Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8
WHAT IS PREDESTINATION?
Predestination is doctrine which teaches that God predetermined who would go to heaven and who would spend eternity in hell. Furthermore, it
teaches that each person has absolutely no choice in accepting or rejecting salvation through Christ. Every move you make and everything that
happens to you, good or bad, was predetermined by God. If you reject Christ it is because you never had a chance or option to believe.
Those who espouse predestination claim that if we have the free will to accept God�s salvation then we have earned our way into heaven. Therefore we�re not saved by grace but by our own merit-- we caused our own salvation, not God.
Belief in predestination is generally referred to as Calvinism or Reformed Theology.
� John Calvin (1509-1564):
o God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race,
without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.
o We proved above that something not subject to free choice is nevertheless voluntarily done.(1)
o Some are predestined to salvation, others to damnation (2)
o God �saves whom he wills of his mere good pleasure� (3)
o Regarding the lost: �it was his good pleasure to doom to destruction.� (4)
o Since the disposition of all things is in the hands of God and he can give life or death at his pleasure, he dispenses and
ordains by his judgment that some, from their mother�s womb, are destined irrevocably to eternal death in order to glorify
his name in their perdition.(5)
o All are not created on equal terms, but some are predestined to eternal life, others to eternal damnation� (6)
� Huldrych Zwingli (1484�1531) was the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed
Churches. Zwingli viewed God as the cause of all human sin. A Reformed Theology website said, �Zwingli�s understanding of
predestination as indistinguishable from providence, logically inclines him to the conclusion that God is the cause of human sin.� (7)
� Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892): I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life. (8)
� Loraine Boettner (1901-1990): Even the fall of Adam, and through him the fall of the race, was not by chance or accident, but was so ordained in the secret counsels of God. (44)
� Edwin Palmer: �All things that happen in all the world at any time and in all history�whether inorganic matter, vegetation,
animal, man or angels (both good and evil ones-- come to pass because God ordained them, Even sin- the fall of the devil from heaven, the fall of Adam, and every evil thought, word, and deed in all of history.� (9 )
� R.C. Sproul, Jr.: ��God desired for man to fall into sin�God created sin.� (10)
WHAT IS FREE WILL?
Free will teaches that when presented with the facts of God�s plan for salvation that every individual person has a choice to make, to either accept or reject God�s gift of salvation. God desires that every person accept His gift. What was predestined was God�s plan for salvation through Jesus
for those who accept it. Therefore if you accept that Jesus died for your sins and you have made Him Lord of your life then you are a part of the predetermined plan.
� Jesus Christ: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (11)
� Apostle Peter: The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (12)
� Apostle Paul: For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. (13)
� Apostle Paul: This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved. (14)
Calvinists claim that their position is proven by early church leaders and then quote Augustine who lived from 354 to 430 AD. What do even earlier church leaders say about free will? Let�s look at a few. Some of these men were discipled directly by one or two of the original twelve apostles or by men the original disciples taught and mentored.
