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 Acts 17:26?
“From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.” (cf. Dan. 2:21)
In this passage Paul is preaching to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (17:18). His goal is to show them that, in contrast to their idols, God created and cares for all people (vss. 24–26). The reason why God gives time and place to nations, Paul says, is “so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us” (vs. 26).
The statement certainly implies that God is sovereign in a general way over nations. But it also implies that he does not meticulously control people. God wants to be found and “now commands all people everywhere to repent” (vs. 30). Yet many people from every nation refuse to do this. Indeed, most of the philosophers Paul was preaching to rejected his message (vss. 32–34).
Though God controls the general parameters of human freedom he does not meticulously control humans and thus does not always get his way when it comes to the decisions they make. Thus Paul says that part of God’s goal in working in nations is for people to “search for God” and “perhaps find him” (26). Because he created free agents, God can’t guarantee people will find him. To the extent that the future is left open for free agents to determine, the future can only be spoken of as a “perhaps.”
Category: Q&A
Tags: Q&A, Responding to Calvinism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Responding to Objections
Verse: Acts 17
Related Reading
Isn’t Open Theism outside of historic orthodoxy?
The Church has never used one’s view of divine foreknowledge as a test for orthodoxy. And while the open view has always been a very minor perspective, it has had its defenders throughout Church history and it has never been called “heresy” (until in mid 1990s when some started using this label). According to some…
How do you respond to Isaiah 53:9?
Speaking of the suffering servant Isaiah says, “[T]hey made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich…” As with most evangelical exegetes, I believe that Isaiah 53 constitutes a beautiful and stunning prophetic look at the person of Jesus Christ. The most impressive feature of this prophecy is that the suffering servant…
Confronting Divine Determinism
Part of the fallen human condition inclines us to shirk our moral responsibility and accept that everything is predetermined, whether by God, the gods, fate, or blind chance. Various forms of determinism have been prevalent in most primitive religions, in much ancient philosophy, in most forms of Islam and even, most surprisingly, in much traditional…
What is the significance of 1 Chronicles 21:7–13?
The Lord gives David three options of how Israel may be judged. “Three things I offer you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.” Paralleling 2 Samuel 24:12–16, this passage reveals that the Lord gives people genuine alternatives and then responds to their choices. If the future is unalterably settled in…
How do you respond to 2 Samuel 17:14–15?
“Absalom and all the men of Israel said, ‘The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.’ For the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring ruin on Absalom.” This passage is sometimes cited to support the view that God ordains all…
What is the significance of Exodus 3:18–4:9?
The Lord tells Moses that the elders of Israel will heed his voice (vs. 18). Moses says, “suppose they do not believe me or listen to me…” (4:1). God performs a miracle “so that they may believe that the Lord…has appeared to you” (vs. 5). Moses remains unconvinced so the Lord performs a second miracle…