Predestination or Free Will?

Faith & Science Conversation
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As long as sin rules us, life and consciousness are somewhat lacking. So Jesus said… “Let the dead bury their own dead.” But very rarely people (and no doubt with the help of God) will step out of their sins to surprise us, much to the consternation of prophets like Jonah.

So… what difference does this make? Adam and Eve were not set up. They had free will and their fall was not “predestined.”

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What a great question, @Angela275. One that is not only important theologically, but also has important pastoral (and emotive) implications. I’m sure that like me you have non-Christian friends and family, so this question also impacts them whichever side you fall down on. On the one hand, “If salvation is for a select set, is there any chance God might pass over them?”. On the other hand, “If salvation is only an act of free choice, does that mean their eternal destiny is more or less up to chance?”. Again on the one hand, “Is God abusively forcing himself on others by predestining people?” On the other, “If he has the power to save, but leaves it up to our choices does that make him negligent?”.

I say all that, not so folk will necessarily answer the questions but more to illustrate that this is not theological minutia. Rather, if one imagines theological doctrines like countries on a map, ones view of predestination and free-will directly borders one’s theology of God and one’s theology of Church Mission. These are big important questions; let me try to offer some basic, stumbling, reflections.

It is worth considering what one means by ‘free will’. My own view is that our will follows our desires, so I do not believe then that the will is ‘free’ from any and all coercion anyway. One chooses Pepsi over coke, for example, because one desires Pepsi more and so the will chooses that brand. I would argue that sinners never choose to submit to God because their heart desires sin more than righteousness and so the will chooses to rebel instead. As such, left to our own devices none of us chooses God on our own. As such God must intervene to give us a new ‘heart’ (the core of humanness) so that we desire to choose him rather than rebellion.

Unsurprisingly then, I am a convinced Calvinist. And not even necessarily because I want to be but because that is what I see in scripture and, personally, find the most convincing position. Others have and will disagree - I’m cool with that.

As a subset of Calvinists, I follow Don Carson’s Biblical Compatibilism model. Justin Taylor gives a good overview of the position (with bible passages) here. However, here are the headlines:

D. A. Carson… argues that the following two propositions are both taught and exemplified in the Bible:

  1. God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in Scripture to reduce human responsibility.
  2. Human beings are responsible creatures—that is, they choose, they believe, they disobey, they respond, and there is moral significance in their choices; but human responsibility never functions in Scripture to diminish God’s sovereignty or to make God absolutely contingent.

Again folks are welcome to disagree. I have answers to some common objections, other stuff I just have to go, ‘yeah, don’t know really…’. I certainly have no answers to Mitchell’s consciousness critique, that is information above my pay grade I am afraid. Yet, not being able to answer an objection does not necessarily make Calvinism invalid, it is more a recognition that I am not as smart as he is(!) :wink:

I guess what I am saying is this: at the end of the day, I’m just another finite human trying to get my head around an infinite being’s operations. Even with the bible and 2000 years of theological reflections, we’re all still ants trying to comprehend the ocean. So whatever direction one approaches the debate I think it is incumbent on us to do so with grace and humility.

Sadly that has not always been the case. The Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate has been dividing churches for centuries and it is often, not to put too fine a point on it, due to stupid behaviour on both sides. Again, I often wonder if part of the reasons one lands on one side of the theological fence or the other on these issues is personality type, background, etc. It also wouldn’t surprise me if when we reach glory Calvinists and Arminians (and everyone else) finds out they were both partly right and both partly wrong.

I hope you can salvage something useful from all that. What’s your thoughts on the issue, Angela?

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The sermon at my church last Sunday was on the book of Habakkuk. The pastor said something that I have been mulling over. He said that we usually treat God’s sovereignty as a puzzle to be solved, some kind of theological brain-teaser to figure out. But in the Bible, God’s sovereignty is given to believers as a place to rest. When life is full of devastating realities and horrific future “what ifs” (as it was for Habakkuk and others like Job), God reminds them of his sovereignty so they can rest in the “even ifs” (Hab. 3:17-19) of their situation and know his peace, hope, and promise of ultimate vindication.

I think we often try to take the truth of the Bible and turn it into some kind of math equation or law of the universe, and that’s probably wrong. We were given the truth in stories and histories that are deeply tied to experiences and emotions and the care of people’s souls, and I think that is the level we need to process the truth on sometimes. So, I have been challenged to think of God’s sovereignty more as a gift to me to ease my human fears and anxieties, and less as some kind of theological chemical reaction with free will that needs to balance out with the proper math.

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Absolutely, and not to resist or resent but to rejoice in. He is a good Father.

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I am still on the fence about free will, but tend to lean that direction. As to concerns about prophecy and God’s sovereignty, I do not see a problem as I hold God as all powerful, so his will will come about. God knows all that can be known, the question is to what extent can the future be known. He know the range of possibilities and the relative probabilities, and can intervene to make his will reality. I feel that he also is fine with a range of possibilities, which is where our will has freedom.

