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“By His Grace and For His Glory”
By Thomas Nettles
Presented
Introduction
Did God give Adam and Eve freewill? Do we have freewill today? Does God
influence us to make the decisions we do make? If so, how much? Why has
God allowed so much evil in the world? What does the Bible mean when it
says God hardens men’s hearts? Does God make us sin? What does the Bible
mean when it says some people are “chosen” and “predestined” to be saved?
Are these questions even worth asking?
If you have asked yourself any of the above questions, then you should read
this article. This essay is a defense of the Reformed doctrine of absolute
predestination. That is, I wish to argue that God has predestined every event
that occurs, even the act of becoming a Christian. I will argue that God
chooses to save some men and not others, and that the basis of his choice is in
his mere good pleasure, not in the actions of men. In doing so, I will try to
show that God can and does control all things – even man’s will.1
Needless to say, this view is quite unpopular. However, I believe with all of
my heart that it is true – and truth is seldom popular. This essay takes a
Biblical approach to the issue. I do not argue for predestination because I feel
that logic or philosophy demands it. Rather, I quote Scripture compulsively
to illustrate that the authors of the Bible, insofar as they express an opinion
on the matter, presuppose a strong doctrine of predestination.
Many Christians may think that it is fruitless to search the Scriptures to see if
predestination is true. Some claim that nit picking over little doctrines only
leads to more doctrinal controversy and denominational division. However,
the authors of the Bible devoted a considerable amount of space to discussing
predestination (virtually every New Testament book has something to say
about it!) – so they apparently thought it important enough for us to learn –
and learn well! The Christian will always be characterized, in thought and
deed, by his conformity to the written Word of God. And Paul commanded
us, “Watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Tim. 4:15)2. I am also persuaded
that Calvinists and Arminians can and should discuss this issue without
needless heated slugfests. Therefore, it is always beneficial for us to search
the Scriptures to see what they can teach us on any issue – even the “little”
issues. But I hope that by the end of this essay, the reader will see that the
doctrine of predestination is by no means little!
I implore my readers to approach this essay with an open mind. There is
often a fine line between having a mind that is too open on the one hand, and
on the other hand being stubbornly resistant to any new teaching that
challenges us. Paul warns us not to be “tossed here and there by waves, and
carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14, NASB). But Proverbs tells
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us “whoever heeds correction shows prudence” (Prov. 15:9). We must be open
to correction from new insights into the Bible, but we must also keep our eyes
open to make sure that a doctrine we embrace is scriptural. In this essay I
have tried to let the Scriptures speak for themselves as much as possible. My
hope is that the interested reader will see, perhaps for the first time, just how
much the Bible has to say about predestination. Please do not judge this essay
merely by its philosophical argumentation. Judge it by its conformity (or lack
of conformity) to the Bible. And I beg the reader not to ignore the doctrine of
predestination because it is emotionally hard to swallow. I have not met a
single person who at first liked the idea that God has not chosen to save
everyone. Indeed, I believe that the greatest prevention of Calvinism being
more popular is that Christians evaluate it with their hearts rather than their
heads. Like any other doctrine, the doctrine of predestination must first be
considered in the mind before it can make its way to the heart. Calvinism
cannot be brushed aside as self-evidently absurd because of emotional appeals
brought against it. Arminian Bible scholar I. Howard Marshall admits that,
“Within conservative evangelicalism [scholarship] the dominant school of
thought is Calvinism.”3 Why is it that so many Bible scholars are Calvinists
while a majority of Christian laypersons are not? I believe that the reason is
that the Bible teaches clearly a doctrine of unconditional predestination and
most Christians simply have not taken the time to sit down and examine the
Biblical data calmly and dispassionately. This essay aims to present the
interested Christian reader with much of the Biblical support for Calvinism.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge some friends who have been a great help
in the composition of the essay without in any way claiming that this essay
accurately reflects their own personal views. Maureen Quinn has offered
many probing comments and critiques that have helped to make this work
both readable and accurate. Her encouragement and excitement over this
project have been a great impetus for finishing it as early as I have. I must
also thank my friend John Deister, who first taught to me and convinced me
of the truth of Calvinism. Without him, this essay would never have been
conceived. Matthew Hall was of enormous help in his painstaking
examination of the grammar, style, and argumentation of this essay. I am
happily indebted to him. (Of course, I claim sole responsibility for all errors
in this final draft.) But above all, I acknowledge my dear friend Mattison
Durrin, who first asked me to write this essay, and who has never stopped
encouraging words, helpful critiques, and suggestions. I dedicate this essay to
him.
God Ordains All Things
We will now survey some of the Biblical data to support the claim that God
has predetermined every event that occurs in the universe. This survey is by
no means exhaustive, but it should suffice to sketch a few major scriptural
themes that lend support to the thesis that God predestines everything that
occurs.
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God Controls Non-Persons
Most Christians will admit that God knows the future – that is hardly
disputed by anyone.4 But it is not only that God knows what will happen
tomorrow— the Bible teaches that God ordains what will happen tomorrow.
Isaiah writes of God, “What I have said [in prophecy], that will I bring about”
(Isa. 46:11). Evidently, God does not just declare what will happen, he
actively makes it happen. Indeed, he causes all things to happen. Paul wrote
that Christians “were also chosen, having been predestined according to the
plan of him [God] who works out everything in conformity with the purpose
of his will” (Eph. 1:11). Not just some things, but “everything” that happen is
performed according to God’s will. Put positively, whatever occurs in the
universe, it happens because God has willed it to happen. There is no such
thing as chance. Even things that seem random to people are controlled by
God. The author of Proverbs declares that, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its
every decision is from the Lord” (Prov. 16:33). The meaning of this verse is
that something as small and seemingly contingent as casting a lot (or we could
say, rolling a die, or drawing straws) is ordained by the all-controlling plan of
God. Though it seems silly, trivial, and even insignificant, when mildew grows
on a wall tile, it is there because God put it there: “I [God] put a spreading
mildew in a house” (Lev. 14:42). The Lord said to Isaiah, “I make known the
end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My
purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please,” implying that God does not
just predict what will come; he causes the future to be the way it will be
according to his purpose and pleasure (Isa. 46:10). The Psalmist agreed when
he wrote, “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Ps. 115:3).
God goes on to say to Isaiah that “From the east I summon a bird of prey. . . to
fulfill my purpose” (46:11) showing that even birds are controlled by him.
Similarly, Jesus said that “not one [sparrow] will fall to the ground apart from
the will of your Father” (Mt. 10:29), meaning that something even as
insignificant as the death of a sparrow is predetermined by God.
God is even the ultimate cause of calamity. He interrogated Moses from the
burning bush, “Who makes [a man] deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or
makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Ex. 4:11). As God shapes a child in
its mother’s womb, he forms some with physical and mental disabilities, and
others he makes healthy. He is free to do with us as he chooses, since we are
merely clay in his hands (Rom. 9:21). And only the impious would dare
challenge his authority by quipping, “why did you make me like this?” (Rom.
9:20). Earthquakes, famine, pestilence and storm all
befall a city because of God. Amos asked the rhetorical question, “When
disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?” (Am. 3:6). So, it is not as
though only a few, rare natural disasters are brought about by God when he is
angry with the squabbling men on earth; every single disaster is from his
hand. In a bold statement of his power, God said to the prophet, “I form the
light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord,
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But a growing number of Christians are beginning to doubt that God knows the choices people will make in the
future. However, I will not argue for God’s foreknowledge in this essay.
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do all these things” (Isa. 45:7). The darkness of night and plague is from God.
And the wealth and peace of the nations is in his hands. Verses like these led
the nineteenth century pastor Charles Spurgeon to conclude,
I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam
does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that
every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its
orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the
hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The
creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the
march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of . . . leaves from a
poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.5
Spurgeon came to this conclusion because he had a deep understanding of the
sovereignty of God that is portrayed on virtually every page of the Bible. It is
as true in our day as it was in his that God is the cause of all calamity that
afflicts mankind. Everything from birds to mildew to physical handicaps to
natural disasters is controlled by the sovereign God. God is sovereign in
bringing about disaster on the earth and its inhabitants. “The earth is the
Lord’s, and everything in it” (Ps. 24:1).
God Controls the Thoughts and Actions of Men
It is easy to suppose that men are somehow exempt from the sphere of God’s
sovereign control. But this is not the case. If Isaiah can say that God controls
birds, it is just as certain that he controls men: “From the east I summon a
bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose” (Isa. 46:11). In
other words, it is within God’s right and power to control a man such that he
brings him to his foreordained destination. Jerry Bridges comments, “God
our Father exercises his sovereignty in such minute detail as to control even
the destiny of a little bird, will certainly control even the most insignificant
details of our lives.”6
God even causes a man to say every word that comes from his mouth:
“from the Lord comes the reply of [a person’s] tongue” (Prov. 16:1). And the
Lord ordains every course of action a man takes for Scripture says, “the Lord
determines [a man’s] steps” (Prov. 16:9). It is humbling to think that every
movement we make as humans has been decreed by God. Indeed, it is
astonishing to consider that the “heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it
like a watercourse wherever he pleases” (Prov. 21:1). God brings about every
fleeting thought and every decision of the heart, no matter how small. The
Biblical testimony is that all of our thoughts, words, and actions are the
product of the cosmic plan of Almighty God. The Lord likens men to tools in
his hand, used to accomplish his purpose (Isa. 10:5ff.). He can make men
Quoted in Piper, John. “Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained that Evil Be?” 1998.
http://www.desiringgod.org/Online_Library/OnlineArticles/Subjects/Suffering/GodAndEvil.htm
6 Jerry Bridges, “Does Divine Sovereignty Make a Difference in Everyday Life?” in The Grace of God, the
Bondage of the Will, edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), 206.
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become afraid and anxious (Deut. 28:66) or bold and confident (Ps. 138:3).
The Lord does all these things.
Some Christians claim that God may sometimes causes men to make choices,
but he has not ordained everything we do. I have heard many Christians
mock the idea that God has predestined, for instance, what color socks they
wear today. However, the Bible does not just teach that God sometimes
controls the actions of men – rather, God always is in control, and he is
constantly exercising this power. David declared in the Psalm,
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be. (Ps. 139:16)
In this Psalm, “David is affirming that God wrote the script of his life in the
great book of God’s intentions before the actual events began to unfold,
indeed, before David was even born . . . . He means that his life, considered
not only as a whole, but also down to his daily experience, was determined . . .
ahead of time.”7 His kingship, his slaying of Goliath – even is adultery with
Bathsheba – were all predestined and orchestrated by God. David is asserting
a general truth that applies not just to him, but also to the entire human race.
God has predestined every action and choice that we will make – and he did
this before we were even born.
Ezekiel knew that God controls the hearts of men. He prophesied, “I [God]
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you
your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in
you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws”
(Ezek. 36:26-27). These verses teach that “Not only does God surgically
transplant a heart, he sees to it that the heart functions in a satisfactory
manner; for with the heart he also implants his Spirit and thus causes his
patients to walk according to the . . . commandments.”8 We see that God is
the one who moves our hearts to follow him – he is “the Lord, who makes [us]
holy” (Lev. 22:32). Paul wrote to the Philippian church, “Therefore, my dear
friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much
more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and
trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his
good purpose” (Php. 2:12-13). God both causes Christians to do good deeds,
and also makes them willing to obey. The author of Hebrews said that God
“work[s] in us what is pleasing to him” (Heb. 13:21).
God causes every obedient act of man, and every act of disobedience is
brought about because he does not enable men to follow him. Moses said that
the reason the Israelites were a stiff-necked people who refused to stop
sinning was because, “to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that
understands or eyes that see or ears that hear” (Deut. 29:4). If God had been
pleased to grant them open eyes and an understanding heart, they would not
Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., “The Sovereignty of God: Case Studies in the Old Testament,” in The Grace of God,
the Bondage of the Will, 32.
8Gordon Clark, Predestination (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), 197.
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have been so stubbornly sinful. And even when Samson fell in love with a
Philistine woman, it was caused by God. Though it was sin for Samson to
disobey his parents and God by marrying a pagan foreigner, he refused to
change his mind because “this was from the Lord” (Judges 14:4). God not
only made Samson fall in love with a woman, he also made Samson too
stubborn to listen to his parents.
The examples of Samson and the Israelites give us food for thought, for they
show us the darker side to God’s sovereignty over men. Arminian Gregory
Boyd writes, “Within the limits set by God, an individual may purpose to do
things which are utterly at odds with God's ultimate purpose. Thus, when an
individual inflicts pain on another individual, I do not think we can go looking
for ‘the purpose of God’ in the event.”9 But this idea is as unbiblical as it is
bold. Proverbs declares, “The Lord works out everything for his own ends –
even the wicked for a day of disaster” (Prov. 16:4). Even wickedness is part of
God’s ultimate plan. However, it is not that God himself is evil, for his own
goals are always good in that they magnify his glory. After Joseph’s brothers
beat him, threw him in a cistern and sold him as a slave (all of which were
sins!), he could still say to his brothers, “it was not you who sent me here, but
God” (Gen. 45:8). He goes on to say, “You intended to harm me, but God
intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20). Joseph does not say that his brothers sent
him to Egypt and that God later made good come of it. He instead states that
God was the one sending Joseph to Egypt from the very beginning through his
brothers’ sinful actions, and God had a purpose in it. God’s plan, though it
uses wickedness, does so for a greater good in the end.10 Jonathan Edwards
rightly said, “God decrees [actions of men] to be sinful, for the sake of the
good that he causes to arise from the sinfulness thereof; whereas man decrees
them for the sake of the evil that is in them.”11 Edwards further elaborated on
how God can hate sin, yet ordain wickedness for his purpose. He wrote,
God may hate a thing [i.e., sin] as it is in itself, and considered
simply as evil, and yet . . . it may be his will it should come to
pass, considering all consequences. . . . God doesn’t will sin as
sin or for the sake of anything evil; though it be his pleasure so
to order things, that he permitting, sin will come to pass; for the
sake of the great good that by his disposal shall be the
consequence. His willing to order things so that evil should
come to pass, for the sake of the contrary good, is no argument
that he doesn’t hate evil, as evil: and if so, then it is no reason
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Gregory Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic (Colorado Springs: Chariot Victor Publishing, 1994), 46-47.
it is here objected that God is working according to morally questionable principle, “the end justifies the
means” (cf. Rom. 3:8), I reply that God has sovereign rights over his creation that men do not have. Thus, while it
may be wrong for a man to use evil to accomplish a good end result, it is not sin for God. Similarly, just as it is
sin for man to kill, it is not sin for God to take away life: “There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to
life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand” (Deut. 32:39). The Creator has rights
that are not allowed to the creation. Therefore, it is within the rights of the Creator God to manipulate and use the
wickedness of sin to accomplish his good purpose.
11Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 2:527.
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why he may not reasonably forbid evil as evil, and punish it as
such.12
We see that when God ordained the evil actions of Joseph’s brothers, he was
not doing this because he loves sinfulness. He did it because it was his means
of achieving a good end-result.
Joseph is not the only case of God ordaining sin for his own purpose. It is well
known that God caused Pharaoh to disobey his command. When God,
through Moses, ordered Pharaoh to release the Hebrew slaves, he did not
listen or obey because “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of
Egypt” (Ex. 9:12; cf. 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8). Some have questioned the
example of Pharaoh because, in the first instances of Pharaoh’s hardening, the
Bible says that Pharaoh “hardened his
[own] heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had
said” (Ex. 8:15). This has led some exegetes to claim that only after Pharaoh
hardened himself did God begin to harden him.
But when it says the Pharaoh hardened his own heart, it does not mean that
God did not cause him to do so. In fact, this explanation is demanded by the
words, “just as the Lord had said” in Ex. 8:15. What exactly had the Lord
said? The answer comes from Ex. 4:21. “When you [Moses] return to Egypt,
see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I [God] have given you
the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people
go.” In other words, when 8:15 says, “just as the Lord had said” it is referring
to 4:21, which says that the Lord would harden Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh’s
self-hardening is the result of God’s prior determination to harden his heart –
a decision he declared when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush. In
other words, when men harden their own hearts, it is God who causes them
to become hard. This is shown perhaps most clearly in the following passage:
When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had
stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their
hearts. So Pharaoh's heart was hard and he would not let the
Israelites go, just as the Lord had said through Moses. Then the
Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his
heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these
miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your
children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the
Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that
you may know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 9:34-10:2).
Notice the beginning of the passage: “[Pharaoh] and his officials hardened
their hearts,” and it says that they “sinned” by doing so. But later the same
passage tells us that God had hardened their hearts (10:1)! So we see that that
Pharaoh hardened his own heart, yet God caused even this action. When God
Quoted in Piper, John. “Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained that Evil Be?” 1998.
http://www.desiringgod.org/Online_Library/OnlineArticles/Subjects/Suffering/GodAndEvil.htm
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hardens a man’s heart, that man infallibly hardens his own heart. When the
Bible speaks of men hardening their hearts it is apparently the way of
observing God’s actions from a strictly human perspective. While men go
about making their decisions, behind each rebellious choice stands the decree
of God.
Despite popular opinion, Pharaoh is not the only example of divine hardening
in the Bible. When the Israelites offer peace to the surrounding countries, the
nations refuse, and as a result Israel completely obliterates them in war.
Joshua says that “Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a
treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. For it was the
Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he
might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord
had commanded Moses” (Josh 11:19-20). And when the Israelites wanted to
peacefully cross through the land of Heshbon, the king did not allow it: “Sihon
king of Heshbon refused to let [the Israelites] pass through. For the Lord
[their] God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to
give him into [their] hands, as he has now done” (Deut. 2:30). When King
Sihon sinned, it was ultimately because God had hardened his heart.
Paul claims that God “hardens whom he wants to harden” (Rom. 9:18) —
meaning that God does not just harden kings like Pharaoh and Sihon, but
ordinary men, all the time. In fact, Paul says that most of the Israelite nation
has been hardened: “What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the
elect did. The others were hardened” (Rom. 11:7). And again, “Israel has
experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come
in” (Rom. 11:25). Of these Israelites Paul
says, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and
ears so that they could not hear, to this very day” (Rom. 11:8). Here we see
nearly an entire nation being hardened by the hand of God. Apparently, God
freely hardens the hearts of men, indirectly bringing about the evil of sin.
Isaiah says as much when he asks, “Why, O Lord, do you make us wander
from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you?” (Isa. 63:17).
God is the cause of man’s disobedience, and it is significant that he does not
answer Isaiah’s question, “Why?” Paul asserts, like Isaiah, that, “God has
bound all men over to disobedience” (Rom. 11:32). This teaching seems to
pervade all of Scripture. The Psalmist declared, “The Lord made his people
very fruitful; he made them too numerous for their foes, whose hearts he
turned to hate his people, to conspire against his servants” (Ps. 105:24-25).
