Predestination

PREDESTINATIONThe issue of predestination: God's determination of who will get to Heaven and who willgo to Hell, is another divisive issue in the Church. It is a tough debatable issue, but some people claim their position is the whole truth and denounce other views as tantamount toheresy.Many Christians see the various passages telling people to choose for or against God, andcommissioning those already following God to go and lead people to Christ (andsalvation), as teaching that man has free will to choose God and Heaven or reject God,which will condemn them to Hell. One often quoted scripture says that it is not God's willthat any should perish, but that all should come to everlasting life (2 Peter 3:9, See also 1Tim.2:4 ). But another camp, naming themselves after reformer John

Calvin

, emphasizesGod's

sovereignty

in saving people. The generic term for this view is

monergism

, asGod alone ("mon-", one) does the work ("-erg-") in saving, without any act of the will onthe part of the one being saved. The generic term for the other view is

synergism

, as manessentially cooperates

with

("syn-") in being saved.In other words, to the one view, if people could just choose or reject Him, then they musthave some sort of power over God; power to save themselves by the "work" of turning toHim. (And salvation by works is universally rejected in Protestant (and Biblical)theology). Since it is obvious that many are not choosing God, then it looks like God,who desires none to perish, is losing out to man's free will and the devil. So to maintainGod's sovereignty, they teach that God selects those who shall be saved. They point outthat we are so "

totally depraved

" that no one is able to even choose God on their own,and a couple of scriptures clearly say that God chooses us ("

unconditional election

")rather than us choosing Him (John 6:37, 15:16, Acts 2:47). There are many scripturesmentioning people being "predestined" or "long ago" marked for salvation or condemnation; sometimes even specifying "before the world (age) began"! So in their theology, it seems people are actually born just to die and go to Hell. Christ did not evendie for these people, but only for the

elect

("

limited atonement"

), and that for them,grace was

irresistible

. They insist that God commands all to repent, but many He did notgrant the ability to repent, but still "holds them responsible" for sinning and notrepenting, and thus will "justly condemn them" for all eternity. Why? Because they are"vessels of wrath fitted for destruction", and God has the "sovereign right" to create these people for this purpose. Then they argue that it doesn't seem fair, but God owes no onesalvation anyway, he only gives it by

grace

, and therefore can withhold it to some if Heso chooses (we all deserve Hell, and those who aren't elected to Heaven aren't beingdeprived of anything; they're getting what they deserve; and those elected to Heaven aregetting what they don't deserve). This even though you may wonder how anyone who 1)had no choice in being born a sinner, and 2) now has no choice even in repenting from hissin and receiving God's forgiveness, can even be morally accountable. God is punishing people for something they couldn't help. Isn't punishment something

earned

from makinga willful wrong choice? Isn't that what the whole concept of guilt is based on? But allsuch reasoning aside, the Calvinists still figure "they broke God's Law, that is enough for them to be held accountable." How they love to glibly remind us that it is only our sinfulnature that makes us want to 'usurp God's right to be sovereign' and to 'be the masters of

our own destiny'. (Isn't it understandable to desire a choice to escape Hell?) Indeed, people seem to get some pleasure in the idea, musing at how "hard" that is, and how it"confounds our limited human minds". (as if just the fact that the teaching is so "hard"alone proves it's right, and that free will makes sense to our notions of justice proves it'swrong—even though our basic notions of justice come from God—His image, alsogeneral revelation (our minds are corrupted by sin, but, we still know what justice is) andalso scripture, such as Proverbs 2:6-9; so you can't just dismiss our ideas of justice andthen appeal to "above your comprehension" to justify questionable theories).The free-will advocates, named after Jacob

Arminius

, a later contemporary of Calvin,are then accused of

Pelagianism

, an ancient heresy named after a man who taught, thatthe Fall had no real effect on man, and that man could thus be sinless if he chose and thusnot need redemption. While the logical conclusion of the message of some Arminiansmay lead to this, it is not what they officially believe. So Arminianism is often called"semi-Pelagianism". So this is another issue that divides evangelical Protestants, withsome virtually anathemizing others. A few, such as groups like Outside the Camp, andsome Baptist "Briders" even claim non-Calvinists aren't even saved, nor Calvinists whoaccept non-Calvinists as brothers, or do not hold all the points of Calvinism. MostCalvinists reject this, but alot of the rhetoric they use ("Arminianism is a 'false gospel' inwhich we 'save ourselves'"; "its god is helpless over man", etc) would lead to this as anatural conclusion. Battles rage on in churches such as the Southern Baptists, withCalvinists trying to gain power, and even in other churches, Calvinists often come intoBible classes and other meetings, much like cultists or "Full Gospel" teachers insistingthat the church's "gospel" is not complete without this other teaching they are bringing.Many Calvinists still believe in evangelizing, even though their belief seems to render itunnecessary. They just do it out of "obedience" and don't question why God wants to useus to bring people to Him, who He foreordained to come to Him without our help. Thereis also what is known as