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I think our future is more sure and secure than that. Father is already there, if you will (:slightly_smiling_face:), and knows where every molecule is, then and now.

Let me reprise my kidney story, if you haven’t seen it (and if you have :slightly_smiling_face:). It not as nicely crafted as Liam would do it, but bear with my stumblings.

(@Christy – note the ‘rest’ featured above.)

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It is God’s sovereignty over molecules that helped me accept evolutionary science and label myself an ‘evolutionary providentialist’.

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Just because God knows what the future holds, doesn’t means its all predestined. Humanity still has free will, God just already knows the choices we make.

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The why does the Bible use that word?

We like Romans 8:28,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

But we have difficulty with 29:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

It’s a wonderful mystery, God’s relationship to sequential time, and how he works in our lives dynamically but also having ‘planned’ them (a word in the past tense that cannot apply to God, the forever Present tense and the eternal Now).

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‘Beforehand’ is a word, once again, that only makes sense in sequential time. It does not apply to God without recognizing that fact and allowing for that qualification, a wonderful mystery.

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Why would God create a bunch of puppets? Whether predestination or knowing the outcomes of our free will is not logical. The only reason He would create beings with free will is so that they could surprise Him. I see God as a master statistician - He know in general what His Creation will do, but not exactly what each individual will.

When He created the the first beings, He knew that it was possible that some could disobey His Laws and He watched it unfold, as each generated their own fate, through their specific disobedience of His Laws.

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A great reminder, thanks @Christy. I’ve always loved the way that the Heidelberg Catechism articulates similar ideas:

Question 26: What believest thou when thou sayest, “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”?

That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… is for the sake of Christ his Son, my God and my Father; on whom I rely so entirely, that I have no doubt, but he will provide me with all things necessary for soul and body and further, that he will make whatever evils he sends upon me, in this valley of tears turn out to my advantage; for he is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing, being a faithful Father.

Or indeed, Psalm 62:1-2, for that matter:

Truly my soul finds rest in God alone,
my salvation comes from him.
Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.

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One of my favorite books, and sadly overlooked on the question of theodicy (problem of evil). My summary:

Prophet: Why don’t you answer my prayers? Why do you tolerate violence and evil?!
The Lord: I am raising Babylon to dispense my justice.
Prophet: But how can you - a good God - use evil men to accomplish your purpose?
The Lord: The plunderer will become the plundered. Evil will not go unpunished forever. Meanwhile, the righteous will live by faith.
Prophet: Although I fear the worst is yet to come, I will rejoice in the Lord. The Lord God is my strength.

Roger Olson had an interesting take on things yesterday:

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Even with God outside the space-time continuum, we can still be other than a book already written. The picture we have in quantum physics is that things exist in a superposition of possibilities until a measurement is made. Likewise, our future is a superposition of possibilities. It is actually the only logically consistent way we can have a God which interacts with the universe. The future is only written as God participates and until then the future is only knowable as branching tree of possible outcomes. Otherwise, how can God do anything if the future is already fixed. And if it is just like a book which God can edit, going back and forth then it is absurd to think of the characters of His book as being any more real or alive than the characters in our own books. Having a future of possibilities to choose from is the very essence of life and consciousness.

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Yeah, I really feel like a puppet in those two accounts I gave as illustrations of his sovereignty. NOT! :slightly_smiling_face: You missed the part about him being timeless and having a dynamic relationship to us.

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These are very important questions, and the implications of how you sort them out can go far. I think that free will and predestination are not compatible ideas logically.

So on one hand you have a reformed or Calvinist view that emphasizes predestination, and then you have the other end of the spectrum with open theism or process theology. And in the middle, you have probably most people who try to mix the two somehow (which is an impossible task).

I subscribe to something like open theism or process theology, where the future is not determined. God knows everything there is to know, it is just that the future is not written and can only be known as possibilities. However, God is able to accomplish whatever he declares in one way or another. He usually prefers to allow his creation to cooperate with him to bring about his plans.

I believe in a God who truly interacts and responds and loves, not just follows a script.

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It is predestined if God or anything already knows it. That is not compatible with free will. That would be the illusion of free will.

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They are not, given that the extent of our ability to understand is completely limited to sequential time. But our God is bigger than that, and I am willing to not try and confine him to our sequential time limited thinking box and to accept the reality of the wonderful mystery of the dynamic relationship he has with us, illogical as it seems to us if we feebly try and explain. The Bible teaches both concepts quite clearly, God’s absolute sovereignty and our freedom and responsibility.

That is an excellent picture of how our thinking is limited to sequential time.

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That too is illustrative of how we limit God to sequential time – all of the verbs are tensed. That is the only language we have.

Free will is not an illusion, it is real, but so is God’s absolute sovereignty. Limited to sequential time, yes, they are incompatible, but God is not so limited. Can we get our heads around God’s dynamic reality and put it in a box? No, we cannot, but we can accept and enjoy the mystery, if we are in his family.

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A Co-instants Log entry:

*CCM: contemporary Christian music