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To say that God is sovereign over all things is to say that everything depends on God. To say that God exists a se is to say that Gods depends on nothing. This chapter examines and defends strong versions of five theses pertaining to God’s sovereignty and aseity: (1) Everything that exists depends on God for its existence. (2)Every situation that is the case depends on God for its being the case.(3)God depends on nothing for his existence. (4) God depends on nothing for his being what he is.(5)God is perfectly free. The implications of these theses for the doctrines of creation ex nihilo, continuous creation, and God’s eternality, freedom, and simplicity are discussed. I argue that although the theses portray a deity who is quite different from humans, they nevertheless are consistent with God’s being personal, that is, a being to whom beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions are correctly ascribed.

The first chapter scrutinizes the question of divine versus popular sovereignty, and introduces challenges to the notion that state authority in the contemporary world can be derived from divine sources. After delineating a brief history of divine and popular sovereignty in Shiite Islam, this chapter targets the linchpin of Iran’s Islamic state, i.e., the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (rule of the Islamic jurist). The chapter intends to provide an insight into the inconsistencies between divine sovereignty and Islamic precepts and traditions. Religious secularity discourse not only invalidates purported historical records of the sacred foundation of the state in Islam, but also problematizes the notion of divine sovereignty from theological/philosophical and non-religious perspectives. As an alternative, Islamic history—along with jurisprudential/theological reasoning—is used to promote popular sovereignty as necessary to complement the spirit of religion. The main thrust of this chapter is to attest to the compatibility of Islam and popular sovereignty, which is an essential requirement of a secular democratic state.

This chapter introduces the central problem that the book addresses and describes its distinctive methodology. The central problem is whether, given theism, moral facts must be explained by facts about God. The chapter distinguishes between a method of dealing with this problem that is ‘explanandum-focused,’ concerned with the issue of whether features of morality (for example, its overridingness) cannot be adequately explained unless morality has its source in God, and a method that is ‘explanans-focused,’ concerned with the issue of whether God's nature entails that God must enter into the explanation of such facts. The latter method is the focus of the book, and this chapter gives a reason to pursue this method grounded in the perfection of divine sovereignty.

This chapter is a critique of views that seek to resolve the problem of moral evil by holding that such evil is owing to exercises of human freedom that escape God's control as creator. It is argued that the three most common treatments of this kind are all unsatisfactory in that none of them provides sufficiently for God's omniscience and sovereignty. Boethian views preserve an omniscient God, but deprive him of any control over what exercises of creaturely freedom will occur. Openness theories deprive God of both omniscience and sovereignty. Finally, Molinist treatments largely fail to provide for either perfection, in that so‐called counterfactuals or subjunctives of freedom often lack grounding, and cannot be known by God prior to creation.

To conclude, the limits of Kantian retribution for ethics are reviewed and the diversity of approaches to ethical reasoning that may be applied to divine violence in the book of Samuel are emphasised. Three ethical, literary, and political considerations of this study are highlighted. Firstly, the study is organised around instances of subjective violence, but attention to systemic, objective violence has raised alternative evaluations of the ethics of the violence. Secondly, different kinds of emotions/cognitions of God are correlated with the formulations of divine violence. For each emotion/cognition resulting in violence, a corresponding example is given where the same emotion/cognition results in blessing. The contiguity of different formulations of divine violence in 2 Sam 24 suggests a coherence to God’s characterisation despite the diverse traditions, not a ‘light’ and a ‘dark’ side to God. Finally, the political visions of divine violence in the book of Samuel are oriented towards an ideology of the Davidic kings. Although human monarchic sovereignty is expansive, it is also limited by divine violence.

In the view of many anti-universalists, human free will is both a great good and that which poses the greatest obstacle to universalism. If created persons have free will, then it seems it is finally up to those persons, and not up to God, whether all will be saved. This is the most popular argument against universalism, but it turns out to be complicated by the fact that the metaphysical assumptions that drive it themselves generate problems for anti-universalists. For a variety of reasons, anti-universalism turns out to be ill-wed to each of the standard accounts of providence—viz., compatibilism, Molinism, and open theism—as none provides the anti-universalist with an adequate explanation of why God creates the damned. The chapter closes with a discussion of why the author is nevertheless unwilling to embrace universalism.