When God makes the future known to men, he often prophecies the decisions
men will make in the days to come. And in order to ensure that his
prophecies occur, he moves the hearts of men to perform his will. Perhaps the
clearest example of this is Rev. 17:17: “For God has put it into their hearts to
accomplish his purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to rule, until
God's words are fulfilled.” This verse goes so far as to say that the regime of
the future Antichrist (i.e., the Beast) will be ultimately ordained by none other
than God: it is God who will turn the hearts of men to give the Antichrist his
governing authority. All kings “would have no power. . . if it were not given. . .
from above” (Jn. 19:11; cf. 3:27). Similarly, we read in Ezra, “In the first year
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of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by
Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia” (1:1). God stirs
the hearts of men to accomplish the certain fulfillment of his prophetic word.
Even the most heinous of sins foretold by God, the murdering of the Messiah,
was predestined. The earliest Christians recognized this when they prayed,
“For truly in this city were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus,
whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles
and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose had
predestined to occur” (Acts 4:27-28 NASB). The death of Christ was no
accident. It was the result of a careful, premeditated plan of God. Isaiah had
said about Jesus hundreds of years before his death, “it was the Lord’s will to
crush him and cause him to suffer” (Isa. 53:10). Jesus himself knew that his
death was inevitable and predetermined. He said, “The Son of Man will go [to
his death] as it has been decreed” (Lk. 22:22).
These numerous specific examples should be enough to posit a strong case for
the fact that God controls everything a person does. But there are also broad
themes that testify that God controls the decisions and actions of men. He
determines who wins wars (e.g., Judges 11:32), who will be the leader of a
country (e.g., Ex. 9:16; 1 Kings 10:9; 14:7; Isa. 45:13), who will have children
and who will not (e.g., 1 Sam. 1:5; Ruth 4:13), and the exact geographical and
political borders of nations (Acts 17:26). Each of these things is the product of
literally millions of actions: who is president is determined by political factors
and votes; the outcome a war is based on weather conditions, technology, and
the decisions and actions of thousands of soldiers and generals; offspring are
generated through intercourse and are contingent upon the movement of
sperm and the chemical signals from the ovum and a host of genetic states, all
of which are inherited from the thousands of generations preceding the
parents of the child; and the borders of countries are tied to the outcomes of
wars, votes, and politics. If God’s control does not extend to the minutest of
actions (not the least of which are men’s decisions) then God would be
incapable of controlling the big things that the Bible gives him credit for.
Behind the Christian claim that God controls history is the implicit
admittance to the fact that he must have a strong, if not overriding, influence
on the myriad of decisions each person makes every day.
In conclusion, these passages teach us that God is the ultimate cause of
everything that occurs, good or bad. We have seen that he brings about
mildew, controls the flight path of a bird, the exact time and manner of death
of a sparrow and man; physical handicaps, wars, kingship, love, hatred,
disobedience, and all other things that occur. From these Biblical data I find
the argument for the doctrine of predetermination well nigh insuperable.
God Determines Who Will Be Saved
Having made a strong case for the fact that God ordains all occurrences, it
should seem only natural to suppose that God determines who will be saved
and who will not. If God ordains even the minuscule events, how much more
the eternal salvation of men’s souls? Bible scholar D. A. Carson observes that,
“believers of a more Arminian persuasion tend to argue that a man has a free
will . . . at the point of deciding to become a Christian. But only rarely have I
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seen such a believer tackle the much larger question of God’s relation to the
countless thousands of decisions each person makes every day. If God in
some sense controls such decisions [as we have shown above that he does],
why not the decision to become a Christian?”13 To avoid such a conclusion,
some Christians are willing to go so far as to admit that God controls all
choices of men except at the moment they exercise faith in Christ! Therefore,
it is necessary for this essay to deal with the Scriptural texts that have been
used both to defend and attack the Calvinist doctrine of predestination to
salvation.
Predestination to Heaven
Many passages in the Bible speak of God predestining men to heaven.
Indeed, there are so many it is difficult to know where to begin. At least a
passing reference should be made of Abraham, whose life marks the
beginning of the plan of redemption of God’s people. The Bible offers no
reason for God’s choosing Abraham as opposed to the myriads of other men
on the earth then. Nehemiah 9:7 says that the Lord “chose Abram and
brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and named him Abraham.” It does
not appear that God revealed himself to Abraham because Abraham sought
God, because Joshua 24:2 seems to imply that Abraham served idols: “Long
ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived
beyond the River and worshiped other gods.” As far back as Nahor the
Israelites were polytheistic. Certainly the Bible is clear on the fact that God
chose the descendants of Abraham simply because he loved them, not because
the merited being chosen. Moses wrote,
The Lord did not set his love on you and choose you because you
were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the
fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and
kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you
out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of
slavery. (Deut. 7:7-8)
God chose the seed of Abraham because he loved them. There is no other
reason for the choice. Even the oath he made with Abraham their forefather
(v. 8) was made freely. God did not have to choose Abraham. He chose him
simply because he loved him in a special way: “the Lord set his affection on
your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above
all the nations, as it is today” (Deut. 10:15).
The New Testament teems with passages that discuss predestination. To
mention all of them would be impossible and cumbersome, but time permits
the discussion of some of the strongest.
Jesus mentioned predestination often in his discourses. He declared plainly,
“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son
13D.
A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension (Grand Rapids:
Baker Books, 1981), 220-221.
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except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to
whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt. 11:27). The Son has authority over
all of the people of the earth, but he chooses to reveal himself in a saving way
to only some of them. This teaching is reinforced by Jesus’ use of parables.
By speaking in mysterious parables to the crowds, he served more to confuse
them than help them find the way of salvation. Only his closest followers had
the benefit of hearing the parables explained so that they could understand
the mysteries of salvation. Lk. 8:9-10 reads, “His disciples asked him what
this parable meant. He said, ‘The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of
God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, though
seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.’” Only to
the ones Christ had chosen did he reveal himself. The ground of God’s choice
of who will be saved is his will and good pleasure (Lk. 10:21). But men who
are not chosen by God are sent to everlasting destruction in hell. Jesus said of
the reprobate, “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the
darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are
invited, but few are chosen" (Mt. 22:13-14). The invitation of the gospel
comes to many, but God only chooses to save only a handful of listeners. In
Mark 10:27, Jesus says that coming to him and believing on him is impossible
without God’s doing. The reason then rich young ruler turned away from
Christ was because his riches and sinfulness made it “impossible” for him to
have saving faith. C. K. Barret remarked, “Faith in Christ is not merely
difficult; apart from God it is impossible (Mark 10:27). Coming to Jesus is not
a matter of free decision.”14
In John’s gospel, Jesus makes frequent reference to predestination. He said,
“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son
gives life to whom he is pleased to give it” (Jn. 5:21). The Son is free to give
life to some, and is pleased to withhold it from others. The Lord said to his
followers, “As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out
of the world” (Jn. 15:19). We did not choose Christ – he chose us, for Jesus
declared, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go
and bear fruit” (Jn. 15:16). Men come to faith in Christ because he has chosen
them, and the only reason we love God is because “he first loved us” (1 Jn.
4:19). Jesus said to his apostles, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one
of you is a devil!” (Jn. 6:70). And this choosing was not just to the office of
apostleship — it was a choosing of salvation. Judas was the one exception that
was not really an exception at all, because Jesus later said, “I am not referring
to all [twelve] of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfill the
Scripture: ‘He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me’” (Jn.
13:18). Judas was not one that Jesus has chosen, and the reason he was not
chosen was so that God’s prophetic word would be accomplished. He was
“the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled” (Jn.
17:12).
John says that men are saved not because of a decision they make, but
because of a decision God makes. Men who are born again are “children born
not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of
God” (Jn. 1:13). We are not born again because of a decision we make
Quoted in Bruce A. Ware, “The Place of Effectual Calling and Grace in a Calvinist Soteriology,” in The Grace
of God, the Bondage of the Will, 354, n. 28.
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anymore than a child is conceived because of a decision it makes. We are
born again according to the will of God. Indeed, before we are regenerate we
are dead to sin and so blind that we cannot even see the kingdom of God (Jn.
3:3). Just as the wind blows wherever it wants, so the Spirit of God moves
wherever he pleases, causing men to be born of God: “The wind blows
wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes
from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8).
Robert Yarbrough remarks that a theology “that grants sinners the real
potential to elect their present spiritual loyalties and eternal destiny by their
own freewill, is so sparsely attested in John’s Gospel that we doubt its
presence can be documented at all.”15
God has given to Jesus some men to be his sheep, and God has chosen them
(see Jn. 6:39; 10:29; 17:2, 9). Of these people given to Jesus by the Father the
Bible says, “For you granted [Jesus] authority over all people that he might
give eternal life to all those you have given him” (Jn. 17:2). Out of all the
people of the earth, some are chosen and given to Jesus so that he is pleased
to give only them eternal life. Perhaps this is most clear in Jn. 6:35-70. In
this discourse, Jesus makes some extremely bold statements about
predestination. Verses 37-39 read, “All that the Father gives me will come to
me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down
from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this
is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given
me, but raise them up at the last day.” If the Father gives one to Jesus, he will
voluntarily come to Christ and be saved at the resurrection at the last day.
This “giving” is a granting of salvation. But even if the coming is voluntary,
this does not mean that it is not caused by God. Jesus goes on to say, “No one
can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (v. 44). Some
readers try to argue that God draws all men, but they can resist his gentle
tugging by their stubborn wills. But this interpretation is not possible.16 The
word “draw” here does not mean a gentle tug or prod. It is often translated
“to drag” in the New Testament. In his essay on election in the Fourth Gospel,
Robert Yarbrough writes,
“Draw” in 6:44 translates the Greek helkuo. Outside of John it
appears in the New Testament only in Acts 16:19: “they seized
Robert W. Yarbrough, “Divine Election in the Gospel of John,” in The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will,
58.
16I am aware of Jn. 12:32, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” But this verse
is not teaching that every single individual is drawn by God. Rather, it teaches that only after the death of Christ
will he begin to save the Gentiles. The words “all men” do not mean “every individual,” but “all nations.” This is
seen from the context. In v.20, some Greeks ask the apostles if they can speak with Jesus. Jesus replies in v. 32
by saying that not until after his death will his message be spoken to the non-Jews, and then his saving scope will
broaden to include all nations. When Jesus said in v. 24, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the
ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” he was referring to his own
death. Not until after he died would the many “seeds” or nations be saved. In John’s gospel, Jesus death is for the
purpose of gathering God’s sheep from among the nations, as is seen in 11:51-52: “Jesus would die for the Jewish
nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make
them one.” There are sheep that God has chosen scattered throughout the world that must be gathered from the
nations, and it is in this sense that Christ’s death would “draw all men” to him. The thought is not unlike that of
Mt. 10:5-6 where Jesus says to his followers, “Do not go among the Gentiles [to preach] or enter any town of the
Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.” Not until after his resurrection did he say, “All authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:18-19). The
death of Christ inaugurated a new era of blessing to the Gentiles. See also Mt. 15:27; Jn. 4:22; Rom. 1:16.
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Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace. . . .”
John’s Gospel uses the word to speak of being drawn to Christ
(12:32), a sword being drawn (18:10), and a net full of fish being
hauled or dragged to shore (21:6, 11). The related form helko
appears in Acts 21:30 (“they dragged him from the temple”) and
James 2:6 (“Are they not the ones who are dragging you into
court?”). It seems hard to avoid the impression that John 6:44
refers to a “forceful attraction” in bringing sinners to the Son.17
It seems unlikely, given the force of the word, that men can resist this drawing
by the power of their own wills. With omnipotent, invincible determination,
God pulls his chosen ones to Christ. “This is what is sometimes called
irresistible grace — not that grace cannot be resisted (Acts 7:51), rather that
this grace can, when God pleases overcome all resistance and make the heart
happily willing to believe.”18 This is why in the same verse Jesus can say that
everyone who is drawn will certainly be saved: “No one can come to me unless
the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Jesus makes clear that only God draws some men, and does not draw others.
In vv. 64-65 he says, “‘Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’ For
Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who
would betray him. He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can
come to me unless the Father has enabled him.’” A careful reading of this
passage is decisive. Jesus had known who would not believe in him. And he
gives the reason: some men do not believe because they have not been
enabled by the Father to do so. This is because the Father has not enabled all
men to believe in Christ.
Surely, then, the predestinarian force of Jesus’ words in the four gospels
cannot be avoided.
The apostle Paul says more about predestination than any other Biblical
author. In Rom. 9 he devotes a full twenty four verses to explaining God’s
predestination of individuals to salvation. This passage is perhaps the most
common one used by Calvinists to prove their position.19 Paul goes all the way
back to Jacob and Esau and ponders why God chose to make Jacob into the
Jewish nation. He states that “though the twins were not yet born and had
done nothing good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to his choice
would stand, not because of works but because of [God] who calls,” Jacob was
chosen over Esau (v. 11 NASB). God did not elect Jacob because he was more
ethical than Esau – in fact, Jacob was a conniving swindler and liar (Gen.
25:28-33; 27:19). Paul’s point is that God does not choose men because they
will prove to be righteous. He chooses them, not based on merit, but free and
sovereign grace. God declares, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and
I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (v. 15).The text plainly
17Robert
18John
W. Yarbrough, “Divine Election in the Gospel of John,” 50.
Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Portland: Multnomah, 1991),
155.
19Certainly the most thorough study of this passage presently available, and perhaps ever written, is J. Piper’s The
Justification of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993). This book defends the Calvinistic interpretation of Rom.
9:1-23. Piper’s book has never been answered by non-Calvinists. I am indebted to this work for my
understanding and exegesis of Rom.9.
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states that the choice of God was according to his secret purpose, not
according to the good or bad “works” that Jacob and Esau would do.
Paul goes even further to assert that God’s choice of who will be saved does
not depend in any way on the freewill of the individual. He plainly states that
God’s choice does “not depend on the man who wills” (v. 16 NASB). This
observation is important because some readers of the Bible try to say that God
chooses us because he foresees that we will believe in Christ by our own free
will. But this erroneous view is outright denied by Paul. Not only is God’s
choice of us independent of anything we do (good or bad) it is also
independent of our acts of willing. God did not choose us because he knew we
would choose him; rather, we chose him because he first chose us. John Piper
writes, “Verse 16 draws the obvious inference from verse 15. Whether a man
receives mercy from God or not does not depend on a man's willing or his
running (=efforts) but solely on God. In other words, God's merciful
treatment of anyone is never initiated by or in any way ultimately influenced
by the person's will. This is a necessary inference from verse 15: The all
glorious God whose glory consists in his freedom to choose whomever He will
cannot be determined by or obligated by anything outside himself.”20
Salvation, in no way, at no time, under no circumstances, hinges ultimately on
the freewill of man. Rather, it hinges on the freewill of God (vv. 11, 22-23).
Even if the will of man were free from the sphere of God’s overriding control,
it would not help the matter any because our salvation does not hang
ultimately on an act of our will. Period.21 Paul could not be clearer: God’s
choice of who will be saved does not depend on man’s willing.
This unrestrained freedom of God is shown in Paul’s words, “God has mercy
on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden”
(v. 18). This “mercy” that God shows is not a benevolent giving of earthly
blessings. The word refers to final salvation.22 Therefore, when Paul says that
God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, he is saying that God saves
whom he wants to save. In other words, “there are no stipulations outside
[God’s] own counsel or will which determine the disposal of his mercy and
grace.”23 He is free to save whomever he chooses.
In likening men to clay vessels in the hand of God (v. 21) Paul goes on to ask
the rhetorical question,24 “What if God did this [i.e., prepared some vessels for
20Piper,
John. “The Argument of Romans 9:14-16.” 1976.
http://www.desiringgod.org/Online_library/OnlineArticles/Subjects/DoctrinesGrace/Romans9_14-16.htm.
21I do not mean that men are not responsible to choose Christ. I simply wish to convey that man’s eternal destiny
is ultimately decided by God, not man.
22 In Eph. 2:4-5, Paul states, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with
Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.” Of himself Paul said,
“though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy” (1 Tim. 1:13) meaning,
of course, that he was saved by God. Paul prays, “May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on
that day” (2 Tim. 1:18), hoping that we will be saved on the day of judgment. For God to show mercy to
someone often means that God will save that person.
23John Piper, The Justification of God, 82.
24Some non-Calvinists object that Paul is saying “what if” (v. 22) meaning that he is not discussing how God
really deals with men, but a hypothetical scenario. This is a clever observation. The Calvinist reply is (1) in
Scripture, there are examples of the phrase “what if” expressing a rhetorical question (see Jn. 6:62; Acts 23:9;
Rom. 2:17ff.); (2) and even if the words “what if” are meant to express a possibility, but not reality, this proves
that for Paul it is completely reasonable and natural for Christians to believe that God predestines some men to
heaven and others to hell. So I think that Paul is here asking a rhetorical question. He by no means intends his
words “what if” to be taken to mean that God does not ordain some men to damnation and others to heavenly
bliss. Besides, he goes on in v. 24 to say, “even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the
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destruction] to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy,
whom he prepared in advance for glory – even us, whom he also called, not
only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?” We are like clay pots in God’s
hand, and he makes some vessels to be filled with his mercy in the bliss of
heaven. We are “prepared in advance for glory” by God. It is not our doing.
We go to heaven because God prepared us to be saved.
Paul speaks about predestination to salvation in many other places in his
epistles. He says in 2 Thess. 2:13, “But we ought always to thank God for you,
brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be
saved.” Apparently, Paul believed that God chooses some people to be saved
and not others. He goes on to say in v. 14, “He called you to this through our
gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” When
Paul says that God “called” them, he is not referring to the general invitation
call of the gospel. For Paul, saying that God “calls” men to salvation means
that he causes them to be saved by a powerful work within their hearts.25 He
said, “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to
Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the
power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23-24). Verses 26-30 go on to
say,
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not
many of you were wise by human standards; not many were
influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the
foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the
weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the
lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the
things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one
may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ
Jesus (1 Cor. 1:26-30).
Those who are called are those who have been chosen to be saved.
Theologians often refer to this call as the “effectual call” because it is always
effective in saving those to whom it is given. Bible scholar John Piper writes,
[Paul] says that among those who hear [the gospel message],
there are some who are “called” in such a way that they no
longer regard the cross as foolishness but as the wisdom and
power of God. What else can this call be but the effectual call of
God out of darkness into the light of God? “Effectual” means
that the call itself effects what it demands, namely, faith. If all
who are called in this sense regard the cross as the power of
God, then something in the call must effect faith. . . . . The call
Gentiles,” which is a very specific statement to make if Paul is discussing mere hypothetical possibilities and not
reality. Daniel P. Fuller captures the idea of Paul’s statement best with his paraphrase, “what objection can be
made is he did this to make the riches of his glory known the objects of his mercy” (see The Unity of the Bible
[Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992], 446.) The answer is that no objection can legitimately be made to God’s
freedom of choice.
25D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 62-63.
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is not merely an opportunity for man to choose, but also an
infallible work of God to create a new heart of willing faith.26
This effective call is mentioned again in 2 Tim 1:9, where Paul speaks of God
“who has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we
have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us
in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” Before the beginning of time
itself, God purposed to save and call certain men to salvation.
In Romans 11 Paul speaks of God’s choice of a subset of mankind to save.
