Kepler Disputatio: Predestination with Dr. Junius Johnson

Kepler Disputatio
4/26/24
Predestination
Junius Johnson, PhD, Disputant

[please direct questions and comments to junius.johnson[at]kepler.education]

In this disputation, the question whether God predestines humans is considered.

Arguments For

1. Predestination is an entailment of God’s eternal nature and sovereign omniscience, in the following way: if God, “who inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15), knows the end of all things from the very beginning and, indeed, from eternity past, then of necessity all things that come to pass are in some sense predetermined by God. Isaiah 46:10 confirms this: “I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish.’” If this is true of world-historical events and nations (Acts 17:26), then it is also true of individuals.
2. To push this further: Plato defines knowledge as “justified true belief.” But a belief is true if it corresponds to the way the world is. God’s omniscience entails that he know future things. But future things do not yet exist, and so there can be no knowledge about them, for no beliefs about them can be true (there is nothing for them to correspond to). It follows that God cannot know the future, which is blasphemous. Therefore, God’s knowledge of the future causes the future: in the moment God knows it, the future is determined to take the shape that it has in God’s mind. But this is to predetermine all future things. But all things, before they were, were known by God, and therefore future things. Thus all things were determined in the first decision to create when God foreknew that they would eventually take this shape.
3. Everything happens for a reason; but this can only be true because God controls all things; otherwise, things would be without reason and random.
4. Ephesians 1:4-6: “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 for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the Beloved One.” This clearly states that those who would become holy and blameless were chosen for this, and that this choosing happened before the beginning of the world. Further this passage uses the word “predestines,” (Greek proorisas, “to see ahead of time”), stating that this is how we have adoption as sons and daughters.
5. Psalm 139:16 says: “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be.” But if they were ordained, then they were determined. And to have been determined ahead of time by the will of God is what we mean by predestination.
6. Ephesians 1:9–11: “And He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together in Christ. In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will […].” Our choosing is a predestination that depends on nothing but God’s will.
7. Lamentations 2:17: “The Lord has done what he proposed; he has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago.”
8. Malachi 1:2: “‘Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.’” This election seems to have been before Esau did anything, for it is said of them that “the older will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23). Paul interprets this in Romans 9 to have happened “in order that God’s purpose of election might continue” (Romans 9:11). Therefore Jacob was predestined to love, and Esau to hate.
9. Exodus 9:12 et plures states that God hardened pharaoh’s heart. Therefore pharaoh was not free to respond to the word of the Lord through Moses. The same is said of Israel in Isaiah 6:10, and John says this hardening of the heart means that the Jews Jesus spoke to “could not believe” (John 12:40). Therefore, God determines who can believe and who can’t.
10. Romans 9:15: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” We receive mercy or compassion entirely because of God’s will. Those who do not receive were simply not chosen to receive it.
11. Again, Romans 9:22-23 indicates that some were made for wrath to underscore the glory of those made for mercy: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”
12. A painter does not paint a masterpiece by planning only part of it and leaving the rest to chance. Rather, he must plan the whole in advance so that he can insure that each part is correctly balanced with all the rest. Likewise, in creation, God does not plan a part only, but the whole course of it. Thus he determines all things before they are created.
13. God made everything. This includes every idea, place, event, action, thought, table, book, star, proton, film, helmet and so on. And if God made everything, he knew what would happen to each individual thing, because he made the events that would shape and change every individual thing. But, as stated before, if God knows something ahead of time, he determines it. Ergo etc.
14. Predestination is required by divine immutability and impassibility. For if God cannot be affected by anything outside of God, and if God cannot change, then God cannot respond to anything in the creature. Thus, my salvation cannot be a result of my accepting an offer from God, for then God is responsive to me, and is neither impassible nor immutable. Therefore, God must have immutably decided from all eternity on the basis of nothing but himself who would be saved.