John Calvin launched the influential Reformed tradition (the Calvinists) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with Christianity’s strongest emphasis on the sovereignty of God. Calvinists rejected the notion of chance as unguided fortune or luck, seeing it rather as a result of divine decree and thus a form of divine providence consistent with their emphasis on the sovereignty of God. The Reformed tradition has consistently rejected chance as a real part of the created order. They continue to acknowledge God’s absolute sovereignty, hold to the integral concept of providence as consisting of decree and its execution, advocate the concurrence of God in all things and events, and still argue that this divine concurrence does not make God the author of evil or the culprit of corruption.

According to the traditional doctrine of divine universal causality (DUC), God directly causes all being distinct from himself, with the implication that God directly causes all creaturely actions. Prevailing opinion holds that, if God causes our actions, then they cannot be free in the libertarian sense. This chapter argues to the contrary, showing that, given a certain account of divine agency, God’s causing our actions is perfectly consistent with libertarian freedom. It shows, moreover, that DUC, together with some common theistic assumptions, actually precludes those accounts of divine agency on which libertarian freedom is ruled out by God’s causing our actions.

This chapter describes how Hermann Gollancz's Rosh Hashanah sermon enunciates a powerful and principled attack on nationalistic extremism and an endorsement of the fundamental value of inclusiveness, buttressed both by the religious theme of universal divine sovereignty and by an appeal to venerable British traditions. His sermon responds not to the external threat but to an internal issue: the treatment of German-born aliens. There were two main periods of xenophobic activism in Britain during the war. The first followed the sinking of the Lusitania on 7 May 1915 with the loss of over 1,000 lives. The second such period was the summer of 1918, immediately preceding the Rosh Hashanah sermon.

Together the two parts of Exodus—Israel in Egypt and in Sinai—form one of the master narratives of the Bible. The first part pits against each other two opposite responses to YHWH’s self-revelation: while Moses yields to God’s will, Pharaoh consistently resists manifestations of God’s presence and power. The second part introduces three elements of Israel’s formation as a people. The gift of manna establishes a godly food economy. The treatment of covenant provides theological reflection on divine sovereignty, divine dangerousness, the goodness of creation, and the problem of slavery. Finally, the instructions for the building of the tabernacle and its completion show Israel’s initial resistance to God’s commands and their eventual obedience; it also provides a humanizing counterpoint to Israel’s slave labor in Egypt.

This chapter begins with some remarks about what traditionalism, for all its difficulties, gets right, and why orthodox Christians are rightly reticent to abandon it. The author then moves on to universalism, first identifying what he takes to be its most plausible variety and then presenting select arguments on its behalf that are especially powerful and that pose the greatest challenge to anti-universalists. The most basic and fundamental argument in support of universalism is that the salvation of all persons seems to follow from two theological assumptions that are central to orthodox theism: that God is perfectly loving and that God is perfectly sovereign. Some further arguments from two of the foremost defenders of universalism, Marilyn Adams and Thomas Talbott, are given special consideration.

In the last phase of Edwards’s ministry, now in Stockbridge, he writes several treatises which are philosophically sophisticated, though this chapter maintains that they are nonetheless ecclesiologically consistent with earlier writings, for Edwards is conducting on the frontier a pastoral ministry in which he maintains the hope of revival. He argues for God’s freedom in salvation and God’s consistency in cosmic purpose, which supports his view of the church as providing order within the creation. This section also contends that Edwards’s ecclesiology is not merely established by systematic concerns “from above,” but also embeds features of contingency generated by revivalist insights and a moral vision, and so is also “from below.” Against the conclusions of Thomas Schafer, it is here argued that Edwards’s ecclesiology is not generically Protestant.