Predestination or Chosen Before Birth

One of the most controversial bible topics of all time is the subject of Predestination. Every great theologian down through church history has had to address this topic. All theologians agree on the fact that this doctrine must and should be treated with extreme care and caution. It has the tendency to raise more questions than answers. There is no doctrine shrouded in misunderstanding than this one.

Whenever this doctrine is taught – formally in classrooms or informally across from lunch tables, a strong measure of grace and patience should be given. Feelings run high. It is imperative that the fruit of the Spirit be manifested.

It may surprise you, but all Christians believe in predestination. Every major denomination that exists today believes in it. Most certainly, there are various views, but nonetheless, it is believed upon. Since the Bible teaches predestination, it cannot be ignored or simply tucked away hidden from view.

Let me simply share two main passages from the Bible that teaches predestination. Now I have not yet defined what is predestination. I will come to this. Here, I simply want to show that predestination is a biblical word.

1. Ephesians 1:3-6, 11: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even 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 for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will."

2. Romans 8:29: "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be
conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers."

All theologies down through the centuries regarding the nature of man and the role of the grace of God in salvation can be narrowed down to three categories of thought:

1. Pelagianism: Pelagianism derives its name from Pelagius who lived in the 5th century A.D. and was a teacher in Rome, though he was British by birth. Pelagius taught that people had the ability to fulfill the commands of God by exercising the freedom of human will apart from the grace of God. In other words, a person's free will is totally capable of choosing God and/or to do good or bad without the aid of Divine intervention. Pelagianism teaches that man's nature is basically good. Thus it denies original sin, the doctrine that we have inherited a sinful nature from Adam. He said that Adam only hurt himself when he fell, and all of his descendants were not affected by Adam's sin. Pelagius taught that a person is born with the same purity and moral abilities as Adam was when he was first made by God. He taught that people can choose God by the exercise of their free will and rational thought. God's grace, then, is merely an aid to help individuals come to Him.

Note: Pelagianism is really the father of 19th century modern liberalism today. Pelagianism is neither Christian nor a sub division of Christian thinking. It is non-Christian.

2. Semi-Pelagianism – This teaching came together during the 16th century. This view teaches that man cannot be saved apart from the grace of God, but there is still something man must do in his fallen condition in order to cooperate with God so as to be saved. Semi-Pelagius theologs believe that man cannot be saved apart from the grace of God, but man within himself in the final analysis can either receive or reject the grace of God. Semi-Pelagianism is really modern day Arminianism.

3. Augustinianism – Augustine taught that Man is so seriously fallen, he is totally dependent on the grace of God even for his initial response to the gospel, even in his cooperation with the grace of God in the first place. Augustianism is really modern day Calvinism.

The debate has its roots in man’s ability to respond to the gospel in his fallen state.

Of the three:

Pelagianism – Modern Day Liberalism
Semi-Pelagianism – Modern Day Arminianism
Augustinianism – Modern Day Calvinism

It is Calvinism or classical Augustinianism that I believe is more biblically accurate on the nature of man and his relationship to the grace of God in salvation.

More to come.

Does God Predetermine Sin?

Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen (Acts 4:27-28) 

Does God govern the good and the bad? We should have little problem believing that God is in the good. But we may struggle a bit believing that God governs the bad, such as sin, crimes and horrific events.

The most horrific crime ever committed in the history of mankind was when sinful people put to death the innocent and sinless Son of God. Who were the ones responsible? The Bible says, Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles and Israel. All conspired and banned together to crucify Jesus.

Where was God? They all did what His power and will had decided before hand should happen to His Son. In other words, God was present overseeing the fulfillment and implementation of His divine plan. Nothing thwarts the will of God from occurring. All the sin of the world in its most horrible details has been predetermined by the mind and will of God.

You say, “I can’t believe that. Such a thought is horrible and makes God out to be a monster.” I understand where you are coming from. Here is what I do and what I believe God wants us all to do.

If indeed putting Jesus to death was the worse sin of all time; and if indeed the death of Jesus was God’s universal display of His love for mankind; and if indeed God planned the sins that crucified His Son; then the cross is the place to center yourself when you think about God’s predetermined planned over every detail of life, especially the bad things.

You see, it was the horrific sin of crucifying Jesus that has lead to the greatest love and saving grace of God to those who believe. God, before the foundation of the world or in eternity past, planned out in detail the sin and the people who were to commit such horrific acts, and which brutally murdered the sinless Son of God that led to the greatest show of God’s love and ultimately the salvation and forgiveness of sins to those who believe. Even though from a spiritual perspective, the cross is totally the crime of all crimes. An innocent person was brutally killed and this innocent and sinless person was no less than the Son of God. Yet, God predestined such an event for the benefit of others.

Therefore, when you look at the horrible events that have or will take place in the world, and look at such things through the centerpiece of the cross, you will keep your mind and heart in check and not be too puffy with pride or too determined to make God less than sovereign because you think you need to rescue Him from His very own plan.

You and I are not meant to figure out the deep things of God to our satisfaction. The Bible is the Word of God minus any contradictions. Though our minds may wish to formulate a few because of our need to understand God to our satisfaction, remember, God is completely sovereign and loves purposefully and deeply. Whenever you are tempted to doubt God’s love, center yourself back to the cross where once and for all, God’s love, in predetermining the horrific death of His Son, was all done so that you and I could receive forgiveness of sins, an eternal relationship with God, and everlasting life minus the justice of hell.

