Chapter 3 - You Searched Me and Knew Me

Summary

Divine determinism has been an unpopular topic in recent theology – widely dismissed, habitually avoided. One might wonder, therefore, what a theological contribution to understanding this possibility might look like. Some have proposed that reflection on divine transcendence helps us avoid misunderstandings that put secondary, creaturely agency in competition with God’s. I argue that this “non-competitive” approach offers limited insight into the agential and theodical problems raised by divine determinism. Drawing on doctrines of election, I then explore the possibility that divine love itself might require determinism. If, having imagined specific characters in a particular story, God loves them and desires to bring them to life, God might find it necessary for history to take the directions required for them to come to be. This possibility challenges caricatures of a determining God as tyrannical and suggests that even divine authorship may face constraints in eliminating evil.