20:12-15).

Thus, it is totally fair for God to eternally punish sinners for sins they cannot avoid doing in this life, since everyone can avoid facing this eternal punishment simply by believing in Jesus' promise that if we believe in him as our Savior, he will give us eternal life for free.

Summary of How God Controls Evil

So in summary, in this post I believe I've been able to demonstrate that:

1. The Bible says that God is fully and completely good and never does evil.
2. God is not the ultimate cause of the evil that Satan or sinful people do.
3. By choosing to not actively oppose/thwart the evil that Satan, demons, and sinful humans naturally want to do, God effectively gives 'permission' to these evildoers to sin, which is the same as allowing sin that God otherwise could prevent.
4. God can still have precise control over exactly how much evil occurs and when it occurs in the world, so that God can prophesy about people's evil actions that he will allow them to freely do in the future.
5. God does not need perfect foreknowledge of Satan or sinful humans' future free choices to prophesy about evil.
6. When God punishes sinful people for their sins it is due to God's righteous justice, even if this punishment is carried out by God allowing evil to happen to these people.

This is all possible because Satan, demons, and totally depraved sinful human nature are always trying to do as much evil as possible, but God can restrain any particular instance of evil in a number of ways, such as by:

• Ending sinful people's lives.
• Destroying evil societies.
• Allowing evildoers to do evil against other evildoers.49
• Sending holy angels to oppose the evil activities of Satan/demons or people.
• Enabling and inspiring still-sinful people to do good through common grace that opposes or thwarts.
• Even outright forcing people to do good or morally-neutral actions, if absolutely necessary.

But God is not obligated to prevent all evil, and indeed, God cannot actually prevent all evil while still preserving the free will of God's created creatures, whether Satan, demons or sinful people.

However, because the source of evil is not from God, then God does not sin whenever God chooses to withdraw his common grace or chooses to not oppose the activity of Satan/demons and sinful people when they freely choose to do evil. By choosing to withdraw this spiritual opposition or holy influence in particular ways, God can accurately predict how sinful people will behave, and thus, can prophesy about it.

Yet sinful people can be justly held responsible for their sin and punished for it because they were the ultimate authors of their sinful actions, and because all people have the option of having their sins forgiven by choosing to believe in Jesus as their Savior who was punished for their sins, so that everyone who believes in him can have eternal life for free.

Still, God does not have to grant any of his creatures unlimited freedom to do evil, and so God can choose what evil to restrain and what not to restrain, according to his providential plan for the world.

One day, God will put an end to Satan and all sinners who reject God's offer of eternal life, so that no sin or evil will ever happen in the New Heaven and New Earth, and there will be no more death or suffering ever again (Revelation 21:4, 21:27, 22:3). This will be God's ultimate victory over evil.

In the meantime, we will not always understand why God allows any particular instance of sin, evil, and suffering to occur. Therefore, Christians must trust God's providence and his promise that in the end we will finally see all the good that came out of the evil that God did allow for one reason or another (Romans 8:28), and that we will be eternally compensated for every instance of suffering we experienced in this world due to sin and evil (Romans 8:16-18).

I hope this post has been helpful to explain at least some of the complex dynamics regarding God's relationship to sin, evil, sinners, and Satan/demons that we see going on in various places in the Bible. I also hope this can reassure you that God is still fully good, and thus, worthy of being loved, worshipped, and trusted regardless of what evil occurs in the world or that we may personally face in our lives.

Footnotes:

• 1. For more on translation possibilities that do not require these verses to mean that God is the ultimate cause behind all evil in the world, see Frederik Lindström, God and the Origin of Evil: A Contextual Analysis of Alleged Monistic Evidence in the Old Testament, trans. Frederick H. Cryer (Lund: Gleerup, 1983), 198–199. Some of these same difficult verses are examined from an open theist perspective in John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, Rev. ed, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 86-92.
• 2. See my blog post Why Doesn't God Prevent More Evil? for an overview and critique of Thomas J. Oord's theology expressed in his book The Uncontrolling Love of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015) where Oord claims that it is better to say that God truly cannot stop some instances of evil than to say that God permits evil to happen that God could otherwise prevent.
• 3. Justin Dillehay, How Jesus Fulfilled the Passover, The Gospel Coalition, February 29, 2020.
• 4. C. Samuel Storms, "Open Theism in the Hands of an Angry Puritan: Jonathan Edwards on Divine Foreknowledge," in The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, eds. D.G. Hart, Sean Michael Lucas, Stephen J. Nichols (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,2003), 122.
• 5. William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 149-150.
• 6. Such as in the film "12 Monkeys" (1995) starring Bruce Willis. Wikipedia.org, accessed January 1, 2026.
• 7. "Since God is an eternal being, he does not really foreknow anything. He simply knows eternally … what he thinks, he has forever thought. His thought is perfect and absolute; it needs no progress or improvement. So from God’s vantage point he simply knows (not foreknows) what we are doing with our free choices. For what we have, are and will choose is present to God in his eternal NOW." Norman Geisler, "God Knows All Things," in Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, eds. David Basinger & Randall Basinger (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 73.
• 8. As Clark Pinnock explains, "On the one hand, how is a timeless God supposed to act the way the Biblical God is said to act? A timeless being cannot deliberate or anticipate or remember. It cannot do anything or respond to anything. There cannot be any before or after. In short it cannot be the divine Agent we love and worship. And even worse for Geisler’s proposal is the fact that timelessness destroys temporal distinctions and rules out the genuine novelty which results from true freedom." Clark Pinnock, “Clark Pinnock’s Response,” in Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, eds. David Basinger & Randall Basinger (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 96. Gregory Boyd agrees with Pinnock, and says that if God were timeless then God could never experience novelty, creativity, spontaneity, or relationships where one is truly responding to the other. Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 128-129.
• 9. Oliver Crisp argues that before the incarnation, God the Son did not have a human body, contra Robert Jenson who argues that because he believes God is timeless, God the Son must have had a human body eternally. But Crisp says this situation described by Jenson would mean that God the Son is not metaphysically simple, and would be a 'composite' of at least two different parts, which means that God the Son would not be immutable or impassible, as Christian tradition typically asserts. Oliver Crisp, The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 20-31.
• 10. Thus "God’s knowledge of the temporal world is also temporal. God experiences things as they happen, and God’s knowledge of events develops as events take place. God doesn’t see the future in all its detail, because a great deal of the future is not there to be known." Richard Rice, Suffering and the Search for Meaning: Contemporary Responses to the Problem of Pain (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2014), 93. While God experiences time, God can also transcend time in the same sorts of ways that humans do through memory, reason, and imagination. Clark Pinnock, "Systematic Theology" in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 121.
• 11. William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 135.
• 12. William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 145. See also Paul Helm, The Providence of God: Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1994), 45. For example, God may know that I am 30% likely to take one course of action, and 70% likely to do something else, but I could still freely choose to do the less likely course of action, thus 'surprising' God, even though he knew it was still a possibility that I might act in that less-likely way. Gregory Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 61.
• 13. William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 145-146.
• 14. Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 10. Jonathan Edwards agrees that God having foreknowledge of sins is effectively the same as the Calvinist idea of God ordaining sins. See Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 398.