Paul says, “at the present time there is a remnant [of people] chosen by grace.
And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer
be grace” (vv. 5-6). These verses teach that God chooses who will be saved,
and his selection is not based on our actions. Salvation is not by works
because it is based on God’s gracious choice. God does not see our good deeds
(even our faith27) and predestine us to salvation based on that. He chooses us
because he loved us unconditionally. He did not choose us based on anything
we did or would do. Those God chooses he grants faithful obedience to – they
are not obedient before the choice. In v. 4 God said, referring back to the time
of Elijah, “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the
knee to [the false god] Baal.” Those are chosen by God are the true
worshipers of him. We are not chosen because we are true worshippers – we
are chosen to become true worshippers.
Ephesians 1:1-12 is another passage that teaches God’s predestination of men
to salvation. It reads,
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual
blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of
the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he
predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in
accordance with his pleasure and will-- to the praise of his
glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he
lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. . . .
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined
according to the plan of him who works out everything in
conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who
were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his
glory. (Eph. 1:1-12)
26John
Piper, The Pleasures of God, 155.
Arminian writer Robert Shank would disagree with me, claiming that it is true that God does not choose us
based on our “works,” but he does choose us based on our faith. After noting the contrast between “faith” and
“works” in Rom. 4:1-5, 16, Shank concludes that the Calvinist position “collapses” (Elect in the Son
[Minneapolis: Bethany Books, 1989], 125). What Shank fails to notice is that “what Paul says about boasting in
Rom. 3.27 and 4.2 in relation to works of and the law is simply part of a wider attack on boasting about any kind
of human wisdom or achievement (1 Cor. 1.29, 31)” (I. Howard Marshall, “Salvation, Grace, and Works in the
Later Writings in the Pauline Corpus,” New Testament Studies (1996), 356. When Paul says that God does not
choose us based on our works, he means that God chooses us without consideration of our works of obedience or
wise decisions. This is why in Rom. 9:11 Paul can say that God does not choose men based on their works, and in
v. 16 he can add that God does not choose us based on our acts of willing or efforts.
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In this one passage, Paul teaches many truths. He declares that God chose
Christians to be saved and that he made this choice before the creation of the
world. Man had no say in a decision that was made so long ago. Paul also
indicates that God chose us to be his sons, and receive redemption and
forgiveness of sins. We were chosen to be saved. The basis of God’s choice
was his love, grace, and the pleasure of his will (vv. 5, 7). Nothing in this
passage indicates that God’s choice of us is made based on our actions. God
chooses us because of his love and unmerited favor for us.
Paul says in 1 Thess. 5:9 (NASB), “God has not destined us for wrath but for
obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The purport of this verse
is that our salvation is predestined by God. Paul is saying that we have not
been destined to wrath – rather, we have been destined for heaven.
Christians are chosen by God to believe in Christ and be saved.
The other Biblical authors are far from silent when it comes to discussing
predestination. In Acts 13:48 Luke writes, “When the Gentiles heard [the
gospel], they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were
appointed for eternal life believed.” This passage indicates that there is a
group of men that are destined to believe in Christ, and that they will believe
when they hear the gospel message. As Paul preached the gospel in
Macedonia, Luke records that “The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to respond to
Paul's message” (Acts 16:14). God chose to enlighten Lydia to the truth and
save her. God did not declare his gospel to Lydia and wait for her to respond
by an act of her sovereign freewill. He caused her to be responsive to his call.
Peter exhorts Christians to “make certain [God’s] calling and choosing you” (2
Pet. 1:10 NASB). He also calls Christians “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of
him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet. 2:9).
Peter, Paul, John and Jesus believed and taught predestination.
Based on these data, it can hardly be doubted that the Bible teaches that God
predestines some men to heaven.
Predestination to Hell
Some Christians would like to admit that God predestines to heaven, but does
not predestine others to hell. But the two teachings stand or fall together, and
indeed, the Bible affirms both.28
Much traditional Calvinistic theology sees God’s predestining men to hell as entirely passive: he withholds
grace from already hardened sinners, thus making damnation inevitable, but does not actively predestine men to
hell. Calvinists have long debated whether God actively predestines men to hell, or just passes over all but a
remnant of the massa damnata. Calvinists called infralapsarians believe that “God actively chooses those who
are to receive eternal life, and passes by all the others, leaving them in their self-chosen sins.” On the other hand,
Calvinists called supralapsarians say that “God chooses some to be saved and others to be lost. Calvin held called
this a ‘horrible decree,’ but nevertheless held it because he found it in the Bible” (Millard Erickson, Christian
Theology [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998], 930-31). Millard Erickson observes that “While the effect is the
same in both cases, [infralapsarianism] assigns the lostness of the nonelect to their own choice of sin rather than
the active decision of God, or God’s choice of omission rather than commission” (Ibid., 931). While I lean toward
a supralapsarian view, the purpose of this essay is not to support it. When I say that God “predestines to hell,” I
am not meaning to communicate supralapsarianism. Even if God only passively reprobates the nonelect, the end
result is still that by his omission of action, some men are predestined to eternal misery. So my arguments should
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John speaks of those who have been hardened so as not to believe and be
saved. In his gospel, he writes, “For this reason they could not believe,
because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: ‘He has blinded their eyes and deadened
their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their
hearts, nor turn – and I would heal them’” (Jn. 12:39-40). These men were
unable to believe because God has hidden the truth from them. The naked
force of this text is lethal to the non-Calvinist position. Some men are enabled
to believe in Christ, others are prevented. God has chosen some men to be
saved and others to be damned.
In Rom. 9:1-24, Paul makes some of the strongest statements in the Bible
concerning predestination to hell. In discussing how men are mere lumps of
clay in God’s hand, he asks, “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
‘Why did you make me like this?’” (v. 20). His answer is humbling: “Does not
the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery
for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to
show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the
objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction?” (vv. 21-22). The purposes of
God extend even to ordaining certain people to destruction. The word
“destruction” carries the meaning of eternal existence in hell. It is contrasted
with the “glory” of heaven in v. 23 which speaks of vessels “prepared in
advance for glory.” For Paul, “destruction does not mean extinction of
physical existence, but rather of an eternal plunge into Hades and a hopeless
destiny of death.”29 God has sovereign rights over men to deal with them
however he pleases. He can mold some men to be disobedient, and others to
be righteous. All men are “in God's hands” (Eccl. 9:1). He uses his control
over mankind to make some men for eternal destruction. As harsh as this
teaching sounds, it is the clear meaning of Paul’s words.
In v. 18 Paul says that God “hardens whom he wants to harden.” This
hardening inevitably sends one to hell. Two chapters later Paul speaks of the
salvation that “Israel sought so earnestly [but] did not obtain, but the elect
did. The others were hardened” (Rom. 11:7; cf. 9:34). Paul says that hardness
of heart sends a person to hell on the day of judgment. He warned his
readers, “because of your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring
up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous
judgment of God” (Rom. 2:5 NASB). In other words, when v. 18 asserts that
God hardens whomever he wants it means that God predestines whomever he
wants to hell. Those who are reprobate have no more say in their final destiny
than does a clay pot in the potter’s hands (vv. 20-21).
In Romans 11:7-10 Paul discusses how Israel has been hardened by God to not
believe the truth of the gospel. He writes,
What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain,
but the elect did. The others were hardened, as it is written:
“God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see
and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.” And
David says: “May their table become a snare and a trap, a
be useful both for supralapsarians and infralapsarians. It should be pointed out there this is some dispute among
historians as to whether Calvin was supralapsarian or not.
29G. Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,1:396 cited in Piper, The Justification of God.
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stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be
darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.”
(Rom. 11:7-10).
God gave the Israelites deaf ears and blind eyes, and a mind of confusion. He
did this to prevent them from believing the truth and thus being saved. By
pronouncing that their “backs be bent forever” Paul was indicating that their
disobedience would lead to eternal destruction. There was no hope of them
evading their bleak destiny and being saved.
Again in 2 Thess 2:11-13, Paul speaks of such reprobation. In discussing those
sinners who hate the truth and will fall away from the faith in the last times,
he proclaims, “God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe
the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but
have delighted in wickedness. But we ought always to thank God for you,
brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be
saved.” Here God is so determined to accomplish his plan of saving some and
rejecting others that he turns men over to believe in the false miracles of the
Antichrist (v. 9). While it is true that these men are deluded by God to believe
the lie because of their own previous bent toward wickedness (v. 12), it is also
true that the only reason the rest of the church is not so deluded is because
they have been chosen by God to be saved (v. 12). Some men God causes to
believe a lie; others he chooses to be saved. He predestines to both hell and
heaven.
Peter says of those who do not believe the gospel, “They stumble because they
disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for” (1 Pet. 2:8).
Not only are these men destined for destruction — they are predestined to
disobey the message of the gospel and thus be damned. Peter says again of
such evil-doers, “these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand.
They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and
destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish” (2 Pet. 2:12). Ponder the
gravity of Peter’s solemn words: some people were born only to be destroyed.
This silences the popular Arminian objection that God would not create
something to destroy it. The fate of unbelievers is sure and hangs over them
from the moment of birth. Jude comments, “For certain persons have crept in
unnoticed, those who were beforehand marked out for condemnation” (Jude
4 NASB).30 He goes on to say of them, “They are wild waves of the sea, foaming
up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been
reserved forever” (v. 13). From all eternity, these men have been prepared for
the destruction of hell, and will endure an eternity in the nether gloom of
darkness. John says in Revelation, “All inhabitants of the earth will worship
the beast – all whose names have not been written in the book of life . . . from
the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). Those whom God did not put in his
book of life will worship the Antichrist and be doomed.31
30It
is possible that this verse means merely that God knew beforehand who would perish in hell. But the
predestinarian thrust of the passage seems to me to be possible, if not likely, given the active sense of the phrase
“to be marked out for.” Hell has been prepared for these people from all eternity (v. 13).
31 Some people would argue that Revelation does not speak of predestination because it is possible for someone’s
name to be erased from the book of the life even if he was once a Christian and thus “elect.” John wrote, “He who
overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life” (Rev. 3:15).
But I do not think that this verse conclusively argues against predestination. I hold this for three reasons. (1) Rev.
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From these texts, it is evident that the doctrine of double predestination to
both heaven and hell is contained in the Scriptures. Indeed the Bible is
saturated with this doctrine. Arminian attempts to explain away the doctrine
of unconditional election do not successfully silence the previously mentioned
passages. Only forced exegesis and remove this distinctively Calvinistic
teaching from the pages of the Bible.
Some Objections and Responses
I will now offer a brief treatment of some of the major objections to the
Calvinistic view of unconditional election.
“God Loves All Men the Same”
The above arguments so challenge the contemporary understanding of God
that many Christians reject the doctrine of predestination outright. If God is
love, how can Calvinists insist that he has ordained some men to destruction?
Arminian scholar Thomas Talbot declares that the fact that the Bible teaches
that God is a loving God is “enough to discredit the Reformed doctrine of
predestination, quite apart from any other consideration.”32 He goes on to
state that the doctrine of unconditional election implies that God does not
love all men and that fact “should be quite enough to reduce the Reformed
doctrine of predestination to a complete-absurdity.”33 This objection cannot
be lightly brushed aside as mere emotional ranting and raving. The Bible
does undeniably affirm that the Christian God is a God of love.
We read in Jn. 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only
Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Some Calvinists have tried to say that in this passage the “world” means, “the
elect.” Others have argued that Jn. 3:16 means that God loves all nations but
not all individuals. These are conclusions that sound exegesis will carefully
avoid.34 Rather, Jn. 3:16 means that God “punishes reluctantly, loves
13:8 and 17:8 say that if our names are written in the book of life, we will not fall away from the faith. (2)
Revelation 17:4 calls Christians, “the called and chosen the faithful,” showing that the author of Revelation holds
to a doctrine of election, and also that those who are chosen will be faithful and thus probably not have their
names erased from the book of life. And, (3) our names are written in the book of life from the creation of the
world, not when we become a Christian. This seems to mean that before we are born, God writes in his book
those who will be saved. It is not as though our name is written in the book when we convert, and then erased if
we fall away from the faith. Arminian Bible scholar I. Howard Marshall writes, “Those who fall away after the
beast do not include those whose names are written in the book of life . . . and yet there is also the warning. . . .
that men’s names may be blotted out of that book. This is admittedly paradoxical. . . .” (Kept By the Power of
God, 175). There is a tension here between human responsibility and divine sovereignty that should make us think
twice before making a casual appeal to Rev. 3:15 to prove Arminianism. I think it the case that a chosen Christian
will not have his name erased from the book of life. That is, Rev. 3:15 may simply be a litotes meaning something
like, “If one is truly a Christian, he will certainly persevere to the end (so as not to have his name erased from the
book of life).”
32 Quoted in Piper, “How Does a Sovereign God Love? A Reply to Thomas Talbot.”
http://www.desiringgod.org/Online_Library/OnlineArticles/Subjects/GodAttributes/How_does_a_sovereign_God
_love.htm.
33 Ibid.
34 The term “world” in John signifies sinful humanity in rebellion against God. There is no warrant to restricting it
here to mere nations (but not individuals) and still less warrant having it limited to the elect.
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graciously, and finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”35 The Old
Testament prophets also speak of this great love. God announced through
Ezekiel, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the
Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and
live?” (Ezek. 18:23). To make the point clear, God again declares just nine
verses later, “For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the
Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!” (18:32). Even when God punishes men for
sin, he does so unwillingly: “he [God] does not willingly bring affliction or
grief to the children of men” (Lam. 3:33). God’s heart burns within him with
longing to show compassion: “the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to
show you compassion” (Isa. 30:18).
God not only expresses sincere love for mankind, he even pleads with men to
repent and turn from their ways. In passionate fervor and seeming
bewilderment he pleads, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but
rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil
ways! Why will you die?” (Ezek. 33:11). He commands them, “Rid yourselves
of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit.
Why will you die?” (Ezek. 18:31). Despite man’s sinful rebellion, God says to
Isaiah, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people” (Isa.
65:2). And as his people turn away again and again, God is grieved to the
point of tears: “But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your
pride; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears” (Jer. 13:17). No
doubt the tears are metaphorical, but the heartache is real.
This love of God for all mankind is expressed in a desire for all to be saved.
Paul told Timothy that God “wants all men to be saved and to come to a
knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).36 Peter says that “The Lord is . . . patient
with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”
(2 Pet. 3:9).37 The general thrust of the Biblical data seems to be that God
does indeed love all of his creatures, that he is grieved by sin, and that he
would like to see all men saved.
But we must be careful of reductionism. Some readers of the Bible, after
pointing out the previous passages, assert that God is love means that God is
merely love, and that he loves all men unconditionally and to the same
degree. However, such a conclusion does not follow from the aforementioned
texts, and it contradicts numerous other propositions of Scripture. God does
not merely have one type of love any more than human beings have one type
of love. The love a man has for a spouse differs from a man’s love for a child,
35
D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, 175.
It is possible that the “all men” in v. 4 means, “all types of men,” like, kings, rulers, and authorities (cf. vv. 1-2).
Arminian scholar Robert Shank exhorts Christians to pray for “all men,” and then adds, “for the mighty and the
lowly, the rich and the poor, the well fed and the hungry, the wicked and the ‘good,’ the responsible and the
lawless” (Elect in the Son [Minneapolis: Bethany, 1989], 91). It appears that even Shank takes the “all men” in
vv. 1-2 to refer to all types of men, not every individual (though he seems inconsistent on this point). And such an
interpretation is likely, given that Paul probably did not really expect Christian churches to pray for every
individual – this would have been impossible. Therefore, it is certainly possible that v. 4 means that God desires
all types of men to be saved (i.e., that his saving purpose includes all classes of men) but not that he desires every
individual to be saved. But given the insistent witness of the Prophets that God wants all men to repent, that he
takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and that he commands all men to turn from their wicked ways, I find
it likely that 1 Tim. 2:4 means that God wants to see every individual person saved. And certainly the belief that
God wants every individual man to be saved is a legitimate ground for praying that all types of men be saved.
37 It is possible that the “you” refers only to the elect (cf. 1:1, 10). But this is not a necessary interpretation, and
for the sake of argument I will grant that 3:9 probably expresses God’s heartfelt desire for every man to be saved.
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and love for a stranger is not the same as love for a family member. Since
men are capable of such diverse forms of love, is it not reasonable to suppose
that within the infinitely complex heart of God dwells a spectrum of different
types and degrees of love? If Ezek. 18:32 affirms God’s unconditional love for
the disobedient, Jesus can still say that God’s love is sometimes conditional:
“If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love” (Jn. 15:10). We must
distinguish between God’s unconditional love on all of mankind and his
conditional love on those who obey him. Similarly, if Paul can say that
nothing separates the elect from the love of God (Rom. 8:33, 38-39), Jude can
warn, “Keep yourselves in God's love” (v. 21). There is a certain distinction
between God’s love for the elect and his love for mankind in general.
Knowing that these different forms of love exist in the mind of God helps us to
make sense of numerous Biblical passages that otherwise would confound us.
While a person may be loved by God in the sense that God loves all of his
creatures, he may still be excluded from the realm of God’s electing love. This
is what Paul had in mind when he said, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”
(Rom. 9:13). Esau was “hated”38 because he was not one of God’s chosen ones
(cf. vv. 11-12). Psalm 11:5 asserts that “The Lord examines the righteous, but
the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.” The doctrine of the
hatred of God is as Biblical as the doctrine of the love of God. D. A. Carson
observes,
That is why in Scripture God is sometimes portrayed as
blisteringly angry. Moreover, it is important that we reject that
common evangelical cliché on this subject: “God hates the sin
but loves the sinner.” The second part may be true, but as it
stands this antithesis is fundamentally mistaken and is clearly
refuted by Scripture. For example, fourteen times in the first
fifty psalms alone the texts insist that God “hates” sinners,
“abhors” those who tell lies, and so forth.39
Even though God loves all men, it is still possible for the Bible to speak about
God hating certain individuals. There appear to be more than one way in
which God loves us. His special love for the elect is so great that in
comparison he can be said to ”hate” the reprobate (cf. Lk. 14:26). If we think
of God’s love as concentric spheres, then within the broader sphere are all
men. But there is a narrower sphere which contains only the elect. The rest of
humanity does not participate in God’s special love for his chosen ones. While
he loves all men, it does not follow that he loves all men in the same way.
I do not think, then, that the doctrine of the love of God precludes the
doctrine of election. The Bible teaches both. John Piper feels that “Arminians
have erred in trying to take pillars of universal love and make them into
The word “hated” may mean, “loved less,” as some commentators have pointed out. This observation does not
affect the flow of my argument. I have been saying all along that God does love all men, and so obviously in
some sense he did not hate Esau. But God did truly hate him in that he excluded him from election. In this sense
he loved Esau less than Jacob. For an example of the word “hate” meaning “loved” less in the New Testament
compare Lk. 14:26 with Mt. 10:27. In any case, whatever interpretation of Rom. 9:13 is opted for, all must own
that God does love some individuals more than others.
