Abstract
Predestination, the doctrine in today’s epistle, has been a problem down the centuries and still is today. As to what the doctrine is, to quote the apostle Paul: According as God has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love; having predestinated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
It is a problem because it seems to annul free will. We all know that however much influenced by upbringing or circumstance, when we make decisions, we do so of our own free will. And besides, it would be no pleasure to God if we were robots; He wants our freely given love and worship, not something produced by people who are pre-programmed automata.
And how—if this is also implied by the doctrine of predestination—can we be blamed for sins if we are predestined to commit them?
Perhaps the part of the church most known for holding the doctrine of predestination are the Calvinists. They ask, has not the God who created us the power to dispose of mankind as He sees fit? No doubt He has, but only if the disposal is in accordance with His other attributes. Would such an exercise of power be also consistent with mercy and justice?
Many centuries before Luther and Calvin, Augustine gave his answer to that question. He pointed out the background, namely that all mankind is sinful and so worthy of death. So yes, there is an eternal decree which, before the establishment of anything which might be thought to be deserved, separated one portion of the human race from another, ordaining some of all who deserved eternal death to eternal life and the others to misery.
But it was out of mercy that God so decided to deliver some whom He had chosen, without regard to their future merits. It was from eternity that He prepared gifts for these so chosen which He bestows on them in due course, gifts which enable them to persevere in the faith to the end of their days.
Augustine did not say that God predestined the others to eternal damnation. But he did say that God does withhold His graces from them, and they end up condemned by sin. How this accorded with justice, Augustine could not say. The justice was infinitely far from human conception, he wrote. The law of His justice rests with God alone.
The position is perhaps best expressed by Copinger in his book on Predestination ‘It is impossible,’ he wrote, to deny that there is such a thing as an Election of some nations and of some men to certain blessings which other nations and other men are not privileged to enjoy. So far as we can see, this election has no relation to the moral excellencies or qualities of the nations or individuals, but is dependent on the mere will and choice of the Almighty Father and Disposer of all things.
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He then goes on: ‘We are not able to solve the choice of God as thus manifested.’ 2 ‘What is denied is that the Infinite is bound by laws which the ingenuity of man may lay down for Hs guidance under all circumstances.’ 3 In other words, we must accept the doctrine but not deduce from it elaborations of our own devising.
He points out, however, that this is not a unique occurrence of something which we cannot fully understand. Why are some born into poor families, others into rich? Why does God give some one talent, others two, and others five? Why are the spiritual gifts not evenly allotted? Why, as Paul teaches, is every member of the church not of equal honour? We believe in the Trinity but ‘cannot [...] define the mode of operation of the Three in One.’ 4
Likewise, ‘Scripture does not reveal to us the mode by which the two truths’ of predestination and of free will ‘ undoubtedly taught therein may be completely harmonised.’ 5
He concludes that we can see predestination only from our own place. We can only accept of God’s revelation of its truth in faith. The attempt to explain it is useless; it is the province of the Creator, not of the creature.
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Now if this is so, then certainly we must put our full trust in God in this matter as in others. But somehow this seems different from the other matters which we do not altogether understand. It is not the apparent injustice which differentiates it. It is hard enough at times to see where justice lies even in earthly matters; we can readily accept that there is a heavenly justice which is beyond our comprehension. No. It is in what seems impossibly illogical, that there could be both: predestination and free will. That is the problem.
That seems somehow to be being blamed, as it were, on God; He has not sufficiently explained to us the apparently inexplicable. But that is not the conclusion to which I am led. The conclusion to which I am led is that it is much more likely that it is we who have net properly understood what has been explained to us.
So let us look again therefore at what Paul wrote; ‘According as He has chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having preedestinated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ’ and so on. We have interpreted this to mean that God’s having chosen us before the world to be holy and without blame rules out any exercise of will by those so chosen.
But why so? As Paul wrote to the Romans; ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’ (Romans 3.10). Let alone, one might add, holy and without blame. So how do we become so? Paul tells us this more than once in his lengthy explanation of faith in that letter. For example: ‘If you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture says: Whosoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed.’ (Romans 10.9–11) And again: ‘to him that believes on Him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.’ (Romans. 4.5)
Of course, that faith will not be genuine unless it brings forth good deeds, as James teaches us. But no amount of good deeds suffices to make us holy and without blame. Only faith can do that.
But that is where the exercise of free will lies, in getting ourselves into the position where we can receive the gift of faith in what Jesus has done for us. It is after the exercise of that faith achieved through the use of our own free will that God makes us holy and blameless.
Now God is omniscient and so He can know before the foundation of the world who is going to so exercise his or her faith and whom therefore He is going to be able to make holy and blameless and to predesignate to be adopted as children. As Paul writes elsewhere in this letter: ‘Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son[. . .]. Whom He did predestinate, them He also called’—i.e., after the exercise of the necessary faith—‘ and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified’ (Romans 8.29, 30). The foreknowing comes first, i.e., the foreknowing of those who through the exercise of their own free will, make themselves such that He, God, can give them what He has predestinated for them.
If this is the correct understanding of the apostle Paul’s teaching about predestination, not only is there no injustice involved, but there is no conflict between free will and predestination.