TheLionRampant.net

Ok, my dissertation is in and I’m going to take another stab at my predestination series before studying for finals consumes my life. If you haven’t read my previous posts on predestination (or have blocked them from your memory), check them out first here. We have seen the biblical definition of election, and I have made the first background point that we have to consider predestination in light of our utter inability to do any good in our sinful state. Before going on to defend the Bible’s teaching on election I want to first briefly make another background point.

In order to understand what God is doing in election, we have to understand why God does anything that he does. What is it that motivates God to act the way he acts? The unambiguous answer of the Bible is that God works everything for his own glory. While it would be entirely wrong for us to do everything for our own glory, this is not the case for God. For a human being to do so would be wrong for the simple reason that we don’t deserve such honour. An individual who did everything to bring himself glory would be a deluded, self-absorbed, pompous jerk. Yet God is truly deserving of all glory and honour, because everything he does is thoroughly perfect.

There are (at least) two implications of this fact. First, everything God does (and therefore every individual action) is thoroughly good and should cause us to praise him. God’s integrity is above reproach. We cannot question the goodness of his actions, nor can we question the motivation lying behind them. Secondly, the answer to why God does anything is always that he does it for his own glory; we can never get beyond this answer. We may question why certain actions bring God glory, but we cannot answer this question. The reason for this is that it’s not a question for which the Bible itself provides an answer. We are simply told that God does everything for his own glory, and we must rest in the knowledge that the one who is infinitely greater than ourselves knows how to glorify himself.

Now, what does this have to do with predestination? The fact of the matter is that while it is not difficult to affirm in theory that God works everything for his own glory, we often slip into thinking that a substantial portion of his job description involves keeping us happy. In many churches today the implicit teaching is that God is our personal assistant–he exists to put out fires and get us through tough times. And so when we meet the doctrine of predestination in the Bible our instincts tell us it is wrong. How could our nice God be so not nice as to choose some people and not others? The answer, quite obviously, is that God is not motivated by an over-arching desire to be nice; he is working to bring glory to himself. (Again the satire of the Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism is helpful when it says ‘God hath never performed such an omnipotent act, for any such thing would not reflect His primary attribute, which is Niceness’.) All this, of course, does not mean that God wants us to suffer continually and works tirelessly to make our lives difficult. It does, however, mean that he will bring circumstances into our lives that are difficult. He is glorified as we understand what it means to be humble (seeing ourselves for what we are in light of his greatness), and we are not often humbled when everything is going well.

The Bible’s teaching on predestination offends our senses. It doesn’t sound right. But truth is not judged by the standard of our fickle feelings and senses; it is judged by the standard of the Word of God. So when we are offended by the biblical teaching on election, we must remember that God’s act in election brings him glory. As we continue to consider what the Bible says about predestination we must keep this point in mind: God is working to bring himself glory, and those who love him should seek to make his glory more fully known.

I’ll start looking at common erroronious views on predestination in a few days. Until then, feel free to leave questions or comments on anything I’ve written up to this point.

This is the third post in my series on predestination. Prerequisite reading can be found here.

Before continuing to defend the doctrine of predestination, I need to take a look at a couple background issues. The first issue has to do with the state of humankind after the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This doctrine is commonly called ‘total depravity’, but I prefer the phrase ‘utter inability’. They both mean the same thing, so don’t let it throw you.

God created Adam and Eve in a state of perfection, and gave them authority and dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:28-31). Everything they did was perfect, and they enjoyed perfect fellowship with God. After they ate of the fruit of the tree which God had prohibited, however, everything changed. Their relationship to the land, to each other, and to God was irretrievably corrupted. In Romans 5:12-21 (as elsewhere in the Bible), Paul teaches that through this sin, Adam plunged the entire human race into sin—he sinned on behalf of us all.
(more…)

Well, I seemed to get by with my first post on predestination without upsetting too many people. In that post I explained why Christians should attempt to understand what the Bible says about predestination (or, rather, why we shouldn’t avoid thinking about it). I’m now going to attempt to define predestination according to how it is used in the Bible. I really think that the meaning of the word is pretty obvious, and if you do too then I guess you can come back in a couple days. But just to make sure we’re all on the same page, I’m going to define it before moving on.

Before I do that though, I should make a qualification. It is possible to talk about predestination in three different senses. We could talk about cosmic predestination—God’s work in determining everything that comes to pass. I’m going to avoid this sense as much as possible. We could also talk about reprobation—God’s action in predestining some to death. Though I won’t be able to avoid this entirely, it will not be my primary focus. The third way the word predestination can be used is to describe God’s work in appointing some to eternal life. In this sense predestination and election are synonyms. This third sense will be what I have in mind in what follows.

Now that we have that under control, let’s take a look at what the Bible has to say about predestination. I’d like to first consider predestination as a general theme in the Bible. Out of all the people of earth, God selected the descendants of Abraham, the nation of Israel, to be a chosen people for himself. This he did for no other reason than because of his own freely given love (see, for instance, Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Deuteronomy 4:37-39). Yet this general election of Israel did not save every individual Hebrew. The history of the Old Testament shows this in abundant clarity. Among the people of Abraham, whom God elected in a general way, he more specifically elected some individuals and rejected others.
(more…)

So I finished my essay on Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination just in time to turn it in. I went considerably over the word limit, but what can you do when you’re up against the clock? Any who care to read it may do so here. It’s not a terribly inspiring essay, mostly because the assignment was to sketch Calvin’s view, not to set forth my own. Nevertheless, I am reasonably happy with how it turned out.

Ash has been after me to post something thought-provoking, and since this essay has been provoking many of my thoughts lately, I figured I’d post something on predestination. In fact, I think this will be the first in a series of posts on predestination.
(more…)