Welcome all! Tonight, Pastor James Lee came to large group and spoke to us about the difficult doctrine of predestination. This is the first in a series of talks on theology, the study of God, particularly the parts that are confusing to us. Keep reading for a synopsis and highlights of the ensuing discussion.
To begin the talk, Pastor James polled the crowd on who thought predestination is an important doctrine, then on who thought that justification by faith alone is important. A few raised their hand for the first, but almost all raised their hand for the second.
Our reading of the Bible began in Exodus 3:13-14, where God reveals his name. This name was written down as YHWH, since Hebrew had no vowels, and as the Jews thought it improper to utter the name of God, the pronunciation was lost. The KJV interpolated the vowels from Adonai, making the word we spell Jehovah. Now we think that the original pronunciation was Yahweh.
What did this name mean? I AM WHO I AM. God is not dependent on anyone else, he exists on his own. All the other names of God we have come from culture: God from the Germanic Gott; Spanish Dios from Zeus actually. This is God telling us something fundamental about his nature.
In Exodus 33:19, we get a divine explanation. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." In other words, God is unrestrained by anyone. This is why YHWH is sometimes translated as "Sovereign Lord." He's the only being with absolute sovereignty.
Then we turned to Romans 8:29-30, which gives the order to our salvation: Predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. Predestination is when God foreknew us, before the beginning of the world, which means intimate knowledge. We've all been aware of his calling on our lives, hearing it in various ways. Justification is by faith, as we all agreed was important. Glorification is our eventual hope, when Jesus takes us up to be with Him. There are other elements such as sanctification, repentance, faith, adoption, and regeneration, mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, which fit into this order.
To see the importance of predestination, we read Ephesians 1:3-14. Why did God choose us? Because we were good ourselves, or because of anything we did? No, because it pleased him ("in accordance with his pleasure and will").
All Christian thinkers have believed in predestination, but there have been two schools of thought as to how to interpret it. In particular, there are two understandings of foreknowledge: God looks into the future and sees that we will have a turn of heart and accept him, so he chooses to save us, or that God looks into the future and picks us out, deciding that we will repent and be saved as well. The first view was carried forward by (it is debated) James, Pelagius (who went further to believe in salvation by works), and Wesley, while the second was expounded upon by Paul, Augustine (the dominant thinker in later Catholic thought), and Calvin. Now, all (except Pelagius) would have accepted salvation by faith alone.
To help distinguish, we turned to Ephesians 2:8-9. What is the "this" that is not from us but from God referring to? Grace or faith? If it's faith, then Calvin's line is clearly right, but if it's grace, Wesley's view might be. Let's look to the Greek... "this" is neuter, but faith and grace are both... feminine. So what is the "this" referring to? It could be the whole process, which would support Calvin. Or we'll be left to debate the point until Jesus shows up and says, "Both of you are stupid" or "just you were." (I actually stole that line from Matt Chandler. :P)
In any case, there's also the relevant question of predestination for those who will not be saved. What about Judas, for whom Jesus declares it to have been better had he (Judas) not been born?
We read Jude 4 (Jude has only one chapter). It seems there is even a "double predestination," that God predestines some to be saved and some to be damned. And yes, there are some who will not be saved; we'll tackle that question later this term. Think of God hardening Pharoah's heart. Why did God do this? It was for His greater glory.
A more intriguing example comes when David counts the fighting men. In 2 Samuel 24:1, it says that God incited David to do so, and in 1 Chronicles 21:1, it says that Satan did it. How do we understand that? Well, God is sovereign over Satan, and simply allowed him to incite David. We see the same thing in Job, when God allows Satan to harm Job in every way. And after all, wouldn't you want God to be sovereign over everything, not an equal or subject to Satan? It's about God's sovereignty here.
But fundamentally, predestination is a doctrine for the believer to take to heart. This is why it is mentioned in the same chapter as the wonderful promises of Romans 8. It is assuring to know that God chose you from the beginning of the world, if you are saved.
