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.
How do you respond to 1 Samuel 2:25?
Eli’s sons “would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to kill them.”
Compatibilists sometimes cite this text as an example of how God determines events for which humans are morally responsible. Eli’s sons were evil in not listening to their father, yet it was the Lord who prevented them from doing this. If read in context, however, the passage does not support the compatibilist interpretation.
Eli’s three sons had willfully persisted in abusing their priestly office for a long time. The Lord detested their vile activity (1 Sam. 2:17). Eli warned his sons about the severity of their wickedness, but it was too late. God had already decided to bring judgment on them. God’s sovereign act of preventing the sons from heeding Eli’s warning was an act of judgment and was consistent with the wicked character the three sons had freely developed for years.
Now, if the passage said that the sons were wicked in the first place because God wanted to judge them, it might support compatibilism. Or if the passage said that the sons were godly people until the Lord changed their heart and prevented them from heeding their father’s words, it might support compatibilism. But the passage does not teach this. It only teaches that God determined to judge the sons because they were persistently wicked while making it very clear that this wickedness was not God’s will.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Q&A, Responding to Calvinism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Responding to Objections
Verse: 1 Samuel 2
Related Reading
What is the significance of Hosea 11:8–9?
After plotting severe judgment against Israel (vs. 5–7) the Lord says, “My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger… I will not come in wrath.” This passage shows that God experiences conflict between his compassion and his justice and that he sometimes alters his plans…
If God anticipates each possibility perfectly, how does he differ from the “frozen God” of classical theism?
Question: If God anticipates each and every possibility as if each were only possibility, how does God ever experience novelty and adventure? It seems that a God who perfectly anticipated (from all eternity) every single possibility as if it were the only possibility would not differ from the timeless “frozen God” of classical theism Answer:…
How can people who believe the open view trust a God who doesn’t control the future and doesn’t know for sure what will happen?
It’s true that according to the open view of the future things can happen in our lives which God didn’t plan or even foreknow with certainty (though he always foreknew they were possible). In this view, trusting in God provides no assurance that everything that happens to us will reflect his divine purposes, for there…
How do you respond to Acts 4:27–28?
The Christians in Jerusalem proclaim to the Lord, “…both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against our holy servant Jesus… to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” This passage tells us that Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel…
What is your perspective on the classical view that God is above time?
In a major strand of hellenistic (Greek) philosophy, change was seen as being an imperfection. This idea was adopted by many early Church fathers and eventually became almost an assumed dogma of the Church. It was thus assumed that, since God is perfect, he must be above all change. Not only does his character and…
What is the significance of 2 Chronicles 7:12–14?
The Lord says to Solomon, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will…