The long-standing contention between predestination versus free will boils down to the bifurcation of religion and reality. These are two opposing metaphysical views about God and His creation that struggle zealously to coexist together. Predestination is a religious doctrine, construed by men, leading to misinterpretation of Scripture, with no foundation in the real world. Free will is a rational doctrine based in reality, empirically evident, and supported by an overwhelming plurality of Scriptures; but consequently offends the religious sensibilities of many raised on the false hope of embedded religious theology. Reality is very clear. God is the Great “I AM”, the all-existent Creator of the temporal world as well as Lord of the eternal world; of all that is real. Not so of religion, which is a cultural creation of man about their god. Religion is a tangled mass of opinions, cultural traditions, emotions, and ultimately ecclesiastical control. Pastors are hesitant to explore this subject because it trespasses those who require everything packaged into neat doctrinal boxes alleviating the need to think for themselves. Thousands of books have been written, theological seminaries have been erected, churches have been split, pulpits have been pounded, and probably wars have been fought over these religious differences. But we must not shy away from the truth for in doing so we will be enlightened, knowing God in a deeper way, and understanding his creation and our reason for being.
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.” -John 8:32
But does the religious mind wish to be free?
As we shall see, free will is leavened into the very creation of God. It is the essence of the reality that God created. It is thrilling to teach and is the truest example of the love of God. Those who cling to the doctrine of predestination have become unmoored from reality. They have become firmly rooted in the dryness of religion. They paper over rational arguments. They are at war with reality. They regurgitate doctrine, like religious monks living in isolation in an ivory tower. They go to church religiously to have these dogmas spoken to them over and over again like mantras while the overwhelming reality keeps pounding on their head from the outside. And so they escape into their church and pretend the world of freewill does not exist. Reality becomes an annoyance to them from which they must escape for it continuously tells them of their invalid religious beliefs.
They are unable to logically confront the problem of evil in the world which is Satan’s number one argument against the existence of God. Most disturbingly, in defense of their theology, they turn God into evil itself. And yet paradoxically, they do not live or practice what they preach, because it is unreasonable and impossible.
If you want to get your life right, get your metaphysics right. The entrenched religious doctrine of predestination is foundational in enabling an escapist and besmirched Christian Church. It is essential that we read the Bible honestly, with a rational mind, that is based in reality rather than religious tradition or theology. The most religious were the Pharisees.
The Foundation
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. – Genesis 1:3-5
In this, the very first act of creation, God lays the foundation and establishes a new dimension, a contrasting reality, the temporal realm. This was something new and very different from the other realm, that still existed, and will always exist, and always has existed: the eternal realm. The temporal realm would indeed be temporal (based in time) and uniquely not eternal; having a beginning and an eventual end.
The creation of light was not an immaterial thing, but was rather the creation of time itself. All the rest of His creation, all the rest of His word, all human activity, as well as all of God’s striving with man, and even the advent of God’s only begotten Son, would be carried out within the limitations and succession of events in this newly created temporal realm. We now understand, to some degree, that the speed of light is directly connected to time. God wound and set the ticking of the clock when He said “Let there be light”.
There would now be two new elements, past and future; which all things would pass through from inception to cessation, which do not exist in the realm of the eternal present. God was experimenting with something new and was pleased; as the Bible states “And God saw that the light was good”. We see the very first succession of events that God creates by separating the day from the night: “and there was evening and there was morning, one day”. One day had passed from the future to the past in this brand new temporal realm. Never would that day exist again. There would be only be one first day. Everything that would happen from now on, until the end of time, would pass from future into the past, without pause, to be recorded, forever, in eternity, but never to exist in eternity.
The exact synergy between the eternal realm and the temporal realm is a mystery beyond our comprehension, precisely because we do not live in the eternal realm. We have no knowledge or logistical understanding of the eternal realm. We only know and understand things in the temporal realm. Our language and our thoughts are inseparable from time. We cannot truly comprehend what it means when God is expressed as “the beginning and the end”. The very statement is a contradiction for those living in time. And yet it is this contradiction which indicates God does not exist in time; but rather, He is eternal and “the beginning” is indistinguishable with “the end” in eternity. So the phrase is a way of using temporal language to describe what exists in the eternal (or the heavenly as the Bible sometimes refers to it).
It is this use of temporal language, which is necessary for us to have any understanding at all, in describing the eternal which causes much of the confusion and apparent contradiction in the Bible and theology. As Jesus said “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” John 3:12
Only the Son of God, coming in the flesh as Jesus, would experience what it is like; having first dwelt in the eternal realm, having a primary hand in creation, to now be compelled to live in the temporal realm, bound by time and eventually by men, led by the Spirit, and separated from His Father dwelling in the eternal realm. Is not this the most profound gospel story?!