39 Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 38.
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weapons against electing grace.”40 It is easy to quote a myriad of passages
that emphasize the love of God. But it is unfair and unbalanced to do so
without also discussing the passages that describe the hatred of God. Donald
Guthrie claims that, “An over-emphasis on the love of God has all too often
led to a soft view of him which has removed the element of awe.”41 A proper
understanding of God demands an understanding of all of the scriptural
descriptions of him.
We should expect such complications and tensions while we probe the infinite
mind of God with our finite intellectual capacities. It is belittling to God to
diminish his rich and diverse emotions for the sake of preserving his love.
The problems we face in wrestling with the Biblical tension of the
simultaneous love and hatred of God are not unique to Calvinism. Precisely
how a divine emotion exists from all eternity in the mind of God is a mystery
to us, especially when we consider the fact that God knew from all eternity
every event that would occur. Piper wisely says that “If [Arminians] cannot
imagine the psychological possibility of praising God's sovereignty over men's
lives and yet weeping over an unrepentant son, it is owing to the limits of
[their] simple emotional capacities, not the impossibility of the two emotions
in one godly heart.”42 Elsewhere Piper adds,
God's emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to
fully comprehend. For example, who can comprehend that the
Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of ten million
Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one
personally and individually like a caring Father (as Hebrews
4:15 says he will), even though among those ten million prayers
some are broken-hearted and some are bursting with joy? How
can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who
rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time -- in
fact are always coming to him with no break at all?
Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the
world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment,
he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the
world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7,10,23)? Who can
comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the
rebellion of the wicked, grieves over the unholy speech of his
people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily
(Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent
prodigals who come home?43
I might also ask how it is it that God laughs at the wicked (Ps. 37:13), yet
weeps over them (Jer. 13:17)? In the same way God can laugh at the wicked
and mourns for them, can he not also love them (in one sense) and hate them
(in another)? This conclusion seems unavoidable when we examine the whole
of the Bible.
Piper, “Are there Two Wills in God?” in The Grace of God the Bondage of the Will, 109.
New Testament Theology (Dowers Grove: Intervarsity, 1981), 94 n.52.
42 “How Can a Sovereign God Love?”
43 “Are There Two Wills in God?,” 126-127.
40
41
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The Word of God attributes both love and hatred to the divine Being. He
freely shows electing love to some and not others. We must not pit one
Biblical claim against another, as if the Bible taught the love of God and not
the election of God. It is our duty as Christians to humbly accept both truths
even when the exact explanation of the mystery is out of our grasp.
“Predestination is Based On Foreknowledge”
We have shown, conclusively, I think, that the Bible certainly teaches a strong
doctrine of predestination. But some readers of the Bible attempt to dwindle
the force of the above arguments by holding to a view of election based on
foreknowledge. This view states that from all eternity God foreknew who
would put their faith in Christ, and based on that foreknowledge he
predestined them to salvation. God did not choose us unconditionally, they
say – rather he chose us because he knew we would believe on him and be
saved. It is popular today to hear people who hold this view say things like, “I
believe in predestination in the sense that God knows what will happen in the
future.”
The two verses most commonly used to defend this view are Rom. 8:29 and 1
Pet. 1:2. Therefore, a detailed examination of these passages is necessary.
Romans 8:29 reads, “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.” Some interpreters claim that this verse is teaching that God
knew who would believe in him, and so he predestined them to salvation.
Similarly, 1 Pet. 1:2 says that God’s elect “have been chosen according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father.” On a first reading, these verses might
seem to support the Arminian view. However, such an interpretation does
not stand up under scrutiny.
First, Rom. 8:29 does not say, “Those God foreknew would believe, he
predestined.” The object of the foreknowledge, according to the passage, is
the person, not the faith of the person. In order for the Arminian
interpretation to fit, we must add the words, “who would believe” to the text —
and this procedure is always questionable. Verse 29 speaks of those people
that God knew: “Those he foreknew.” Put bluntly, there is absolutely no
mentioning of “faith” in this verse. When Arminians introduce faith into this
passage, they are introducing something that is foreign to the context. The
whole sequence of Rom. 8:28-30 describes actions performed by God, not
man (knowing, predestining, calling, justifying, glorifying). Paul’s point is to
emphasize that salvation is one hundred percent an act of God, not man. It
would be rather silly of Paul to here make mention of man’s act of believing.
So what does Paul mean when he speaks of certain persons being beforehand
“known” by God and predestined? This question is readily answered.
Scripture speaks many times of God knowing people. In Gen. 18:19, God says
of Abraham, “I have chosen him.” The word “chosen” in the NIV’s translation
is literally, “known.” God says that he knew Abraham, and this act of knowing
is synonymous with choosing and entering into a relationship. Similarly, in
Amos 3:2 God proclaims to Israel, “You only have I chosen of all the families
of the earth.” Once again, the word “chosen” in the Hebrew is yada literally
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meaning, “know.” When God foreknows someone, it does not mean he looks
into the future to determine if they will have faith or not. It means that he
chooses to set his affection on them and enter into a relationship. The word
know is used in this latter sense in Ex. 33:17 where God says to Moses, “I
know you by name.” It would be ridiculous to try to argue that this text means
God is aware of the name by which Moses is called. By God saying that he
knows Moses, he is offering tender words of encouragement, as if to say,
“Moses, I have set my favor and affection upon you.”
We have a clear Old Testament example of God’s foreknowledge of an
individual in Jer. 1:5. There he says to Jeremiah,
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.
This verse is an example of Hebrew poetry known as “parallelism.”44 The
second line is meant to convey virtually the same idea of the first. When God
said that he “knew” Jeremiah before he was born, he meant that he “set him
apart,” and then “appointed him as a prophet to the nations.” God did not
foresee that Jeremiah would, by an act of his sovereign freewill, become a
prophet. God ordained that Jeremiah would become a prophet, and this was
unavoidable. It was an impossibility that the prophet could choose to deny
his calling and flee from God’s set purpose for his life (cf. 20:7-10). God’s
foreknowledge of Jeremiah was his placing of his favor upon him and his
prior resolve to set him apart for a predetermined purpose.45
Bible scholar S. M. Baugh summarizes the Old Testament data by stating, “. . .
it would be best to say that the phrase God knows us expresses a relationship
of commitment.”46 The word carries the idea of a “personal relationship.”47
Those who know God are the ones who are devoted in covenant relationship
to him (Dan. 11:32; Hos. 6:6-7); those God knows he has entered into a
relationship with. This meaning of the word “know” is carried over into the
New Testament. Jesus expresses this when he solemnly declared, “I never
knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Mt. 7:23). He means that he never
had a relationship with those who did not repent and persisted in doing evil.
In light of the forgoing evidence, when Paul declared, “Those God foreknew he
predestined,” he was teaching that, “Those to whom he was previously
devoted to [sic], he predestined.”48
Such an understanding of the word “foreknowledge” can also aid in
interpreting 1 Pet. 1:2. When this text tells us that we have been “chosen
according to the foreknowledge of God” it means, not that God chose us based
on his foresight of our faith, but that he chose us according to his devotion to
us before the foundation of the world. Peter is telling us that God was
determined to save us, and set his favor upon us, and chose us based on that
44S.
M. Baugh, “The Meaning of Foreknowledge” in The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, 186.
also 1 Sam. 2:12; Ps. 18:43; Prov. 9:10; Hos. 13:5 for examples of the word “know” being used to mean
more than mere intellectual apprehension.
46Ibid., p. 193.
47Ibid., p. 193.
48See Ibid., p. 194. This interpretation also fits with the overall theme of Rom. 9-11, which is dealing with God’s
faithfulness to his covenant people (9:1-6). God did not reject his covenant with those he foreknew (cf. 11:2).
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45See
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“foreknowledge” of us. This exegesis squares with Peter’s use of the word
“foreknown” in v. 20: “He [Christ] was chosen before the creation of the
world.” The NIV’s “chosen” is literally (in the original Greek), “foreknown.”
This passage does not mean that God looked into the future and saw what
Christ would do. It means that God had a determined plan, and devotion to
his Son — and he had this relationship and plan before the world began. Peter
speaks again of “foreknowledge” of Christ in Acts 2:23: “This man [Jesus] was
handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with
the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” There
is only one definite article in the Greek to combine the words “purpose” and
“foreknowledge.” This probably makes the word “and” what scholars call a
“hendiadys” which serves to link and identify the two words. The two nouns
“foreknowledge” and “set purpose” are “expressly united” and should be seen
as nearly equivalent to one another.49 Thus Moffat renders the verse as, “in
the predestined course of God’s deliberate purpose,” and the New English
Bible has, “by the deliberate will and plan of God.”50 In the Bible’s use of the
terms, the concepts of divine foreknowledge and predetermination are often
nearly indistinguishable.51 The two come in a tightly wrapped package.
On the lexical data alone, then, it seems that there is no merit to the Arminian
interpretations of Rom. 8:29 and 1 Pet. 1:2. The non-Calvinist view has
absolutely nothing commendable about it, and it is found severely wanting
when weighed on the Biblical balances.
Second, it is important to reflect on the immediate context of Rom. 8:28-30 to
see why the Arminian interpretation is fatally flawed. Verse 30 says, “And
those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he
justified, he also glorified.” Everyone who is foreknown is predestined, and
everyone who is predestined is called. As we have shown above, for Paul the
word “call” does not refer to the general gospel proclamation to all men. It is
a specific act of God that “calls faith into being.”52 This interpretation is
demanded by the fact that everyone who is called is also glorified at the
resurrection (v. 30). Divine calling not only offers salvation to us, it works
faith in our hearts. The idea that God foresaw our self-produced faith – and
based on that faith predestined us – simply does not fit with the plain wording
of the text. There was no faith to foresee except the faith that God gives. The
insistent witness of the New Testament is that faith is a gift from God given to
whomever he is pleased to give it. Luke writes that Christians are “those who
by grace had believed” (Acts 18:27). This implies that faith is a gracious
bestowment of God. Similarly, Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “For it is by grace
you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the
gift of God” (Eph. 2:8-9). These two verses teach that the package of salvation
by faith through grace is a gift given to men by the Father.53 Philippians 1:29
49Ibid.,
p. 190.
J. Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory: A Historical, Theological, and Practical Study of the
Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1986), 277.
51 Of course, this is not always true, but it is often true. “Foreknow” is not always a technical term (see D. A.
Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 47).
52John Piper, The Pleasures of God, 140.
53 Arminians are quick to point out that, strictly speaking, it is not the faith that is the gift of God in Eph. 2:8-9; it
is salvation by grace and through faith (as indicated by the gender of the words). Now I am no Greek scholar, but
it seems to me that even if the Arminians are correct, this only proves that both grace and faith are given by God.
In other words, this text may teach that more than faith is a gift from God, but it certainly does not teach less than
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tell us “it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ . . . to believe on him.”
Peter says that we have “received a faith” (2 Pet. 1:1). The faith we have in
Jesus Christ was granted to us; we did not create it ourselves. Theologian and
philosopher Gordon Clark remarked, “If God does not give a man faith, no
amount of will power and decision can manufacture it for him.”54 To say that
God gives men faith is simply to say that God causes someone to believe what
they did not previously believe. If God gives a person faith, that person
believes – what else could it possibly mean for the Bible to say that God gives
some men “faith”?55
And if faith is a gift from God, so is repentance. Paul exhorted Timothy,
“Those who oppose [an elder] he must gently instruct, in the hope that God
will grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth, and
that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil who
has taken them captive to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:25-26). And Luke declares,
“God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18). Before
they are converted, men are in a state of mental fogginess, blinded by sin and
enslaved by the devil. Not until God gives us repentance can we be free from
the deluding power of sin and Satan. It is important to notice that these
passages teach that God gives repentance and faith; he does not merely grant
the ability to repent and believe. The actual change of mind and action that
accompanies a conversion are given by God, and they are thus presumably
given to only some because “not everyone has faith” (2 Thess. 3:2).
Therefore, it is not possible that God saw our faith and predestined us based
on that. There was no self-engendered faith to foresee.56 Men must receive
faith as a gift from God. Rom. 8:28-30 is teaching that those God
predestined, he gave faith to through the act of effectually calling them. No
amount of twisting can squeeze this plain meaning from the passage.
In light of these arguments, most major commentators on Romans have
rejected the interpretation that says God foreknew who would believe, and
predestined based on that foreknowledge.57
Finally, it is hard to even imagine the Arminian scheme of predestination
based on foreseen faith. It makes God completely passive — indeed,
pathetically inactive — in the salvation of his people. If God waits for us to
exercise our own faith, and then only after seeing this faith predestines us,
what exactly does he predestine us to? According to the Arminians, he
certainly didn’t predestine us to have faith because his predestination was
supposedly based on that faith. But if he did not predestine us to have faith,
he certainly did not predestine us to be saved, because faith is a prerequisite
of salvation; no one is saved without faith. But can it be denied that Paul in
Rom. 8:29 speaking about predestination to salvation? Of course he is! We
see then that if Arminianism is true, God does not predestine us to anything.
We form our own destinies by willing to believe in Christ. But if this is so,
this. But even if Eph. 2:8-9 does not teach that faith is a gift of God, there are plenty of other verses that do.
54Gordon Clark, Predestination, 102.
55 My friend Maureen Quinn has pointed out that it is almost amusing that Arminians often claim that freewill is a
gift that God has given men, when not a single verse in the Bible says this – and they reject that faith is a gift of
God even though many verses teach that it is!
56Piper, The Pleasures of God, 140. This is the title of a subsection of his book.
57For an impressive list of influential commentators who opt for the Calvinistic interpretation of Rom. 8:28, see S.
M. Baugh, “The Meaning of Foreknowledge,” 191. Even commentator Leon Morris (who was by no means a
Calvinist) is forced to reluctantly admit that the Calvinistic interpretation of this verse is the best one available.
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why does the Bible even say that God predestined us? Perhaps an analogy will
suffice. If I were to toss a ball up into the air, I would certainly know by the
law of gravity that the ball would come back down. I would have sure and
certain foreknowledge of the balls future descent. But for me to then claim
that, since I foreknew the ball would fall, I had also predestined the end result
and consequences of its falling would be illogical. Did I really predestine
anything at all? The Arminian would have God ridiculously claiming credit
for predestining men to salvation when all he really did was foreknow that
they would be saved! I have to agree with Thomas Nettles who said, “The
concept of predestination, which connotes bringing events to pass, loses any
integrity of meaning in this explanation.”58
In conclusion, I have shown that the Arminian understanding of
predestination based on foreknowledge is both exegetically and logically
bankrupt. The Scriptures testify that from all eternity God was devoted to
some people and set his favor upon them, and that because he knew them
intimately, he destined them to glory.
“God Does Not Tempt Men to Sin”
After reading many of the verses cited above that show God causing sin, the
careful reader will eventually ask, “But doesn’t the Bible say that God does not
tempt men to sin?” This is a very good question. Indeed, James wrote,
“When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be
tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by
his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed” (James 1:13-14). But we
have just given numerous verses that seem to indicate that God does cause us
to sin, perhaps even by tempting men. The tension here is difficult to get a
mental hold on, so I make no bold claim to have easy answers. My discussion
of this issue is complex because the Bible is complex. But I can attempt to
offer part of the solution.
When James says that God does not tempt men to sin, he cannot mean that
God never causes anyone to sin. This would go against other passages of
Scripture that in fact do speak of God enticing men to sin. This is particularly
interesting because James said that God does not entice men to sin; their own
evil desires entice them. But Ezekiel talks about God luring false prophets to
speak blasphemies. He writes,
And if the prophet is enticed to utter a [false] prophecy, I the
Lord have enticed that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand
against him and destroy him from among my people Israel. They
will bear their guilt – the prophet will be as guilty as the one
who consults him. (Ezek. 14:9-10)
How is it that James can say that God does not tempt men to sin, while
Ezekiel says that he can? This is not a Biblical contradiction, and perhaps
58Thomas
J. Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, 275, italics mine.
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another example from Scripture will alleviate the tension a little. The author
of First Samuel says the following:
Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited
David against them, saying, "Go and take a census of Israel and
Judah." . . . David was conscience-stricken after he had counted
the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, "I have sinned greatly
in what I have done. Now, O Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt
of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing." (2 Sam. 24:1,
10)
David clearly sinned by numbering the fighting men of Israel. But didn’t God
tempt him to sin? Let’s see how the author of Chronicles described the very
same event. He wrote, “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take
a census of Israel” (1 Chron. 21:1). How can one passage declare that God
incited David to sin, and another attribute the same action Satan?
The solution seems to be that God used Satan to fulfill his purpose, much like
he used the brothers of Joseph to fulfill his purpose (cf. Gen. 50:20, and the
discussion above). The author of Chronicles wants his readers to know that,
even when God causes sin, he is not the immediate cause, but he uses other
agents to actually do the sinning.
The situation is not unlike that described in the book of Job. It is Satan who
strikes Job with calamity (Job 1:12) but when disaster came “[Job said,] ‘The
Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.’
In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22).
Technically, it was not the Lord who struck Job — it was Satan. But because
God had the ultimate say in decreeing what would happen to Job, it was not
wrong to say that God had brought about Job’s misery.
This concept pervades nearly all of Scripture. Judges 9:23 declares, “God sent
an evil spirit between Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem, who acted
treacherously against Abimelech.” The evils spirit sent from God immediately
causes sin, making the citizens of Shechem “ambush and rob everyone who
passed by” (v. 25). Here an evil spirit is sent from God to bring about sin!
Perhaps the example of Saul is even more familiar: “Now the Spirit of the
Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him”
(1 Sam. 16:14). In 1 Sam. 19:9 God sends a demonic presence to Saul in order
to make him sin: “an evil spirit from the Lord came upon Saul as he was
sitting in his house with his spear in his hand. While David was playing the
harp, Saul tried to pin him to the wall with his spear.” So we see that in some
way God uses evil spirits to accomplish his plan. Apparently, God wills for
them to cause men to sin. Micaiah the prophet announced,
I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven
standing around him on his right and on his left. And the Lord
said, “Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and
going to his death there?” One suggested this, and another that.
Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, “I
will entice him.”
“By what means?” the Lord asked.
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“I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his
prophets,” he said.
“You will succeed in enticing him,” said the Lord. “Go and do
it.”
So now the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these
prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for [Israel]. (1
Kings 22:19-23)
In this eye-opening narrative mortals are given a glimpse of the heavenly
council, and the supreme kingship of God is marvelously displayed. Evil
spirits come and go at his beckoning, tempting the people of earth to sin. God
sends demonic spirits to the men of earth to make them lie.
This is not just an Old Testament concept. The crowd of followers of Jesus
said that “He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him” (Mk. 1:27).
