To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
R. C. SproulRead
To say that God's sovereignty is limited by man's freedom is to make man sovereign.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that if human free will restricts God's power, it implies humans hold ultimate authority.
R.C. Sproul's quote addresses the complex relationship between divine sovereignty and human free will. It implies that if one asserts that God's control is constrained by human choices, they inadvertently elevate human authority, suggesting that people have ultimate power over their own fate, which raises profound theological and philosophical questions about the nature of power, autonomy, and the divine.
In practice
This quote could be used in a philosophy class discussion about the nature of free will.
To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
Iβve often wondered where Jesus would apply His hastily made whip if He were to visit our culture. My guess is that it would not be money-changing tables in the temple that would feel His wrath, but the display racks in Christian bookstores.
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it's too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.
Without God man has no reference point to define himself.
I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.
The difference between a man who is led by opinion or emotion and one who is led by reason. The former, whether he will or not, performs things of which he is entirely ignorant; the latter is subordinate to no one, and only does those things which he knows to be of primary importance in his life, and which on that account he desires the most; and therefore I call the former a slave, but the latter free.
Freedom is just freedom. It is a condition, not an agent of change. It does not develop or uplift those who win it. Freedom holds us accountable no matter the disadvantages we inherit from the past.
At the heart of my politics has always been the value of community, the belief that we are not merely individuals struggling in isolation from each other, but members of a community who depend on each other, who benefit from each other's help, who owe obligations to each other. From that everything stems: solidarity, social justice, equality, freedom.
The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.
By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.