Arguments Against

1. If we believe that the salvation of humans depends on God’s mere good pleasure, and that the divine will for each person is hidden from humans, we cannot tell another person with any confidence that God loves them. For if this person is not predestined to eternal life, they are left to Hell. But this is not love, but hate. We cannot know that the person sitting across the table from us was not made for the sole purpose of being damned to demonstrate God’s glory and power. But this seems contrary to Christ’s command to preach the Gospel to the nations.
2. Joshua 24:15: “Choose this day whom you will serve, etc.” But if all things are determined, there is no such thing as choice. Therefore all things aren’t determined.
3. Deuteronomy 30:19-20: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, etc.” God seems to be saying that the people have the power to choose life or death, and that whatever they choose will be their lot. But this is not predestination.
4. Mark 8:34 says: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” But this means that discipleship is open to anyone who wants it, not just those who are predestined.
5. Isaiah 55:6-7: “Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” But if those who are saved are predestined to be saved, in vain does the Lord call on the wicked to forsake their ways: for they will do so if they are predestined, and will not if they are not.
6. If God determines all things, then he is the author of every action. But actions are good and bad, such as virtue and vice, charity and sin. Therefore God is also the author of evil, and to him are to be attributed every murder, rape, and every worst sort of crime. But the Scriptures say that God does not tempt anyone (James 1:13), and that Satan, not God is the father of lies (John 8:44). Therefore, if God is not the author of evil, God does not determine all things.
7. Again, if God is the author of evil, then God is a liar, for he is the author of lies. But Anselm says: “For the argument that, ‘If it is God’s will to tell a lie, it is just to tell a lie’, is a non sequitur. Rather, the liar is not God” (Cur Deus Homo, book I, ch. 12), meaning that a being who could lie could not be God, because that being would not be the best imaginable being.
8. Again, if God is the author of evil, then he is not all good, and he is not to be praised.
9. Again, if God is the father of lies, then we cannot know when he is lying and when he is telling the truth. And so all the promises of God turn out to be hollow and empty, for the one who promises is not trustworthy.
10. Matthew 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” God wants to gather Jerusalem, but cannot, because it’s people are unwilling.
11. Jeremiah 18:7-10: “If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.” But none of this makes sense if nations do not have the ability to choose to repent or persist in evil.
12. If only those whom God predestines are saved, then it follows that God wants only them to be saved: otherwise, if God wanted the non-elect to be saved, he would have predestined them also. But Paul says that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Therefore, if we see that not all do come to this knowledge, it can only be because this knowledge is not arrived at through predestination, but through choice.

Determinatio Quaestionis

            To begin with, it must be noted that the arguments often conflate two different things: divine determination of all events, and divine predestination for salvation. It is necessary to separate these two ideas out and discuss them individually.

            Divine determinism argues that God is the only cause of things that happen: all other causes are illusory. In that case, absolutely everything that happens is to be attributed to the will of God. This position seems to contradict the Scriptures in their entirety: for in every book of the Bible the people of God are presented with exhortations, pleas, warnings, examples, and encouragements, all to the end that they turn to God and away from wickedness. From the many demands of the moral law to the warnings about divine judgment in the prophets and the apostles, and more than all of these from the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, it is clear that God holds humans morally responsible for their actions. But it would not make sense to do so if our actions were not really our actions, but God’s actions. Too many scriptures would need to be interpreted against both their plain sense meaning and their context for this to be a viable position.

            Predestinationis the claim that God determines the destiny of creatures before they come to be. “Destiny” refers to the goal of their lives, that which will be most determinative of the type of life they have lived. Within this definition “predestination” is used in a variety of senses.