The Typical Situation
The new pastor at the new church we attended was teaching from Ephesians chapter 1, which coincidentally I had just finished reading again and had taken quite a few revelatory notes. But I’ve become seasoned with religious teachings, and felt that there was little chance we would share the same insight. Long gone are the days when fishermen and carpenters were the prophets and teachers raised up by the power of God and recognized by their congregations as speaking the truth. These days we have career pastors who are taught the “correct” curriculum at various accredited Bible colleges and seminaries, and are then hired by churches to repeat this accepted curriculum, in accordance with the denominational name on the church placard, that the parishioners expect to hear. There is little fresh insight and almost no connection between the real world and the Bible lesson.
The doctrine of predestination is typically taught from this passage in Ephesians, along with sparse versus scattered elsewhere, to which its proponents doggedly return and continuously cling. They seem to be unpersuaded by and distrustful of the overwhelming number of contradictory scriptures which are either ignored or methodically reinterpreted.
Freewill is a dangerous concept to the church because it does not lend itself to the ecclesiastical control that the doctrine of predestination reliably provides, which becomes both a crutch and a law unto itself. Freewill demands the individual to be responsible and crying out for a savior, while predestination provides the basis for one to feel secure, privileged or chosen specifically by God in order to fulfill a unique “wonderful plan” that God has for their life. No thought is ever given to the vast majority of people, also created in the image of God, who were thus not chosen and thereby not priviledged.
The Posturing Begins; Reason Is Abandoned
He begins his message by stating how difficult this teaching is. Worried of any controversy and with scant ability to defend his position, he magnanimously states that some will have a different opinion, and that this is perfectly okay. He creates a religious safe-space by prefacing his message “I don’t wish to get into a philosophical discussion here”. Particularly vexing, this is a typical religious dodge that insulates the doctrine from being challenged by reason, a plethora of antithetical scripture, or by the obvious empirical evidence existing everywhere outside the walls of the church. Beyond Biblical reasoning, borne out by empirical evidence, there is only religious dogma.
Significantly, he said that he sought God as to how he should teach this difficult and controversial subject and said that God told him to simply “preach the text”, but most clearly, as we shall see, he did not preach the text but rather redefined the text and taught the accepted religious doctrine leavened into him from his Bible college or his religious upbringing. Not only did he not compare contradictory passages, but he even altered the particular passage in Ephesians from which he was teaching.
Let’s Actually “Preach the Text”
…just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, Ephesians 1:4-5
The operative phrase here is “He chose us in Him” which the pastor, vehemently and most erroneously, chose to reinterpret the word us as meaning us as individuals. But that is not what the text says. Us means us, meaning as a group, or more accurately us as a people and specifically the people of God adopted as sons. (Allow me a bit of foolishness here )- Sons? What about the women? If “us” means individuals, then why is it only male individuals as sons that is mentioned? Why not women as daughters? Because it is not individuals spoken of here but rather a predestined group. (but I digress)
What was predestined is that God would have a people – eventually, one way or another. The exact individuals in that people group are not predestined. But the people of God, that God would have a people to bear his name, “us in Him” is what was predestined before the foundation of the world. In Him is more significant than the us in this phrase. His will, before the foundation of the world, was to have a people in Him. The Bible, as a rule, is about God more than it is about us. God does not predestine us as individuals but his purpose is predestined “us in Him”.
Quite outrageously, seemingly able to read my mind, he tried to counter the obvious objections to his interpretation by saying that some would interpret us as meaning a group, but he reassured his congregation that us did not mean a group but rather us as individuals. Try as he might to make the square peg fit the round hole, the Scripture simply does not say that. I thought God told him to “preach the text”? Instead of going home with a deeper understanding of the text, the congregation is given the expected religious hopium that makes them feel good about themselves but wears off almost instantaneously as they return to the harsh, and yet delightful, realities of life where free will and choice reign supreme.
This is further made crystal clear just a little further on down in Ephesians 1:11; also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
We are not predestined as individuals but rather predestined according to His purpose. His purpose is predestined, not the individuals that will make up the people to satisfy his purpose. They come by themselves believing in the Son of God. God does not pick and choose who will believe and who will not believe.
Again as the Scripture says right here in Ephesians 1:13; In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him
Having also believed after listening to the message of truth? –is the listening predestined? Is the believing predestined? No! The individual decides to listen or not to listen to the message of truth and the individual chooses to believe or not to believe. Every indication is given throughout the Bible that the believing, that leads to salvation, that leads to being in Him, the people of God and receiving the inheritance, is a matter of free will choice and is not predestined. Notice also, mentioned twice in the same verse, the true predestined purpose of God is us “in Him”. Again, the exact individuals that make up the us are not predestined, but God’s purpose “us in Him” was predestined before the foundation of the world.