• 15. The problem with God having perfect foreknowledge of our 'free' choices is explained by Clark Pinnock: "If God sees the whole of the future, then the future is fixed and frozen, and we are mistaken to believe that we have the liberty to choose one way or the other….So the future is not, as [Bruce Reichenbach] thinks, a realm of open possibility in which [Reichenbach] can by his freedom determine what is true. It cannot turn out different in any respect from what God from eternity has infallibly known it to be. Reichenbach can only choose to do actions which God has always known he would do. Therefore he cannot do otherwise than what he is destined to do." Clark Pinnock, “Clark Pinnock’s Response,” in Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, eds. David Basinger & Randall Basinger (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 137-138.
• 16. Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 34.
• 17. Gregory A. Boyd, Is God to Blame?: Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 192.
• 18. Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 35; Bruce A. Ware, God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 69.
• 19. USS Callister, Wikipedia.org, accessed December 24, 2025.
• 20. Gregory A. Boyd, Is God to Blame?: Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 86-87.
• 21. "Behind every particular event in history lies an impenetrably vast matrix of interlocking free decisions made by humans and angels. We experience life as largely arbitrary because we can't fathom the causal chains that lie behind every particular event. In Christ, God's character and purposes are not mysterious, but the vast complexity of causal chains is. The mystery of evil, therefore, is about an unfathomably complex and war-torn creation, not about God's character and purposes in creation." Gregory A. Boyd, Is God to Blame?: Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 80. See Boyd's analysis of the Book of Job on p.95-104.
• 22. Gregory A. Boyd, Is God to Blame?: Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 92-94.
• 23. Gregory A. Boyd, Is God to Blame?: Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 94-95.
• 24. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2011), section 2.4.2, 310.
• 25. "The Lord's purpose is to exercise the patience of His servant by calamity; Satan endeavors to drive him to desperation; the Chaldeans strive to acquire gain from another's property contrary to law and right. So great is the diversity of purpose that already strongly marks the deed. There is no less difference in the manner. The Lord permits Satan to afflict His servant; He hands the Chaldeans over to be impelled by Satan, having chosen them as His ministers for this task. Satan with his poison darts arouses the wicked minds of the Chaldeans to execute that evil deed. They dash madly into injustice, and they render all their members guilty and befoul them by the crime. Satan is properly said, therefore, to act in the reprobate over whom he exercises his reign, that is, the reign of wickedness. God is also said to act in His own manner, in that Satan himself, since he is the instrument of God's wrath, bends himself hither and thither at His beck and command to execute His just judgments." John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2011), section 2.4.2, 310-311. See more in sections 2.4.3-2.4.5, p.311-313.
• 26. "Somewhere Augustine compares man's will to a horse awaiting its rider's command, and God and the devil to its riders. 'If God sits astride it,' he says, 'then as a moderate and skilled rider, he guides it properly, spurs it if it is too slow, checks it if it is too swift, restrains it if it is too rough or too wild, subdues it if it balks, and leads it into the right path. But if the devil saddles it, he violently drives it far from the trail like a foolish and wanton rider, forces it into ditches, tumbles it over cliffs, and goads it into obstinancy and fierceness.' ... For those whom the Lord does not make worthy to be guided by his Spirit he abandons, with just judgment, to Satan's action." John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2011), section 2.4.1, 309-310. See more in sections 2.4.6-2.4.7 on p.314-316, 2.4.6-2.4.8 on p.314-316, 2.5.14 on p.334.
• 27. T. J. Mawson, Free Will: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), 39.
• 28. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 403.
• 29. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 404.
• 30. "So, inasmuch as sin is not the fruit of any positive agency or influence of the Most High, but on the contrary, arises from the withholding of his action and energy, and... necessarily follows on the want of his influence; this is no argument that he is sinful, or his operation evil, or has anything of the nature of evil; but on the contrary, that he, and his agency, are altogether good and holy, and that he is the fountain of all holiness." Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 404.
• 31. Edwards, "Images of Divine Things," no. 186 in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 11 Typological Writings, eds. Wallace E. Anderson, Mason I. Lowance Jr., and David H. Watters (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 120.