Paul claimed that “there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of
Satan, to torment me” (2 Cor. 12:7). And he indicates that this satanic spirit
was sent to “keep me from becoming conceited,” implying that God had sent
the spirit to make Paul more holy and Christ-like. Surely Satan is not
interested in preventing God’s children from becoming proud! It was the
Lord Jesus who sent the satanic messenger to Paul in order that the demon
might afflict the apostle to accomplish God’s good end-result. Thus we see
that even when God uses the sins the evil spirits to entice men to wickedness,
his purposes are for good, not evil. Satan meant to torment Paul; Christ
meant to make him exhibit the virtue of humility. Martin Luther wrote what
God must say to Satan: “Devil, you are indeed a murderer and an evil-doer;
but I will use you for my purpose. You shall be my hoe; the world and your
following shall be my manure for the fertilization of my vineyard.”59
So I think that the best solution to the problem is that God is the ultimate
cause of evil, but he does not tempt men to sin as we commonly use the word
“tempt.” God does not whisper in our ears commanding us to sin against him.
But he does use his evil creatures to tempt us and cause us to sin. Because
God is ultimately in control of the actions of all of his creatures, it can
properly be said that he incites us to sin, even if the immediate cause of our
sinning is temptation, either by Satan, demons, or our own evil desires. It is
therefore good and proper for us to pray, “Our Father in heaven . . . lead us
not into temptation” (Mt. 6:9, 13).
“God Would Be Unjust to Choose to Save Some Men and Not
Others”
Someone is sure to ask, “But how is it fair for God to choose some men and
reject others?” This is a common question, and we must turn to the Bible to
see how to answer it.
One objection against the fairness of predestination is that it is not just for
God to command a man to repent when he has predestined him to hell. After
all, if the man has been predestined to hell, then it is impossible for him to
59
Quoted by Sinclair B. Ferguson in, Children of the Living God (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1987), 145.
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repent and be saved. Isn’t God commanding men to do the impossible, and
then punishing them for failing to obey?
Yes and no. Yes, it is true that men are unable to come to Christ without the
sovereign work of God. We have seen that Jesus said very plainly, “no one can
come to me unless the Father has enabled him” (Jn. 6:65). John said of
certain Jews that they “they could not believe” (Jn. 12:39).
However, it is not true that there are external, physical constraints prohibiting
men from putting their faith in Jesus. It is not as if a fifty foot concrete wall
prevents sinners from coming to Christ! The only constraint is internal, sinful
stubborn obstinacy. Reformed theologians often make a distinction between
“physical” and “moral” inability. An agent is physically unable to perform an
action when there is an external force preventing him from doing the action.
He is morally unable to perform an action when his own sinfulness is what
prevents him from willing to perform it. Scholar D. A. Carson comments,
A demand that we fly like bird would be unjust because we are
[physically] unable to do so; but a demand to be holy is not
unjust if the only inability is a moral one, i.e., a set
determination to choose not to be holy. So it is. . . with Christ’s
demand for belief.60
We should not be surprised that on our own we are morally unable to obey
Christ’s demand that we believe in him. God commands men to perform
actions they are morally incapable of obeying all the time. The least disputed
example is that of obeying his law perfectly. The Lord commands us to “Keep
my commands and follow them” (Lev. 22:31). But Paul teaches that, “the
sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.
Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7-8). It is
not as though men are physically unable to keep the law of God. When the
Lord gave his law he said, “Now what I am commanding you today is not too
difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have
to ask, ‘Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may
obey it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, ‘Who will cross the
sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?’” (Deut. 30:11-13). It
does not take a super-human feat like journeying into heaven or crossing a
vast sea to keep God’s command. No physical ability is lacking. But because
of the sinfulness of man’s heart, Paul said he is truly is morally unable to obey.
But if man cannot keep all of God’s commandments, why is it unthinkable
that he cannot obey the command to “believe the good news” (Mk. 1:15)? If
the only ability lacking is a moral ability, then men are still accountable to
God. And predestination is no more unjust than it is unjust to punish men for
not keeping his laws.
Also, we should not think that God causes otherwise good men to be blinded
and hardened and go to hell. All men are by nature sinners and objects of
wrath (Eph. 2:3). We are dead in our own trespasses and sins (Col. 2:13).
When God blinds us, we voluntarily close our own eyes because we love sin
(Mt. 13:15, cf. Jn. 12:40). No one is holy and good (Mk. 10:18), and therefore
no one deserves to be saved by God. He has mercy on some, and hardens
60D.
A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, 248.
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others (Rom. 9:18). Those he predestines to hell he turns over to their own
warped minds and sinful desires (e.g. Ps. 81:12; Rom. 1:24, 26.). God will not
turn men away who seek him. The problem is that, on his own, man will not
seek after God. Paul said, “there is no one who understands, no one who
seeks God” (Rom. 3:11). It takes a sovereign act of God to move people to seek
him.
No one is sinless, and therefore no one deserves the grace of God. In fact, it is
impossible for God to owe us grace. In Romans, Paul said that righteousness
by works is “not credited. . . as grace, but as an obligation” (Rom. 4:4).61 The
important thing to see here is that the words “grace” and “obligation” for Paul
are opposites. God cannot be obligated to show us grace and mercy.
“Obligated grace” is an oxymoron. God owes us nothing. For him to choose
to show grace to some men, and neglect others, is his own prerogative, since
no one has a right to claim his mercy. It is therefore arrogant of us to quip
that God does not choose to save everyone because God was not obligated to
choose even one person. He could have left all of us dead in our sins. We
should be humbled and awestruck that God has saved as many people as he
has. It is his right to save a handful of undeserving sinners and to leave others
dead in their sins, so that they are by nature destined for destruction. It is
when we truly believe that all men are depraved, wretched sinners, who do
not deserve to be saved, that we can understand that it would have been more
than fair if God had not chosen anyone to be saved. The objection that it is
unfair of God not to save everyone only makes sense if we assume God has to
save everyone he can. But he does not have to save any of us. He owes us
nothing. So this objection really isn’t strong.
“God Cannot Cause Men to Love Him”
One objection that I hear over and over again is that God cannot predestine
men to heaven because he cannot force them to love him. The argument goes
something like this. For God to cause a person to love him would be a
violation of the personhood of the creature. One person cannot force another
person to love him. Forced love is really not love at all. Therefore, God
cannot choose who will be saved because that would mean he would have to
cause certain people to love him. Arminian62 philosopher Norman Geisler
writes,
Irresistible force used by God on His free creatures would be a
violation of both the charity of God and the dignity of man. And
true love never forces itself on anyone, either externally or
internally. “Forced love” is a contradiction in terms . . . .
Irresistible grace operates the way falling in love does. If one
willingly responds to the love of another, eventually they reach a
point where that love is overwhelming. But that is the way they
61My
translation. The NIV’s word “gift” is literally, “grace.”
Geisler would object to my calling him an “Arminian,” but I think this term aptly describes his views, at least
concerning the issue under question : predestination.
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willed it to be. . . . Indeed, as we have seen, God does not force
free creatures to love him. Forced love is both morally and
logically absurd.63
Geisler finds it repugnant for God to cause men to love him – indeed, he sees
it as a logical impossibility. Gregory Boyd agrees with Geisler on this point
and presents an analogy to illustrate the point.
Suppose you possessed the technological knowledge to program
a computer chip and secretly implant it in your spouse’s brain
while he or she was sleeping. This chip would cause your spouse
to talk and act exactly as you would want, though your spouse
would still think he or she was choosing to talk and act this way.
That person would, on one level, be “the perfect spouse.” The
loving behavior and words would be exactly what you desire.
You would, in fact, know exactly what your spouse was going to
say and do before he or she did. After all, you programmed the
responses.
We might enjoy such an arrangement for a while, but wouldn’t
you eventually grow tired of it? Wouldn’t be unfulfilling? For
you would know that everything your spouse was saying and
doing to you, as wonderful as it may be, was really you saying
and doing to yourself. Your spouse may speak and act loving
toward you, but he or she would not truly be loving you.64
Boyd’s analogy, admittedly, appears quite convincing at first. If God makes us
love him (as Calvinists say he does), isn’t this love just a preprogrammed,
robotic response, that is devoid of all meaning?
I think not. We must be careful while evaluating the reasoning of Boyd and
Geisler for the simple fact that it is, at bottom, philosophically speculative and
an appeal to analogy. But we must realize that analogies and philosophical
arguments cannot settle the matter – Scripture stands as the supreme judge.
Geisler assumes that it is not within the power of an omnipotent God to cause
a person to love him. Boyd assumes that because one human being cannot
cause another human being to love him, God cannot do this, either. Both of
these are rather big assumptions, and they overlook the fact that “There is an
unbridgeable ontological gap between the personal/transcendent God and
finite men, and this gap brings about the breakdown of analogical arguments
designed to picture the mode of divine causation.”65 Let’s see what the Bible
has to say on the matter.
There is no Biblical basis for the idea that God cannot cause men to love him;
in fact, this claim flies in the face of many Biblical passages and themes. The
Bible says, quite clearly, that God does cause people to love him. Moses
wrote, “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your
descendents to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul” (Deut. 30:6 NASB). The reason we love God is that he caused us to love
63
Norman Geisler, Chosen But Free (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1999), 49, 90.
God of the Possible (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 134.
65 D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, 211.
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him. I cannot see any plausible way to avoid the clear meaning of Deut. 30:6.
When God works on our hearts by circumcising them, the result is that we
love him. Apparently, it is possible for God to cause people to love him, even
if men are not capable of doing this.
The Scriptures also teach that God can cause a man to fall in love with a
certain woman. Samson is one example of this. When Samson falls in love
with a Philistine woman, the author of Judges writes, “this was from the
Lord.” Since God can turn a heart anywhere he desires, he can make people
fall in love. Apparently by manipulating circumstances, and Samson’s heart,
God made him fall in love with a Philistine woman. This simple Biblical
observation strips Boyd’s analogy of any real potency. God’s ability to cause
Samson to love his spouse shows that it is possible for God to cause a person
to love another person. If we are willing to admit this, why not admit that
God can make people love him?
The fact that we are not in control of “falling in love” fits well with common
experience. It is not as though we choose who we will fall in love with.
Rather, as Leon Morris observed, “We ‘fall in love’; we do not think of
ourselves as in charge of the process.”66 A person does not wake up in the
morning and choose to fall in love – falling in love is something that is outside
of our control. It makes perfect sense, therefore, to think that it is God (and
not we) who makes us to love the Lord with all our heart. If it is true that the
“heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he
pleases” (Prov. 21:1), then I think that it would be no problem at all for God to
turn someone’s heart to love him.
The New Testament supports this conclusion. In 1 Thess. 3:12, Paul writes,
“May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for
everyone else.” Paul could not utter this prayer if he was convinced of the
arguments by Gregory Boyd and Norman Geisler. Notice that Paul asks Christ
to “make” the Thessalonians’ love grow. God’s power over men’s hearts is so
great that he can make people love each other. In 2 Thess. 3:5, Paul asks,
“May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love.” This probably means that
Paul is asking God to direct the hearts of his readers to love God more. The
clear implication is that God can and does make us love him.
In fact, the plain fact of the matter is that if God did not cause us to love him,
we never would have. God moves our hearts to love and obey him — in fact, if
he did not do this, we would be left in our sins. Jeremiah writes, “Can the
Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good
who are accustomed to doing evil” (Jer. 13:23). And all men are accustomed
to doing evil as Gen. 8:21 testifies: “every inclination of [man’s] heart is evil
from childhood.”67 Before Christ, we were, “God-haters” (Rom. 1:30) and
“enemies of God” (Rom. 5:10). Therefore, not only does God cause men to
love an obey him but he is the only Power that can cause sinful men to obey
him. We are as powerless to change ourselves, as a leopard is to change its
spots. In view of all of this, we should not mock the idea of God causing men
to love him. We should be thankful for this truth, and pray for God to cause
our unbelieving friends to love the Lord with all their heart and soul.68
66
Leon Morris, Testaments of Love (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 40. (italics mine).
owe the use of this verse to my good friend, Mattison Durrin.
68 I am indebted to Mattison Durrin for many invaluable suggestions in this section of the essay.
67I
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“God Predestines the Corporate Church to Be Saved, Not
Individuals”
Some theologians have argued that God does not elect individual persons to
heaven, but only groups.69 The argument goes something like this. Jesus
Christ is the one individual who is predestined, and as people come to faith
and enter into the body of Christ, they too become “predestined.” Arminian
Daniel D. Corner likens the body of Christ to a boat. The boat is predestined
to arrive at its heavenly port, but it is left to the free choice of the individual as
to whether or not he remains on board.70 This teaching makes election
conditional upon faith; that is, no one is predestined unconditionally. Rather,
people freely choose to believe in Christ, and when they do they become part
of the body of Christ and are thus “predestined.” Strictly speaking, then, it is
the church as a corporate body that is predestined; individual persons within
the church are only predestined insofar as they believe and become part of the
church. Robert Shank writes, “The election to salvation is corporate and
comprehends individual men only in identification and association with the
elect body.”71 This clever argument claims scriptural support in Eph. 1:1-13
where we read that Christians have been chosen “in Christ” (vv. 4, 11). Some
Arminians say that the fact that we are chosen in Christ means that election is
corporate and based on faith.
But there are numerous problems with this view. First, it is rather artificial to
read into two little words (“in Christ”) an elaborate and complex doctrine of
corporate election. This seems to be stretching words beyond their breaking
point. It seems likely that if Paul wanted the Ephesian Christians to see that
election is corporate he would have stated it more clearly than merely hinting
at it with the words, “in Christ.” The words “in Christ” do not have to mean
that we are predestined as groups. In fact, it makes perfectly good sense if it
means that God foreordains individuals to be saved, and that he does this in
view of Christ as their redeemer.72 When the text says, “he chose us in him”
(v. 4) “it probably means that the God chose that the church would experience
salvation ‘through Jesus Christ.’”73 That is, when God chose to save certain
people, he chose to effect their salvation through the work of redemption that
Christ performed. There is absolutely nothing in the text that implies that we
are only predestined after we are united to Christ by faith. This interpretation
has to be read into the text – it cannot be read out of it.
Second, there is the fact that Eph. 1:1-13 nowhere states that Christ himself
was elected (and this point is crucial to the Arminian doctrine). If the
Arminian view were the correct one, we would expect Paul to emphasize (in
Eph. 1) that Christ is the true chosen one. In point of fact, the object of the
verb “chose” is “us,” not, “Christ.” That is, Eph. 1 says absolutely nothing
69
See, for example, Robert Shank, Elect in the Son.
Daniel D. Corner, The Believer’s Conditional Security (Washington: Evangelical Outreach, 2000), viii.
71 Elect in the Son, 48.
72 Piper, The Pleasures of God, 154. n.13.
73 “Does Romans 9 Teach Individual Election Unto Salvation?” in The Grace of God the Bondage of the Will,
103.
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about Christ being the predestined one – but it does say a lot about Christians
being predestined. I cannot help but wonder if Arminians are seeing in this
passage what they want to see – not what it actually says.
Third, “The ordinary meaning of the word for ‘choose’ in verse 4 is to ‘select’
or ‘pick out’ of a group . . . . The object of this selection is said to be ‘us.’ So
the natural meaning of the verse is that God selects his people from all
humanity, before the foundation of the world.”74 The same word “chose” is
used in Lk. 6:13 to refer to Christ choosing twelve men out of a larger group of
disciples to be his apostles. It is used in Lk. 14:7 to refer to the Pharisees
“picking” places of honor at the table as opposed to less honorable places.
Arminians tend to overlook the fact that the wording in Eph. 1 signifies that
God selected specific persons from among a group of humanity. It does not
mean that he selected a group without any member, but rather that he
selected individuals in order to form a group.
Fourth, it seems to be impossible for God to elect a group without also
electing the individuals that make it up. Thomas Schreiner presents a telling
analogy:
Suppose you say, “I am going to choose to buy a professional
baseball team.” This makes sense if you then buy the Minnesota
Twins or Los Angeles Dodgers. But if you do this, you choose
the members of that specific team over other individual players
on other teams. It makes no sense to say, “I am going to buy a
professional baseball team” that has no member, no players, and
then to permit whoever desires to come to play on the team. In
the latter case you have not chosen a team. You have chosen
that there be a team the makeup of which is totally out of your
control. So to choose a team requires that you choose one team
among others along with the individuals who make it up. To
choose that there be team entails no choosing of one group over
another but only that individuals may form into a team if they
want to. The point of the analogy is that if there really is such a
thing as the choosing of a specific group, then individual
election is entailed in corporate election.75
Schreiner’s point is that every group is composed of individual people, so to
predestine a group to salvation still implies that God predestines a group of
individuals to salvation. Corporate election of a group does not make sense
unless the individuals who make up the group are also chosen. Arminians
often overlook this point and think that once they have shown the Bible
teaches corporate election, they can rule out any individual election.
However, by proving corporate election they unknowingly prove individual
election, too.
Lastly, Arminians assume that, after Christ is elected, it is up to the freewill of
the unbeliever to come to faith in Christ and as a result of their own doing to
be put “in Christ.” But in fact, Scripture teaches exactly the opposite. Paul
said to the Corinthians, “Brothers, think of what you were when you were
74
75
Piper, The Pleasures of God, 154 n. 13.
“Does Romans 9 Teach Individual Election Unto Salvation?” in The Grace of God the Bondage of the Will, 102.
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called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. . . . But God chose
the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:26-27).Here Paul
speaking of the election of the Corinthian Christians to salvation. But
apparently Paul did not believe that the Corinthians were “chosen” only after
they were in Christ because he goes on to say (just three verses later), “It is
because of [God] that you are in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:30). It is not because
of our own decision that we are in Christ – it is because of God. He did not
only choose the corporate body of Christ – he chose specific people to be in
Christ.
Based on these considerations, it is safe to conclude that election is not merely
corporate. God elects individuals to salvation.
“God Does Not Show Partiality”
On the face of it, it does not seem fair for God to choose some over others.
The Bible asserts, “God does not show favoritism” (Rom. 2:11). In this
passage, Paul means that God will judge each man fairly according to his
works (v. 6). But is it favoritism for God to choose some men to be saved, and
pass by the rest?
I think that the answer to this question comes from a careful reading of James
2:1-9. In v. 1, James proclaims to his readers, “don't show favoritism.” In v. 9
he goes so far as to say that “if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted
by the law as lawbreakers.” Favoritism, therefore, is a sin against man and
God. What sort of favoritism is James talking about? In v. 2 he describes the
situation: “Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and
fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in.” Verses 3-4 he
tells the church not to give a place of prominence to wealthy churchgoers. If
they do, he says, they have “discriminated among yourselves and become
judges with evil thoughts” (v. 4). Favoritism is a sin, and therefore the
members of the church must treat the poor and wealthy alike.
But notice what James says in v. 5: “Has not God chosen those who are poor
in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom?” This is
very important. Our question is this: is it wrong for God to “show favoritism”
by choosing to save some men and reject others? The answer is no. In the
same passage of Scripture where the Bible condemns showing partiality as
sin, it speaks of God’s choosing some men to be “rich in faith!”76 It is wrong
for man to choose to show importance to the rich over the poor, but it is not
wrong for God to choose the poor over the rich.
So the concepts of impartiality and election are not mutually exclusive. For
James, it made perfect sense to say that favoritism is wrong, but God still
chooses some men over others. We must be careful then to not define divine
impartiality in such a way as to rule out free and sovereign predestination.