Ephesians 1:9 – He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him
What is His will? What is His purpose? Again, we find the phrase “in Him”. Christ’s death on the cross, winning a people unto Himself was God’s will and God’s purpose which He accomplished, and which was predestined, but the precise individuals that would makeup His people was not predestined.
1 Peter 2:9-10 states it this way: “But you are a chosen race, A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” All these groups are predestined but not the individuals that make up “the chosen race”, the “royal priesthood”, the “holy nation”, and the “people of God”. Individuals become a part of these groups by believing based on the freewill instilled in every man and woman who was made in the image of God. These groups are for God’s own possession and for his glory and not for our individual special predestined salvation.
The pastor said that God told him to simply “preach the text” and yet he did not preach the text but chose to re-interpret the text according to accepted religious tradition. Everyone wants to believe they’re special and that they are predestined but they do not comprehend the consequences of this religious belief. If everyone who believes was predestined, then there are those who were predestined not to believe. Isn’t this an awkward consequence?
Countering Predestination with Reason
No matter how it is peddled, the teaching of predestination, rationally and metaphysically, ends up meaning that God has picked and chosen who is going to be saved as well as who is not going to be saved. The religious theologians always refer to it in a positive manner. But positive predestination necessitates negative predestination, though this is carefully avoided lest the oversight becomes apparent. Negativity and rational criticism don’t play well in the docile Christian church. I guess this is what the pastor considered when he didn’t want to get into a philosophical argument about this. But the philosophical argument is unavoidable and necessary if the church wishes to grow out of childhood, particularly if that argument cites any of the other 99% of the Scripture which thunders that in this world notions of predestination are misleading.
Belief is the choice of the believer, and individuals retain the responsibility for their own salvation whether to accept Christ or not. To say that God has predestined certain individuals for glory is to say that He has also predestined other individuals for damnation.
Did God predestine that Adam and Eve would eat of the fruit or did they choose it on their own freewill? If the fall from grace was predestined, then why were they thrown out of the garden and cursed by God to live a hard life and eventually die if they had no choice in the matter? Can you not see that the entire story and all the subsequent stories from Adam, to the second Adam – Christ, to the present day, make no sense whatsoever without freewill?
(As a side point, if mankind was able to fall from grace while living perfectly protected by God in the garden of the Eden, then how is it that some theologians claim that we can no longer fall from grace once we are saved, even though we now live in a fallen world and no longer in the garden? – But this absurd doctrine of once-saved-always-saved, which could be called half-Calvinism, must be more fully exposed in another paper.
Did God predetermine that Abel would offer an acceptable sacrifice and that Cain’s sacrifice would be unacceptable? Did God predestine that Cain would kill his brother? If so, than who is the murderer here, Cain or God who predestined Cain to kill? Furthermore, why does God question Cain saying, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen 4:7) This does not sound like predestination. God does not master it for you, but God is speaking the language of free will.
Did God predestine and choose Noah and his family to be saved and thus, predestine all mankind and every living creature that walked on the face of the earth to be drowned in the flood? I thought God predestined us, didn’t he? Therefore he must’ve predestined Noah and his family to be saved and the rest of the earth to be drowned. Is there any indication that the Bible suggests such a thing? No. In fact what does it say: “and the Lord God was sorry (repented or regretted) that he made man”. (Gen 6:6) So God regretted what he had predestined? Did God not know in his omniscience that this was going to happen to his creation? Perhaps not, in His temporal world which He created, or perhaps he chose not to know. God does not predestine himself, does he? Of course not! Consider this, God has free will as well and He can choose whether or not to be omniscient or not. He is master and Lord of ALL. And we are made in his image. Concerning the flood, to suggest that God predestined such a thing is to make God out to be an unrighteous judge, and yes even a mass murderer.
We see here that Freewill is the profoundly simple answer to all these seemingly contradictory questions. And yet for some reason the religious mind incessantly rejects it.
Did God predestine that the children of Israel, shortly after leaving the land of Egypt, would fashion a golden calf and fall down and worship it bringing upon themselves the wrath of Moses and God? Would this not make God an idolater?
Did God predestine that David would kill Uriah the Hittite in order to have Bathsheba just so she would be in line to give birth to the future savior Jesus? This would make God a tempter of evil.
Was Judas predestined to betray Christ or did he choose to betray Christ? This is one of the themes in the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar”, that Judas being greatly distressed because he believes that God chose him to betray Christ, cries out to God “You have murdered me! Murdered me! Murdered me! murdered me! In the same way that Cain accused God of unjust punishment when he was banished. The opera is best understood as the gospel according to Judas because it well depicts his distorted view of Christ. This twisted view of God is essentially the same as the Calvinist and those who promulgate predestination, causing many to turn away from God, claiming Him to be unjust, not understanding that it was their own freewill choices that condemned them and not God.