• 32. Given Edwards’ philosophical occasionalism, the distinction between God's causation of an event and God's permission of an event is very small or even nonexistent. Oliver D. Crisp, Jonathan Edwards and the Metaphysics of Sin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 64; Oliver D. Crisp, Jonathan Edwards Among the Theologians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 177. Edwards does at one point outright say that God is the 'author' of sin: "if, by 'the author of sin,' is meant the permitter, or not a hinderer of sin; and at the same time, a disposer of the state of events, in such a manner, for wise, holy and most excellent ends and purposes, that sin, if it be permitted or not hindered, will most certainly and infallibly follow; I say, if this be all that is meant, by being the author of sin, I don't deny that God is the author of sin." Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 399. But again, this excuse only works if sinners have genuine free will so that their actions are not fully controlled and caused by God.
• 33. "We have some difficulty accepting with our total being the conclusion that the whole race was condemned for Adam's sin. This is made far more acceptable when we see that the nature of things made it necessary that the race be charted with Adam's sin than to think that God made the decision in no relationship to necessity.... The race in Adam has descended, body and spirit, from him. This means that we were in Adam and were identified with him in our sin. It necessitates our being partakers with him in his guilt and condemnation." F. Leroy Forlines, Classical Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation, ed. J. Matthew Pinson (Nashville, TN: Randall House Publishers, 2011), 30.
• 34. Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 3, ed. Clyde A. Holbrook (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 385–386, 389, 391.
• 35. Oliver D. Crisp, The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 131-137.
• 36. "In his 'Public Disputations' the founder of Arminianism declared unequivocally that because of Adam's fall all humanity has come under the dominion of sin and that 'In this state, the Free Will of man towards the True Good is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost: And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace'." Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 56.
• 37. "Prevenient grace that frees the human will to respond to the gospel in repentance and faith comes quite apart from any freely determined reception on the part of the person. It is a sheer gift of God through Christ to all humanity (to some degree) and to those who hear the gospel proclaimed to a greater degree. Wesley and some other Arminians have even affirmed a sense in which grace is irresistible!" Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 59.
• 38. "Before Adam and Eve sinned, it was within the framework of possibilities within which they operated to remain in the practice of complete righteousness, or to commit sin. After they sinned, it no longer remained within the framework of possibilities for them to practice uninterrupted righteousness. The same is true for fallen man now (Rom. 8:7-8)." F. Leroy Forlines, Classical Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation, ed. J. Matthew Pinson (Nashville, TN: Randall House Publishers, 2011) 21. "Jesus makes it clear that it does not fall within the framework of possibilities for a sinner to respond to the gospel unless he is drawn by the Holy Spirit (Jn. 6:44). The influence of the Holy Spirit working in the heart of the person who hears the gospel brings about a framework of possibilities in which a person can say yes or no to the gospel" (Forlines, 22). See also Forlines, 51-52. Even open theists affirm prevenient grace, as John Sanders does, although he calls it "enabling" grace: "But if humans are in bondage to sin, how can they respond to God and enter into a personal relationship of mutual love? The answer is enabling grace. Sinners do not trust or love God; they have turned away from God's love and are not inclined to accept his love.... Enabling grace is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for our redemption. This grace is the revelation of God's mercy and love, which opens up new options in the lives of sinners (1 Pet 1:3). The gospel story enlightens, convicts and enlivens us to a future that was closed to us before.... The love of Jesus elicits our loving response and motivates our imitation of his love." John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 256-257.
• 39. A similar argument is made by Roger Olson: "Imagine a woman on the verge of bankruptcy boasting that her endorsement and deposit of a gift check that saved her from financial ruin was the decisive element in her financial rescue. Anyone who heard her and knew the true circumstances of her situation would consider her either an ingrate or a lunatic. The decisive element was the gift of the check." Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 157.
• 40. After all, We must remember that God's grace is just a shorthand way of referring to God acting graciously, rather than thinking of God's grace as being some supernatural substance or effect that can be applied to sinners as if it were a sort of medicine.
• 41. Jonathan Edwards imagines a situation where a gang of robbers receive a tip from an informant that the robbers' hideout is about to be raided by the authorities, and the otherwise-evil robbers express their gratitude and appreciation to the informant who tipped them off about the coming raid. Jonathan Edwards, “True Virtue,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 583. Edwards goes on to argue that self-love can also explain things such as gratitude, pity, the instinctive parental affection for children, and even the human conscience, which are all things that restrain evil in the world to some degree (WJE 8: 575-616). "So, natural affection, love to our party, or to particular friends, tends to keep us from acts of injustice towards these persons; which would be real wickedness. Pity preserves from cruelty, which would be real and great moral evil. Natural conscience tends to restrain sin in general, in the present state of the world" (WJE 8: 616).
