THE HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM
A STUDY IN THE METAPHYSICS OF DIVINE CAUSATION
You have asked me, Mr. President, and members
of the Theological Society,[1] to give my views upon
a question into which I should hardly have made
any public venture of my own motion, at least at the
present time. But as you have been kind enough
to extend the invitation, and also quite urgently,
and as the subject has occupied me much for many
years, with results that may at length have taken
a form definite enough for at least a tentative expression,
I have listened to your hospitable request and
to my interest in the topic, and have perhaps not
let the vastness and the intricacy of the theme give
me the pause they ought. For our subject is the
deep and hitherto very dark question of human
freedom, and its compatibility with the omniscient
and therefore omnipotent supremacy of God.
The historic way of dealing with this has usually been either to assert the Divine Supremacy ruthlessly, to
- ↑ The essay was read before the Theological Society of Pacific Seminary, in Oakland, California, April 5, 1898.