            In the strongest sense, predestination means that God decides who will be saved and who will be damned. God creates some humans (and angels) for Heaven, and others for Hell. This is called “double predestination,” where God predestines some for felicity and the rest for misery. Because this has seemed undesirable to some, inasmuch as it claims that God created some humans and angels expressly to damn them (which seems sadistic), some theologians, like Luther and Augustine, have wanted to soften this to the claim that God predestines some to salvation, and concerning the rest he has no will. This is called “single predestination.” But since, on this view, it is impossible to enter Heaven apart from the divine predestination of God, and everyone who does not enter Heaven defaults to Hell, to create a human or angel and not predestine them to salvation is tantamount to creating them for Hell, a fact that could not escape an omniscient being. So single predestination does not solve the problem it is meant to solve, and collapses back into double predestination.

            Predestination can also be used to describe a divine offer of a destiny whose attainment is not sure. For example, Anakin Skywalker was destined to bring balance to the Force, but he did not fulfill that destiny, instead perpetuating its imbalance. Similarly, those who follow this position argue that God predestines all to salvation, but that destiny is only realized in the case of those who respond to his gracious offer. Part of the tragedy of damnation is that one had a greater destiny, which one now eternally does not fulfill. This could be called a conditional predestination.

            It is important to note that what is not at stake between these two positions is whether God is provident. The providence of God is not a Reformed doctrine, but a Christian one, and any theology that denies that God is provident is not Christian. There can be no doubt that God is in control, and orders things according to his mighty and perfect will, and the Scriptures everywhere declare this. What is at stake is the nature and extent of that providence.

            In order to decide between these positions, it will be helpful to look at what motivates each one. And it turns out that both positions are motivated by the same thing: namely, a desire to ascribe maximum glory to God.

            The proponents of predestination urge the perfections of God. For it is unfitting, they argue, that God should will something and not get it. Indeed, how could such a thing even come to pass, when the will is only hindered from attaining its end by a lack of power from within, or an obstruction from without? But God is omnipotent, and so does not lack power; for the same reason, there is nothing outside of God that could obstruct God. Therefore all of God’s willing must be efficacious. To claim that God could want something and not get it is not denigrate divine power.

            Further, it is unfitting for God to base his decisions on anything other than himself. For we consider most rational those persons who judge according to the best reasons. But there is nothing better than God, and no one can act better than God. So it is more in keeping with the excellence of his being that God decide based on nothing other than himself.

            Further, someone who would lose control of that which is under his control must either do so willingly or unwillingly. No wise person would lose control willingly, especially if pain, suffering, and evil would follow. Therefore God would not willingly lose control of Creation. But one who loses control unwillingly does so either through lack of power or lack of knowledge: either because he cannot control it, or because he does not know how best to guide it. But both of these are impossible for God.

            And they add many more arguments of this kind, all of which urge that the greatest praise is ascribed to God if God is said to be unmoved by anything exterior and in control of the smallest details of the progress of Creation. This is in effect to privilege the metaphysical attributes of God (his power and knowledge) over the moral ones (his goodness and justice). What it means to privilege the former is not that the latter are denied or lessened, but to say that they must be interpreted in light of the former.

            Those who urge freedom of will also speak of divine perfection. The moral character of the universe is inconsistent with the moral character of God, they say. Therefore, that in Creation that is not consistent with God, namely evil, is to be accounted for by beings other than God.

            Further, they argue that God’s moral attributes are more important than his merely metaphysical attributes. It is more urgent, in establishing the excellence of God, that he be good than that he be powerful. And so they interpret God’s power and knowledge in light of God’s goodness and justice.

            It seems to me, therefore, that which position one finds more intuitive will have to do with whether one thinks it is more glorious to control the paths in their every particular on their way to their ends, or to control the ends in spite of the fact that the paths are not being directly controlled. In other words, is it better to assure a certain outcome by holding the reins firmly throughout such that all is bound to one’s will, or by taking the many and often conflicting inputs from various sources and turning them back towards the desired end. This seems to be, to some extent, a matter of perspective and preference, and so it does not seem possible to offer arguments that would force assent on this point. But to the person who feels that it is better to hold the reins tight, a God who is in control in a way that leans towards determinism will be more attractive; while the God of free will will be more attractive to the one who thinks it takes greater or more excellent power to turn even disparate things to good. And so it does not seem possible to force consensus on this question.

