I have enjoyed reading John Phillips commentary on Galatians. I'm working on an adult Sunday school series on Galatians and Phillips' commentary has been a help so far. It is the deepest commentary I've read from him to this point. I've learned a great deal about the history of the Galatian region and the origins of the Hebrew Talmud. Those were things I didn't expect to learn about, but I should have known there'd be a few surprises in a 224 page commentary on a book of the Bible that only has 6 short chapters. I wanted to note something here that he wrote regarding the sovereignty of God from Galatians 1:15:"But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace..."
John Phillips wrote:
"At no time, however, did this overruling will of God infringe on Paul's personal sovereignty and accountability as a moral human being. God persuades, but he does not push. He convicts, but He does not coerce. He does not arbitrarily impose His will on the human will. Yet, at the same time, He never loses control of human affairs. His omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience enable Him to gather events into His hands with the greatest ease. From our perspective, events take place in a time sequence because we live in a time sequence, but God transcends time. He lives in the eternal present tense of time. He is the I AM. From God's standpoint, all of the events of time take place simultaneously. God can call the things that are not as though they are, because He does not have to wait for the future to reveal the end of a sequence of events nor wait for a specific moment of time to come before imposing His will upon that moment."
I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Phillips. A Calvinist would choke at these statements and, quite frankly, that's fine. I have been reading many arguments regarding Calvinism lately and I find that the more I read their arguments the more I am settled on the fact that I disagree with that theological system. The most interesting thing I found regarding Dr. Phillips' statements is that I have been thinking about this same thing for a long time. He mentioned that God "lives in the eternal present tense of time." If a Calvinist would grasp that and apply that to the Bible, all of the verses they use to argue God's sovereignty in salvation would suddenly have quite a different meaning. I've been working on a thesis, of sorts, regarding Calvinism to post on this blog. I was going to mention something in that post nearly identical to what Dr. Phillips wrote here.
As I have looked at both sides of the argument I have learned a great deal, especially where I should stand on the matter. Stay tuned for that post. Until then, ponder this thought.
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