God did indeed use Judas, and an Antichrist was predestined. But it was Judas who made the choice himself to betray Christ and thus become the son of perdition. Judas chose to take the silver, and he also chose to hang himself. God’s purpose and plan was predestined but the individual chooses himself.
Was Jesus Christ predestined to die on the cross? In eternity, yes, but in the temporal world in which Jesus was dwelling it had not happened yet and therefore was not predestined. This fact is evidenced by Jesus praying most fervently in the garden of Gethsemane “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” (Matt 26:39) If Christ was predestined to die on the cross and in fact was slain before the foundation of the earth, why did he pray this prayer? Apparently He was unaware of his own predestination. Furthermore, why did he have to come down and die at all? I mean it was all predestined in eternity wasn’t it?
Furthermore Jesus even says this concerning himself in John 10:17-18 “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.” Even Jesus’s decision to lay down his own life was an act of free will. Why? Because Jesus was in the temporal world and in the temporal world most everything is free will. How much greater does that make Christ’s sacrifice knowing that he chose to do the will of his Father?
There is no end to the examples that I could give that speak against this notion of predestination. Those who advance these notions have turned God into an unrighteous judge and thus, evil itself for the sake of their religion. And these are the deep questions that those outside the church really want answered, but the church cannot answer them because they continue to escape into this comfort zone of religious dogma. The people of the world are hungry to hear the truth and yet they are fed religious platitudes and they remain unresponsive. For the sake of good feelings of having been “chosen” or “appointed”, or uniquely loved, pastors abandon the depth of the Word and the true understanding of God. The unsaved are left confused – though by God’s grace, not predestined.
What about the Chosen?
For those bent on the religious and irrational notion of predestination, they will point to “the chosen” as proof of eternal predestination, but it is nothing of the sort. Individuals are not chosen or un-chosen in the eternal world; for this would make God a picker of winners and losers and an unrighteous judge for the temporal world that He created; which He placed the man and the woman whom He created in His own image. So what does “the chosen” mean?
A good analogy is how a man “chooses” a wife for himself, and indeed how Christ chooses his bride; us being the Bride of Christ as represented in Scripture. (The same can be true for a woman choosing a man but allow me to stick to the analogy.) A man is very strict in his choice of a wife and in the end only one is chosen. There are many considerations that go in to this choice but attractiveness is certainly one of the major ones. Also considered are compatibility and personality and perhaps most importantly, does the woman support the spirit and ambitions of the man. And this is how the Father chooses a bride for his Son, by considering the character and spirit, or heart, of a person as one that he will draw unto himself. Consider how God boasted about Job – And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” (Job 1:
God is keenly attracted to the righteousness of Job.
David was considered “a man after God’s own heart”, and this is the attractiveness that God is looking for in a person to draw unto Himself. Was David predestined to have such a heart that God would be so attracted to? No. This is absurd. If this were true, why would God not create every man with that kind of heart and predestine him to be as David was?
In the case of the man, only one woman is chosen thus effectuating all others to be rejected. Is this not what a woman longs for? To be the one that is chosen? No individual woman is selected prior to the couple meeting and the consideration of marriage entertained. There is no predestination even though there is one who is “chosen”.
The man woos or draws the woman to himself and although the woman is chosen, so to speak, by the man, it is not a foregone conclusion or predestined that the chosen one will accept. It is up to the woman to accept or reject the man as a groom or future husband. In a similar way, the Father draws people to the Son to be his bride. It is left up to the freewill of the person to accept or reject Christ. It is this freewill acceptance of the call by the Father that causes one to be born again after being “chosen” by God as acceptable.
Additionally, freewill does not disappear once an individual is chosen. The woman can at any time walk away from the marriage and abandon her husband. The husband can divorce the wife either unrighteously or righteously because of infidelity for which Jesus made provision, though not commanded. The man can choose, again by freewill, whether to divorce or to forgive his wife. The same is true for the chosen of God. They by free will can walk away, fall away, or choose to divorce themselves from God or spiritually commit suicide. God honors their choice. Love is not love if it is by coercion or predestined.
God does not create or love robots and God is furthermore not interested in the love of robots. He is only interested in the love coming from free will agents who are created in His image.
And all men are created in his image, not just the ones who are chosen. Because of this metaphysical fact they all have freewill.
John 6:44 puts it this way; “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him;”. God “draws” those he wishes, those he finds upright in heart and spiritually attractive, to Himself but they are not predestined to accept His invitation.