            Nevertheless, I will suggest to you that the reasons against predestination in its strong sense are too weighty to be dismissed, and that a consideration of God as presented to us in the narrative of Scripture favors the idea that God is shaping things according to his purposes, not determining them. As the arguments against predestination affirm, the narrative thrust of Scripture seems to take for granted that humans have agency, that God holds humans accountable for their use of this agency, and that God desires that all use this agency to submit to his bounteous offer of grace. The many interventions of God throughout the Old Testament, and the Incarnation of Christ, and the descriptions the apostles give of the progress of the Kingdom of God in spite of resistance from Satan and the world all are more consistent with a God who shapes the end than with a God who determines every moment. As Hamlet says, “There’s a divinity shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” This means that our actions are really our actions, and that we really do make a mess of things; and yet that is not the last word, for the power of God is greater than our power, and can turn even our messes to his glory. Indeed, this is what the word redemption means.

            Perhaps the clearest scriptural example of this comes in Genesis 50, when Joseph says to his brothers: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for God.” I understand this to mean that Joseph was sold into slavery because of the evil will of his brothers; but that God took their evil and worked it into the means of salvation for the nation of Egypt and the family of Jacob. The power that constrains every moment is most like the power of a tyrant, who rules with an iron grip. The power that can take whatever we offer, whether good or evil, and weave it into his larger tapestry such that it turns out beautiful is most like the power of an artist. Virtuosity is both a greater and more excellent power than domination.

            Therefore, the arguments for the affirmative position are to be conceded, with the following clarification: the argument (f) that if God is the author of all things, then God is the author of evil, it is able to be said that in that case we should realize that they are not evil, but only undesirable. God is good, and so whatever God does is good. Nevertheless, the Scriptures present things as evil and hateful to God; therefore, if there really are evils, God is not the author of them.

Replies

1-2.     To the arguments about God’s knowledge, I respond with Boethius’ argument, which may be summarized as follows: God’s relation to time is like God’s relation to space. God is not located in only one place, as humans are. Therefore God is not limited by space. But this does not mean that God is not in a place; rather, it means that God is immediately present to every place without being contained or defined by any of them. Likewise, God is not limited by time. But this does not mean that God is outside of time; rather, it means that God is immediately present to every time without being contained or defined by any of them. But to be contained and defined by a time is what it means to have a present, and past and future times are times outside of one’s proper time. God has no proper time, but is equally related to all times. Therefore, the future is not future to God, but is analogous to the present (but it is not an eternal present: this would need to be discussed in another disputatio).

           Now, things known in the present are not known in such a way that they are caused by that knowledge. For example, my knowledge that it is not raining where I live does not cause it not to be raining, but rather is caused by the fact that it is not raining. It is the same for God, who knows things in time to be as they are because he sees the way they are, not because he causes them to be this way.

           Since therefore future things are not future to God, but present, it is not true that they do not yet exist: they already exist for God. Therefore, God’s knowledge of them, like all knowledge of present things, is caused by them. Therefore it is not true that God must determine them in order to know them.

3. To the argument that the claim that everything happens for a reason requires that God be controlling everything: this is false. For created powers are equally able to be the reason why things happen. That woman was murdered for a reason, namely because the murderer made a wicked decision. But if “everything happens for a reason” is taken to mean that everything has a place in the divine plan and will be used for good by God, this is true not because God controls all things, but because God redeems all things, bringing good out of evil.

4. To the argument that the Bible uses the word “predestines” (Greek proorisas), it must be said that the Greek verb used there literally translates into Latin as providere. Thus the verb therefore literally means not that God decides ahead of time, but that God sees ahead of time. In the context of Ephesians, it is speaking of election; however, read in the light of the passages urged against predestination, this is a contingent predestination of universal scope: all are called to and destined for the adoption of sons, but not all respond to that call, and so some lose their destiny.

