Free Will and Sovereignty

God’s will and ours: causes, choices, time and eternity.

Watercolour of a red leather-bound copy of Reformed Dogmatics lying on a polished library table, with bookshelves and a sunlit window behind.

Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics · 3

Bavinck 3: Creation, Humanity and Sin

Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 277-375: angels, providence and secondary causes, humanity between angels and animals, Adam as head of humanity, sin as a parasite and privation of the good, and the moral law as the standard of sin.

4 min read

Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics · 4

Bavinck 4: Christ and Salvation

Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 401-563: the old and new covenants, Christ's full humanity, the benefits given through Christ, salvation by grace rather than works, and grace and the human will, with David's reflection on how Jesus was tempted.

6 min read

Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics · 2

Bavinck 2: God and the Trinity

Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 158-257: God's attributes, time and eternity, sin as privation, God as truth, analogies for the Trinity and predestination, with David's notes on free will, honest speech and fairness.

7 min read

Watercolour of a fair-haired young man in glasses writing at a desk in a sunlit library, surrounded by stacks of open books.

Open questions

Open Questions

Questions David has not found satisfying answers to: where Scripture says we will be of higher stature than Adam and Eve before the fall, whether sin is more fluid than its familiar categories, and how unequal circumstances can be fair if man must choose God.

1 min read

Watercolour of a tall brown clay vase standing on a sunlit forest path among trees and ferns.

Essay

The Perfect Vase: An Illustration for Our Creation

David pictures creation as a flawless vase broken by an outside force, and argues that humanity, made in God's image with the ability to withstand any pressure or yield to it, was not made imperfect by being able to deviate.

1 min read

Sayings on free will and sovereignty

In the collection

We are constantly living in the present. It is within my mind that I measure time. I must not allow my mind to insist that time is something objective. When I measure time I measure something that is in the present of my mind. Either this is time or I don't know what is.

St AugustineConfessions, book XI

A certain freedom of will is proven in that we are made in the image of God in whom free will is a part. Free will is not a yes or no but a question of degree. Only God knows the true degree. We do know that the degree of free will has gone down substantially because of the fall.

David Visser

God wills good and permits sin.

David Visser

Never ask God why? To Will what God wills brings peace.

Amy Carmichael