Monday, June 11, 2012

How it works (predestination time!)


Note from 2014: This was written in 2012, two years before I discovered that in many ways, I'm pretty much Arminian. The Arminian view of corporate election does a pretty fantastic job of explaining all of this in a much more intuitive manner. This is one way to do it...but I think that corporate election is probably better.

A few days ago I posted a fairly large blog detailing my thoughts on the actual "mechanics" of prayer: How it interacts with the divine foreknowledge of God, as well as the divine plan for the universe. Today I want to talk about it some more, because I think it has a very important application for a very important--and divisive--topic: Predestination.

But we're not going to talk about Calvinism, or Armenianism, or any of the other "isms". We're going to talk about the possibility of a comprehensive and cohesive doctrine that ties the few verses speaking about predestination to the consistent, Bible-wide assumption of free will. 

I need to talk a little bit more about this. The assumption of free will extends throughout the entire Bible. From Job's ultimate steadfastness to Abraham's mingled faithlessness and faithfulness, from Moses' obedience and disobedience to Zechariah pissing off the angel Gabriel... all of these are portrayed as actions that may have happened differently, actions that are punished or rewarded precisely because the doer could have done otherwise. I pick my examples at random, off the top of my head, because I could literally open the Bible to almost any page and find that same implicit assumption of free will. From Adam to the seven churches in Revelations, the Bible clearly shows us that we can choose.

Let's look at Jesus. The Jesus who does not believe in free will is a monster: He proclaims the good news to people who are fundamentally incapable of acting on it, and he does nothing to help them. When he speaks to a totally depraved humanity without free will, saying, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest," it is no different than if he told the lame man to get up and walk, without first healing the man's lameness. It is taunting, mockery of the worst kind, telling a quadriplegic how great it is to be able to walk.  The Calvinist Jesus does not truly love the young man in Mark 10: He merely pretends to love him, with a love that could be effective but is not, that willfully chooses to not be effective and, in doing so, dooms the young man whom Jesus loved to hell. That is not the Jesus I read about in the gospels, no matter how you twist his words, no matter how you twist Paul's words, that is not the Son of God that walked Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

Ahem. Pardon me.

But then you have the few verses that explicitly mention predestination. God hardening the pharaoh's heart in Exodus, God foreknowing, predestining, and calling in Romans, and a few others. They are puzzling, to be sure... but they are not in and of themselves troubling, exactly because of the assumption of free will present in the gospels and each and every one of Paul's letters. They only become troubling when they are used, by Calvinism, to overturn the entire tone and direction of the New Testament. To say that there are verses that clearly teach predestination is only to say that the Bible teaches that predestination somehow coexists with free will. To say that we should take the verses of predestination and use them to completely overturn free will is, quite frankly, ridiculous. 

So. We find ourselves in the position of trying to reconcile free will and predestination. Jesus and Paul both take free will for granted: In calling to people and telling them and asking them to do things, they assume that their hearers can do those things, but are not forced to do them. But both also mention predestination. One might well look at this predicament and say, along with some of the internet's greatest scholars, "What is this I don't even?"

But there is a solution. We return to my blog on prayer, which, in hindsight, I shouldn't have linked so early in the blog before. Essentially, prayer  interacts with God's plan for the world, which, from our perspective, he set down before time itself. The Bible tells us to pray. More than that, it tells us to expect results. It tells us that we can choose whether to pray or not, and that there are consequences to praying and consequences to not praying. In short, it tells us that prayer changes things. 

This only makes sense once you recognize that God does not, primarily, experience time. I'm just going quote a paragraph from my last blog: feel free to skip it if you've already read it:


"The way we experience reality is a series of successive events, one after another: 6:00 a.m. is followed without fail by 6:01 a.m., and no amount of effort can prevent the eventual progression to 6:02 a.m., nor wind the clock back to 6:00 a.m. But that is merely a way of seeing reality, not reality as it really is. God sees everything as it really is: NOT as a series of linear, successive events, but as one utterly cohesive NOW; Thus God does not have to "wait" to experience 6:00, 6:01, and 6:02 in succession: He experiences them all at once, without confusion. (This is important: Otherwise God would be bound by time just as much as we are.) Thus the results of an answered prayer for rain made at a particular point in world history--say, June 4, 2012--would be visible and present in the world long before the prayer was even thought of. Because we experience reality through time, it seems to us as though the effect comes before the cause. But in actuality, God has merely seen the prayer and adjusted reality in the same cohesive, unbounded, endless Now."