God does not need for you and I to rescue Him from His own plan, purpose and sovereign nature. He desires for us to submit to it and not waver in unbelief.

God Has Given You a Rational Mind - Use It!

A great majority of people actually believe that to deny the law of non-contradiction is to embrace truth and appear rational and scholarly at the same time. But nothing could be further from reality.

People only deny the validity of this law when it suits them and when they want to avoid a conclusion that they do not want to embrace. When a person denies the law of non-contradiction, the argument is over. If a person chooses to think in irrational terms, then at least they affirm that their response to theism is irrational. In the area of apologetics, this is what Christians should primarily be trying to show. You can think about God in any way you so choose, but in doing so, come to terms on whether your reasoning is rational or irrational, it can’t be both.

Today, in liberal universities and churches, there is a triumph of irrationalism, not over the secular mindset, but over the Christian community. Existential philosophy has pervasive impact into Christian thinking. So many students in Seminary are convinced that truth can be irrational and that the Bible can be contradictory and still be seen as the Word of God.

Carl Barth and Brunner got much of their thought from Kierkegaard who used subjectivity to formulate reason. Aristotle was a Greek and he helped to state the rules of logic.   Since then, many philosophers wanted to try to liberate Christianity from Greek thought and live outside somewhere else on its own. Aristotle did not invent logic. He merely discovered the rules that were already there and built into the human mind.

He asked the question, “What are the necessary conditions of the human mind to carry on meaningful discourse?” He discovered such things that have been built into your mind by the Creator Himself – who is not irrational or the author of confusion. God made His Word to be understood and the necessary condition for understanding His Word is through rationality.

Barth said that the mark of Christian maturity is when a person is able to affirm both sides of a contradiction (Commentary on Romans).  Brunner said that “contradiction is the hallmark of truth.”

So then, let’s apply this to the Bible – specifically the account of Adam and Eve.

God commanded, “From any tree in the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day you eat from it, you shall surely die” (Gen. 3:17-18).

Let’s use simple logic –

“From all the trees you may eat. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, if you eat, you shall die” – If A then B

But then the serpent comes along and says, “You surely shall not die” (3:4) – If you A, then non-B

Let’s say that both Adam and Eve were schooled in one of today’s liberal seminaries or universities.   Their reasoning would go something like this:  “If we eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, my Creator said that we would surely die.  To do so would be a direct contradiction.   But we have learned from classes in seminary that contradiction is the hallmark of truth.  To therefore embrace both truth and contradiction is a mark of maturity.  Since the serpent speaks words of contradiction, then the serpent must be an ambassador of the truth. He must be a representative of the truth.  We therefore, should not only eat of this fruit, but we must eat it in order to be an obedient mature Christian.”

This is absolute absurdity. When you can embrace both the truth and the lie and put them on equal footing, then you have a mindset of irrationality and a life that will follow. Nothing chips away at truth itself than to believe that the opposite end is also true. This would imply that truth and error are the same, and error and truth are the same.

The law of non-contradiction has no content to it. When you embrace logic, you are not embracing any content or premise. All logic does is to measure the relationship between propositions and premises.

Here is a simple example:

All men are mortal (if. . .)
Socrates is a man (if. . .)
(Then) Socrates is mortal.

You cannot have anything other than logic in order to be rational. The truth of your conclusion is determined by the validity of your premises. Logic is like a policeman that God has put into the mind of every person. It blows the whistle whenever it comes across a lie.

Though the content of the bible goes beyond what we can fully understand, the revelation of God is not package is absurdity. The Word of God is not irrational.  It is addressed to people who have been given minds that operate according to the principles of logic and rationality.    

The Basis of Meaningful Communication

Aristotle taught that logic is not a science, but a critical instrument, a necessary tool for all science, and a necessary condition for meaningful communication to take place. 

This is important to grasp. If you want to engage in meaningful and purposeful communication, you have to use the instrument of logic or else, you will be communicating irrationality.

If I say for example, that this phone I am holding in my hand is not a phone, I cannot communicate anything intelligible to you. Because I am seeking to communicate out of the realm of reality to fix laws that do not apply.

If I lower my voice and say in a soft whisper, “This is not a cell-phone.” I may sound philosophical. You may come up with a creative explanation: “The piece of device you hold in your hand, although it has the appearance of a cell phone, it is not a cell phone because it does not participate in the universal realm of cell-phoneness.”

Just how far will such communication between two people actually go? You cannot make sense out of irrationality. You can fool those around you with your hush voice and philosophical reasoning, but someone will overcome such nonsense when they come to recognize it as a con game – when you make a statement that is fundamentally non-intelligible. People do this all the time. They purposefully violate the law of non-contradiction, and in so doing, plunge into a sea of relativism and irrationality. If people talk boldly and how they do it, they get away with it. All this is really designed to undermine Christian theism.

You see, people talk irrational when it comes to fix laws or absolutes, because the Bible supports such teaching. But they cannot live their lives believing such things. All the university classroom propaganda is designed to undermine Christian theism. But when the subject changes to something simple, such as, “Please pass the salt,” critical distinctions are made and understood.” The law of non-contradiction is thrown out when theism is discussed, but the law itself becomes embraced over the simplest features of life.

Hey, here is what we are trying to show. You may deny the Bible and Christianity all you want, and you have the choice to do so. But what we are determined to show is that when you do, you are believing, communicating and acting irrationally.