supralapsarianism

: the belief that God caused the Fall to justify"reprobating" the non-elect (basically, to give them sin to punish them for, since they hadalready been predestined for damnation). Obviously, this raises many questions, such asmaking God the author of sin, but the Calvinists maintain that the only alternative is thatsin came up against His will, "taking Him by surprise", which further erodes Hissovereignty, and they even cite Isaiah 45:7 to show that God

is

in fact the author of "evil"! But sin is the

falling short

of God's standard (a negative), not some [positive]"thing" that He must have created along with everything else. "Evil" in that passage(Strong #7452) has several different meanings, such as "adversity", "affliction","calamity", "displeasure", "distress", "trouble", plus some morally "evil" meanings suchas "bad", "hurt", "wicked". So with God, it is obviously the non-moral meanings. It isSatan and fallen man who create sin, and then God punishes them in calamity or adversity, thus "creating evil", but not the same as creating "wickedness".A softer version of this is

infralapsarianism

, which at least places the decree of reprobation after the Fall. The two sides argue even amongst each other, with endless philosophy, and the supra adherents claiming the infra position is still half way toArminianism or semi-Pelagianism.Many even believe that this election and "reprobation" extends to babies, including thosewho were stillborn or aborted! To the idea that babies are not held accountable, they

argue "Does a child at 'some point' become a sinner? If so, that would mean that at some point in time he fell from innocence. The only problem is that he, like David, was asinner in the womb. If they did not become a sinner, they were born a sinner. Sin must be punished otherwise God is unjust." and "They are sinners volitionally, or else they areless than human". But "volition" means "choice". Isn't the corollary of this doctrine thatman has no choice? How does a child consciously know what "choice" they are making?The question is does God hold them responsible when they

could not even understand what right and wrong are

? This is supported by Jesus Himself, who while not denyingthat they are by nature sinners, holds up little children as possessing a sort of innocencethat He associates with the Kingdom. (Matt. 19:14). The Bible defines sin as: "to himwho

knows to do good

but does it not; to

him

it is sin" (James 4:17). This is where theconcept of the "age of accountability" comes from.They continue: "Consequently, babies are sinners by their union with Adam" They refer to Romans 5's teaching about sin and death coming through Adam. In other words, sin isnot just actions, but a condition, a point I have used that Calvinists rightly emphasize. Butis it being used right in this case? There isn't enough in this text to support this. This leadsto what they call "

federal headship

": "We all chose to sin in Adam ... and therefore weare responsible for that sin." This now seemingly gets us around the problem of Godsending people to Hell for something they could not help, including even the unborn.Then it is repeated how everyone is doing what they want, and running from God, sorather than being unfairly consigned to an eternity in Hell, they are actually quite "free".Their whole argument (regarding man's real guilt) hinges on this point, because if we all"chose sin", then as they repeatedly say "The question is not why He does not save all, but why He saved any" or "...me"! This is actually the heart of the whole issue, because itis why non-Calvinists think unconditional election and preterition are so unfair, and whyCalvinists think it is not unfair, but quite "just". (An important note: the reason manythink it is unfair has more to do with the "inability" of those who are still condemned because of it, moreso than some being offered salvation but not all, which Calvinistsoften assume is the main objection).But this is almost like God sees it as if our minds/souls were consciously present in Adamand made the choice for/with him. But does anyone remember consciously making thischoice? No, but we shall be consciously punished for it! (While Adam himself may go toHeaven as most believe) This would make sense in an Origenic framework which heldthat all men preexisted in union with God, and that all fell from this state except for Christ. (In fact, Origen's teachings may have helped influence this doctrine). In that case,there would be no problem. Everybody had their chance and like Lucifer and his angels(who are offered no chance of redemption), made their conscious willful choice to leavethe perfection and bliss of union with the Father (Christ was the only such soul whodidn't, and this is what lead to him becoming the Son of God[!!]), so God will give the"grace" of [another] chance to "whomever He will". Calvinism makes perfect sense, then.But "in Adam" was simply an analogy based on lineage. The only proof-text for this ideais Hebrews 7: 9, 10: "And if I may say so, Levi, also, who receives tithes, paid tithes inAbraham. For he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him". The point here was that the line of Levi was supposed to receive tithes, but in that case, Levi'sline (represented by Abraham) paid tithes instead. It is not saying Levi's soul wasactually, personally present in Abraham. Since the seed does come from the ancestor, then