 That is the only way prayer can work: The only way prayer can be effective and free, which is how the Bible always portrays it. 

So why not apply it to salvation?

If reality is truly governed by Time, if God himself is governed by time, and exists and works only in time, then of course predestination must override free will. But if God is not bound by time, if time is merely the way we perceive reality and not the way reality actually is, then it immediately becomes obvious that the mechanics of predestination vs. free will present no greater problem than that of prayer. Having (apparently) found a solution for one, it seems as though we have found a solution for the other.

Can God  receive a prayer, made on June 7, 2012, for rain on June 8, 2012, and as a result of that prayer, shape the weather patterns for the preceding however many thousands of years so as to make it rain on that particular day? I see no reason why not: And is it not obvious that this case flawlessly allows free will to coexist with the divine predestination of weather patterns, without either being overridden by the other?

If this is the case, then surely we can say that someone can make a decision to follow Christ, of his own free will, at a particular point in world history, and that God, as a result of and in conjunction with that prayer, foreknows that person and his decision to follow Christ: Before time yet in conjunction with that man's decision in time, God predestines and calls them... and yet free will, by the grace of our loving God, remains intact, remains perfectly consistent with God's loving and all-powerful governing of the universe and everything in it.

Clarification Edit: We've gotten really used to conflating a person deciding to follow Christ with salvation: The one logically leads to the other. But here's the thing: Accepting the freely-offered gift of salvation is NOT meritorious. It does not deserve the gift, it does not earn the gift. Therefore, without the grace of God, merely confessing Christ as Lord and believing that God raised him from the dead (as Paul says in Romans 10:9) would not naturally lead to salvation.

Without the grace of God, that decision would not lead to salvation. So let's go to Romans 8:29: "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son." Paul himself puts foreknowledge as a basis for predestination. But foreknowledge of what? I am saying that God's foreknowledge extends to the decision, the proclamation, the belief: In his endless NOW, God sees a man saying, "Christ is Lord, and God raised him from the dead." Knowing this, having already freely offered the gift of life to anyone who accepts it, God predestines the man to receive salvation, to be adopted and conformed to Christ's image.

I am no longer troubled with how to reconcile predestination and free will. This is a way in which they can coexist without conflict, without one swallowing up the other, and that is enough for me. I should clarify something: I have no doubt that the scope of predestination here will not be robust enough for entrenched Calvinists to accept. I do think, however, that it meets the biblical criteria for predestination. Entrenched Calvinists are not my audience here: This is for those who, like myself, have struggled to reconcile the concept of predestination with the belief that God has given us free will (as befits creatures made in his image).

14 comments:

  1. I love this post, and the one on prayer before it! I think you do a great job of reconciling predestination and free will, and your explanation of how our prayers work harmonizes with what I have believed for a long time.

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  2. Awesome! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you so much for the comment and encouragement. It's something that has bothered me for a long time, but I've finally been able to articulate a solution. I hope I continue to see you around the blog!

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  3. I’ve enjoyed reading the detail and length that you are covering these interesting topics, Mackenzie!

    Here’s my main thought:

    You write “God, as a result of and in conjunction with that prayer, foreknows that person and his decision to follow Christ: Before time yet in conjunction with that man's decision in time, God predestines and calls them.”

    Mackenzie, are foreknowledge and predestination conflated here? My straightforward reading says that they are. But foreknowledge are different. Minimally, predestination entails the subject destining the object before it occurs, unlike foreknowledge, where the subject may not be acting. Consequently, I think that free will has been reconciled with foreknowledge, not predestination.
    What think you?



    Additional Thoughts:

    Boneless “hotwings” are not wings.

    What is Mackman’s definition of free will? I think Calvinists consider two definitions of free will, whereas this article only considers one.

    Note: Calvinists generally do believe the free will Mackman describes. I, as a Calvinist, have no problem accepting Mackman’s biblical examples; I don’t think these are controversial at all. I am unclear how these biblical examples speak directly to the controversy of who begins an individual’s salvation.

    Apples to apples: The assumption of freewill in scripture should be compared to the assumption of God destining things in scripture; scriptures directly referencing free will should be compared to scriptures directly referencing predestination. Otherwise, a lot needs explaining and uncertainty is introduced.

    The comments about God being outside of time assume the B theory of time, correct?

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    1. Thanks, Daniel.

      I do not conflate foreknowledge and predestination. But it IS important that the passage in Romans, where Paul seems to want to show, step by step, the process or mechanics of salvation, begins with foreknowledge.

      Indeed, foreknowledge is a necessary condition of the predestination.

