What governs history? Well, there have been various answers to this throughout history.

I suppose some would say, well, nothing governs history. Everything is just open to chance.

Who knows even how today is going to end.

Others have said, well, fate determines all things.

And we go back to Greek mythology and Roman mythology

to understand fate.

We find this in the writings of Homer and Hesseid. The fates were the three daughters of the goddess Nix. She was the goddess of the night. And these three daughters, her three daughters, were the fates. One of them would simply

spin thread from a spindle. That's all she would do. Just spin thread from a spindle.

The second sister, the second fate, would measure out a given piece of thread and that given piece of thread signified the length of life. And a third sister, well, she would cut the

thread and that signified death. In Greek, her name literally means the

inevitable. And in ancient mythology even mighty Zeus had to bow to the

fates. They were independent, they were arbitrary, they were capricious, and they governed all events of human history, and all events of a single life.

This idea of the fates carried on into the early Roman philosophers and they would talk about causality

as a determining factor of all that happened in history and in a given life.

Well, what is the Christian response

to these two answers of nothing governs history

or the fates govern history?

Well, we find a very fascinating answer

in Archer Bald Alexander.

He was one of those old Princetonian scholars and he lectured on theology there at Princeton and

one of his students was Charles Hodge.

And Charles Hodge was a very diligent student and he took very careful

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