5. To the argument from Psalm 139 that my days were written and ordained before they came to be, it must be said that this psalm is speaking of God’s knowledge, and the impossibility of escaping from God’s gaze. The verse in question asserts that the number of my days were known and recorded in God’s book, that God decided the length of my life even before I was born. It does not speak to what I will do in those days, or to my salvation.

6. To the passage from Ephesians 1:9-11 about being chosen as God’s own through predestination: this is a universal conditional predestination.

7. To the passage from Lamentations that the Lord has carried out what he commanded long ago: this is spoken specifically about the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of Judah; it is not a general statement about God’s relation to history.

8. To the argument about Jacob and Esau, it must be acknowledged that, taken in isolation, this is one of the strongest scriptural arguments for predestination. However, in context it is not referring to the historical Esau, whose hill country was not laid waste, but to Edom, the country that descended from him. Likewise, Jacob refers to Israel. When Paul refers to this passage in Romans 9, he is not talking about salvation, but about Israel’s election to receive the covenant of the divine law. But even in that passage, he points out that be a part of historical Israel is not the same as to be saved; and so he separates his discussion out from predestination as it applies to salvation.

9. Concerning the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, it is necessary to acknowledge that the passages in Exodus lack the level of detail required for specific doctrinal formulation. For we do not know the antecedent conditions, attendant circumstances, or even what it looked and felt like. Nevertheless, it is probable that these verses refer, as they do when said of Israel in Isaiah and John, to a hardening that is the result of repeated previous refusals to hear the Word of the Lord. This is not the hijacking of free will, but the final acquiescence to it, and is analogous to the strengthening of the wills of the faithful in Heaven or the hardening of the hearts of the damned in Hell. It is best to think of the hardening of the heart in Lewis’ words, when God says to sinners: “Thy will be done.”

10. Romans 9:15, about having mercy on whom he will is, in context, is referring to the fact that Israel and not another nation was chosen to receive God’s covenant.

11. Romans 9:22-23 does not claim that God makes people to be damned so that he may underscore the glory of those made for salvation. Paul poses it as a hypothetical: “what if?” But the hypothetical is not “what if some are made for damnation,” but rather “what if God bears patiently with those who are destined for damnation.” The end of this chapter locates the problem with these “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” with their lack of faith, which he attributes to their action: “They did not pursue it by faith” (Romans 9:32).

12. To the objection about the painter making a complete plan, I would say that it depends on the nature of the work. Creation is not very like a painting, which remains as it was painted throughout its existence, barring damage. It is more like a community or a biosphere. And the planners of a community do not plan every detail down to the actions of every person, but rather try to create a framework for those actions that will be best for the harmonious existence and continuance of the community.

13. To the argument that God made everything, including tables, books, stars, etc.: this is not true. A carpenter made that table, I wrote that book, a lot of people made that film, and so on. There is a sense in which God can be said to be the author of the book I wrote, which is that he created the things in creation that are the conditions of the possibility of my writing that book, and gave me the skills and training and opportunity to write it: but that sense of “author” is not the same as the sense in which I am said to be author. I am the proximate cause; God is the remote cause. And the proximate cause most rightly receives the title creator or author. And so to be the remote cause of a thing is not necessarily to have determined it, since it is not even, properly speaking, to have made it. As to the rest about knowledge, the answer from Boethius must be applied here as well.

14. Finally, to the argument about divine immutability and impassibility, it must be said that this would not only preclude free will, it would also destroy prayer, worship, and God’s ability to say
“well done, good and faithful servant.” For this reason, it is becoming clearer to scholars that when the church fathers said that God was immutable, they did not mean it in the strongest philosophical sense. Rather, we have a God who can love, who can pity, who can be pleased and be happy, and who is responsive to his people’s prayers. To these prayers and the prayers of all the faithful may we refer these questions and meditations so that through them we may draw closer to eternal majesty, in the name of the Father, etc.