The Suffering Of God In The Eternal Decree

This book seeks to unpack the evolution of Barth’s understanding of God’s suffering in Jesus Christ in the light of election. The interconnectedness of election, crucifixion, and (im)passibility is explored, in order to ask whether the suffering of Christ is also a statement about the Trinity.

In the last few years, 9/11, a tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and many other tragedies have shown us that the vision of God in today's churches in relation to evil and suffering is often frivolous. Against the overwhelming weight and seriousness of the Bible, many Christians are choosing to become more shallow, more entertainment-oriented, and therefore irrelevant in the face of massive suffering. In Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, contributors John Piper, Joni Eareckson Tada, Steve Saint, Carl Ellis, David Powlison, Dustin Shramek, and Mark Talbot explore the many categories of God's sovereignty as evidenced in his Word. They urge readers to look to Christ, even in suffering, to find the greatest confidence, deepest comfort, and sweetest fellowship they have ever known.

Are There Two Wills in God? Divine Election and God's Desire for All to Be Saved In this short, theological essay, John Piper builds a scriptural case that God's unconditional election unto salvation is compatible with God's genuine desire and offer for all to be saved. Helping us to make sense of this seemingly paradoxical relationship, Piper wisely holds both truths in tension as he explores the Bible's teaching on this challenging topic, graciously responds to those who disagree, and motivates us to passionately proclaim the free offer of the gospel to all people.

How does an almighty and all-loving God respond to his beloved human creatures, who are made in his image and yet implicated in sin and suffering? What is the origin of human suffering? Is it sin or the limitations of human beings? Is God moved by our suffering? If he sympathizes and co-suffers with us, can he deliver us out of our miseries? Thousands and perhaps millions of people have asked these questions and are searching desperately for their answers. Two major views have been advanced in the history of Christian theology to describe God’s response to the suffering of the world: divine impassibility and divine passibility. More recently, a third, mediating position between impassibilism and passibilism has arisen which affirms both the impassibility and the passibility of God. This position can be identified as modified classical theism, an approach that grasps the perfect and relational nature of God. Following this mediating position, this book sets out its own constructive understanding of a mediating position with the help of a new way of understanding the way in which the eternal actions (and corresponding passions) of the divine persons condition one another—the dynamic reciprocity model.

Editor Gregory Ganssle calls on four Christian philosophers to present and defend their views on the place of God in a time-bound universe. The positions taken up here include divine timeless eternity, eternity as relative timelessness, timelessness and omnitemporality, and unqualified divine temporality.