In fact, all Christians must admit at least some level of “partiality” with God.
All believers will own up to the fact that God controls where a man is born,
and it is evident that some men are born in a condition of poverty, and others
In passing, it should be noted that God did not choose these people because of their faith – rather, he chose to
give them faith.
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of wealth. Some infants are born healthy, others handicapped – and God
could have changed this. We do not all enter this world with equal benefits.
Some people are even born in areas that are politically hostile to Christianity
without any missionary witness of the gospel. And as we have seen, Scripture
gives no reason for God’s choice of Abraham, Jacob, and other believers other
than his unmerited love. Paul deliberates on the fairness of election in Rom.
9. He observed, “it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ What then
shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have
mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have
compassion’” (vv. 13-15). For God to be unrighteous he would have to violate
his honor and go against his name and character that he had declared to
Moses. But his revealed character is to show mercy to whomever he wants.
Therefore, he is not unjust because he has acted exactly as he promised to act.
Therefore, when the Scriptures assert that God is impartial, we cannot take
this to militate against the other verses that speak of God’s sovereign election.
It is true that God will judge all men impartially according to their works, but
this does not mean that God has not chosen some men “unto good works,
which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10 KJV;
cf. vv. 8-9). There are some men to whom God has granted faith and he has
ordained specific good works for them to perform. John Piper warns that,
“impartiality must be defined with great precision lest it becomes a kind of
twentieth-century egalitarian slogan that ends up forcing God to bless equal
percentages of every class and race with identical blessings.”77 Such a
definition of “impartiality” simply does not square with the Bible’s own use of
the term, and so I see no necessary contradiction between God’s impartiality
and his free election.
“Predestination Makes Prayer and Evangelism Pointless”
Perhaps this is the biggest objection to Calvinism of all. Once someone is
exposed to Calvinism, it is not long before they ask, “Why bother to pray or to
evangelize?” If God has predestined someone to hell, then why bother
praying for that person to be saved? And why bother to share the gospel with
that person? In fact, if our destinies were etched in stone before we were even
born, why bother trying to save anyone at all?
My first reply is that God has commanded us to evangelize. Even if our finite
minds cannot comprehend the deep philosophical mystery of how
predestination and evangelism fit together, this is no reason for using it as an
excuse not to do our duty as witnesses of the gospel. I know of no person who
understands precisely how the notions that God is one being and three
persons fit together, but no true Christian would deny that both are true.
Similarly, the Bible teaches that predestination is true, and that we need to
pray for unbelievers to convert. It is not an option for us to choose one and
not the other as true; we must affirm both. Paul could say in Rom. 11:8, “God
gave [Israel] a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that
they could not hear, to this very day.” But Paul also said in the same book,
77John
Piper, The Justification of God, 29.
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just one chapter earlier, “Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the
Israelites is that they may be saved.” We can learn an important lesson from
the Apostle Paul and his prayer habits. He shows us that it is possible to
believe in predestination and to pray for the unsaved. We would do well to
take Paul’s advice and imitate his conduct (1 Cor. 4:16). Whether or not
predestination is true, the command to evangelize still remains in force.
Second, just because God predestines some men to be saved, this does not
imply that they will be saved apart from the prayers and witnessing of the
saints. It is true that God predestines some people to be saved – but it is
equally true that he predestined the means by which he would save them. Not
only was the plan of salvation ordained by God, the actual method of saving
people through the death of Christ was predestined. “For truly in this city
there were gathered against [God’s] holy servant Jesus, whom [he] anointed,
both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of
Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose had predestined to occur”
(Acts 4:27-28 NASB). God wanted to save the elect, and he considered a way to
go about doing it. In order to redeem them, he planned and predestined the
death of Jesus Christ, and that men would be saved through faith in his
name. The God who predestines to save a man will predestine the prayers of
his friends that will lead him to repentance. In other words, God does not just
determine the goal to save his elect; he also ordains the steps necessary to
achieve that goal. This is the flow of thought of Rom. 10:14-15.78 There Paul
asks, “How, then, can [unbelievers] call on the one they have not believed in?
And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how
can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach
unless they are sent?” It is impossible for someone to be saved unless they
hear the gospel and call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, God
sends missionaries to bring the gospel to all unreached peoples. The elect
must hear and respond to the gospel in order to be saved. Belief in Christ is
the God-ordained means to salvation, and he chooses who will believe the
gospel. John Piper commented, “God knows those who are his and he will
raise up messengers to win them. If someone refuses to be a part of that plan,
because he dislikes the idea of being tampered with before he was born, then
he will be the loser, not God and not the elect.”79
There remains then a question left for the Arminian to answer: If
predestination is not true, then why do Christians pray to God to save people?
If, as Arminians claim, God is doing all that he can to save unbelievers80, then
why should we pray to him and ask him to do more? Should we not pray to
the unbeliever and ask him to save himself? An Arminian may reply that God
is not doing all that he can to save people. But if this is true, does he really
desire all men to be saved? If Arminianism is true, then God’s ultimate will is
to choose to save every person on earth. It follows, then, that God is presently
doing all that he can to save people. Why in the world should we ask him to
do more than he can do? If Arminianism were true, wouldn’t such a prayer be
futile and pointless, and only serve to waste our time and frustrate God?
78
I owe the use of these verses to my dear friend, Maureen Quinn.
Piper, “The Sovereignty of God and Prayer.”
80 Shank, Elect in the Son, 147: “If [God] did not choose for [Jezebel, for example] to repent, why did he do
something directed toward repentance? If He did something directed toward repentance, why did He not do
everything needed?” Shank conclusion is that God could not have done anything more to cause Jezebel to repent.
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Likewise, if God cannot control man’s freewill and make people come to
Christ, why do we pray to him at all to save the lost?
On the other hand, if predestination is true, then we have all the reason in the
world to pray for unbelievers to convert to Christ and be saved. John Piper, in
his excellent discussion of this matter, observes,
[One non-Calvinistic author writes], “Ask God to cause a specific
[unbelieving] person. . . to begin questioning whom they can
really trust in life.” But my question then is: Why is it right for
God to cause a person to think a question and wrong for God to
cause that person to think an answer? Why is it legitimate for
God to take control of a person to the degree that he causes the
person to ask a question he would not otherwise have asked, but
it is not legitimate for God to exert that same influence and to
give an answer he would not otherwise have given — namely,
that Jesus should be trusted?
Here is another example of how this writer says we should
pray for unbelievers: “Pray that God will plant in the heart of
these people. . . an inner unrest, together with a longing to know
the ‘Truth.’” Now my question is: If it is legitimate for God to
“plant a longing” in a person’s heart, how strong can the longing
be that God chooses to plant? There are two types of longings
God could plant in an unbeliever’s heart. One kind of longing is
so strong that it leads the person to pursue and embrace Christ.
The other kind of longing is not strong enough to lead a person
to embrace Christ. Which should we pray for? If we pray for the
strong longing, then we are praying that the Lord would work
effectually to get that person saved. If you pray for the weak
longing, then we are praying for an ineffectual longing that
leaves the person in sin (but preserves his self-determination).
Do you see where this leads? People who really believe that a
man must have the ultimate power of self-determination, can’t
pray that God would convert unbelieving sinners. . . . So either
you give up praying for God to convert sinners or you give up
ultimate human self-determination [i.e., freewill].81
If we believe that God has the unstoppable power to save people, then
shouldn’t this motivate us to pray for God to unleash this power? If it is true
that God has the ability to soften hearts, and open eyes, and make people
willing to believe, then doesn’t it make sense for us to pray to him to save the
lost? “Will you pray that God enlighten [the unbeliever’s] mind so that he can
truly see the beauty of Christ and believe? If you pray this, you are in effect
asking God no longer to leave the determination of the man's will in his own
power. You are asking God to do something within the man's mind (or heart)
so that he will surely see and believe. That is, you are conceding that the
ultimate determination of the man's decision to trust Christ is God's, not
merely his.”82 In other words, whenever a Christian prays for a person to be
81John
Piper, The Pleasures of God, 225-226.
“The Sovereignty of God and Prayer.” 1976.
82Piper,
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converted, he is asking God to overcome the freewill of the person and draw
him to Christ. The only way we can consistently pray for God to save people is
if we admit that predestination is true.
Arminians claim that Calvinism opposes evangelism. But actually, Calvinism
does not destroy evangelism – it makes it possible. Were it not for the
electing work of God, then we would have no hope in prayer and evangelism.
Given the sheer depravity of men, evangelism would be doomed from the very
start. John Alexander, former president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
said in 1967,
At the beginning of my missionary career I said that if
predestination were true, I could not be a missionary. And now,
after 20-some years of struggling with the hardness of the
human heart, I say I could not be a missionary unless I believed
the doctrine of predestination.83
When Christians come to believe that God has chosen people in all nations of
the world, they are often inspired to bring the gospel to the elect and see them
saved. Paul had this attitude, and it motivated him to do all things to see the
elect saved: “This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of
being chained like a criminal. But God's word is not chained. Therefore I
endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the
salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:8-10). Paul
risked his life to preach the gospel precisely because he believed in election.
And when he was discouraged at the lack of success of his missionary
enterprises, God encouraged him with the words, “Do not be afraid; keep on
speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack
and harm you, because I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:9-10). This
cannot mean that there were many Christians in this city, because only a few
had believed. What God meant was that there were many people in that city
whom he had chosen – who would come to faith when they heard the gospel.
Paul’s belief in election was what moved him to carry on his missionary
endeavors when the entire situation seemed helpless.
It is no coincidence that those Christians who have embraced the Calvinistic
worldview of Paul have accomplished great things for God’s kingdom.
Calvinistic preacher Jonathan Edwards strived to form a campaign for
reaching the un-evangelized Iroquois Amerindians.84 His Calvinist nephew,
David Brainerd, brought the gospel to thousands of Native Americans.
George Whitfield’s passionate sermons saved many in the Great Awakening,
and Charles Spurgeon’s Calvinistic preaching saved hundreds in England.
Even more remarkable is the fact that from very early on Calvinists were
passionately concerned with evangelism. Church historian William Travis
writes,
Calvinism was a major factor in the limited Protestant
missionary activity prior to William Carey and in the burst of
http://www.desiringgod.org/Online_Library/OnlineArticles/Subjects/Prayer/Sovereignty_and_prayer.htm.
83 Quoted in John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), 52.
84 William Travis, “William Carey: The Modern Missionary Movement and the Sovereignty of God,” in The
Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, 330.
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missions that occurred during and after Carey’s time. It is
certainly noteworthy that the first three foreign missions boards
[ever] founded were done so by groups adhering to the
Principles of Reformed Theology.85
Despite Arminian claims that a belief in predestination leads to a lack of
missionary zeal, Calvinism’s emphasis on predestination, “rather than
mitigating against missions, has been a catalyst for engaging in missions.”86
Worth noting is that the father of the modern missionary movement was a
Calvinist: William Carey. His missionary work in India would spark a
monumental wave of missions from all denominations that still continues
today. God will ensure that his elect are saved, and he will use people like
Paul and Jonathan Edwards and William Carey to do it.
So we see that Arminian claims that Calvinism destroys the proclamation of
the gospel are ill founded, Biblically, philosophically, and historically. It is
ironic that the claims of Arminians that Calvinism destroys evangelistic efforts
could not be more wrong.
Therefore, I conclude that each one of the above objections is based more on
gut reactions to Calvinism than on calm, careful interpretation of the Bible.
All of the objections can be answered, so I think that Arminians have not
made a strong case against the truth of predestination.
The Will(s) of God
I believe that an understanding of the emotional complexity of God is the key
to unlocking what Scripture means by the will of God. We have seen that God
wills all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4) and yet God predestines some men to
destruction (1 Pet. 2:8). How are we to make sense of all of this? Does God
will that some men perish? Does he will that we sin?
Great Calvinistic thinkers of the past have distinguished two wills in God.
What they mean is that God often ordains that men do the opposite of what he
commands them to do. Thus we may say God has a “will of command”
through which he orders men to obey him, and a “will of decree” through
which he ordains or predestines all things, even human rebelliousness and
sin.
There are numerous examples of these two wills of God in the Bible, and
space only permits us to look at a few of the most important passages.87 The
clearest example is perhaps that of Pharaoh. We read that God commands the
king of Egypt, “Let my people go!” (Ex. 8:1). It appears that God wanted
Pharaoh to obey the command and let the Israelites go free. But we read in
Ex. 4:21, “I [God] will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.”
God’s will of command was for Pharaoh to release the Israelites. And this can
properly be called God’s “will” because it expresses what God wanted Pharaoh
85
Ibid., 336.
Ibid.
87 For an excellent discussion of the two wills of God, the reader is encouraged to read John Piper’s masterful
essay, “Are There Two Wills in God? Divine election and God’s Desire for All to be Saved” in The Grace of God
the Bondage of the Will. I am greatly indebted to John Piper’s essay for my own discussion of the two wills of
God.
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to do. But at the same time, it was not God’s will to have Pharaoh let the
people leave Egypt; God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and prevented him from
obeying the divine command. At work here are the two wills of God. God’s
will of command can be disobeyed, and is so everyday by sinners all around
the globe. But his will of decree cannot be thwarted. Paul brings out this
point in Rom. 9 while discussing the case of Pharaoh. He asks, rhetorically,
“Who has resisted God’s will?” (Rom. 9:19). The answer is, of course, that in
one sense we all have resisted God’s will. But there is a deeper sense in which
we cannot resist God’s sovereign plan. John Piper writes,
To be sure, Pharaoh said “No” to God’s command that he send
the Israelites into the wilderness. This can reasonably be called
“resisting God” (cf. Acts 7:51). But this is so obvious to everyone
it is utterly implausible that [Paul] would be affirming that no
one has ever resisted God in this sense. Everyone has. But
Paul’s point was that even this resistance is in one sense willed .
. . by God as hardness. The [verse shows] clearly that Paul is
saying, “God wills that Pharaoh resist his own commands.”88
The example of Pharaoh shows clearly that God may will that someone
disobey his will. This paradox is not a man-made creation. It is the clear
teaching of the Bible.89
As we have pointed out earlier in this essay, Isaiah wrote that God hardens
men’s hearts and keeps them from obeying his commands (Isa. 63:17). But
Psalm 95:8 commands “do not harden your hearts!” God commands us not to
harden our hearts, but he wills that we break his own commands when he
does harden our hearts. Here again we see the two wills of God at work.
In Zech. 8:17 we read God saying, “‘do not plot evil against your neighbor . . . I
hate all this,’ declares the Lord.” This verse is affirming that God hates men
planning and doing evil against their neighbors, in accordance with Jesus’
command for us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But just seven
verses earlier in Zech 8 we read, “No one could go about his business safely
because of his enemy, for [God] had turned every man against his neighbor”
(Zech 8:10). God may express his sincere desire for men to be kind to their
neighbors, while, for a greater purpose, he may turn the hearts of men to plot
evil against their neighbors. Apparently, Zechariah saw no contradiction
writing these two sentences. He understood that God can will for us not to
sin, and in another sense, God can will for us to sin. Even if we cannot make
sense of this, it is our duty as Christians to accept the teachings of the Bible.
Similarly, we read in Ezek. 18:32, “For I take no pleasure in the death of
anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!” Here is expressed
God’s desire for men to repent and turn from their sins. Even wicked men he
wills to turn around and be saved (Ezek. 18:23). But we read in 1 Sam. 2:25
that Eli’s wicked sons “did not listen to their father's rebuke, for it was the
Lord's will to put them to death.” Even though God does not get delight in the
death of the sinful, yet he may cause men to not repent because he wills for
them to die. Arminians often use Ezek. 18:23, 32 as a cannon to shoot down
88John
89
Piper, The Justification of God, 191.
Piper, “Are There Two Wills in God,” 110.
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the Calvinist claims. But if the Arminian is Biblically faithful, even he must
admit the genuine tension between God’s will of command and his will of
decree in 1 Sam. 2:25. There is no way around the issue if we are to remain
Biblically consistent.90
What about punishing us for our sins? The Bible says that God wills for men
to suffer in punishment, and also that he does not will for men to suffer.
Lamentations 3:33 says that God “For does not willingly bring affliction or
grief to the children of men.” But we read in Deut. 28:63, “Just as it pleased
the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to
ruin and destroy you.” If someone reading this essay can explain these two
paradoxical verses without postulating two wills in God, I will happily be
indebted to him! One verse says that God does not willing punish men for
their sins, and the other claims that God relishes it. If we hold to the
inerrancy of the Bible, we have no choice but to say God has two wills. John
Piper, after considering this tension, remarks,
Who of us could say what complex of emotions is not possible
for God? All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell
us in the Bible. And what he has told us is that there is a sense in
which he does not experience pleasure in the judgment of the
wicked, and there is a sense in which he does.91
This conclusion is Biblically unobjectionable.
Piper thinks that the “most compelling example of God’s willing for sin to
come to pass while at the same time disapproving the sin is his willing the
death of his perfect, divine Son.”92 Sin was the immediate cause of Christ’s
death. His betrayal into the hands of the Jews was the result of Satanic
prompting in the heart of Judas (Lk. 22:3). But the same Luke who records
that the death of Jesus was a result of Satan’s trickery could also write,
“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. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand
should happen” (Acts 4:27-28). Not only does God in some sense will human
sin, he directly predestined the most heinous sin of all: the death of his Son.
Arminians are fond of pointing out 1 Tim. 2:4. This verse teaches that God
“desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.” It is true
that this verse teaches that, in one sense, God wills for all men to be saved.
But from what we have seen of the two wills of God, this verse cannot be used
to teach that God does not choose to save some men and not others. That is, it
One of the serious flaws with Robert Shank’s Arminian defense, Elect in the Son is his failure to notice that God
willed to prevent Eli’s sons from repenting. Shank claims that, “under certain circumstances, it remains
[impossible] for particular men to repent” because they have reached a sinful point of no return (p. 146). Shank
gives Eli’s sons as an example of people who can no longer repent because they are being judged by God for their
depravity (p. 146). Unfortunately, Shank does not even show an awareness of 1 Sam. 2:25, which says quite
clearly that God prevented Eli’s sons from repenting because he “willed to put them to death.” Even if God willed
to put them to death because of their sin (which Shank says, and so do I) it still follows that there are two wills in
God. For, God expresses in Ezek. 18:23, 32 (verses that Shank is fond of quoting) that God does not want the
wicked to die in their sins. If this were so, then why would God want Eli’s sons to die in their sins? The only
answer I know of is that God, in one sense, does not want sinners to die in their sins, but in another sense, he does
will it. Shank too quickly passed by this Biblical tension and completely ignored the issue at hand.
91 “Are there Two Wills in God?” 126-127.
92 Piper, “Are There Two Wills in God,” 111.
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may be true that God would like to see all men saved – yet he may will to
predestine only some men to salvation. This interpretation is demanded by 2
Tim. 2:24-26:
And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be
kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose
him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant
them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and
that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of
the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. (2 Tim.