      You say, "Predestination entails the subject destining the object before it occurs... I think that free will has been reconciled with foreknowledge, not predestination.
      What think you?"

      I say that from a perspective "in time," you are correct. But Paul tells us that predestination begins with foreknowledge, and I am saying that to God, it is neither FOREknowledge nor PREdestination. They are both things that happen in the endless Now, and thus can work together with the free will of those of us in time. A man can confess Jesus of his own free will in time, and as a result of that decision, be predestined before the universe began (NOTE: I had a (possible) epiphany concerning this, but I also wanted to address your other points. It's at the bottom.)

      My definition of free will: The ability to follow Jesus when he calls. And by "calling," I don't mean some contrived, irresistible definition gotten by elevating some Bible verses above others in an unwarranted fashion. That is to make what Jesus did on earth, his calls for repentance, his calls to those who are weary, his offers of rest and salvation, to be something entirely different, something futile and utterly ineffective. I mean Jesus' loud and powerful voice echoing through the streets of Jerusalem and Galilee, echoing through Paul, Peter, and the rest of the disciples, echoing through the Bible and even ourselves.

      You say that "scriptures directly referencing free will should be compared to scriptures directly referencing predestination." I disagree. It doesn't seem accurate at all to demand that kind of treatment, simply because when something is assumed, it is very rarely directly referenced, if ever. Free will is assumed whenever Jesus calls indiscriminately to people, whenever Jesus or Paul give moral instruction: Free will is even assumed when Peter tells us to "make your calling and election sure." Predestination is referenced in only a handful of verses, and I don't think it's ever assumed.

      As for time: I did a quick search, and... I guess? But while the future is fixed from our perspective, it is all Now to God, meaning that God is constantly tweaking reality to allow for the prayers of the saints to be effective.

      Possible epiphany: Predestined to what? In Romans, it's predestined to be conformed to Christ. In Ephesians it's predestined to adoption as sons. We have grown so used to linking the decision to follow Christ to the salvation it entails that in our minds they have become intrinsically linked. But they are linked only because God wishes to give us a gift that we do not deserve. They are not one and the same thing, and one does not follow "naturally" from the other. The decision is not meritorious: it does not earn the gift. Therefore, we can choose of our own free will, and then, as a result of that decision (not that the decision is meritorious), God predestines us from the beginning of time to be saved. God can KNOW the person's utterly free decision to accept Christ and DESTINE that person to salvation. I think that works. What do you think?

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    2. Clarification on the last bit: Accepting the freely-offered gift of salvation is NOT meritorious. It does not deserve the gift, it does not earn the gift. Therefore, without the grace of God, merely confessing Christ as Lord and believing that God raised him from the dead would not naturally lead to adoption, to being conformed to Christ.

      I am saying that God's foreknowledge extends to the decision, the proclamation, the belief: In his endless NOW, God sees a man saying, "Christ is Lord, and God raised him from the dead." Knowing this, having already freely offered the gift of life to anyone who accepts it, God predestines the man to receive salvation, to be adopted and conformed to Christ's image.

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    3. Hey Mac, Thanks for continuing the conversation. There's a lot of topics on the table here, so I don't know how many I'll be able to get to, but I'll at least write a little. :)

      I'm wondering if I'm understanding your definition of free will correctly: You don't think someone has free will unless she has (1) heard bodily-Jesus talking and (2) has the ability to follow Jesus. This must be a working definition of free will, right? I think I'll need something more generalized in order to tell whether the type of free will that you mean is reconciled with predestination.

      And what do you mean by "predestination?" I think defining these two words will really help my understanding. :)

      So, Mac, do you agree that "The assumption of freewill in scripture should be compared to the assumption of God destining things in scripture;"? I was just trying to say likes should be compared to likes. I was a little surprised you disagreed on that point. Of course, we will need to weight the evidence differently as reasonable for the final ballot, so something may be the explanation even if it isn't explicitly mentioned in scripture.

      Do you think that prophecy sometimes includes God's decreeing something to take place? I know this is a different topic but it might be a another idea for your blog.

      My final thought is on time. Mac, your argument may be sound to reconcile fate with free will. Nevertheless, we can only say the conclusion is true if the premises are true as well. One premise is that God sees time as an endless now, that our experience of the present "is merely a way of seeing reality, not reality as it really is." Is it possible that God experiences time progressively? Is this premise based off what God has revealed about himself in scripture? How does God experience emotions at specific times in human history (grief, joy, sadness, anger) if he experiences time as an endless now?