Matthew 22:1-14 gives a true picture of how God calls people and chooses people but clearly does not predestine people.
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son. “And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. “Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”’ “But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. “But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire. “Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. ‘Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ “And those slaves went out into the streets, and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests. “But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw there a man not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And he was speechless. “Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14“For many are called, but few are chosen.”
The wedding guests are not predestined to attend the wedding feast, but rather accept or reject the invitation by free will. The King is enraged at the very few who accept His invitation. This is not a King who has micro-managed his son’s wedding to be perfect in every way, following His will to the letter; but rather a picture is painted of the people’s free will frustrating all the wedding plans of the King to the point where he lashes out in vengeance. Does this sound like predestination to you? Certainly not.
And how about John 6:66-70 which is a multiple slayer of the dangerous notion of predestination or God choosing individuals for salvation or damnation. It reads: As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore. (Did they choose to withdraw? Or did God predestined them to withdraw?) Jesus said therefore to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” (According to Jesus, by his own words, whose choice is it?) Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.“ And we have believed (who believed? Were they predestined? What does it literally say!? – I could do this all day long throughout the whole Bible) And have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”
And here is the real kicker concerning “the chosen” –
Jesus answered them, “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70)
Do you claim to be one of the “chosen” by Jesus, and therefore predestined to be saved? But here Jesus says that he chose Judas as well. Was Judas predestined to be saved because he was chosen? – Obviously not since he betrayed Christ and later hanged himself. Furthermore, how is it that Jesus chose a devil? Did Jesus choose to make him a devil? Did Jesus make a mistake? The irrationality of predestination ties itself into a knot with such Scriptures – and there are many. It is rationally unsatisfying and serves up no answer as it attempts to make theological dogma out of a single word such as “chosen”.
Freewill is the most elegantly rational answer for all these difficult problems and seemingly contradictory Scriptures. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the advocates of predestination steer clear from reading from the Gospels, preferring the epistles of Paul which, due to their labyrinthian nature, are easier to theologically manipulate.
The religious purpose of teaching predestination
Some Christians will hear the message of predestination and feel good about ourselves at the expense of all those others who have not been predestined. As soon as they walk out the door, however, they are back to living their lives in the temporal world with no cognitive sense of being predestined until next week when they return and learn that we are predestined again and so is the merry-go-round of religious life. This all leads the church out of the world and disconnected from reality.
Predestination is perfectly suited to the Peter Pan contemporary Christianity that we have in most churches. It is one that wishes never to grow up but to remain a permanent adolescent – if not a child. And yes I am fully aware that there are younger Christians that need assurance of their salvation, but that doesn’t mean that they should not be encouraged to face the real world and grow to maturity. The mature Christian recognizes that the state of the world is not micro-managed by God, but rather is determined by the free will that God graced to mankind when he made him in his own image. He did not make us to remain as children, but to become mature men and women of God making godly choices and recognizing and judging between good and evil. We make the choice to follow the narrow road that leads to life, or the wide road that leads to destruction.
We must make a choice. God may choose us but salvation comes only when we, in return, choose God.
The Will of God
The religious mind believes that the will of God is always done. It claims that God, being sovereign and in total control, is micro-managing all things; and who can resist his will?
But the rational mind can easily see the stark truth that, in the temporal world, the will of God is rarely done. So much so that God delights greatly when certain individuals actually do his will. Consider how much God delighted in Job as he brags to Satan concerning him “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” (Job 1: Job was an extremely rare person. David was an extremely rare person – a man after God’s own heart. Jesus made this clear, “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it. “For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it”. (Matthew 7:13-14) Is it the will of God that many individuals enter by the wide gate? No. It is the will of God that none should perish but they are perishing every day. The will of God is rarely done.
Additionally, why is he telling them to enter by the narrow gate if it is predestined which gate each individual will enter? The entire ministry of Jesus becomes an absurd exercise in fulfilling what has already been predestined and cannot be changed.
On the other end of the spectrum is the rarity of the Son of Man, Jesus, who said “…for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” (John 8:29) (Jesus always did the will of God and thus he was sinless. We are not sinless. We are sinners born in sin and therefore we rarely do the will of God. The entire Bible is God’s dealing with sinful man, refusing God’s will, from the fall of Adam to the final deception by Satan in Revelation 20:8.
The Insanity of it All
Under predestination we all become actors, or marionettes, on a grand stage in a preposterous play (with the odd theme of making proper choices), which the script has already been written and every line has been programmed for an audience comprised solely of the author of the play. And yet for some reason the play actors keep forgetting their lines and stumbling off the stage, wandering away and failing to show up for the show, disrespecting the director, cursing the producer, fighting and killing their fellow play actors, and even writing their own subversive script, and yet nonsensically, all of this is also part of the play and predetermined by the author. The words of Jesus and the Bible become a grotesque absurdity viewed through the lens of predestination.
