LTS again providentially



Bruce Ware interviewed by Garry Williams

It was good yesterday to be at the LTS withou about thirty others to hear Bruce Ware once again. After a brief interview with Garry Williams, Dr Ware took us through the fascinating doctrine of providence in three sessions with questions at the end.

The first sesion looked at "free will theism" as seen in Classic Arminianism and Open Theism (on which Dr Ware has written). The other two sessions were more positive and presented the Reformed doctrine from an infralapsarian, single predestination, compatibilist Calvinist position.

So first we were given the background to Arminianism (we tried to ignore his remarks about Beza, betraying a four point position) then the much more recent Open Theism. All this was enlivened by Dr Ware's enthusiasm and the fact of his personal acquaintance with many writers on both sides of the argument. (He was actually able to say that he has asked his friend Jack Cottrell his response to the point that if God only foreknows he can change nothing and been told that Jack is still working on it!) Dr Ware then showed how these two positions approach the matter of providence and the inadequacies of these views. The other two sessions were quite helpful as well, especially his highlighting of texts such as Genesis 45:4-8 and Isaiah 10:5-7, 12, 15 and helping us to think the thing through carefully.

For more on this see Mostyn Roberts here.

Bruce Ware's books on this are here (one of five views in the book) and here (God's greater glory) and here (critique of Open Theism).