If you want to say the universe has a destiny and it's in the hands of something other

than man, I say yea and amen.

The destiny of this race is in the hands of one who is absolutely wise and loving.

That's an occasion to rejoice.

Well, anytime I hear people speak about the Christian faith as being fatalistic or of Calvinism

as being fatalism, I really get annoyed, because if there's one thing Christianity is not,

it is not fatalistic.

Fatalism means that the destiny of human beings is controlled inexorably and ultimately by the whimsical

games and pranks of these little semi-gods or junior-grade deities call the fates.

Or it has come to mean that our lives are controlled by blind impersonal forces, mechanistic

unseen cause.

That's not what we mean when we speak of Christian freedom and God's sovereignty.

First of all, when we talk about God's sovereignty, we are saying that God is absolutely powerful

and sovereign over all things. Nothing happens apart from His will in a certain sense.

However, within the context of God's sovereignty, God can operate that sovereign power in many different ways. He can operate his sovereign power

actively or passively. He can determine by shaping the events of history to bring to pass what he

will bring to pass. He can command unilaterally worlds to come into existence, he can bring back the dead

to life by the power of his command. That's how much power he has, and we speak of it in terms

of omnipotence, absolute power over the created order. But God also exercises that power of

sovereignty by means of a passive operation through what we would

call the restraining power of providence. That is to say, God can allow me my freedom

within limits and still get me where I want to go or get the world where he wants it to go

...