Ignatius of Antioch- Died between 98 and 110 AD. Ignatius was likely a disciple of both Apostles Peter and John and was martyred (Ignatius was condemned to fight wild beasts in the Coliseum) in Rome. Seven of his letters have survived to this day; he is generally considered to be one of the Apostolic Fathers (the earliest authoritative group of the Church Fathers):
� If any one is truly religious, he is a man of God; but if he is irreligious, he is a man of the devil, made such, not by nature, but by his own choice.(15)
Polycarp- c. 69 AD-c. 155 AD. Martyred by being burned at the stake in his 87th year. Polycarp had been a disciple of John (there is debate as whether this John was the son of Zebedee, or John the Presbyter (Lake 1912)).(16) I list Polycarp here not for any particular quote but because he
was a teacher of Irenaeus, whom I do quote:
� But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom... (17)
Irenaeus- (ca. 130-202) - Irenaeus, who was also a martyr, was taught by Polycarp and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology. About 180 AD Irenaeus wrote Against Heresies Book IV, against ideas that would later become aspects of Calvinist and Reformed Theology in its denial of the free will as you can see in the following summaries:
� Men are Possessed of Free Will, and Endowed with the Faculty of Making a Choice. It is Not True, Therefore, that Some are by Nature Good, and Others Bad. (18)
� Man is Endowed with the Faculty of Distinguishing Good and Evil; So That, Without Compulsion, He Has the Power, by His Own Will and Choice, to Perform God�s Commandments, by Doing Which He Avoids the Evils Prepared for the Rebellious. (19)
Justin Martyr- c. 100/114AD � c. 162/168 AD. He was another early Christian apologist (defender) of the faith and was martyred by beheading. His works represent the earliest surviving Christian apologies of notable size:
� Man acts by his own free will and not by fate. (20)
� We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, chastisements, and rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man�s actions. Otherwise, if all things happen by fate, then nothing is in our own power. For if it be predestined that one man be good and another man evil, then the first is not deserving of praise or the other to be blamed. Unless humans have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions-whatever they may be.... For neither would a man be worthy of reward or praise if he did not of himself choose the good, but was merely created for that end. Likewise, if a man were evil, he would not deserve punishment, since he was not evil of himself, being unable
to do anything else than what he was made for. (21)
� But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully, unless
we repent beforehand. But if the word of God foretells that some angels and men shall be certainly punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeably [wicked], but not because God had created them so. (22)
Clement of Alexandria (190 AD)
� A man by himself working and toiling at freedom from sinful desires achieves nothing. But if he plainly shows himself to be very eager and earnest about this, he attains it by the addition of the power of God. God works together with willing souls. But if the person abandons his eagerness, the spirit from God is also restrained. To save the unwilling is the act of one using compulsion; but to save the willing, that of one showing grace. (23)
� Neither praise nor condemnation, neither rewards nor punishments, are right if the soul does not have the power of choice and avoidance, if evil is involuntary. (24)
Archelaus (250-300 AD)
� All the creatures that God made, He made very good. And He gave to every individual the sense of free will, by which standard He also instituted the law of judgment.... And certainly whoever will, may keep the commandments. Whoever despises them and turns aside to what is contrary to them, shall yet without doubt have to face this law of judgment.... There can be no doubt that every individual, in using his own proper power of will, may shape his course in whatever direction he pleases. (25)
Methodius (260-315 AD)
� Those [pagans] who decide that man does not have free will, but say that he is governed by the unavoidable necessities of fate, are guilty of impiety toward God Himself, making Him out to be the cause and author of human evils (26)
I could have quoted more early church leaders but the point is made. Lest you think I merely cherry picked favorable quotes to make my point consider what Calvinist Loraine Boettner has to say about the early church leaders. Boettner, author of The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination acknowledges that the early church fathers did not ascribe to the doctrine of predestination:
�It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century....They of course taught that salvation was through Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized; yet along side of those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination... They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a co-operation between grace and free
will...� (27)
Regarding what we now call the doctrine of predestination Boettner went on to say, �This cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine...� Augustine lived from 354 � 430 A.D., well after the church fathers quoted above.
Boettner wasn�t alone in his conclusion that prior to Augustine there really weren�t any who espoused a doctrine of predestination of a certain elect few. In 1882 James Morrison wrote in The Extent of Atonement about an English Bishop, John Davenant (1572-1641), who was present at the
Synod of Dort in 1618. Bishop Davenant wrote:
It may be truly said before Augustine and Pelagius, there was no question concerning the death of Christ, whether it was to be extended to all mankind, or to be confined only to the elect. For the Fathers�not a word (that I know of) occurs among them of the exclusion of any persons by the decree of God. They agree that it is actually beneficial to those only who believe, yet everywhere confess that Christ died in behalf of all mankind�
Augustine died in AD 429, and up to his time, at least, there is not the slightest evidence that any Christian ever dreamed of a propitiation for the elect alone. Even after him, the doctrine of limited propitiation was but slowly propagated, and for long but partially received.
In other words, according to Reformed Theology, the early church fathers, men who studied under the original Apostles and Disciples or their students, did not understand basic Christian doctrine. Apparently the world would have to wait nearly 400 years for this revelation! They are in effect saying that Christ�s work and the Scriptures were not understood by the early Christians. It required some special revelation of hidden truth to special people centuries later. Isn�t that Gnosticism?