But yet, it must be held in tension with our choice, as shown in Romans 10. Without this notion of free will, we run into fatalism, where we are resigned to believe that we are fated (by God, if you are Christian) to follow certain patterns. James has seen this in a related discussion with Chinese Christians who think that God has picked one person out from the beginning of the world for them to marry, and if they each love each other, they were simply fated to be married.
No, there are some mysteries that God will not reveal to us here. He'll never tell us why he chose us in particular. He also will not tell us who is a Christian and who is not; that's between the (potential) believer and God. You can know that you are Christian, but no one else can know for sure. Not all that profess to be Christians are.
We are like the Flatlanders, who encountered a sphere passing through their two dimensions. Some things will remain mysterious until we go to join Jesus and he explains it all to us.
That was it! There were some good questions and answers, but I was so caught up in those I didn't write them down. Please ask any questions you have in the comment box so we can continue the conversation!
Next up: I will be talking about the divine-human nature of Jesus. We will be meeting on the 3-day weekends this term, since there is so much to cover. Hope to see you there!
"In any case, there's also the relevant question of predestination for those who will not be saved. What about Judas, for whom Jesus declares it to have been better had he (Judas) not been born?"
ReplyDeleteJudas is made up. First, by harmonizing Mark and John you see that when Jesus appeared to the 11 apostles, it was THOMAS who was missing, not Judas, because there was no suicide of Judas as Matthew and Acts report. Why not? Because Judas didn't betray Jesus. He continued to be an apostle in good standing and still alive. In John we read that Jesus gave him permission to give away his location "what you must do do quickly" -- yet elsewhere we find it called a 'betrayal' -- further we are expected to believe that the chief priests who saw Jesus all the time needed Judas to kiss him on the cheek so they could recognize him. Its fiction. Judas was chosen by the Catholic church to become the one apostle it was going to sacrifice in the interest of antisemitism, and since his name 'Judas' evokes the Jews, they could use that to create their myth of Jewish evil. Its a hoax. Judas didn't do it.
As for Pharaoh, read Exodus 9. God didn't harden his heart by any other means than showing him mercy -- 'I could have killed you with my plagues but for this purpose I spared you...' -- and it was always when God removed a plague (showed Pharaoh mercy) that Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Pharaoh was of the sort who saw mercy as weakness; thus he was convinced that God was not serious when God showed mercy; this is how he hardened his heart -- no predestination.
ReplyDeleteAs for Esau and Jacob, the passage is about the right of primogeniture not salvation -- it is an abuse of scripture to use it to support predestination.
As for the passage 'I will show mercy to whom I will' -- Paul mistranslated, for the passage says 'kindness' -- and it is about the special kindness showed to Moses in letting him see God's backside, not about salvation. God was simply saying he has the right to give such a special vision to whomever he wants.
As for 'I will harden whom I will' -- no such statement exists in the OT -- Paul made it up.
Okay, I'm not sure how useful this is, but let me push back on some of those points. First, you mention harmonizing Mark and John. It's not entirely clear which of the appearances in John is mentioned in Mark 16:14. Certainly, Mark appears to be summarizing these events, and since he mentions rebuking those without faith, this is likely to be the second appearance, with Thomas. Moreover, I don't think we can read too much from the lack of mention of an event like this. Not a lot appears in all four gospels.
ReplyDeleteYour second argument, that Judas betrayed Jesus even though Jesus knew what he planned to do gets more to the heart of the predestination question. It was clearly betrayal from the beginning, but Jesus knew about it and God presumably did, too. Did that mean Judas was damned from the beginning of time?
Meanwhile, Pharoah did harden his heart initially (Exodus 9:25), but it was then God who is said in Exodus 10:20 to harden Pharoah's heart. We get the sense that God sometimes allows our hearts to go the way we were directing them already. This also happens in Romans 1:24-32.
