Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
God Ordains who gets to Heaven: Predestination
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
Is Free Will Irrelevant?
Predestination is the doctrine that God has already decided or ordained in some way who is to be saved and who is to be damned, even before they were born and lived, and so anyone’s life has no influence whatsoever with their ultimate destiny as saved or damned. No just and loving God could impose such a monstrous rule on His subjects, and so the doctrine is wrong, and Christians wrong to believe it, or they have a mistaken idea of God.
Some Christians say the Bible teaches everyone is saved:
God, our savior, desires all persons to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.1 Timothy 2:4
God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.2 Peter 3:9
The obstacle seems to be that He gave human beings free will to choose salvation or damnation, but some choose damnation, even if it is just a little bit of it, to make life interesting. They are predestined because God, being omniscient, knows who would choose which. S Augustine and S Thomas Aquinas both held the doctrine of predestination, as well as Calvin and Luther. It all stems from Paul’s epistle to the Romans:
When Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac (for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth), it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.Romans 9:10-16
Works in life have no effect on God’s previous decisions in this scenario of Paul’s. Human exercise of their free will is irrelevant to God’s decisions. He can show mercy or not according to His whims. That Christians can believe that God has granted them freedom to decide as they wish but nevertheless ignores whatever they have decided, being merciful or harsh just as He choses on no basis of individual goodness or wickedness in life, shows that Christians believe anything they are told irrespective of its sense, coherence or basic fairness. Is it any wonder Christianity has been monstrous throughout its history?
Indeed, if God knows before he creates us what our destiny is, and yet our destiny is ours to choose by our own free will, then God cannot be omnipotent, nor can He be perfectly good. He is obliged to concede wickedness if humanity choses it, but perfectly good entities cannot work ill, and almighty beings cannot be constrained. If these contradictions are to be avoided, then God’s will must coincide with human will, so that humans actually do what God wills, God being the omnipotent power, and not what they choose. For His foreknowledge to equal the outcome, God must will the destiny we have, not us!