What we see is that Calvinists would rather put their trust in doctrine developed centuries after Jesus, the Apostles and the early church fathers, by a man who did not study with those closest to the source. Biblical historians and scholars will tell you the closer one gets to the original source, the
more likely one is to get accurate doctrine from those who were there. The reverse is true, the farther away you get from those who were there, the more likely that errors are to develop in doctrine.
There is about a 400 year jump between the original Apostles and their students until Augustine revealed �the truth,� then you had another 1,100 years until men like John Calvin came along to develop and enforce this doctrine.
Dave Hunt sums it up nicely:
"The huge difference between the biblical God and the Calvinist God is clear. The biblical God punishes men for rejecting the salvation He provided for everyone, which all could have accepted by their free will-and punishes them for their sins, which are contrary to His will, none
of which they had to commit but chose to do so.
But the Calvinist God condemns to hell those whom He could save if He so desired but for whom He sovereignly chose not even to have Christ die and from whom He deliberately withholds the salvation He pretends to offer them�and punishes them for not accepting. Yes, that's a huge difference."
The Berean Call, July 2007 Q & A
EARLY JEWISH THOUGHT
Jewish philosophy stresses that free will is a product of the intrinsic human soul and is closely linked with the concept of reward and punishment,
based on the Torah itself:
I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse: therefore choose life Deuteronomy 30:19
It is further understood that in order for Man to have true free choice, he must not only have inner free will, but also an environment in which a choice between obedience and disobedience exists. God thus created the world such that both good and evil can operate freely. (28)
The 12-volume Jewish Encyclopedia, which was originally published between 1901-1906 has this to say about Free Will and Predestination:
FREE WILL: The doctrine that volition is self-originating and unpredictable. That man is free to choose between certain courses of conduct was regarded by rabbinical Judaism as a fundamental principle of the Jewish religion. Although generally following the ethical system of the Stoics, Philo, influenced by Judaism, professed the doctrine of free will ("Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis," ed. Mangey, p. 279), and Josephus states that the Pharisees maintained it against both the Sadducees, who attributed everything to chance, and the Essenes, who ascribed all to predestination and divine providence ("Ant." xiii. 5, � 9; xviii. 1, � 5). "All is in the
hands of God except the fear of God" is an undisputed maxim of the Talmud (Ber. 33b; Niddah 16b). Source: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=363&letter=F&search=free will
PREDESTINATION: The belief that the destiny of man is determined beforehand by God. "Predestination" in this sense is not to be confounded with the term "preordination," applied to the moral agents as predetermining either election to eternal life or reprobation. This latter view of predestination, held by Christian and Mohammedan theologians, is foreign to Judaism...Source:http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=503&letter=P&search=free will
Free will acknowledges that God is active in our lives and that He does intervene and cause certain things to happen as evidenced by the prophecies in the scriptures. Other things that happen to us are a result of choices we make. While yet other events happen because of sin that is in the world, we can�t control the events, we can control how we react to them. Free will teaches that because God is sovereign and active in our lives He can use any event for our benefit, even those events He does not directly cause to occur.
IS THERE A MIDDLE GROUND?
I�ve been told emphatically by a friend I�ll call Fred, who is a bi-vocational Reformed Theology pastor, �there is no middle ground.�
Loraine Boettner, author of The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination claims �there is no consistent middle ground between Calvinism and Atheism.�
DOES IT MATTER?
There are two reasons as I see it that it matters:
a) If a person's salvation is already determined there is no real point in being proactive in the faith or urgency in preaching the Gospel. If your neighbor is unsaved, Reformed Theology tells you that they will come to know Jesus or spend eternity in hell whether you tell them about God�s plan for salvation or not.
b) Calvinists believe that if you don�t believe in predestination it is because the Holy Spirit has chosen not to reveal the truth of predestination to you. The Holy Spirit reveals the truth of predestination to real believers so you must not be a real believer if you believe in free will.
Why do Calvinists even bother to debate the issue? After all, if Calvinists are correct then those believing in Calvinism and those believing in Free Will were predestined to have those beliefs, there is no basis for argument. Yet there seem to be more books and more web sites arguing the case for predestination than there are in favor of free will. Many Calvinist sites verge on the militant, dismissing any argument for free will out of hand. Many Calvinist websites I�ve come across call freewill dangerous to true faith. If, as Loraine Boettner claims, �there are no valid arguments for free will� then why devote so much time to arguing the case for predestination?