The sincere religious prophets of Baal were foaming at the mouth and cutting themselves to prove that Baal is God but as Elijah says as a proclamation of free will, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people did not answer him a word. [1 Kings 18:21] Here we see the religious people who could not answer Elijah a word and continued to hesitate between two opinions. I guess Elijah didn’t understand predestination either because he asks them to make a choice. But I guess the choice does not really matter since the individuals who would follow Baal and the individuals who would follow the Lord God were already predestined. Right? The whole dramatic scene involving Elijah and the prophets of Baal was just part of the play.
And again we have Joshua who gives the freewill decision to the people, “Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. “And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:14-15) Choose for your selves today whom you will serve. This is not the language of predestination. It is the language of freewill.
This paper would be as long as the Bible itself if I were to include every example of individuals turning to the Lord or rejecting the Lord based on their freewill choice with no reference to being predestined by God as to which choice they were supposedly compelled to make. I’ve only presented the highlights. But the overwhelming majority of Scriptures contradicting any notion of predestination, with deafening silence, are routinely whitewashed by the religious leaders regurgitating the feel good dogma of predestination.
“But I still believe we are predestined.” They cling to their beliefs. The play must go on!
The Ends are Predestined, Not the Means
Clearly something is predestined as a handful of scriptures do make reference to it. As previously said, the predestination applies mostly to God’s purpose. To be more precise, God’s eternal purpose, His “ends” are known and predestined, because they always existed. God’s will will be done eventually (to use a temporal term to define an eternal concept) and fully established in eternity after the temporal world has ceased to alter it. In consideration of this alteration of eternity, it is crucial that we remember Who it was that made the temporal world. It is the temporal world that God uses to fulfill His ends and for His own good purposes. The eternal God, Who dwells in eternity, The Beginning and the End, The First and the Last, is the One that created the temporal world. And He saw that it was good. God did not make a mistake. He knows what he is doing. This must not be overlooked.
It is this, God’s creation, the temporal world, where free will reigns because that is where time exists and the ever present ticking of the clock. We do not live in the eternal world despite the church wishing to pretend that we do. We live in the temporal world which is governed by free will and is ever passing from the future into the past. Not so in eternity where future and past exist in an eternal present. If you do not fully grasp this, that is understandable because we are inhabitants of the temporal world seeing only through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12) what is not governed by free will.
The teaching of predestination is therefore mostly irrelevant to those who live in the temporal world except to give hope to the believers of their potential eternity. When life ends in the temporal world, we go to eternity, and the choices that we made in the eternal world are now set in stone and written in the books for all eternity. While we exist in the temporal world, we can make eternal changes. Your name can both be written in the book of life as well as erased from the book of life. The book of life which exists in eternity can be changed by your actions in the temporal world. This is the defining element of the grace of God. The temporal world can alter the eternal world. The grace of God is the time that God gives us to humble ourselves and repent. This is our grace period in which we can utilize our freewill to make the choice to follow God or not. In this way, time is grace, time denotes freewill, and freewill trusts in the Grace of God for our salvation.
The ends are predestined but not the means in the temporal world. God will have a people, a bride, a body in eternity but he does not predetermine the individuals that will make up that people. The people themselves must exercise the grace and sovereignty given to them and make a choice.
Calvinism
Unfortunately one cannot speak about predestination without running into the highly religious and deeply hypocritical theology of Calvinism. John Calvin did to the Protestant Reformation what David Hume did to empiricism; he took it to its illogical extreme, drove it into the ground and killed it. So despising the heavy-handed religiosity and legalism of the Catholic Church, John Calvin ended up creating his own faith-based legalistic religion based on predestination to such extent that free will was deemed nonexistent.
Simply put, Calvinism is a colossal overreaction to Roman Catholic religious notions of confessions, paying of indulgences, purgatory, and various penance in order to obtain a partial eventual salvation. Yes we are saved by faith and not by works and Christ’s work on the cross is complete – the essence of the Protestant Reformation – and yet that doesn’t mean we don’t do anything. We must humble ourselves and we must choose God, and we must repent, and we must have faith. All these things are actions we must take; the “work” that we are given in order to be saved is to believe in Christ, the Son of God. (John 6:29) But for most people, this light yoke is too much to bear and they refuse. The Calvinistic idea that our faith is given to us, and that God humbles us, and that God chooses us, and predestines us, and that God does absolutely everything based on his sovereignty leaving nothing to our freewill is as un-biblical and absurd as any of the works based theologies of Roman Catholicism.
