Right Click and “open link in new tab” for Largest Version
A. W. Pink
“God not only knew the end from the beginning, but He planned, fixed, predestinated everything from the beginning. And, as cause stands to effect, so God’s purpose is the ground of His prescience.” (Teaching Resources International)
DUMMY DIALECT: “God knows the future because God planned the future.”
— Source: Teaching Resources International
Source: A. W. Pink, The Attributes of God, chapter 4, “The Foreknowledge of God.”
Loraine Boettner
“Foreordination in general cannot rest on foreknowledge; for only that which is certain can be foreknown, and only that which is predetermined can be certain. […] and God foreknows only because He has pre-determined. His foreknowledge is but a transcript of His will as to what shall come to pass in the future, and the course which the world takes under His providential control is but the execution of His all-embracing plan.” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
DUMMY DIALECT: “God knows what will happen because God has already decided what will happen.”
— Source: The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 99 (PDF of Chapter)
James White — debate with A. K. Richardson
“Okay. How many free choices of human beings do you think were involved from the time of Adam downward to the cross that could bring about that exact—the exact people—the high priests, the Romans, Pilate, Herod? I can’t imagine [the] hundreds of millions and literally billions of free choices, and yet their result was fixed. How does that not demonstrate that God’s decree does in fact determine the actions of mankind in time?”
DUMMY DIALECT: “God has to determine the choices in order to guarantee the outcome.”
AK RESPONDS:
Well, first of all, nothing’s too hard for God. I mean, billions and zillions and bajillions of free will choices seems like a lot to us. [….] So I don’t know that, all these millions and millions of free will choices seems like a lot to us, but it doesn’t to God. I don’t think he does.
— Source: James White / A. K. Richardson debate | RPT’s RUMBLE
I want to compare this to my post dealing with my memorized routine when Mormons come to my door. Here is the summary of this presentation:
When Mormon missionaries come to the door, I begin by establishing from Mormon teaching that Heavenly Father is an exalted being who exists within an eternally existing cosmos. I then work through the implications: matter, space, time, intelligences, and the governing laws of reality are not ultimately created by God but precede or exist independently of him. Consequently, laws governing things such as gravity, biology, mathematics, morality, and logic impose themselves upon Mormon deity rather than being realities that God Himself ultimately authored. In this framework, God is therefore not the ultimate, self-existent Creator standing above and sustaining all reality, but a powerful being who exists and operates within a larger, preexisting reality. The punchline of the routine is that the Mormon concept of God is ultimately finite, contingent, and constrained by the very cosmic order in which he exists—in other words, “your God is too small.”
Similarly, I believe Calvinism falls into the same man-made trap.
The Calvinist conception of divine sovereignty raises a different kind of limitation. If God’s sovereignty is defined as the exhaustive determination of everything that comes to pass, then God’s purposes are guaranteed by determining the very thoughts, desires, decisions, and actions through which those purposes are accomplished. As the Good News Apologetics chapter argues, Calvinist determinism makes God the cause of every historical event down to its smallest details, including human attitudes, beliefs, desires, decisions, and actions; in this framework, divine sovereignty effectively becomes theistic determinism.
James White’s argument illustrates the practical implication: if the crucifixion was fixed from eternity, how could billions of genuinely free human choices possibly produce that exact outcome? His answer is that God’s decree “does in fact determine the actions of mankind in time.” In other words, God guarantees the victory by controlling the entire chessboard.
But is determining every move really necessary for an omnipotent God to accomplish His purposes? A greater conception of sovereignty allows God to give His creatures genuine freedom—including the freedom to sin, rebel, resist, and make choices God does not approve—while remaining completely capable of accomplishing His ultimate purposes through and even in spite of those choices. The Good News Apologetics chapter makes this distinction explicitly, arguing that biblical sovereignty does not require God to predetermine everything, but can include God sovereignly establishing the boundaries of creation while granting human beings substantial self-determination.