2:24-26)
In this passage, Paul admits the possibility that God might not give “a
knowledge of the truth” to some people. That is, he may not desire all men to
have this knowledge. But 1 Tim. 2:4 states clearly that God wants all men to
“come to a knowledge of the truth.” The only solution, as far as I see it, is that
God would like all men to come to a knowledge of the truth, but for some wise
reason he may not be willing to give this knowledge to all people. As
paradoxical as this sounds, it is the clear teaching of the Bible and cannot be
ignored
Incidentally, 2 Tim. 2:24-26 also teaches that God may not give repentance to
some men. This is indeed a strange statement given that Peter wrote that God
is patient, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to
repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). One verse says that God waits for people to repent;
the other says that he actively gives repentance to some sinners and withholds
it from others. These two passages together make sense only if we postulate
two wills in God.
Many, many more examples of this principle could be enumerated. God does
not want men to lie (Lev. 19:11) but he may send an evil spirit to make people
lie (2 King 22:19-23). God does not will for a prophet to deceive his people
(Deut. 13:5) but he may entice men to utter false prophecies (Ezek. 14:9-10).
God does not will for his people to suffer at the hands of persecutors (1 Chron.
16:22), but he may will for this suffering to happen (1 Pet. 3:17). The same
God who commands us to love our neighbors (Lev. 19:18) can (and does)
cause people to hate their neighbors (Ps. 105:24-25). In one sense, Scripture
can inform us that God wanted the Israelites to live at peace with one another
(Lev. 19:18), but at the same time, God may cause bitter rivalry between the
tribes of the Jewish nation (Judges 21:15). God commands us not to steal (Ex.
20:15), but sometimes sends an evil spirit to cause men to rob others (Judges
9:22-25). God can restrain men from sinning if he wants to (1 Sam. 25:26, 39)
but experience testifies that he does not always choose do so! Though God
gets no delight in senseless bloodshed, even in war (1 Chron. 22:7-8) he still
turns men against one another for slaughter (Judges 7:22). We see that the
doctrine of the two wills of God is not just some obscure teaching in remote
corners of the Bible. It permeates the entirety of the scriptures.
An awareness of the two wills of God helps to clarify many Biblical passages.
It shows how God can hold out his hands and plead for sinners to repent (Isa.
65:2; Ezek. 18:30), while he has the power all along to give repentance to such
sinners (2 Tim. 2:25). The fact that God begs and pleads with sinners to
repent and turn from their wicked ways in no way argues against
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predestination; rather, this fact offers support for God having two ways of
willing. In Rom. 10:20-21, God holds out his hands all day long to the
stubborn nation of Israel, waiting for them to repent. But the next chapter of
the same book says why Israel does not repent: “God gave them a spirit of
stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to
this very day.” Similarly, in Deut. 5:29 God laments over Israel, proclaiming,
“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands
always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!” God
sincerely wishes for the Israelites to have a heart in them that is inclined to
obey God and love him and serve him. God has the power to incline hearts to
obey him. Solomon prayed “that [God] may incline our hearts to himself, to
walk in all in all his ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes” (1
Kings 8:58 NASB). Yet even with God’s will for Israel to have a heart that
follows after him, and his power to give it, he still did not will to grant them
such a soft heart. In 29:4, Moses explains why the Israelites do not honor
God: “to this day the Lord has not given [Israel] a heart to know, nor eyes to
see, nor ears to hear” (NASB). God wishes that Israel had a soft heart, but he
willed not to give them such a heart, even though it was within his power.
So we see that verses that portray God as mercifully holding out his hands to
miserable sinners and pleading with them to come to him do not teach that
predestination is untenable. Verses like these merely express God’s near
infinite patience and grace with undeserving humanity. It is true that Jesus
lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone
those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as
a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Mt.
23:37). This passage does not teach that God could not have made the people
of Israel willing to come to him. Jesus said that God powerfully can draw men
to himself (Jn. 6:44), that he gives life to whomever he pleases (Jn. 5:21) and
that though he calls many men to repentance, only a few are chosen (Mt.
22:14). God’s act of passionately urging men to repent does not in any way
militate against the fact that he gives repentance to whomever he is pleased to
give it.93
But does the Bible make any sense when it speaks of God having two wills?
Some Arminians have mocked the idea of there being two wills in God. The
Calvinist God, they say, is schizophrenic. But the fact is that every day even
ordinary humans may will one thing, while, at the same time, willing
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Many people find it unthinkable that God would plead for men to repent if the effort is useless, since he has
predestined the unbeliever to be unrepentant. But this argument does not settle the matter at all. If we believe that
God is all-knowing, then he knows that many people will not repent – despite his urging them to repent. OpenTheist Gregory Boyd sees this point: “Scripture depicts God as genuinely frustrated and grieved when people
resist the Holy Spirit’s influence in their lives (Isa. 63:10; Eph. 4:30). Such striving and grief make perfect sense
if God knew it was possible and hoped that these individuals would accept his love, but it is inexplicable if the fate
of these individuals was certain [in the mind of God] before he created them. . . .How are we to conceive of the
all-wise Creator striving for something he eternally knew could never [happen] and being frustrated about
something he eternally knew would always be? (God of the Possible [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000], 100101). Unfortunately, Boyd is led to the conclusion that God does not know the future. But if we hold to the
traditional doctrine that God is omniscient, we see that, whether we are Calvinist of Arminian, we cannot fully
understand why God pleads with men to repent when he knows (or ordains) that his efforts will not do anything
(except heighten personal accountability and make for severer punishment in hell). So when Arminians ask me
why God would command men to repent if he has predestined it, I ask them why God would command men to
repent if he knows that they certainly will never repent. So far as I see it, both Calvinist and Arminian have to
humbly admit that we as humans do not have all the answers to this puzzle.
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something else even more. And this may properly be called two ways of
willing – or “two wills.” Usually this occurs when a man wants something, but
there is something else he wants even more – so he forestalls the lesser desire
for the sake of the greater. John Piper argues that with God it is the same
way:
. . . God wills not to save all, even though he is willing to save all,
because there is something else that he wills more, which would
be lost if he exerted his sovereign power to save all. This is the
solution that I as a Calvinist affirm with Arminians. Both
Calvinists and Arminians affirm two wills in God when they
ponder deeply 1 Timothy 2:4. Both can say that God wills for all
to be saved. But when queried why all are not saved both
Calvinist and Arminian answer that God is committed to
something even more valuable than saving all.
The difference between Calvinists and Arminians lies not in
whether there are two wills in God, but in what they say this
higher commitment it. What does God will more than saving
all? The answer given by Arminians is that human selfdetermination and the possible resulting love relationship are
more valuable than saving all people by sovereign, efficacious
grace. The answer given by Calvinists is that the greater value is
the manifestation of the full range of God’s glory in wrath and
mercy (Rom. 9:22-23) and the humbling of man so that he
enjoys giving all the credit to God for his salvation (1 Cor.
1:29).94
The bottom line seems to be that God wants all of mankind to be saved, but he
wants something else even more. What he wants more is for his glory to be
fully displayed – for all of his perfections to be seen by mankind. These
perfections include his mercy and love, but also his wrath and hatred of sin.
In order for God to show the greatness of his mercy, he must also show the
depths of his wrath. Paul affirmed this when he said, “What if God, choosing
to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the
objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make
the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared
in advance for glory” (Rom. 9:22-23). One cannot know the greatness of the
mercy shown to him in salvation unless he can catch a glimpse of the
fierceness of wrath that he deserved. In order to show the greatness of his
mercy and fury God shows mercy on some and hardens others. This is
because “Only he who knows the greatness of wrath will be mastered by the
greatness of mercy.”95 Paul expounded on this principle when he stated that,
“For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy
on them all” (Rom. 11:32).96 Commenting on this verse, Thomas Schreiner
“Are There Two Wills in God?” 124.
G. Stahlm, quoted in D. Guthrie, New Testament Theology, 103 n. 77.
96 The “all” men that God has mercy on cannot mean every single individual, because this would contradict what
Paul said in Rom. 9:18, “Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he
wants to harden,” and Rom. 9:22-23, “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore
with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his
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writes, “Paul can speak of sin as within the realm of God’s sovereignty and as
an enemy contrary to his will. In a sense, sin does not accord with God’s . . .
plan, but, ultimately, the existence of human sins fits into God’s design. This
does not lessen the evil of sin, nor does it minimize the fact that immanently
sin contravenes God’s will. . . . God ultimately willed that sin would occur, so
that he might display his mercy in salvation.”97
Everyone who thinks about the matter carefully must come to the conclusion
that, in some sense, God wills for sin to exist. This is because God had a
choice in whether or not he would create the world. When God made the
earth, he knew that sin would eventually pollute his creation. But he chose to
create mankind anyway. If God wanted to, he could have prevented the
existence of evil from his universe – but he did not prevent evil from
occurring. The only possible explanation for the existence of sin is that, in
some sense, God willed for sin to exist. In fact, every time a person sins, God
has at least allowed for it to happen, even though he could have prevented it.
So why does God allow men to sin when he has the ability to prevent sin? The
answer is that God must, at some level, wants sin to occur. After all, if he
could stop sin if he wants to, then why does he not stop sin? The answer left
staring us in the face is that in some sense, he does not want to prevent sin
from happening. I see no honest way to avoid this conclusion.
But why did God allow sin to exist? The Arminians say that God willed sin to
exist because he values a world with freewill over a world that does not have
freewill. Alvin Plantinga claims, “A world containing creatures who are
sometimes significantly free (and freely prefer more good than evil actions) is
more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures
at all.”98 That is, God (they say) would like to see all men saved, but he does
not save all because he is committed to honoring the freewill of men and not
forcing any of them to believe. Not only is there no explicit Biblical support
for this claim, there are in fact numerous passages that state the contrary, as
we have seen above. Apparently the Arminian sees God as valuing the
potential abuse of freewill more than he values the eternal destiny of a person.
For the sake of letting man have control over his own destiny, God will
consign the man to eternal pain and misery in the fires of hell. Under this
scheme, God values freewill more than he values people. On the other hand,
under the Calvinistic scheme, God values his own glory in the display of his
mercy and wrath more than he values people. The predestinarian solution is
Biblical; the other is not.
The Will of Man
A detailed philosophical discussion of freewill is beyond the scope of this
essay.99 But at least a few words need to be said concerning the meaning of
this term, and if it has any scriptural support.
glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory.” Rather, as the context in Rom.
11 shows, Paul is saying that God has bound all nations over to disobedience so that he might show mercy to both
Jews and Gentiles alike (Rom. 11:30-31). This does not imply that God will show saving mercy to every single
individual Jew and Gentile.
97 The Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), 88.
98 Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 166.
99 The interested reader should see the classic of Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, and the brief, but
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The word freewill, as understood by most Christians, denotes the ability of
men to make choices that are caused by the person choosing, and are such
that the person had the power to choose something other than what he did in
fact choose.100 For example, we say that a person is free to eat breakfast or
not if he has the ability to choose to eat breakfast or not to eat breakfast.
Furthermore, even if he does in fact choose to eat breakfast, he could have
chosen not to. Under this view of freewill, God cannot cause men to make
decisions – he can only influence them. This is because, if God predestines
that a man eat breakfast, the man does not have the ability to refrain from
eating. To be free (in the Arminian sense), the person himself must be the
ultimate cause of his own actions – God cannot cause the person to choose to
eat breakfast or not, or else the action would not be free.
It is surprising that this view of freewill is so popular today even though there
is absolutely no Biblical support for it. Arminians often quote verses like,
“Now choose life” (Deut. 30:19) or, “choose for yourselves this day whom you
will serve” (Josh. 24:15). But these verses do not teach that God cannot cause
us to make certain choices. At most, these verses teach that humans do in fact
make choices everyday – and no one will contest that fact! The question is
not, “Do people make choices?” It is, “What causes people to make the
choices they make?” According to the Calvinist, God controls the decisions of
men. We have already given numerous passages that show conclusively that
God controls all things, even the choices people make. I will not repeat those
verses here. My conclusion is the same as John Piper, “If free will were
defined as the native power in a man to determine his own destiny. . . there is
no such thing in the entire world.”101
I think that even without the Bible to guide us, it is difficult to see how men
can have freewill. One famous argument formulated strongly (but not first)
by philosopher Nelson Pike makes the concept of freewill doubtful. Pike
writes,
Last Saturday afternoon, Jones mowed his lawn. Assuming that
God exists and is (essentially) omniscient . . . it follows that (let
us say) eighty years prior to last Saturday afternoon, God knew
(and thus believed) that Jones would mow his lawn at that time.
But from this it follows, I think, that at the time of action (last
Saturday afternoon) Jones was not able to refrain from mowing
his lawn. If at the time of action, Jones had been able to refrain
from mowing his lawn, then (the most obvious conclusion would
seem to be) at the time of action Jones was able to do something
that would have brought it about that God held a false belief
eighty years earlier. But God cannot in anything be mistaken. It
is not possible that some belief of his was false. Thus, last
Saturday afternoon, Jones was not able to do something which
would have brought it about that God held a false belief eighty
years ago. . . . [I]t seems to follow at the time of action, Jones
did not have the power to refrain from mowing his lawn. The
interesting paper by William P. Alston, “Divine Foreknowledge and Alternative Conceptions of Human
Freedom,” The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 18 (1985):19-32.
100 Philosophers call this type of freedom libertarian freewill.
101John Piper, “The Argument of Romans 9:14-16.”
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upshot of these reflections would appear to be that Jones’s
mowing his lawn last Saturday cannot be counted as a voluntary
action. . . . As a general remark, if God exists and is (essentially)
omniscient . . . no human action is voluntary.102
The basic idea behind the argument is that if God knows what you are going to
do tomorrow, then you are not free to do otherwise. This is because if you
were to do otherwise, God would have been mistaken in what he believed you
would do – and this is certainly impossible for an infallible God.
Do you see this? If God knows what you are going to do long before you do it,
then how can you be free to act otherwise? Does not the mere fact that God is
all-knowing preclude human freewill? If God can never be wrong, and he
knows that you will eat ham and eggs for breakfast tomorrow, then nothing
you do can prevent you from eating ham and eggs. If he knows that you will
decide to go for a stroll in the park, then you cannot choose not to go for a
walk. If he knows that you will tell a lie, then it is inevitable that you will tell
the lie. Since it is not within your power to prove God wrong in what he
believes, you cannot tell the truth tomorrow. Considerations such as these
have led many philosophers to agree with Nelson Pike, and attempts to
answer Pike’s basic argument have failed to be convincing.103 The strength of
this observation is that it shows that if God is all-knowing, no human action is
free (in the Arminian sense of the word). It is safe to say that thousands of
years of reflection has left the problem of God’s foreknowledge and human
freedom unsolved. But there is one solution that, if one is willing to make,
completely settles the dilemma: “No doubt the most direct solution is simply
to deny that free will, in the libertarian sense, exists at all.”104 Considered
philosophically, then, it is doubtful that mankind can have freewill if God
exists.
There is another popular argument that shows that man’s so-called freewill is
a figment of his imagination. Theologian R. Nicole notes,
Just about everyone agrees that in heaven, there will be no more
danger of [sinning]. Does this mean that in glory men will be
deprived of that freedom which constitutes the distinguishing
character of humanity, the gift [of freewill] that stands so high
that [Arminians say] even the sovereign purpose of God must be
viewed as subordinate to it? Surely not. But if in glory [not
Nelson Pike, “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action,” in God Foreknowledge and Freedom, edited by
John Martin Fischer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 62-63.
103 I do not have the time or the philosophical expertise, to go into the proposed solutions to Pike’s problem.
Philosophers have developed clever ways to preserve divine omniscience and human freewill. For one of the
more famous treatments, see Alvin Plantinga, “On Ockham’s Way Out,” Faith and Philosophy, 3 (1986):235-269.
I am not entirely convinced by these arguments because they strike me as fruitless attempts to explain away the
obscure by an appeal to the even more obscure. The arguments are long, complex, and depend on many concepts
that have not yet been successfully defined and formulated (e.g., “accidental necessity,” “soft facts,” “hard facts”).
Without doubt the simplest and most straightforward approach is to accept Pike’s argument and redefine what it
means for men to have freewill. Therefore, I opt for rejecting “Ockham’s way out” and instead hold to
“Ockham’s Razor” – that is, the simplest solution to a problem is usually the best.
104 William Hasker, “Foreknowledge and Necessity,” in God Foreknowledge and Freedom, ed. John Martin
Fischer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 220.
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being able to sin] is not inconsistent with freedom, why should it
be thought incompatible on earth?105
This argument is perhaps even stronger than Pike’s. It is true that in heaven,
no one will be able to sin – that is, no one will have the freewill to choose to
sin. But if in heaven we do not have freewill, then why not say that on earth
we do not have it, either? Philosopher James F. Sennet is forced to conclude
that, in heaven, we do not have freewill, but he still holds stubbornly his
intuitive idea that we do have freewill on earth.106 I say that if it is possible for
humanity to exist in heaven without freewill, then it is certainly plausible that
we do not have freewill on earth, either. In heaven, all men will, by the
enabling grace of God, love their neighbors and love God. In heaven, we will
experience emotions of delight and joy. In heaven, we will certainly make
decisions. Our personhood will not be compromised one bit without freewill.
But if it is possible for human existence to continue in heaven where we do
not have freewill, why not admit that even on earth we do not have freewill?
In brief, if there will eventually come a time when humanity will be stripped of
freewill, and continue on in bliss, is it so unthinkable that humanity never had
freewill to begin with?
It is popular to hear Christians today claim that the Bible says God gave Adam
and Eve the gift of freewill. However, it should be pointed out that not one
verse in the entire Bible states that God gave Adam and Eve freewill.107 This is
an important observation, because when people assert that the scriptures
teach that God gave our first parents freewill, they are unintentionally reading
their own theology into the Bible, and making it say something that is does
not really say. So why do Christians often assume that the book of Genesis
teaches that God gave men freewill? It is because they are working on a
philosophical assumption – really, an intuitive gut feeling – instead of basing
their beliefs on the Bible alone.
Repeatedly, Christians claim that once God gave Adam and Eve freedom, he
could not prevent them from sinning. Respected philosopher Alvin Plantinga
boldly admits that because of mankind’s freewill, “God is omnipotent, and it is
not within His power to create a world containing moral good but no moral
evil.”108 This sounds to me to be doubletalk. If God can do all things possible,
then surely he can prevent men from sinning! Along with Plantinga,
philosopher James F. Sennet writes, “no one – not even God – can guarantee
that [giving man freewill] will not result in evil.”109 What is the conclusion to
all of this is Arminianism is true? Plantinga sums it up well: “Thus is the
power of an omnipotent God limited by the freedom he confers upon his
creatures.”110
But this near-blasphemous claim, popular as it may be, stands in direct
contradiction to the Bible, and severely limits God’s power over mankind.
105
Quoted in D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, 208.
See his “Is There Freedom in Heaven?” Faith and Philosophy, 1, (1999): 69-82.
107 If you don’t take my word for it, check for yourself!
108 Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 45.
109 “Is There Freedom in Heaven?” 71.
