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

I say yay and a man.

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 if Calvinism is 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 called 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 without necessarily taking away all of my freedom of choice and volition.

Simply by restraining me or presenting opportunities that he know that I will choose

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