A.W. Tozer captures this understanding particularly well:
God can sovereignly decree that man be free to make moral choices without decreeing which choices he will make. When man chooses evil, he has not thwarted God’s sovereign will, because God’s decree was not that man choose a particular action, but that man be genuinely free to choose.
As Tozer puts it,
“Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures.”
In other words, genuine human freedom is not evidence that God has surrendered control; it can actually be evidence of a greater sovereignty—one in which God is confident enough in His own power to permit His creatures to make real choices without having to determine those choices Himself.
Tozer’s ocean-liner illustration makes the distinction even clearer. The ship has a predetermined destination, yet the passengers aboard it are not robots whose every movement has been programmed. They can eat, sleep, talk, read, walk the deck, or do countless other things as they please, while the ship continues steadily toward its appointed destination. Tozer’s point is that freedom and sovereignty do not contradict one another. God’s sovereign purposes can establish the ultimate destination without requiring Him to predetermine every action of every passenger along the way.
This provides a striking contrast to the deterministic model: the deterministic God guarantees the destination by controlling the passengers; the sovereign God described by Tozer guarantees the destination while allowing the passengers genuine freedom along the journey.
This is precisely the point of Leighton Flowers’ chess analogy.
One chess master guarantees victory by controlling both sides of the board; the other allows his opponents to make genuinely free moves and nevertheless defeats every opponent because he is simply better at the game. Both arrive at victory, but only one demonstrates the ability to remain sovereign in the presence of genuine opposition. Flowers’ point is that God’s victory over evil does not have to come from controlling or manipulating every evil action that occurs. God can permit evil choices while possessing the wisdom, power, and goodness to overcome them, redirect their consequences, and ultimately accomplish His purposes. The question, then, is not whether God can guarantee His victory, but why He would have to determine every move in order to do so.
A God who must control the board to win demonstrates control; a God who can allow genuine freedom and still unfailingly accomplish His purposes demonstrates something far greater—omnipotence. The first says, in effect,
“I must determine the moves so that I can guarantee the outcome.”
The second says,
“Make your moves. I am still God.”
The first guarantees victory by eliminating the possibility of genuine opposition; the second demonstrates that genuine opposition cannot ultimately threaten God’s purposes. The greater display of sovereignty is not God’s inability to lose because He controls every move, but God’s ability to permit real freedom, endure real rebellion, confront real evil, and still bring His sovereign purposes to pass.
As Tozer’s ocean liner illustrates, the destination can be certain without every passenger’s movement being predetermined. And as Flowers’ chess master illustrates, victory can be certain without controlling the opponent’s hand. That is not a diminished sovereignty. It is sovereignty confident enough to let creation move freely while God remains completely capable of bringing history exactly where He intends it to go.
In a sense the Determinist states:
“If God doesn’t determine every move, He might not accomplish His purposes.”
To which the reply is:
“Why would an omnipotent God need to control the moves of His creatures in order to accomplish His purposes?”
The Flight
Imagine that you decide to take a trip. You call a travel agent and say, “I’d like to book a flight.” The first question the agent asks is simple: “What is your destination?”
“Where are you going?”
You tell the agent your destination, because a trip has to have somewhere it’s going. The destination is the terminus—the point toward which the journey is headed. Whether you’re traveling by airplane, train, or ship, the travel agent needs to know where you’re ultimately going.
Now suppose the agent tells you, “Your destination has already been decided. Your ticket has been booked, your destination has been fixed, and your arrival point has been established before you ever began the journey.”
That’s essentially the basic idea behind the word predestination. Destination tells us where we’re going; predestination means that the destination has been determined beforehand. In the theological sense, the ultimate destinations are heaven and hell. According to the Calvinist understanding, God determined those destinations before we were born—even before the creation of the world. From eternity, God decided to save some people unto everlasting blessedness and to pass over others, allowing them to perish in their sins.
