Sunday Morning Meditation: John Piper on Hell
John Piper gets his turn at bat here on Pastoralia concerning the subject of hell. Does what he’s saying here contradict what NT Wright was saying last week?
Archived entries for John Piper
The not-God of I35, Job, and John Piper
My online friend Bill Kinnon has gotten himself into a bit of a row over the subject of God’s sovereignty with this post at his blog Kinnon.tv. In it, he not-so-gently mocks John Piper’s comments about God’s supposed role in the I35 bridge collapse a couple years ago in Minneapolis. Here’s the shot he fired across every neo-Calvinist’s bow:
I do not believe in a God who foreordains every action, but in a God who is not surprised by anything. As an example, the collapse of the I35 bridge in Minneapolis/St. Paul was not part of God’s sovereign plan – no matter what Piper told his young daughter.
Daryl Dash got into the action by announcing a subsequent, yet still impending, blog series on the topic and Bill seems to enjoy jousting with others in the comments section resulting in this rebuke by another reader:
God has foreordained everything to happen. The Scriptures are blatant about this side of the truth revealed about God’s sovereignty. Just because you can’t logically conceive of this as compatible with suffering in this present fallen world doesn’t mean you have to denigrate God’s pre-determination of all things.
Here’s my question: Doesn’t Jesus’ gospel – that is, the pronouncement of God’s inaugurated kingdom (i.e. Matt 4:23) – fundamentally presume the existence of a realm in which God is not king, where his rule and reign are not?