      Even if you don't have time to respond to these, they are important questions to consider given your view.

      I hope everything's going well!

      God bless!
      ~Daniel

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    4. I don't think someone has free will unless they have the ability to choose to follow Christ (I don't think hearing Jesus talking is a prerequisite).

      I think that if God experiences time progressively, that's problematic, because then God is as bound by time as we are. That means God is playing according to rules written by somebody else: That time is bigger even then God. Of course, when he is interacting with us, he is interacting in time: God speaking to one of the prophets is operating in time no less than Jesus himself was operating in time. But that is not to say that God *as God* operates in time.

      That God answers prayer is clearly seen in Scripture. That the effect of a prayer often must precede the cause (the prayer itself), the only explanation is that God operates outside time.

      For prophecy, you might want to read my blog on Hezekiah: I go into it quite a bit there (http://imperfectfornow.blogspot.com/2012/05/changing-future.html)

      Everything is indeed going well: And you?

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  4. I repeat:

    Boneless “hotwings” are not wings.

    Tried them a couple weeks ago for the first time. :(

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  5. I'm looking forward to our skype call this week. For the time being, let me raise a few questions for you to consider before then.

    1: You define Arminians as those who believe they can come to God on their own. Do you think this is a fair characterization of Arminians, and are you familiar with the idea of prevenient grace?

    2: Your description of free will seems to assume the principle of alternate possibilities. Have you considered alternative understandings of free will, such as the idea of sourcehood? Are you familiar with Frankfurtian thought experiments?

    3: In response to your Jesus is a monster if he doesn't believe in free will paragraph: Do you believe Jesus ever told parables to people with the intent that they not understand? If so, does that bother you? Also, do you believe Jesus ever preached repentance to people that he knew would not come to repentance? If so, does that bother you?

    4: I agree with you that you are not conflating free will and predestination, though given your (and please understand, this is descriptive of your concept of predestination, not a dismissal of it) very weak view of predestination, I can understand how such a mistake could be made. Before I ask my question, I'd like to restate to you what I think your view is, so if I've got it wrong it will be easy for you to clarify it for me:

    When God predestines people, that just means he foreknew that they would freely choose him, so then utilizing that foreknowledge, he predestined them.

    Do I have that right; is that all there is to predestination? Do you believe that's how John Calvin, or for that matter even John Wesley, viewed predestination? How do you explain descriptions in the bible, such as in Romans 9, that seem to indicate God's predestination has some kind of causal force apart from simply responding to human free will?

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    1. 1. I'm fine with prevenient grace, as long as it is available to everyone or is at least *potentially* available to everyone.

      2. I think you are correct in saying that I am assuming alternate possibilities. A quick internet search implies that Frankfurt talked about the difference between free will and free action. I find the idea of free action determined by environment and past experiences to be repulsive: It's Calvin's "They can do what they want, they just can't want to do good" all over again.

      3. It's possible that he told parables with the intent that they would not understand that particular parable. That would be in keeping with his ministry's parallel with O.T. Israel. As for Jesus knowing certain people would not come to repentance: My view stands on the difference between knowing and effecting (no, I don't mean "affecting"). Jesus is acting in time, and from our perspective in time, time is constantly in flux: That's the only way prayer can be free and viable as the Bible portrays it (you may want to see my blog on Jesus telling Peter he will deny him 3 times vs. God telling Hezekiah he is going to die: http://imperfectfornow.blogspot.com/2012/05/changing-future.html).

      4. I completely understand that my view of predestination is not as robust as any view which uses it to usurp free will. However, I would say that you don't have it quite right. The subject is freely choosing something in time: Freely choosing to follow Christ, freely choosing to proclaim with his mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in his heart that God raised him from the dead.

      However, this does NOT naturally result in salvation. Salvation only follows as a gift of God, freely given, which is where predestination comes in. It is not merely, "They WOULD have chosen this, so I am just predestining them to do so." What he is predestining is NOT the decision: It is what comes AFTER the decision. In Ephesians 1:5, we are predestined to adoption: In Romans 8:28, we are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ. Therefore, we are predestined to salvation AFTER we choose to follow Christ: And predestination DEFINITELY has causal force, because that salvation, that conforming to the image of Christ, WOULD NOT HAPPEN without God's will.

      Romans 9 is tricky on its own, which is why I don't read it on its own. I see Romans 8:28-30 as the primary instance of Paul working out the "mechanics" of predestination: It seems to be where he is most methodical, most step-by-step. And there, in Romans 8:28, Paul clearly lays foreknowledge down first. Everything from that point on follows from foreknowledge: It is dependent on it. Without God's foreknowledge, there is no predestination, there is no calling, there is no justification: It all hangs on "Those whom God foreknew."