Ironically and unwittingly, the Calvinist on the theistic right mirrors the materialist on the atheistic left. The materialist also believes that there is no freewill, maintaining that we are compelled, or predestined, strictly by material forces alone and that any notion of freewill is merely an illusion by our brain which is deceiving us. They of course believe that there is no soul, and thus no mind, no god, and therefore no freewill. In the same way the Calvinist, lost in radical predestination anti-Roman Catholic theology, believes that not only are we predestined to be redeemed or not redeemed (incongruously by a loving God who shows no partiality), but in addition, all events leading up to the redemption or the non-redemption must also be predestined. And thus freewill, like the materialist, is once again found to be an illusion because how could God be God, being sovereign and omniscient, not preordain everything? But like the materialist, the Calvinist, both having their metaphysics incorrect, lock themselves into an irrational box from which they cannot escape, and of which they refuse to see past. – Ironically, this refusal is further evidence of their own freewill.
Though the Calvinist believes we have a soul, it is something that is considered dead and therefore has no ability to make free will decisions. This is a quaint and narrow reading of Scripture; a theology which seems to have some validity but is not observable anywhere in the reality. The complete lack of any empirical evidence, including zero awareness within ourselves of being incapable of making choices, makes this a difficult theology for any rational person to swallow. Any theology that is not supported by reason and empirical evidence should be considered questionable. What is the purpose of man’s soul, which is created in the image of God, and which will either descend into hell or ascend into heaven, if every decision is predetermined for the soul by God.
Why does God repeatedly put so many demands on man’s soul to make decisions if it has no ability to do so? So why evangelize if everyone is already predetermined as to their eternal destiny? The Calvinist will say that he evangelizes in order to be obedient to God, but where is obedience if there is no freewill to obey or not? Obedience to God is demanded throughout the Scripture but it is impossible without the soul’s ability to make the freewill decision of whether or not to be obedient. Is not obedience itself predetermined?
Why are these things not obvious to the Calvinist? Because they are devoted to religious dogma rather than to simple common sense, observable evidence, and to what the Bible actually teaches. Calvinism is an absurdity which one can make jokes about all day long. And yet their religious theology of predestination has been leavened into a majority of the churches throughout the years. Unfortunately, Calvinistic dogma won the battle over the more humble Arminianism.
Ironically the Calvinists are some of the greatest evangelists of the gospel thereby remaking my previous point that no one, despite their religious beliefs that they claim, actually lives by the notion of predestination. The Calvinist lives his whole life completely unaware of being predestined, because he isn’t, and yet he antithetically clings to this irrational theology.
Reality still rules the day
As should be expected, as soon as the religious sermon about predestination ends, everyone immediately returns to their real life which is consumed with freewill choices. And this includes their choice to accept Christ or not, to sin or not, to do good or not, to work or not, to play or not, to think or not, to hear the gospel or to cover their ears, to learn or not, to desire understanding or to desire not to understand, to follow Christ or to follow anti-Christ, to live in reality or to live in religion. All of these freewill choices are tiresome and thus the reason for religious dogma; for it relieves mankind from the burden and the responsibility of thinking reasonably for oneself. But this is the burden that mankind chose when they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In this way we indeed became like God, knowing good from evil, and thus having to make a choice. We now must exercise our freewill in order to be saved.
Although I truly love, and live by, metaphysical arguments, I am aware that for many people these unfortunately fall flat. So let me bring it back to practical reality and our own experiences of which we are all intimately aware.
In our day-to-day life, there is absolutely no sense of being micromanaged or predestined in the decisions we make; ever. Are we to believe, as the theologians claim, that we as individuals, billions upon billions of us throughout history, are somehow predestined, individually, on a predetermined path, exclusively designed for us by God, to act in a certain way and to arrive at a particular destination chosen by God before the foundation of the world? Now that is hubris! How important do you think you are? The Bible never hints this to be the case.
But couldn’t God control every one like robots? Couldn’t God choose every step we take and make every decision for us? Absolutely! He is certainly powerful enough. But to do such a thing would be to destroy his actual plan he designed, and yes one could say, predestined into His creation; for the men and the women that he made in his own image; who would share some of His sovereignty to make free will decisions. And after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, would share in His responsibility to make righteous judgments between good and evil.
The Problem of Evil
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the doctrine of predestination is the problem of evil. It is one of the most vexing and yet essential questions that every philosopher and thinking person comes to wrestle with.
Simply stated, if God is good, and also absolutely sovereign (this sovereignty being the foundation which proponents of predestination base their argument) then how does one account for the presence of evil in the world? How can a good God create evil? What is the genesis of evil in a “good” world created by a holy God? This is the nagging question that the Calvinist has no good answer for. This is the question that so many unsaved people hold against God, and yet sadly, the church which is devoted to religious tradition offers no satisfaction either. The only answer that makes any sense is the presence of freewill which has allowed both mankind and Satan and his demons to go astray, on their own, apart from God, and commit evil. God allows this choice. It is part of God’s design – the potential to turn away.