Again, does it matter? It shouldn�t be anything more than a difference in opinion. However, John Calvin had people executed who denied predestination and many prominent modern day Calvinists claim that Calvinism �is the Gospel,� the implication is if you reject Calvinism you also reject the Gospel, therefore you are not saved.
According to Calvinism the good news of the Gospel is not good news for everyone� The Reformed Theology Gospel is essentially this:
God only loves and saves those whom He chooses to love and save. Everyone else God specifically created to spend in hell, for eternal torment and damnation even though they never had the chance or option to accept God�s gift of salvation. This is �God�s good pleasure.� God demonstrates His Glory when he predestines certain people to destruction.
In case you think I�m exaggerating then read from John Calvin�s Institutes of Christian Religion:
� God �saves whom he wills of his mere good pleasure� (29)
� �Those, therefore, whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children�� (30)
� Regarding the lost �it was his good pleasure to doom to destruction�� (31)
� �But if all whom the Lord predestined to death are naturally liable to sentence of death, of what injustice, pray, do they
complain�because by his eternal providence they were before their birth doomed to perpetual destruction� what will they be able to mutter against their defense?�(32)
� �Now since the arrangement of all things is in the hand of God�He arranges� that individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction�� (33)
� ��by his eternal providence they were before their birth doomed to eternal destruction� (34)
This is in contrast with the Gospel I know. The Gospel means the good news, which is that God created us to have a personal relationship with Him and cares about every individual person:
�For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.� John 3:16-17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. Romans 1:16
THE PROBLEM WITH PREDESTINATION
According to Reformed Theology when someone, lets call her Molly, accepted Christ it wasn�t really because of her own free will, but because God created her specifically to accept Christ, without a choice.
Now suppose Molly's grown son dies without accepting Christ. Reformed Theology tells us that God created Molly's son specifically to spend eternity separated from God, in hell. Therefore all the years of prayer, anguish and hope that Molly�s son would someday accept Christ was a
waste of time.
It�s one thing to have a loved one that rejects God because of his own choice, but it is another to believe that person never had a chance because God never permitted or allowed them a chance.
To follow predestination to its logical conclusion we should not feel any sense of grief or sadness when an unsaved friend or relative dies and spends eternity in hell. Rather we should rejoice because the person is going to hell, just as God intended.
IN THE BEGINNING� IT WAS VERY GOOD
We see in the first chapter of Genesis that God created everything and everything He created was good.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. Genesis 1:31 NIV
What did God create that was not good? Nothing!
We�re also told that �God created man in His image�. The Bible tells us God created man, male and female, and God blessed them (Genesis 1:28). Nowhere in the Genesis account does it tell us that God created anyone specifically for eternal damnation.
Sin, Rebellion and Evil
God did not create the world to destroy part of it. That is something we brought on ourselves.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:17 NIV
Sin: Everything God created was good, so how did sin enter the world? Apostles Paul and John tell us that sin entered the world through Adam and that God did not create sin.
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. Romans 5:12 NIV
�But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him� the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God� 1 John 3:5-9 NASB
God did not cause Adam to disobey Him; otherwise man wouldn�t have been created in God�s image. The Bible tells us that God hates sin and that sin can�t enter heaven. Solomon wrote: "This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." Ecclesiastes 7:29 NIV
Reformed Theology says �God created us therefore whatever He does is just, whether we like it or not.� Yes, that is true, however, I don�t accept their definition of just nor do I believe that God is that capricious or arbitrary. God sets the standards for us and the standards are knowable.
A just parent cannot force his child to eat a cupcake and then slap the tar out of him for eating it. It�s a different case when the parent says, �Don�t eat the cupcake�, then if the child thinks about it and says to himself, �Dad really didn�t mean he�d punish me if I did eat it� or �I don�t care what Dad says, I make my own decisions and I am eating the cupcake anyway.� Then the resulting punishment is just.
Having free will means bad things are going to happen as a result of living in a fallen world.