      Now: the whole "What if God..." bit: I have a few points I think are relevant.

      First off, it can't be treated as though Paul didn't employ a hypothetical scenario. To my knowledge, this is the only time Paul uses a "what if" instead of clearly stating what is. To take this statement as though it wasn't preceded by "what if" is dishonest, to say the least.

      Another point (kinda tangential, but it's cool): God doesn't justify himself to NOBODY. Best example of this is Job: God has a really cool explanation for Job, one that he could have given at any time... but he never does. When you question God, God may not give you the actual answer, even if the actual answer is super awesome.
      (cont. in next comment)

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    2. Another point: According to my theory, those whom God does not predestine are still "vessels prepared for wrath" and those whom God does predestine are still "vessels prepared beforehand for glory." There is just another step before the preparation, where God employs his foreknowledge of each and every man's decision, in time, whether or not to follow God. And it works: God is still enduring with much patience those who he knows will never choose him.

      Another point: God COULD be the completely Calvinist God. It IS his prerogative. God COULD do that, if he willed. But God could do a lot of things that he doesn't do. Paul never says that God irresistibly hardens people and dooms them to hell: He just says God could, and it would be within his right to do so. But when I read these passages by the light of Romans 8:28, I see that they can still be read and taken completely as is, as long as the root of foreknowledge remains.

      That's not how John Calvin saw it, and I don't know how John Wesley saw it. The only view similar to this that I've seen is Lewis' in The Great Divorce, and even that's different (although possibly not, ultimately). But, like I said, I'm not interested in matching this up to previous theological traditions so much as finding a way to reconcile predestination with the free will that is assumed throughout the Bible.

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    3. I appreciate your questions Tim B, especially question 2. I wonder if Mac would consider sourcehood more if we were just to consider the human will (i.e. without the term free preceeding it).

      Mac or Tim (whoever gets to it first) could you point out to me what distinction is made in Mac's original post between predestination and foreknowledge? I got lost in the transition to the following paragraph, copied here for convenience:

      "And is it not obvious that this case [with regard to God's action responding to prayer] flawlessly allows free will to coexist with the divine predestination of weather patterns, without either being overridden by the other?

      If this is the case, then surely we can say that someone can make a decision to follow Christ, of his own free will, at a particular point in world history, and that God, as a result of and in conjunction with that prayer, foreknows that person and his decision to follow Christ: Before time yet in conjunction with that man's decision in time, God predestines and calls them... and yet free will, by the grace of our loving God, remains intact, remains perfectly consistent with God's loving and all-powerful governing of the universe and everything in it."

      The beginning of the second paragraph here moves the conversation from a discussion of prayer to salvation. I'm having a problem with the analogy and what it is trying to accomplish.

      Mac, let me know if I'm getting your reasoning correct: are you saying that because God answers prayers without contradicting free will, then God can predestine people without contradicting free will? If so, then I get lost at how God answering prayers--without contradicting free will--is analogous to God predestining people.

      (I'm talking about predestination in general here, so instead of thinking about predestining people to be saved or sanctified, just substitute in God's ability to appoint or decrees someone to eat a sandwich beforehand, if it helps; if not, ignore the last sentence).

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    4. I attempted to clarify it in my response to you. I am most certainly not conflating free will and predestination. God has knowledge of a person's decision to follow Christ, and then predestines that person to be conformed to Christ's image, to be adopted as a son, etc.

      Let me try to clarify it some more: Sticking with Paul, Paul does NOT say, "God predestined men to confess with their mouths that Jesus is lord and believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead." That is the decision that I am saying God has foreknowledge of.

      What Paul DOES say is this: "Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son." There is action on God's part *as a result of* this foreknowledge. The decision, by itself, is not efficacious in any way. It does not somehow naturally lead to being conformed to the image of Christ. It requires the grace and action of God, predestined before all time, to accomplish that. And yet this predestination is a result of God "foreknowing" that person's decision.

      In my mind, the link between prayer and salvation is clear. We talk about the sinner's prayer. Paul says to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart. These are actions, like prayer, that take place in time, that are meant to achieve something.

      In short, God predestines people to salvation as a result of their decision to follow Christ, much like he predestines the weather as a result of a prayer for rain. "Following Christ" and "Salvation" are NOT the same thing, nor does one naturally lead to the other.

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