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Calvin's Institutes: February 11
Providence does not mean blind fate or an impersonal chain of causes, and Calvin will not allow it to be reduced to either. In these closing sections of Chapter 16, he carefully dismantles the charge that Christian providence is merely Stoic fatalism, insisting instead that God actively governs all things by wise decree, not by necessity embedded in nature itself. Drawing on Basil and Augustine, Calvin rejects “fortune” and “chance” as pagan placeholders for ignorance, showing that what appears accidental to us is fully ordered by God’s hidden counsel (1 Timothy 6:20; Job 14:5). Events may be…
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