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Is God's Sovereignty limited by Man's Free will or vice-versa?

God is certainly sovereign over all things. As I understand Calvin’s theology, he would conclude that since God is in complete control of everything, He must have predetermined all those that are going to be saved and all those that are not, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that.

However, that is a rather limited understanding of God’s sovereignty, and the conclusions drawn from it do not square with the references in scripture that clearly demonstrate (and presuppose) the free will of each person to choose to cooperate with God’s saving grace or not. (Please read my discussion of this.)

God is sovereign over any and all of our free will choices. He doesn’t have to predetermine all our choices in order to maintain His sovereignty over all creation. In other words, like the best and most perfect Father that He is, He is completely capable of dealing with any of the choices that His children make. From my discussion of this on my website: "When therefore He [God] establishes His eternal plan of 'predestination', He includes in it each person's free response to His grace: 'In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.'[Acts 4:27-28 ; cf. Ps 2:1-2.] For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.[Cf. Mt 26:54 ; Jn 18:36 ; Jn 19:11; Acts 3:17-18.]..."

In other words, God knows all the free will choices that we will make, but His knowledge of that does not limit our free will. But neither does our God-given free will, limit God’s sovereignty. Rather His sovereignty allows Him to take all of that into account in establishing and carrying out His eternal plan of salvation.



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