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.

Resignation to Evil: Not an Option
While few Christians would deny that Satan is in some sense the ruler of this world, since it’s so clearly taught in the New Testament, many nevertheless insist that everything Satan and every other free agent does fits into a divine plan that is governing every detail of world history. In this view, it’s not just the beautiful aspects of creation that glorify God. Everything, including evil events, ultimately contributes to the “glory of God.” God is ultimately behind it all.
Throughout history and yet today, very few Christians have seen themselves as belonging to a subversive revolution – despite the clear teaching of the New Testament regarding the enemy-occupied status of the world. I frankly suspect that this God-is-behind-it-all theology is partly to blame. The belief that “evil” is ultimately controlled by a greater good tends to produce an attitude of resignation toward evil rather than an attitude of revolting against it.
Interestingly enough, there were many pagans in the ancient world before the time of Christ who believed every particular thing came to pass by a sort of cosmic necessity and that it all contributed to a greater good. The most well-known philosophical school espousing this view was known as “Stoicism.” Consistent with their determinism, Stoics advocated a form of piety that stressed peaceful resignation to all that afflicts humans rather than an on-going attempt to revolt against it.
How can you, and why would you, revolt against something you believe can’t be other than it is?
I suggest that Jesus had a very different mindset, as did most of the early Church fathers.
When Jesus encountered people who were physically, socially or spiritually oppressed, he never once encouraged them to resign themselves to their situation as being part of God’s mysterious plan. He rather viewed their various afflictions as the direct or indirect result of Satan’s will – and he revolted against them.
For example, when Jesus confronted a Jewish woman with a deformed back, he asked, “should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free …”(Lk 13:16, emphasis added)? This is what we consistently find throughout the Gospels. Peter summarized Jesus entire ministry by saying he “went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil…” (Ac. 10:38, emphasis added).
Far from supposing that things like diseases and deformities were part of a great divine plan or that they glorified God, Jesus revealed God’s will and glorified God by coming against these things! Jesus ministry was not about helping people accept the world as it is – as though it now reflected God’s will. His ministry was about helping people revolt against the world as it now is – in order to bring about God’s will.
Category: General
Tags: Calvinism, Determinism, Evil, Kingdom Revolution, Revolt, Warfare Worldview
Related Reading

Paul Teaches Free Will, Not Determinism: Romans 9, Part 3
In this series of posts, I am challenging the deterministic reading of Romans 9, which interprets Paul’s teaching as saying that God chooses some to be saved and others to be damned. There are six arguments that I offer to challenge this popular view. Today, I will look at the fourth. Argument #4: Paul’s Summary and…

What is the warfare worldview?
The warfare worldview is based on the conviction that our world is engaged in a cosmic war between a myriad of agents, both human and angelic, that have aligned themselves with either God or Satan. This is the view that is presupposed throughout the entire Bible, and it’s especially evident in the New Testament. For…

Dealing With Objections to Open Theism, Part II
There are four major objections to Open Theism. In this post, we are dealing with the third and fourth. (See yesterday’s post to read about the first two.) Objection #3: God cannot foreknow only some of the future. It is often argued that for God to be certain of anything about the future, he must be…

The Cross and Cosmic Warfare
Since the time of Anselm in the 11th century, Western theology has focused almost all of its attention on the anthropological dimension of the atonement. In the most popular understanding, the chief thing that God was accomplishing on the cross was satisfying God’s perfect justice and thereby atoning for our sins. The work of the…

The Warfare Worldview
The Warfare Worldview from Roberta Winter Institute on Vimeo. Here’s a video presentation that Greg did at the Roberta Winter Institute regarding the Warfare Worldview. Enjoy!