• 42. Arminius wrote "I ascribe to grace THE COMMENCEMENT, THE CONTINUANCE, AND THE CONSUMMATION OF ALL GOOD,—and to such an extent do I carry its influence, that a man, though already regenerate,can neither conceive, will, nor do any good at all, nor resist any evil temptation, without this preventing and exciting, this following and co-operating grace—from this statement it wil clearly appear, that I am by no means injurious or unjust to grace, by attributing, as it is reported of me, too much to man's free-will." Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 143-144. Thus, Olson says "Clearly then Arminius did believe people are totally dependent on grace for any and every good they have or do" (144).
• 43. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2011) 2.5.15 p.335, 2.5.2 p.318-319.
• 44. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2011) 2.2.26, 2.2.27, 2.3.1-2.3.12, p.286-306.
• 45. Regarding those who get caught up in things like the occult and end up getting demonically possessed, we might say that a person could be held responsible for freely putting themselves into a situation where they lose some of their free will, similar to a situation where someone willingly takes drugs or alcohol and then acts in ways they didn't necessarily have full control over. On the flip side, we do praise people who over time form themselves in such a way that they feel they must do something good and cannot do otherwise. See T. J. Mawson, Free Will: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), 99. For example, otherwise, we would have to say that Judas couldn't be properly blamed for betraying Jesus when Satan entered into him. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 296. In these cases, the blame or praise for the final 'unchosen' end state and the actions that occurred in that 'unfree' state would, I think, transfer backward to the earlier free decisions that ended up creating that 'unfree' end state. As Edwards argues that the Arminians believe "If a man in one or more thing that he does, exercises liberty, and then by those acts is brought into such circumstances, that his liberty ceases, and there follows a long series of acts or events that come to pass necessarily; those consequent acts are not virtuous or vicious, rewardable or punishable; but only the free acts that established this necessity; for in them alone was the man free." Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University, 2008), 325.
• 46. "When an agent (a human or God) acts freely in the libertarian sense, nothing outside the self (including physical realities within the body) is causing it; the intellect or character alone rules over the will and turns it one way or another. Deliberation and then choice are the only determining factors, although factors such as nature and nurture, and divine influence come into play. Arminians do not believe in absolute free will; the will is always influenced and situated in a context. Even God is guided by his nature and character when making decisions. But Arminians deny that creaturely decisions and actions are controlled by God or any force outside the self." Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 75.
• 47.See comments on 1 John 3:9 by Zane Hodges, "1 John", The Grace New Testament Commentary, Vol. 2, ed. Robert N. Wilkin (Denton, TX: Grace Evangelical Society, 2010), 1208-1209. "Sin does exist in the Christian, but it is foreign and extraneous to his regenerated inner self, where Christ dwells in perfect holiness. Since Christ is eternal life (1 John 5:20), the one who possesses that life cannot sin because he is born of God. The divine seed (sperma) of that life [i.e., the Holy Spirit — Ephesians 1:13-14] remains (meno, 'abides,' 'stays') in him who is born again, making sin an impossibility at the level of his regenerate inward self.... The regenerate person can express himself only through righteousness (cf. 2:29) and can never express himself through sin, because he cannot sin" (1209).
• 48. "The people were unwilling to recognize the Lord's hand against them (Amos 4:1-6; 9:10). They refused to believe that God would punish them for their sins, so they sought other explanations." John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 87.
• 49. See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2011) 4.20.30, 1517. "Sometimes he directs to this end the rage of men with other intentions and other endeavors." "Thus he tamed the pride of Tyre by the Egyptians, the insolence of the Egyptians by the Assyrians, the fierceness of the Assyrians by the Chaldeans; the arrogance of Babylon by the Medes and Persians, after Cyrus had already subjugated the Medes. The ungratefulness of the kings of Judah and Israel and their impious obstinancy toward his many benefits, he sometimes by the Assyrians, sometimes by the Babylonians, crushed and afflicted — although not all in the same way.... But the latter kind of men, although they were directed by God’s hand whither he pleased, and executed his work unwittingly, yet planned in their minds to do nothing but an evil act."