But now consider something important about the analogy: knowing and fixing the destination does not, by itself, tell us everything that happens during the journey.
You board the airplane. You take your seat. Someone else gets up and walks to the restroom. Another passenger reads a book. Someone talks to the person beside him. Another passenger sleeps through the flight. Someone orders a drink. Someone decides to look out the window. Hundreds of individual decisions and movements occur during the flight, yet the plane continues toward its destination.
The destination remains fixed.
The passengers are still moving.
The question is whether the certainty of the destination requires the determination of every movement made by every passenger along the way.
That is where the analogy becomes important for the debate over divine sovereignty and human freedom. Does God have to determine every human thought, desire, decision, and action in order to guarantee His ultimate purposes? Or is God sufficiently sovereign, wise, and powerful to establish His purposes while allowing His creatures genuine freedom along the journey?
A predetermined destination does not necessarily imply a predetermined journey.
R. C. Sproul, Chosen by God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986; rev. ed. 1997/2011), chap. 2, “Predestination and the Sovereignty of God,” p 22.
R.C. Sproul, “All Christians Believe in Predestination: The Classic Collection with R.C. Sproul,” YouTube, approximately 11:55–14:15, accessed August 15, 2026.
This will be our bridge Tozer’s ocean liner and Flowers’ chessboard.
The Sailing
Tozer’s ocean liner makes the distinction even clearer: the ship has a predetermined destination, but the passengers are not predetermined. They are free to move about the ship as they please, while the ship continues steadily toward its appointed port.
Imagine two ships sitting in the harbor. Both ships represent Christ. Both are headed toward the same ultimate destination: the blessings God has prepared for those who are “in Christ”—holiness and blamelessness, adoption into God’s family, redemption and forgiveness, an inheritance, and the fulfillment of God’s purpose. The question isn’t whether God provides the ship or whether the destination is ultimately in His hands. The question is who determines which passengers actually board.
In the Calvinist understanding, God chooses the passengers before the voyage ever begins. The passenger does not ultimately determine whether he will board; God has chosen him for salvation and effectually calls him. That calling changes the person’s heart and desires so that he willingly comes to Christ. So the Calvinist can rightly say, “Nobody is forced into heaven against his will.” The person boards willingly—but his willingness itself is the result of God’s prior determining work. God chooses the passenger, God changes the passenger’s disposition, and the passenger then willingly boards. The elect cannot finally refuse the call because God’s grace ensures that they will come.
In the Provisionist understanding, God provides the ship and announces the destination to everyone. Christ is the provision of salvation, and God genuinely invites people to come. His grace precedes the response and enables sinners to respond to the Gospel, but God does not determine which individuals will exercise that response. The person can genuinely say yes—or genuinely say no. Those who trust Christ board the ship and are thereby found “in Christ.” Those who reject the invitation remain outside. The destination and all the blessings belonging to those in Christ are God’s provision; entering into that relationship occurs through faith.
That means the disagreement is not really “forced boarding versus voluntary boarding.” Both sides say the believer boards willingly. The deeper question is: Who determined the willingness? Calvinism says God determined the person who would board and, through effectual calling, ensured that person’s willing response. Provisionism says God graciously enables the response and genuinely invites all, but leaves the decision itself undetermined. In one model, God determines the passenger and guarantees the boarding; in the other, God provides the ship and guarantees that His purposes are not threatened by the passenger’s choice.
And this brings us back to the larger question of sovereignty. If God must determine which passengers will board in order to guarantee His ultimate purposes, then God’s sovereignty is expressed through controlling the passenger. But if God can provide Christ to all, genuinely allow people to accept or reject Him, and still accomplish everything He has purposed, then His sovereignty is expressed through His ability to remain completely sovereign without determining the passenger’s choice.
The question becomes: Does an omnipotent God need to determine every person’s decision in order to accomplish His purposes—or is He powerful enough to let people make real choices and still bring His ship safely into port?
Well?