ON PREDESTINATION and
FOREKNOWLEDGE,
LIBERTY and NECESSITY,
RESPONSIBILITY, DUTY and CREATIVITY
Published May 2006
with extensions
June-August 2006
April 2007, January 2009
A Hexad of Volumes
ISBN 0 9775556 0 7
This is a glorious field where the hand of God may be seen in its complete
divulgement
of the answers to the questions of time with the perspective of
eternity,
logically unique in resolution, and this because the Bible as the word
of God, has divulged it. Because man is made by God for God,
there can be no
answer to ultimacies except from Him.
That it is so is one more verification,
with no competitors.
For Index items, see both the Contents of the volumes below, and BOTH the INDEXES.
This work was commenced with the Melbourne University M.A. Thesis in 1964, and completed in 2006, with the sixth volume. It has been a privilege to be called to write it, and the delight to find as in some vast botanical gardens, endless nooks, arbours, wonders, harmonies, splendours and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, who did not come to condemn the world, but that it might be saved; but will judge the world and all its works in His day.
This is past design, for it is in the very heart of God, revealed in His word: it is the beauty of holiness in the Designer of designs, however, and of these works, every man, woman and child is one. Though sin has defiled, and evil molested, the pardon in Christ is regenerative, and in the regeneration of all things (Acts 3:19ff.), reconstitutive. The marvel of both being a design, and as such, a person, one capable of communication with and pardon from, of peace in and counsel from God, even adopted as one of His children is a testimony to divine power, pity, love, grace and sheer immensity of vision, vigour and longsuffering. That many will eventually be found in Him, and that nothing misses His divine foreknowledge of all things, or His perfected predestination is as vast a wonder as the reality of the theme of liberty which exists in those made in His image.
Only His word can show you EXACTLY who He is and WHAT He has done, including that work called man. In Christian Apologetics, studying His word and constrained in all things by it, we find a preferred position; for when you have the map, the maestro and the Maker, you have what no one but God Himself and those to whom He has sent His word CAN have: the truth. Here you find the nature of His profundity of love, depth of peace and grounds of pardon, the keen edge of His friendship and the pointed meaning of all His work.
Volumes
1. Predestination and Freewill
(based on research, MA Thesis, Melbourne University)2. Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will
(for harmony intro. see esp. Ch. 3)(Biblical Predestination has a Very Beautiful Face)
4. The Glow of Predestinative Power
AND THE SHOW OF
AUTONOMOUS ANTICS
PHILOSOPHIC PRANCING
AND RENEGADE ROMANCING
5.
and contrasting considerations popular in callow confusions
This fifth volume is formed by reducing the size, hitherto perhaps 1300 pages, of volume two, and setting what were its appendices with what now requires its place in the form of three new chapters, from Anguish, Ecstasy and the Mastery of the Messiah, commencing with Chapters 8 and 9.
These chapters deal with Wesley and Calvin, Whitefield and Arminianism in an historical setting, but with systematic intent, and resolve the issues involved by reference to the scriptures of light, the Bible. They have arisen from a letter of enquiry, of a lively character. With Chapter 10, this new material moves the wonder of freedom in grace, and of grace in freedom, matching the superb wisdom of God in all things in cohesion, coherence and control. Thus these chapters have much to do with the grace of love and the love of grace revealed and found in the Lord.
The Spiritual Sagacity of Predestination in Love
FOREKNOWLEDGE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH
(2007 and 2009 additions appear here)
In this volume, there is much attention given to the heights and wonders of a freedom that soars, yet is not autonomy, a foreknowledge which selects, but is not a 'horrible decree', to use Calvin's term, a predestination in love and the simple fact that these biblical concepts are an apologetic triumph for biblical Christianity, for the lost who seek and for the insecure who long.
They are drawn from several chapters in other works, published since the fifth volume of the PQ or Predestination Quintet saw the light of day, with provision for further additions, one more being presented with this publication.
Now it is necessary to change that name PQ to PH, as in chemistry, where it refers to hydrogen ion concentration, the most acidic as ph 1, and the more alkaline assembling itself after ph 7. Here however, since this is not chemistry, it is a matter of PREDESTINATION HEXAD, for the latter term can mean simply a group of six. It is no longer the PQ. That is the new name for what is now a six volume set on predestination, freewill, responsibility, love, justice, judgment and duty.
This set, the Predestination Hexad, now appears to cover something like 700,000 words, and enables a close attention to this glorious reality in the ways of the Lord.