Everything will happen as God’s will has determined, but the freedom of people to choose their actions is not infringed. Indeed, the freedom of moral agents is ratified, because in His will He has determined that free agents will act freely. For example, in God’s will it was impossible for the soldiers to break Christ’s bones. But no coercion was laid upon them: they were free agents, who freely chose not to break them.
— Samuel Willard (1640–1707), Puritanischer Prediger
Topics: Guidance & God's Will, Wisdom & Understanding
Occasions: For Reflection
Samuel Willard
Samuel Willard (1640–1707) war ein puritanischer Geistlicher in Neuengland, Pfarrer an der Old South Church in Boston und amtierender Leiter des Harvard College. Bekanntheit erlangte er durch sein postum veröffentlichtes Monumentalwerk *A Compleat Body of Divinity* sowie durch seine Kritik an den Hexenprozessen von Salem, bei denen er gegen die Zulassung sogenannter Geisterbeweise auftrat. Heutigen Bibellesern vermittelt sein Werk eine systematische Auslegung der reformierten Bundestheologie und zeigt das Ringen um Besonnenheit in Zeiten religiöser Spannungen.
All quotes by Samuel Willard (8)
Blaise Pascal
You have enough time to do everything God wants you to do.
Craig Groeschel
God loves to use people whom others believe are unqualified.
Craig Groeschel
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
Frederick Buechner
John Henry Newman
Chance is the pseudonym God chooses when he wants to remain incognito.
Albert Schweitzer
What was not in my plan lay in God's plan.
Edith Stein
Outside the will of God, There's nothing I want. Inside the will of God there's nothing I fear.
A.W. Tozer