You're listening to the hashtag STRS podcast from Stan to Reason. Welcome to you. And welcome to you, Greg.

Thank you, Amos. And I'm Amy. And we're going to go to a question

from David. I've heard Greg say that Allah is capricious. How is God's divine prerogative shown in

Romans 9 different from the capriciousness of Allah? Thank you so much for all that you do. Grace and peace

to you both. I don't know that I've actually ever said that. I mean, maybe I have because I've heard

that this was the case. And the difference is that keep in mind, caprice is a sudden shift

from one thing to another.

Okay?

So you have a person who's capricious.

You never know what they're going to do next.

It isn't like there's a pattern or this set of principles they're following.

And if you learn the principles, then you'll see, oh, this is why he does what he does,

and then they become a little bit predictable in a good sense, you know.

A person who's capricious, you never know what's going to happen next.

Now, this is my understanding of Allah, but this isn't my field.

So Alan Schleman would be better to speak in depth on this.

But my understanding is that Allah is capricious in that he doesn't, he does what he wants when he wants it. And you don't know what that's going to be because he may forgive, he may not. You don't have the standards for that. Now, when it becomes, when it comes to the God of the Bible, to Yahweh, you have an entirely different circumstance. Yes, Romans 9 talks about how God has the liberty to exercise

and give mercy where he wants to give mercy or to withhold it. But we have a very clear idea of

the criterion by which God shows mercy, and that's the person of Christ. And God can save

whoever he wants to save, and he can condemn anybody who's worthy of condemnation. So he is, in a certain sense,

he's following a set of rules, but they're not external rules. They're guided by his own

character. And he's characterized that for us, so we know what we can expect. As I put it before, in a story of reality, and I got this from a brother, was a wonderful

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