• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Phil Gons

Bible & Tech

  • About
  • Contact
  • Categories
    • Audio
    • Books
    • Deals
    • Exegesis
    • Meditations
    • Miscellany
    • Reviews
    • Technology
    • Theology
    • Videos
  • Resources
    • Bibliographies
    • Book Reviews
    • Files
    • Messages
    • Other Works
    • Publications
    • Union with Christ
You are here: Home / Archives for sovereignty

sovereignty

Calvin on God’s Permissive Will

June 11, 2010 by Phil Gons

Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion

After reading my post on Zac Smith’s cancer a while back, a friend of mine saw a link in the sidebar to a related post, “The Grace of Cancer,” and left a comment challenging my choice of words when I repeatedly said that God gave cancer to a man from our church to bring him to repentence.

I responded by encouraging him to read Calvin’s Institutes, I, xviii (esp. 1), where he discusses the “distinction [that] has been invented between doing and permitting,” and Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Cancer.”

I spent some time rereading Calvin’s chapter on the issue of permission, “The Instrumentality of the Wicked Employed by God, While He Continues Free from Every Taint,” and I thought much of it was worth quoting here at length. I’ve bolded the most pertinent portions.

[Read more…] about Calvin on God’s Permissive Will

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: Calvinism, cancer, evil, God's will, John Calvin, John Piper, Logos Bible Software, permission, R. C. Sproul, sovereignty

Was the Oil Spill an Act of God?

June 10, 2010 by Phil Gons

Rick Warren tweeted earlier today, “When people call an ocean oil spill caused by human drilling ‘an Act of God,’ THAT, friends, is taking God’s name in vain!”

To my surprise, I enjoy a lot of what Warren tweets, but in this case I think he has it precisely backwards. Failing to attribute to God complete sovereignty over all of the events of His world—even the “accidental” ones for which man is at some level responsible—is to rob God of His glory.

Amos wrote a few thousand years ago, “Does disaster [רָעָה] come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?” (Amos 3:6). Amos was speaking of intentional disaster (an invading army seeking to overtake a city), not events resulting accidentally or from carelessness like an oil spill. If the former is rightly attributed to God, certainly the latter would be as well.

Job’s response to the loss of his children by a great wind bringing the house down upon them was, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).

Both of these biblical writers saw God as the ultimate actor behind natural disasters and the evil of men.

And let us not forget that the cross itself, with all its evil, was an act of God (Acts 2:23; 3:18; 4:27–28).

[Read more…] about Was the Oil Spill an Act of God?

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: Act of God, Amos, calamity, Calvinism, disaster, evil, Job, John Piper, Rick Warren, sovereignty

Footer

Popular Posts

  • One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life
  • Rob Bell and Andrew Wilson Discuss Homosexuality and the Bible
  • Did John Use Bad Grammar to Teach the Holy Spirit’s Personality?
  • Free Download of R. C. Sproul’s The Truth of the Cross
  • The Doctrine of the Trinity in Five Theses
  • Warfield, Vos, and Van Til: Is God One Person?
  • John Murray on Union with Christ
  • Is Google Keep Better Than Evernote?
  • The Best Google Reader Replacement

About Me

I’m a Christ-follower and the Chief Product Officer at Logos. I’m happily married to my best friend and the father of five wonderful children. I enjoy studying the Bible and playing outside with my kids. More about me . . .

Subscribe

Receive posts via email

Join 3,932 other subscribers

Random Posts

  • PastorBookshelf Weekly Email
  • Augustin on Postmodernism
  • Books for Christmas
  • Gaffin on Union with Christ
  • Free Audiobook: Spurgeon’s All of Grace
  • Titus 2:11 in Calvin
  • Loving God Supremely
  • Watch The Gospel of John Movie for Free
  • New Edition of the ESV with the Apocrypha

Copyright © 2025 · Infinity Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in