“Conventional” accounts of God’s sovereignty in providence infer from God’s utterly restricted relating in creating that God’s power in providence too is unrestricted, thus underwriting pastorally problematic consolation of the anguished. However, “traditional” accounts of providence partially block that inference. They do not completely block it, however, because their account of the providential God is rooted in a generically theistic account of God rather than in a Trinitarian account. This project proposes the latter by explaining God’s sovereignty in terms of God’s intrinic “glory” rather than in terms of God’s “power.”

In this chapter I explore a number of different proposals for how to define ‘divine determinism.’ I settle on one to guide the rest of the book, which was first offered by Heath White. On this account, divine determinism is the conjunction of two claims: (i) The facts about God’s will wholly determine every other contingent fact and (ii) the facts about God’s will explain every other contingent fact. I then turn to a brief overview of some motivations for divine determinism. I begin with philosophical motivations, including motivations arising from consideration of the principle of sufficient reason, divine sovereignty, divine power, divine knowledge, divine aseity, and divine providence. I then turn to motivations that are more closely tied to particular religious traditions, including ones related to prophecy, scriptural authorship, and specific scriptural passages. Finally, I investigate two different varieties of divine determinism: primary divine determinism and Edwardian divine determinism.