110 The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 190.
A friend of mine (in personal
conversation) once made the tongue-in-cheek comment: “I don’t think the God who does everything he does to
make his power and glory known is into the business of limiting his power!”
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The whole argument breaks down when one considers that in heaven, God is
able to keep men from sinning – which implies he is able to do so on earth,
too. This is not just a philosophical inference, it also what the Bible explicitly
teaches. In Genesis 20:6, God says to Abimelech, “I have kept you from
sinning against me.” Similarly, David claims that “[God] has kept his servant
from doing wrong” (1 Sam. 25:39). If God is able to keep Abimelech and
David from doing wrong, then why should we think that he was not able to
prevent Adam and Eve from doing wrong? Couldn’t God have kept Adam and
Eve from eating the fruit in the Garden? It seems to me that God is
omnipotent, and it is within his power to create a world that does not contain
evil. If he is not, it “prompts me to wonder what the new heaven and new
earth will be like.”111
If one carefully considers the common claim that God created mankind so
that man could have freewill and choose to have a relationship with God, then
he cannot help but conclude that this whole idea makes nonsense. For, if God
has made man to have freewill and freely choose to follow God, then it follows
that one of the highest goals of humanity is to always exercise their libertarian
freedom. But this cannot be the case. In heaven, all of creation will be
redeemed and restored, and humanity will reach the goal that God intended it
for. But we have seen that in heaven, men will not have freewill (at least in
the sense of having power disobey God). It follows that God did not create
men because he wanted to give them the gift of libertarian freewill. He did
not create mankind so that we would have the power to freely choose him or
reject him. If this were so, he would not take away this freedom in heaven
because it would be to take away the very thing we were created for.
Therefore, the idea that God made man to give them freedom is entirely
unconvincing.
But if we do not have freewill, how is it that God can blame us for our sins?
The Bible teaches repeatedly that men are held accountable for their actions.
Is it fair for God to blame us for our sins when he is the ultimate cause of us
choosing to sin?
The Apostle Paul anticipated this question some two thousand years ago.
After unpacking his doctrine of predestination in Rom. 9, he concluded,
One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us?
For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back
to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why
did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right
to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble
purposes and some for common use? (Rom. 9:19-21)
It is true that no one can resist God’s sovereign will. We may say “no” to his
will of command, but not to his ultimate, sovereign will of decree. No one can
resist that. But Paul still said that God can blame us for our sins. Even if he
hardens us so that we do sin, he is not to blame; we are.
Paul offers no completely satisfying explanation to this mystery. It is our duty
as faithful Christians to accept the word of God for what it says, even if we
cannot make sense of it this side of heaven. But many philosophers have
111
Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, 254.
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argued that it is reasonable for men to be controlled by God and yet
responsible for their actions. Such a view is called philosophical
compatibilism. Compatibilism says that God is sovereignly ordains our
actions, but nonetheless, we are responsible for those actions.
Compatibilism is the only way to make sense of the dozens of verses we have
shown that indicate that God controls the actions of men – even sinful ones.
Jonathan Edwards tried to explain this mystery by arguing that all men make
choices based on their strongest preferences. Since all men are sinful by
nature, all of our preferences are tainted by sin. As a result, sinning is
inevitable. God can so control our preferences (by giving us good desires, or
turning us over to sinful ones) that he can control the very choices we make.
But since these choices are in accordance with our own desires, we are
accountable for them. All that is necessary for us to be held accountable for
sin is that we sin because we wanted to – it is totally irrelevant whether or not
God was the one who ordained our behavior.
I conclude, then, that freewill, understood in the Arminian sense, is a myth –
though I suspect many readers of this paper will not be satisfied with my
answers to the question of freewill. That is understandable. Any explanation
of freewill will have some difficult parts and annoying loose ends. But I feel
that the words of D. A. Carson are appropriate here:
[For] the monotheist, there is no escape from the [divine]
sovereignty-[human] responsibility tension, except by moving
so far from the Biblical data that either the picture of God or the
picture of man bears little resemblance to their portraits as
assembled from the scriptural texts themselves. It is no answer
to me to tell me that my presentation of the sovereigntyresponsibility tension still embraces certain unresolved
tensions. Of course it does. But to correct me you must not
claim to resolve all the tensions, for such delusion is easily
exposed. Rather, if you wish to convince me that your theology
in this matter is more essentially Christian than my own, you
must show me how your shaping of the tension better conforms
to the biblical data than mine does.112
So, I will hold to my view of freewill until a better one comes a long. And a
“better” view will not be characterized by clever philosophical argumentation,
but by agreement to the teachings of the Bible. Given the fact that the Bible
nowhere states that God gave men freewill (yet does state that he gives faith),
the fact that the Bible offers myriads of examples of God causing men to make
decisions (and none that say God has limited his power by giving man
freewill), and the fact that strong philosophical arguments can be offered
against libertarian freewill (but most objections against compatibilism are at
bottom mere emotional appeals), I hold tenaciously to the Reformed doctrine
of predestination.
Does Predestination Make a Practical Difference in One’s Life?
112D.
A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, 220-221.
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Even if predestination is true, does it make a difference in the way that we
live? Many readers of this essay no doubt are wondering what the practical
benefits of Calvinism are. I will do my best to answer this question.
The Belief that God is in Control Comforts the Grieving
Consider for a moment how one’s belief in freewill will affect the way he
handles a tragic event, like a sudden death in the family. Pastor and
theologian Gregory Boyd, who believes in freewill, comments,
I know Christians frequently speak about “the purpose of God”
in the midst of a tragedy caused by someone else. There was a
young girl this year at Bethel who was killed by a drunk driver, a
lot of students were wondering what purpose God had in “taking
her home.” But this I regard to simply be a piously confused way
of thinking. The drunk driver alone is to blame for the girl's
untimely death. The only purpose of God in the whole thing is
His design to allow morally responsible people the right to
decide whether to drink responsibly or irresponsibly.113
If a Christian believes in freewill, then when a drunk driver takes an innocent
life in an automobile accident, there ultimately was no purpose for this action.
God was not in control. He could not have prevented the accident from taking
place. The Arminian cannot say with Joseph, “You intended to harm me, but
God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20). If we believe that God has given man
a sovereign freewill, and that men can botch up God’s plans, then how can we
embrace Paul’s confident assertion that, “we know that in all things God
works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to
his purpose”(Rom. 8:28)? Which is more comforting: to believe that God has
given up control of his creatures and allows them to mess up his plans, or that
God is in control of even the evil in the world, and that he is permitting it for a
good purpose? After Calvinist John Piper’s mother was tragically killed, he
wrote about how his belief in predestination consoled him. Contrast his
approach to dealing with suffering and grief to that of Gregory Boyd:
On December 16, 1974, [God] did not save my mother’s life. She
was riding with my father on a touring bus toward Bethlehem in
Israel. A van with lumber tied on the roof swerved out of its lane
and hit the bus head on. The lumber came through the windows
and killed my mother instantly. . . . What was my comfort in
those days? . . . [There was] the confidence that God is in
control and God is good. I take no comfort from the prospect
that God cannot control the flight of a four-by-four. For me
there is no consolation in haphazardness. Nor in giving Satan
the upper hand. As I knelt by my bed and wept, having received
the dreaded phone call from my brother-in-law, I never doubted
113
Letters from a Skeptic (Colorado Springs: Chariot Victor Publishing, 1994), 46-47
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that God was good. I do not need to explain everything. That he
reigns and that he loves is enough for now.114
In times of crisis, a belief that God is in control brings comfort to the hurting
saint. As Piper said, there is no comfort in haphazardness. But there is a deep
well of consolation in the fact that nothing in the universe occurs outside of
God’s purpose. We can trust God to be in control, and to work even evil
events for the good of those who love him. The precious promises of God to
ensure that everything works for the good according to his infallible purpose
are guarded by the Biblical doctrine of predestination.
Freewill Can Promote a Works-Based Understanding of Salvation
Another reason the doctrine of predestination is important is because an overemphasis on the doctrine of freewill can lead to a Roman Catholic (worksbased) understanding of the process of salvation. In fact, it is mainly the
Catholic doctrine of freewill that Martin Luther so vehemently opposed in the
Reformation. Contrary to popular opinion, Luther’s view of predestination
was virtually identical to John Calvin’s – if anything, he was even more
“Calvinistic” than Calvin! Any theology that exalts the individual’s freewill,
Luther reasoned, would inevitably lead to boasting, and a works-based view of
righteousness. Luther called the issue of freewill “the most important aspect
in the matter [of the Protestant Reformation]” and “the hinge on which all
turns.”115 Catholic scholar Robert Sungenis observes that the doctrine of
predestination “was the doctrine that Luther considered the most important,
even more so than justification by faith alone since the later depends on the
former. Many scholars feel it was Luther’s complete denial of freewill that
was his main reason for proceeding with the Reformation.”116 It is readily
apparent that were it not for Calvinism, Protestantism might never have been
born.
Luther’s strong position on predestination stands in stark contrast to modern
apathy over the issue. Most Christian laypeople don’t even find the issue of
predestination important enough to discuss at the dinner table, much less
start a Reformation over! But it is easy to see why Luther held this doctrine as
the most important of all117. Salvation by grace alone means that we are
converted by grace alone, not by grace plus freewill.
114John
Piper, The Pleasures of God, 68-69.
Quoted in Robert A. Sungenis, “Predestination, Free Will, and Justification,” in Not By Faith Alone: The
Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification (Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing Company,
1997), 454 n.69. This is the most extensive defense of the Catholic doctrine of salvation that I know of. To show
the importance Sungenis puts on the issue of predestination and freewill, one need only observe that he devotes
over 60 pages of his book to the topic! I have gathered much of my information for this section of my essay from
Sungenis’ work because it shows that even today, one of the most important doctrines separating Catholics and
Reformed Protestants is the dispute over predestination.
116 Ibid., 447 (emphasis mine).
117 In Luther’s own words:
I give you [Erasmus] hearty praise and commendation on this further account – that you alone,
in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue [i.e.,
freewill]. You have not wearied me with those extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory,
indulgences and such like – trifles [!!!], rather than issues – in respect of which almost all to
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Catholics opposed Luther by saying that they, too, taught the necessity of
grace to save us. Strictly speaking, this is true, but the role of grace is
completely different under the two systems. “What the [Roman Catholics]
described as grace, Luther described as legalism.”118 Under the Catholic view
of salvation, God gives us grace and expects us to cooperate with this grace by
our own freewill. Under the Reformed view, the grace of God is completely
effective in saving those people it is given to. This later understanding of
grace glorifies God because it gives him all of the credit for salvation. It
humbles man because it admits that he is spiritually helpless to save himself
by an act of willing or working. At bottom, we are not Christians because we
were wise enough to make the right decision or worked hard enough to get it.
We are Christians because God decided to save us. D. A. Carson presents the
following analogy:
[P]icture a judge rightly condemning ten criminals, and offering
each of them pardon. Five of them accept the pardon, the other
five reject it (the relative numbers are not important). But in
this model, even though those who accept the pardon do not
earn it, and certainly enjoy their new freedom because of the
judge’s “grace,” nevertheless they are distinguishable from those
who reject the offer solely on the basis of their own decision to
accept the pardon. The only thing that separates them from
those who are carted off to prison is the wisdom of their own
choice. That becomes a legitimate boast. By contrast, in the
Calvinistic scheme, the sole determining factor is God’s elective
grace.119
In reality, no one can boast in his choice to become a Christian because it is
God who causes us to choose Christ. Paul wrote, “But God chose the foolish
things of the world to shame the wise . . . so that no one may boast before
him” (1 Cor. 1:27, 29). Paul was opposed to any doctrine that gave man some
of the credit for his salvation. This is why he adamantly opposed salvation by
works. He wrote, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and
this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can
boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). Salvation is not based on works so that no one can boast
in his own endeavors to make himself a Christian. It is also true that the
reason God predestines some men to be saved and not others is so that
Christians will not think they were saved by their own works. Again Paul says,
Not only that, but Rebekah's children [Jacob and Esau] had one
and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were
born or had done anything good or bad – in order that God's
date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge
on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot. (The Bondage of the Will, tr. J. I. Packer and
O. R. Johnston [Grand Rapids: Revell, 1957], 319).
Now I do not think that predestination is more important than issues like papal infallibility and the sale of
indulgences, but this citation certainly shows that Martin Luther saw the issue of utmost importance. It also shows
that the doctrine of predestination was directly responsible for arguably the greatest revival in human history – the
Protestant Reformation.
118 Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment, 119.
119 Exegetical Fallacies, 121-122.
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purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who
calls--she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it
is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom. 9:10-13).
Paul’s argument is that the reason Jacob’s salvation was not based on works is
because it was based on God’s sovereign choice. It is crucial to see this point.
Later in Romans Paul says the same thing: “at the present time there is a
remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it
were, grace would no longer be grace” (Rom. 11:5-6). The grace of salvation is
the grace of election; no work we do can initiate our conversion to Christ
because God’s choice of us based on his grace, not our works. If salvation is
based on our freewill, then the words of Paul are meaningless when he says,
“So then [salvation] does not depend on the man who wills or the man who
runs, but on God who has mercy” (Rom. 9:16, NASB). I do not think that Paul
could have been clearer in his assertion that holding onto a doctrine of
freewill is dangerously close to holding onto a doctrine of salvation by human
effort.
The connection between freewill and works-based salvation was not imagined
by Luther. It is made explicit in some discussions of freewill even today.
James Sennet, in an article already referred to in this essay, speculates as to
why God would have given man freewill in the first place: “One might . . .
suggest that [the value of] freedom . . . is the potential for or actual possession
of a certain God-like quality – the quality of self-determined righteousness
[!!!].”120 What this quotation shows is that exalting freewill can directly lead
to the idea that men make themselves righteous by their own will-power and
works. The New Testament screams against this conclusion on nearly every
page! Contrast Sennet’s view with Saint Paul’s: “not having a righteousness of
my own that comes from the law” (Phil. 3:9); “he saved us, not because of
righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Tit. 3:5); “[God] has
saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but
because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus
before the beginning of time” (2 Tim. 1:9). I am struck as to why anyone
would think that the value of freewill is in its potential for men to make
themselves righteous by their own choosing. I hope my readers can see that
taking freewill to its logical extreme opens the door for believing we are saved
by human merit. The view that we are saved by a “self-determined
righteousness” is exactly the error Paul spent so much energy and frustration
trying to refute. Pauline scholar Timo Laato sees this. One theologian writes
about Laato’s view,
Second Temple Judaism offered an optimistic estimate of
human ability, believing that people could keep God’s
commandments by exercising their free will. This led, says
Laato, to a synergistic conception of soteriology in Judaism [i.e.,
a doctrine of salvation that held people are saved by a
cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freewill]. Salvation
was by God’s grace and keeping the law. Paul, says Laato,
rejected the synergistic theology of Judaism. He believed people
120
“Is There Freedom in Heaven?,” 76.
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have no ability to keep the law, so the exclusive hope for
salvation is God’s grace. Even faith is a gift from God, not
something produced through exercising free will. According to
Laato, Paul identified Judaism as legalistic because of its
synergism. In contrast, Paul was a monergist: Any human
action that pleased God was produced by God’s grace alone.121
The reader should see how close Arminianism can get to compromising the
purity of the gospel. This is a big claim to make, but I think both Scripture
and history confirm it. Start emphasizing freewill, and before you know it you
may be claiming that we are saved because of something we do, not something
God does in us. The practical ramifications of this observation are
breathtaking. Recognizing that we did not take the decisive step to save
ourselves will help us avoid the misunderstanding that salvation is based on
works. Renouncing freewill can keep us humble, thankful to God, and full of
awe and wonder at his grace. Whenever one believes that salvation is a
cooperation (“synergism”) between man’s freewill and God’s grace, he
inevitably leaves the door open for works-based salvation to creep in. And it
is precisely here that the issue becomes infinitely practical in our lives. Do we
become Christians because we freely choose to come, prompted by grace – or
do we become Christians by grace alone, because God’s grace irresistibly
draws us to him? Does becoming a Christian take an action on our part that
God does not work in us,122 or is the process of salvation solely God’s doing
through his working in us? Do we persevere as Christians because we freely
decide to, or because God keeps us in his hand by his grace alone? The
answers to these questions will change the way one lives. D. A. Carson
remarks that in Arminianism, “at the end of the day, the security of the
believer[‘s salvation] finally rests with the believer. For those in the opposite
camp [Calvinism], the security of the believer finally rests with God – and
that, I suggest, rightly taught, draws the believer back to God himself, to trust
in God, to a renewed faith that is of a piece with trusting him in the first
place.”123 I would also add that it leads to a renunciation of a salvation that is
ultimately based on human achievement, effort, and work. In a word, a
proper view of predestination can safeguard the Biblical gospel.124
So I think that predestination does change the life of the Christian. It can
make him more humble and often comfort him in times of distress. The truth
that God is in control of our decisions grounds our confidence that he is
121
Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment, 29.
See Jn. 3:21: “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he
has done has been done through God.”
123 “Reflections on Assurance,” 404.
124 Considerations like these led Charles Spurgeon to remark,
I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him
crucified, unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it
Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the
gospel . . . unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless
we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I
think we can preach the gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of
His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the Cross; nor can I comprehend a
gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called. (C.H. Spurgeon, The Early Years,
Autobiography, [Banner of Truth: London, 1962], 1: 172)
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working all things for good. It also leads us to reject any theology that gives
man the credit for making the right decision to become a Christian. As a
result, Calvinism both comforts man and, more importantly, glorifies God.
Conclusion
This essay has shown that the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional
predestination is both biblically faithful and practically satisfying. Biblically,
there is no avoiding predestination. God sovereignly controls even man’s socalled freewill. Not only has Calvinism stood firm against arguments made
against it over the centuries, it has been a major impetus in virtually every
great Christian movement. Without the Protestant Reformation, the Church
would still be tangled in dead Catholic religion – and it is likely that the
Reformation would never occurred had Martin Luther and John Calvin not
been Calvinists. The Great Awakening, called the largest spiritual revival in
Christian history, probably would not have occurred were it not for the
preaching of the staunch Calvinist, Jonathan Edwards. It is a great truth that,
while Arminians were attempting relatively little to evangelize the unreached
nations, the Calvinistic faith of William Carey sparked the largest missionary
movement the world has ever seen. Calvinists have not only been adamant
about spreading the gospel, but also about preserving it. Princetonians
Charles Hodge, J. G. Machen, B. B. Warfield, and others played a crucial role
in defending the church against twentieth century liberalism.
In the realm of philosophy, Jonathan Edwards’ Calvinistic defense, Freedom
of the Will, stands second to none. In the realm of systematic theology, John
Calvin may never be equaled. Whether one judges Calvinism by its
scholarship, missionary activity, or (most importantly) Biblical faithfulness,
the verdict is the same: “Certainly no other view of God, man, the world, and
all things visible and invisible can approach the strength of Calvinism.”125
125
Thomas Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, 40. I realize that this essay has not defended all of the
“points” of Calvinism, but it has touched on the central ones: total depravity, effectual calling, and unconditional
election.
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