Mike,

Great comments. Here's how I interpreted your post.

"Sure, John, you've shown that God could have decreed (in a plausibly Calvinistic sense) genuinely free actions. But the view you've suggested seems to make God some sort of Distant, Cosmic Observer. Isn't that a serious problem for the view? It almost sounds like it leads to a form of Deism."

If the view that I have proposed had the implications that, as I have understood you, you suggested, then that would definitely be a problem for it. Happily, though, it doesn't have those implications. Here's why:

The world God chose to create is a world in which God is actively involved. He performs miracles, becomes a man, reveals His will in Scripture, sends plagues, scatters the Jews among the nations, etc. In other words, God created a world in which He is very intimately involved--a world about which He cares very much. Accordingly, God doesn't walk away from this world and allow the "drama to take its course because He has already seen the show"--He is in the show as he directed it from eternity.

Regards,
John

Last edited by jmp; Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:07 PM.

"He that hath light thoughts of sin, never had great thoughts of God." ...John Owen