Predestination
The simple definition of the word "predestination" is "to decide beforehand". But the subject of predestination is far more complicated than that definition. Unfortunately when many people, who live the western hemisphere, hear the word predestination they immediately think of a personal God who decided beforehand the content of each person's life and the destiny of each person's soul.
People, who believe God decided beforehand what each person's life would be, use clichés like, "It was meant to be", "It was inevitable", "There is a person for every other person to marry", "God has a specific plan for your life", "God meant this to happen to you for a purpose", and my favorite, "When your number's up, it's up."
The most popular concept of predestination is correctly known as "unconditional determinism". Unconditional determinism is the belief that before each person was born, God deliberately and unconditionally determined who would be your parents, your psychological makeup, what you would look like, what your childhood would be, where you would go to school and how far, if and who your mate would be, where you would live, what your occupation would be, how many children you would have, the illnesses and accidents you would experience, when you would die, and lastly, where you will spend eternity.
There are very many people, who do not believe in a personal God, who also believe that every aspect of your life was unconditionally determined by forces other than God. They believe that one or more of these effects determined the course of your life before you were born: Fate (which is sort of an impersonal and indefinite, perhaps spiritual, cause of the events of life); witchcraft (the practice of magic arts determines the events of one's life); astrology (the location of planets and stars determines one's life); physical laws (know as "mechanism"), Marxism (also known as "dialectic materialism") is the belief that the forces of the universe make atheistic communism inevitable; psychology (free will is replaced by childhood trauma, heredity, and environment and the resulting attitudes and behavior are inevitable and inescapable); and pantheistic determinism (God is sum total of everything and everything is headed toward an inevitable conclusion). There are other secular and ethereal philosophies of predestination too numerous to mention.
The two types of predestination we are concerned with here are: 1) the predestination taught by both St. Augustine in the 400's and by John Calvin in the 1500's, and 2) the predestination taught by the apostle Paul in the Bible. These two concepts are known as "unconditional determinism" or "Calvinism", and "conditional determinism".
Augustinian/Calvinistic predestination is "unconditional determinism". Unconditional determinism means that God, without any reason known to us, without rhyme or reason, decided before creation every detail of a person's life, including the everlasting destiny (heaven or hell) of each person's soul. And there is nothing anyone can do to change the situation in which they find themselves.
I repeat, "Augustinian/Calvinistic Predestination" is the belief that God, before creation, "pre-determined" your life, the length of your life, the quality of your life and the everlasting destiny of your soul, period. The consequences of Augustinian/Calvinistic Predestination are too numerous to mention, except to identify just one.
Today the clear New Testament teaching concerning one's response (belief, repentance and baptism) to the grace of God has been ignored and supplanted by the Calvinistic doctrine of salvation by subjective experience rather than by one's free will choice to believe and obey the instantly recognizable claims and commands of the Scriptures. There is more about this in the chapter titled "Salvation"
"Augustinian/Calvinistic Predestination" or "unconditional determinism", is not Biblical predestination.
Perhaps the clearest passage in the Bible on the subject of predestination is in Romans 8:28-30, which is quoted here in its entirety. (28) "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (29) For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (30) And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified." (New International Version, italic mine)
The key to understanding Biblical predestination is the first part of verse 29: "For those God foreknew he also predestined." Biblical predestination is based on the "foreknowledge of God". God is omniscient. This means that God knows everything there is to know: all of the past, all of the present and all of the future. (Omniscience is discussed in chapter 4, "God".)
By His foreknowledge, even before creation, God knew all of the free will choices each person would make. By His foreknowledge, God knew whether or not a person would choose to be saved by His grace through faith (Salvation is discussed in the chapter titled, "Salvation"). And it is because God knew, in advance, what one's free will choices would be, and based on His knowledge of those free will choices, God simply determined (hence the word conditionally) at creation, who will be saved and who will be lost.
Biblical predestination, with freedom of will still in tact and unharmed, is known as "conditional determinism". God, based on the conditions of one's free will choices, pre-determined the course of one's life and everlasting destiny.
And example of "conditional determinism" is this. In His knowledge of the future God sees a man who has "good genes" and who will make the decision every day of his life to take care of his physical body. God also knows that this man will not suffer death as the result of another person's decisions and that he will not die as the result of a natural disaster. In addition, God also knows (because he knows all future events) that that person is going to die at age 94 on June 12, 2022 at 11:30:22 in his home in Columbus, Ohio. Based on His foreknowledge and the free will decisions that man will make, God conditionally determined (predestined) that that person would live to be 94 and die at his home at 11:30:22 in Columbus, Ohio. "For those God foreknew he also predestined."
Biblical predestination maintains each person's freedom to make choices, freedom to benefit or to be victimized by the free will choices of others, and freedom to experience the results of God's general and special providence. (See chapter 16, "General Providence, Special Providence, and Miracles).