When a loved one gets sick, or dies in a traffic accident, or loses their job, or just gets a cold many tend to say �it�s God�s will.� It is certainly a convenient and uncomplicated explanation. If one means its God�s will because He didn�t prevent it this is different than saying God caused it to
happen.That God didn�t prevent it doesn�t mean He caused it to happen. Many calamities are a consequence of living in a sinful fallen world of our own making. That is a consequence of having free will. Otherwise one would have to conclude that God causes every rape, every murder, and
every starving child. The truth is because God can use any incident for His glory, He doesn�t have to cause it to use it. In the same way, regardless of what befalls us, God expects us to react a certain way:
...Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ... Philippians 1:27 NIV
Rebellion: Did God create Lucifer/Satan, specifically to rebel and take a third of the angels with him? Because God is sovereign, He could have prevented the possibility of the rebellion from ever happening. Again, that God didn�t prevent it doesn�t mean He caused it to happen. God allowed it because He allowed free will.
Evil: Did God create evil?
And the LORD God commanded the man, �You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.� Genesis 2:16-17 NIV
And the LORD God said, �The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3:22 NIV
You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; Psalm 5:4 NIV
The LORD loves righteousness and justice Psalm 33:5 NIV
I have been told by my Reformed Theology friends that since God is sovereign over all it is presumptuous for us to call anything evil. They tell me since we cannot know God�s mind and God causes all things as part of His sovereign plan, then nothing is really evil, there is no difference between good and evil. Yet God's sovereignty is not threatened by free will and He tells us we can distinguish between good and evil.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil Isaiah 5:20
Josh McDowell had the following to say about creation, evil, and God�s love for us:
The Scriptures make it plain that God did not create the world in the state in which it is now, but evil came as a result of the
selfishness of man. The Bible says that God is a God of love and He desired to create a person and eventually a race that would love Him. But genuine love cannot exist unless freely given -- through free choice God allows us to accept His love or to reject it.
This choice made the possibility of evil a reality. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they did not choose something God created, but, by their choice, they brought evil into the world. God is neither evil nor did He create evil. Man brought evil upon himself by selfishly choosing his own way apart from God�s way. (35)
GOD LOVES US
God created us out of love for a purpose. The purpose is God wants a relationship with us. A relationship cannot be one-sided where the interaction of one side is all controlled by the other side. Imagine creating a sock-puppet with button-eyes and carrying on both sides of a conversation with it. How satisfying is it for you as a creator to make up both sides of the dialog?
If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. Deuteronomy 7:12 NIV
... the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. John 16:27 NIV
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8 NIV
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10 NIV
God created man for fellowship, not to keep us in a fishbowl as a pet, in a cell as a prisoner, or preprogrammed to be obedient robots. If God did, there would be no relationship.
God, from the beginning, had a plan to redeem mankind and built into that plan were choices and consequences for man. God desires fellowship with all mankind, not just certain people. Yet God knows that not all people are going to reciprocate because of the freedoms He gave us.
References:
1. John Calvin- Institutes of the Christian Religion, II,v.
2. John Calvin- Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, viii
3. John Calvin- Institutes of the Christian Religion, III:xxi,1.
4. John Calvin- Institutes of the Christian Religion, III:xxi,7.
5. John Calvin- Institutes of the Christian Religion, III:xxi,7.
6. John Calvin- Institutes of the Christian Religion, III:xxi, 5
I agree God changes us, but I do not agree that he forces us, so don't celebrate too much:laugh:. I do also doubt that we have real "free will", like Sparrows was saying, considering we're slaves to sin. But I do think we have enough for God to bring us to recognize His perfection and our horrible state, even though we don't have enough to free ourselves from slavery.
"And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for everyone that exalts himself shall be abased; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted."
Predestination is like a movie script. Free will is like when people watch the movie in the theater for the first time. The viewers don't say, "I know this movie has a happy end, therefore it's boring!" No, they are experiencing the movie as it happens. And that's what our experience is like on earth. We experience history as it is unfolding now, and we feel 100% in control.
We could say that free will is just an illusion, but when people believe they are not in charge of their lives, they feel powerless, depressed, and start blaming everyone else. So, in order to function as a sane and healthy human being, we must believe that we have free will. :)
And yes, we can find plenty of verses in the Bible that support one position or the other. I did a comprehensive study on this once, and I believe both.
