A Healing Proposal Restated – Predestination vs. Freedom to Choose
This question of God’s sovereign knowledge and our freedom to choose righteousness and life or rebellion and death is especially arduous for minds accustomed to viewing all of reality from the present moment temporal perspective. Therefore at the risk of repeating myself (which I will do anyway), I think it may be helpful to restate my proposed resolution in a slightly different fashion in this post.
What both sides of this argument have in common is the temporal perspective, and this context guides and strongly influences interpretation of pertinent scriptural passages. Neither side has fully appreciated the place of the eternal perspective in Biblical grammar.
One example may help to clarify my point. Let apparently conflicting passages be analyzed from both the temporal and eternal viewpoints. Though God speaks from an eternal perspective, He necessarily communicates to people through human language, which is structured and defined in the temporal perspective. If it is recognized that the Holy Bible expresses both temporal and eternal perspectives by means of time-constrained human grammar, the confusing theological rhetoric of this longstanding argument may be avoided.
A foundational passage of the Calvinist position is Romans 8:28-30. The context of this passage is important. In the context of Romans 8, the Apostle Paul’s primary purpose is to reassure Christians of the absolutely and eternally secure fact of their salvation, the chapter beginning as it does with “no condemnation” (Romans 8:1) and ending with “no separation” (Romans 8:38-39).
Those who were formerly slaves to sin may be confident that they are truly children of their heavenly Father. Romans 8:28-30, understood from both temporal and eternal perspectives, reads as follows. The author’s personal translation from the Greek with verb parsing is shown after the popular New International Version translation.
(Romans 8:28-30 NIV) 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. 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. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
(Romans 8:28-30, this author’s translation) And we know (perfect indicative) that to those who are loving (present active indicative) Him, God is causing (present active indicative) everything to work together for good to those called (adjective, dative plural) according to His purpose. For those He foreknew (aorist indicative active) He also predestined (aorist indicative active) as likenesses of the likeness (the form) of His Son, with the goal that He is being (present active infinitive) the first born among many brothers. And those He predestined (aorist indicative active), He also called (aorist indicative active); and those He called (aorist indicative active) He also justified (aorist indicative active); and those He justified (aorist indicative active) He also glorified (aorist indicative active).
The underlined verbs in this passage, “foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified” are all in the Greek aorist tense, which connotes a completed or finished action, not an ongoing present or potential future activity. The words are couched in temporal language (“pre-”, “fore-”, etc.) for people who are caught up in time. The grammar is familiar to those who reference everything from their present moment. But the action is something accomplished (finished) once for all in eternity by God for Whom all of human time in this world of time is seen in a single eternal instant.
The simple fact is that God knows everything that happens in time from beginning to end, because He created the universe with one dimension of time, matter and three dimensions of space. His knowledge, though described for time-trapped present moment-constrained humans as foreknowledge, might just as well be described as “afterknowledge.”
If it be said that God knows what people will choose, it is equally correct to say He knows what they have chosen in one and the same divine thought. If God predestines people according to temporally defined grammar, it is equally true that He “postdestines” them. Predestination, calling, justification and glorification are all completed acts from God’s eternal perspective, and this is the comfort that the apostle is giving to those who are still struggling in historic time. The comfort is that their perseverance is a known and accomplished fact in God’s mind and that they need not fear that the outcome of their persistence in faith will be anything other than what Christ, Who is Faithful and True, has promised.
It is God’s sovereign knowledge from the perspective of eternity that the Apostle Paul is communicating in human grammar defined by the familiar temporal perspective. Human presumption interprets God’s language solely from the familiar temporal perspective. This presumption argues thus, “If God determined before I was born (which He did, since in eternity this is the same as saying that He determined after I died) that I would be saved or damned, then nothing I or anyone else does can alter my destiny.” This sort of reasoning is deterministic and is borrowed from the mechanistic views of evolutionists and secular atheists who see all life as predetermined according to chance, physical-chemical events and biologic determinism.
Such a view seems to eliminate free will, or freedom of choice, from the human relationship with God. In fact, it totally destroys relationship and makes God seem to be a horrible Caricature of Love, because He arbitrarily condemns or saves people without any regard to their relationship with Him and responses to Him. Indeed, in the most extreme form of this theological argument, a person has no choice of whether to trust God, because his or her choice is predetermined by God. It is this rigid exclusion of freedom as anything more than an illusion, which the Arminian extreme rejects.
But the relationship between God and man cannot be reduced to an initiative of human will, because Scripture clearly states that human will is fallen and so hopelessly reprobate that human beings are “dead” in their sins. As we have previously recognized in this blog, we enter this world as dead spirits in living bodies.
Dead people cannot choose to respond to God’s grace and love, because they are fearful and unresponsive, even when God comes calling, as He did with the first man and woman (Genesis 3:8-10). But to those dead in sin there is a promise from God of a Redeemer (Genesis 3:15) and a series of covenants from God, which are intended not to condemn but to save the people of this world.
(John 3:16-17) For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
“Whoever believes” clearly implies relationship and a participation of human will in the plan of salvation, in the same way that the first man and woman were given the option of conforming to God’s will concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.
The first man and woman (Adam and Eve) had the choice to trust God or trust self. They chose the latter and so were quarantined in the world of death. We, as their descendants born into the world of death, have the same choice—to trust God or trust self. The gracious assurance of God is that He confirms our choice from His eternal perspective, as He is equally and continuously being at the beginning and at the end of our time. Their choice was from the upside of the Fall; our choice is from the downside; but the terms and the consequences are the same—God or self, life or death—just as Moses told the Israelites.
(Deuteronomy 30:19 NNAS) “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,
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