The reason predestination has been rejected by many believers is that they have been misled to believe that predestination takes away a person's freedom to choose to become a Christian and to make other free will choices. Evidence that many have been misled by "unconditional determinism" can be seen on the church signs of some congregations that put the words "Free Will" in the name of their churches. Freedom of will disappears in the teachings of Augustine and Calvin and these churches are trying to distance themselves from that belief.
It is enough to say that freedom of will is maintained in the Bible.
If we are going to understand Biblical predestination it is important for us to understand both "conditional predestination" (Biblical) and "unconditional predestination" (Augustinian/Calvinism) because of the amazing impact these two opposing views have on one's concept of the process of being saved.
According to "unconditional predestination" (Augustine and Calvin), salvation is not a choice one makes. For those who believe in unconditional predestination, salvation is something one receives based on an emotional or subjective experience and salvation really cannot be refused. According to those who hold to "unconditional predestination" (Augustine and Calvin) the object of preaching is not an appeal to all people everywhere to be saved, but an appeal to only those God has unconditionally determined to be saved. And when that chosen person hears the gospel, God will let him know he is saved by giving him some sort of and emotional experience.
One group, who believes in the "unconditional predestination" of Augustine and Calvin, goes so far as to require that any person who claims to have been saved must describe his personal conversion experience. And then the church votes on whether or not the conversion experience is legitimately from God!
Now voting on the validity of a person's conversion experience is not a widespread practice. However, the remnants of the belief in a subjective experience as the means and the sign of salvation virtually dominate the theology of evangelical churches and preachers and Christian writers today. Most every evangelical televangelist, preacher, and writer who offer instructions on how to become a Christian tell a person to do three things; pray to God admitting one's sins, confessing Jesus as Savior, and asking Jesus to come into their hearts. And we are told if we do these things, we are forgiven our sins and saved to everlasting life. Some even go so far as to say, once you have accepted Jesus as Savior, you can never be lost. (This is teaching or doctrine is known as "eternal security" or by the more familiar phrase, "once in grace, always in grace".)
There is only one problem with the message of salvation preached by these evangelicals. It is not from God. It is not in the Bible. That response to the grace of God is a leftover from the messages of St. Augustine and John Calvin. Yet that is the theology of salvation accepted and taught by many sincere believers in Christ. That theology is rooted, not in the Bible, but in the doctrine of "unconditional predestination" taught by St. Augustine and John Calvin.
"Conditional predestination" (Biblical) is that a person who meets the conditions of salvation as revealed in the Word of God will be saved. I encourage you to look in the New Testament for the conditions of salvation. Read the book of Acts and see for yourself what the first converts to Christianity were told believe and do. I guarantee that you will not find the message of modern evangelicals. What you will find are the instructions to believe in Jesus, repent of your sins and be baptized into Christ.
A preacher friend of mine was on a live Christian radio broadcast when an evangelical minister, who believes in salvation "by praying the sinner's prayer", asked my friend to explain why he believed that salvation required repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.
In response my friend asked the evangelical minister if he believed that the commands of Jesus must be obeyed. And the preacher said he agreed. So my friend read the command of Jesus, in Matthew 28:19-20, to be baptized, and then asked if this command was essential. And the preacher said he believed that. So then my friend asked the evangelical preacher, "What is the problem?"
Then my friend turned to Acts 2:38 and read Peter's instructions to those who had asked, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Peter said, "Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." Then my friend told the evangelical minister that Peter followed the command of Jesus by preaching baptism and that we ought to follow the command of Jesus and preach baptism as well.
Then my friend turned to Acts 22:16 where Ananias told Saul of Tarsus to, "Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name." And then took him to I Peter 3:21-22 which says, "This water symbolized baptism that now saves you also, not the removal of dirt form the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It (baptism) saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
"What is it about this don't you understand?" my friend asked the evangelical minister. Indeed what is so complicated about obeying the Scriptures?
Remember that old gospel chorus, "Give me that Old Time Religion"? The second verse begins, "It was good for Paul and Silas and it's good enough for me." That's what I want. I want to call Bible things by Bible names and do Bible things in Bible ways. That's good enough for me.
By God's knowledge of everything in the future, He predestined (conditionally determined) that those who, by their free will choices, decide obey the gospel of the Scriptures will be saved. Every person who hears or reads the gospel has the freedom of will to make the choice to obey.
Our omniscient God, who knows what all our free will choices will be during our entire lifetimes, also knows whether or not we will choose to obey the gospel of the Scriptures. And based on our choice, which was known to God at creation, He predestined the everlasting destiny of our souls. "For those God foreknew he also predestined."
"For those God foreknew he also predestined." That is Biblical predestination.
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