We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Free Will: What about “natural” evil? Was Hurricane Sandy a Free Agent?
What about natural evil? How does free will help to make sense of this? Greg reflects on the origins of sickness, natural disaster, animal suffering and so on. Hope you’re enjoying the series so far. There’s more to come!
Category: Q&A
Tags: Calvinism, Determinism, Evil, Free Will, Natural Evil, Open Theism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict, The Problem of Evil
Related Reading

Last Minute Preparations
We’re all busy here at ReKnew making last minute preparations for the Open2013 conference here in St. Paul, MN. It’s our first ever event of this kind and there’s a nervous energy and anticipation. I wonder if you’ll hold this up in prayer if you weren’t able to join us? We have a last minute…

What Does a Perfect God Look Like?
The “classical view of God” refers to the view of God that has dominated Christian theology since the earliest Church fathers. According to this theology, God is completely “immutable.” This means that God’s being and experience never changes in any respect. God is therefore pure actuality (actus purus), having no potentiality whatsoever, for potentiality is…

What is the significance of Jeremiah 19:5?
The Lord says that Israel has “gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind.” Here, as elsewhere, (7:31, 32:35), the Lord expresses disappointment, if not shock, over Israel’s idolatry. The…

What is the significance of Isaiah 5:3–7?
The Lord describes Israel as his vineyard. Referring to himself, he says that the owner of the vineyard loved his vineyard and did all he could to care for it. “[H]e expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes” (vs. 2). Then the Lord asks, “What more was there to do for my…

Will Violence against ISIS Root Out Evil?
Image by arbyreed via Flickr Fallen humans tend to identify their own group as righteous and any group that opposes them as evil. If they were not evil, we tend to believe, no conflict would exist. Hence, the only way to end the conflict is to rid the world of this evil. This is the age-old “myth…

How do you respond to Psalm 139:16?
“In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” Psalm 139 is a beautiful poetic expression of God’s personal moment-by-moment involvement in our lives. So intimate is his involvement that he knows our thoughts before we utter them (vs. 2–4). His loving presence surrounds…