Before I get to answering today’s topic, to those readers who don’t know who Paul and Justin are I’ll be giving a bit of background info behind these 2 people so you can have an idea and a better understanding when I answer the question.
So, who is Paul? Paul was one of the apostles/follower of Jesus. Paul’s story was interesting because he wasn’t always his follower. You see, Paul was a persecutor of Jesus and his people that followed him. He hated the nation and made their lives miserable. That is until one day god revealed himself to Saul (his first name back then which later is converted to paul) and spoke to him. Saul now became Paul and a follower of Jesus. His entire life changed completely to owning a lot of things leaving with little to nothing after becoming a Christian. By little to nothing I mean of the earthly things such as money and clothes, but what he did have just like any other Christian was to have Jesus inside of him. He lived his whole rest of his life for him and died for him him willingly as well.
Justin was an early Christian apologist and philosopher who has discovered about Jesus and his works while exploring through many other philosophies from philosophers. He was a martyr just like Paul. A Martyr by the way was someone who willingly gives their life for their belief or for something they strongly believe in that they just can’t deny it in exchange for life. Both Paul and Justin were martyred in their belief of Jesus Christ.
Now that I have given a bit of a background of the 2 followers of Jesus let’s dive into answering the question for today’s topic.
Paul’s concept of God’s sovereignty was that God was all powerful, he was in control of everything, and that no one was good except him. By accepting God, people receive him as a helping guide. With God people are guided in the right direction in life, meaning guided to making the right decisions and choices. A lot of people either hate God or leave their faith in him completely, because God’s job is to help guide people not physically save them. So if a person hurts themselves or others hurt them God isn’t always there to rescue for he has his own reasons not doing so, although he can do that and rarely does. That’s basically how Paul thought of God as being an all powerful being who is good.
Justin’s concept of God’s sovereignty was quite similar to Paul’s in terms of God being all powerful and the dominant one. What makes the 2 followers different from each other is that Justin didn’t believe in fate. That God can manipulate things according to his will. In my opinion that defeats the purpose of our existence. We were created to have our own decisions and choices to which we make an action upon. Justin believes that God can change a certain thing in our life which he can, but leaves us to decide and do things what we think is right. Also Justin believed in the consequences of our good/bad actions and that we will be judged based on our actions whether it’s good or bad (any action).
Thanks for reading this essay, I hope you liked it or learned something from it. I’ll be posting one more for today and as always have a great rest of your day!
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