It can't be considered 'betrayal' if you want it to happen. Likewise, it isn't 'sin' if God wants it to happen. That is the point that you people are just too thick to get. The concept of predestination, therefore, makes betrayal no longer betrayal and sin no longer sin. The guy who objects to Paul in Romans 9, "If what you are saying is true? If God controls our actions, how can he still find fault?" is correct. It makes no sense. It is insane. Paul's answer "Who are you to answer against God!" begs the question. The question is, is Paul really speaking correctly about God? Paul cannot just answer in outrage "To reject what I say is to reject God" -- he needs to prove that what he is saying is true about God. All the passages he uses from the Old Testament are ripped out of context and twisted, and do not prove what Paul asserts, but when read in context and interpreted properly demonstrate the opposite of Paul's assertions.
ReplyDeleteI'll keep this up as long as it's edifying. Personal attacks are not.
ReplyDeleteIs God sovereign or isn't he? If he's sovereign, then he knows everything that's going to happen. That doesn't mean he "wants" it to happen. A lot happens that grieves God's heart, yet he turns and uses it for good. God did not want Joseph's brothers to sell him into slavery, but he used it to save an entire nation and their very lives (Genesis 50:20). There is no denying that they did wrong, something God didn't want to happen, but he is sovereign and worked the evil they intended for good.
Likewise, Judas did mean evil on Jesus, so much so that Satan capitalized on this opportunity to destroy God's only Son. But God is sovereign and had a greater plan to for the redemption of the world through Jesus' death and resurrection.
That said, I definitely agree that Romans 9:20 feels like a cop-out, as the question posed for this sermon puts it: http://marshill.com/media/religionsaves/predestination . This is why we engage in these sorts of discussions.
"Is God sovereign or isn't he? If he's sovereign, then he knows everything that's going to happen."
ReplyDeleteYou've twisted the meaning of the word sovereign. That's not a 'personal attack' because I don't mean you personally, but all Calvinists. You simply use a different definition of the word than everyone else -- a mystical fantasy meaning not to be found in the real world.
By sovereign you mean 'one who micromanages every particle in the universe at all times -- a gran puppet master who controls literally everything' -- but that is NOT the meaning of the word.
"That said, I definitely agree that Romans 9:20 feels like a cop-out, as the question posed for this sermon puts it: http://marshill.com/media/religionsaves/predestination . This is why we engage in these sorts of discussions."
ReplyDeleteIf Paul himself of all people couldn't provide a valid argument but had to use a cop-out, then the whole cause of predestination is lost. When Paul is held up as the greatest Christian theologian barnone, and aside from hat considered inspired, how can we do better? Yet if even with 'inspiration' on his side he got tangled into a doctrine that is indefensible and for which he could only provide a cop-out, then the doctrine is clearly not true.
My goodness, so many comments! That's exciting :)
ReplyDeleteHm, I'm not a very good writer, but I'll attempt to put in my two cents.
God is not only sovereign (supreme ruler over everything) but he's also the alpha and omega, beginning and end. So while sovereignty doesn't really indicate whether God knows the future, the fact that He is the beginning and end, and basically everything, that statement is what indicates that He knows everything that can and will happen.
Also, I believe it makes more sense for God to be in charge over His own creation. And while this might sound like I'm saying He predetermines all our actions, I'm not. I think God can have control over everything and still give us free will. He guides us in certain directions, and sometimes it's incredibly persuasive/obvious what He wants us to do (eg. God telling Jonah to go to Ninevah) but ultimately He lets us make the decision (Jonah could've stayed on the ship if he wanted to). And we get to make our decisions not because God doesn't have power over that, but because He chooses to let us choose.
I hope I didn't contradict myself up there :P But anyway, ultimately, I think we should still be diligent Christians (if you're a Christian) and seek God and work for His glorification and spread the Word, predestined or not :)