The instinctive “Arminian” response to the idea that God controls all things (“all his creatures and all their actions”) is that it destroys moral accountability.  Unless I have free will I cannot be held responsible for what I do.  “Compatibilism” is ruled impossible.  Either God plans all things and we are not accountable to Him, or else we are morally responsible and God does not plan and bring about all things that happen.

So what do we say to this?

I think we need to argue that no human being can be held accountable to God if God is not control of history in an exhaustive way.

My argument is as follows: One: We are accountable to God because he made us. Two: We are products of historical circumstances brought about in part through human decisions. Three: Therefore, the human decisions of history must be God’s instruments to bring about people or else there is no moral accountability to God.

To get more specific, I teach my four children that God made them.  But Jennifer and I did the deeds that produced these four (as well as the preceding courtship and marriage).  These were spontaneous and real decisions, not impulses directed from outside of us.  We made choices as moral agents.  And yet this had to be under God’s control.  Otherwise, I can’t teach my children that God really made them. I would have to say that God contributed to their existence.

If God was not in control of human history (including human decisions) then God’s status would be akin to that of space aliens bringing human life to planet earth.  We might feel grateful to the aliens if that were true, but no individual would accept that he or she was accountable to them for every thought, word, and deed.

Was Solomon supposed to be grateful that God made him?  Yes! So what does that tell us about the relationship between God and human sin in history?