Consider nature. It would seem to be absurd that God would micromanage the flitting of the bat or the bird, directing it at every turn, providing the appropriate number and precise predestined insects that it is supposed to eat at every given moment. Why would God create a universe in which he burdens himself with the micromanaging of all possible events? What pleasure could that possibly bring Him? Instead, I would postulate that God created the universe grounded in a freedom and unpredictability that would continually both delight Him and challenge Him.
I would argue further that in addition to freewill and sovereignty being given to man, it is fully leavened into the very creation of the temporal realm. This randomness and unpredictability has even been found astonishingly at the sub atomic level. It is a foundational element of time and the realm in which we live. It enables man to fall away as well as it enables him to choose life and to come back to God.
But does any of this matter? Can’t we all just get along?
The pastor concluded his message by again playing COEXIST peacemaker and saying that people may disagree with him but that is okay, because the only thing that really matters is unity above all. But getting one’s metaphysics straight is very important as it is the foundation of everything else. It greatly affects one’s fundamental understanding of who God is and how He operates in the temporal world that He created.
In confronting predestination versus freewill I’ve been told that “this is not a hill to die on”. This is something that is only said by those in power to those not in power and never the other way around. It is an easy thing for the majority stance to say “this is not a hill to die on”, precisely because they are in the majority. These two opposing opinions can only coexist together if one side capitulates to the other. We see this maxim played out in politics where Democrats will allow the Republicans to ride along in the car provided that they are driving, and the Republicans are happy to ride in the backseat. But if the Republicans object to where the car is headed, the Democrats will quickly kick the Republicans out of the car. And so it is with the church and any directly conflicting doctrine. This is partly what gives rise to the multitudinous Christian churches, divisions, and denominations. If the majority should ever become the minority however, it will quickly become very much “a Hill to die on”.
The majority does not really care if you agree with them, just so long as they are in the majority. This is human nature. It actually benefits them if the minority does not leave because then the majority can appear open-minded and magnanimous to the lesser minority. But in any case, all debate must be silenced and unity maintained at all costs. If one continues to debate despite the majority’s call to not debate they are the n called divisive and politely pushed out.
Final thoughts
In writing these things I realize that I’m attempting to chop down a well-established religious tree, and that being most objectionable to those who live by the fruit of that tree, and by those who make their living cultivating that tree. It is a tall order to expect those who have been taught all their lives, and now teach others the same well-worn dogmas, to change and think differently. As with the apostle Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees, it might take a strong knock off a horse and the voice of Christ to awaken them – maybe. Even if one were to rise from the dead it is not enough to change the recalcitrant religious mind. It is easier to enlighten the hardened sinner than the religious mind. How then can I expect any of my rational arguments or numerous passages to do any better?
The religious mind has already established what it believes and has ceased from growing and learning while the rational mind is always testing what it believes continuing to grow and alter those beliefs based on new evidence and new revelations about reality.
I’ve attempted in this paper to handle most of the objections of those clinging to the doctrine of predestination, but the biggest objection remaining is that old reliable security blanket which provides such comfort. They search the Scriptures relentlessly in order to find those passages which supposedly justify them keeping their blanket. There is no end to the number of teachers, books written, preachers, Bible colleges and seminaries that are available providing the justification for keeping their blanket. Many make their living selling blankets and other religious securities to those who thirst for them. As Paul said “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.”
Those who believe in predestination hold a horizontal man-centered theology. They believe that God created the world for their sake because, as they are so often told, He loves them so much and predestined them before the foundation of the world. On the other hand there is the vertical God-centered view of creation where He created the world primarily for Himself, and for His own pleasure. He also created man for His own pleasure. What the Bible teaches is not that “God has a wonderful plan for your life”, as many Christian books teach, but rather that God has a wonderful plan. –And you can be a part of His plan if you are willing. God is willing, but a valid covenant also requires the other party to be willing. We must be willing to accept the covenant – this is what we must do, and God will not do it for us.
As children mature, they are expected to lay aside their security blankets as they begin to realize they do not need them and that they offer no benefit. Freewill is an understanding for the maturing believer. With the freedom to choose comes the responsibility to make righteous judgments. “If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36) But you have to choose it.
Leave religion for the religious. Step into God’s reality and make the freewill choice to follow the Truth. It is something you must do. It is a choice that you must make. We all know it intuitively, so why not allow your theology to teach it. You can predestine yourself this very day by making a choice.