(AI generated image of Hank and RoboHank)
How God's sovereignty and man's will exist and interact - Free Will vs Predestination - have been issues that have been debated for well over 1,500 years in Christendom.
There have been amazing, faithful, and true followers of Jesus Christ on both sides of this issue. The two main views are commonly known as Calvinism (after John Calvin) and Arminianism (after Jacobus Arminius). Other theologians that have taken positions at various points between the two polar sides leading to additional views such as Molinism (after Luis de Molina).
There are absolute giants of faith that hold one of the different positions of how God's sovereignty and man's will work together for salvation through Christ. I have people in my life that I am pleased and honored to call friend and brother (and sister) that hold opposing views to mine, and it does not affect our love for, or fellowship with, one another in the slightest - as it should be with non-essential topics.
Not that I'm a giant in the faith by any means, but here is my current view on how I view the topic which a dear and trusted friend who leans Calvinist says leans Arminian in nature:
This is Hank. Throughout his life, Hank will be faced with thousands of decisions every day. They may be choices between what to say or not say, what to do or not do, where to go or not go, what to believe or not believe, or any number others from a long list of decisions.
Isaiah 46:9-10 says that God declares the end from the beginning.
This means that God knows how everything will happen from the very beginning of creation, right? Right. This is precisely how His prophecies perfectly come to pass, and how His prophets can be validated from among the false prophets.
While some decision's outcomes may be very similar, others will be vastly different. For instance, if Hank made a decision to study aerospace engineering rather than animal husbandry, his educational course would be very different. That's not to say those fields would never somehow converge later in the future, but the odds are greater of those paths remaining separate and bringing very different sets of decisions from the other.
Let's follow an abbreviated life of Hank and a few of his choices.
[START] Hank is faced with a decision that leads to a number of different potential outcomes. Each option before Hank leads to it's own unique set of choices. Each of those choices are followed by their own unique sets of choices. Hank may choose a path that results in 10 choices because making of that 1 previous choice. Had he chosen a different path initially, he would be faced with a completely different set of options (though some may be shared) and they may be fewer or more in number.
(1) Hank makes a choice. Having done so, is God surprised with Hank's decision? No. Why? God knew that would be Hank's choice from the [START].
(2) As pointed out above, Hank's decision presents a whole new set of choices to decide between. He carefully or carelessly makes another decision from that vast number of possibilities because of his previous choice. Is God surprised this time? Nope. Even with a greater number of options Hank had to choose from, God also knew this one would also be Hank's choice from the [START].
(3) Now, Hank is at a crossroads. Only two options are in front of him this time, and each leads to vastly different outcomes. Hank really struggles with these options and then makes a decision. Was God surprised this time? Still no. God still knew that decision would be made from the [START]. God also knows if Hank had chosen different paths at any time earlier in his life this crossroad may not have ever been encountered, and God knows what decisions Hank would have faced at this same point in time in every one of those different situations.
(4) Hank faces yet another situation with a number of possible options.
(5) Hank chose, but God knew this would be Hank's end from the [START].
God, in His absolute infinitude, knows every single choice that Hank could ever potentially encounter, which ones Hank would never encounter, which ones Hank would encounter, which ones Hank would reject, and which ones Hank would choose.
Let's say that choice #4 was between the following (from left to right): Atheism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, New Age, Satanism, Voodoo, Sikhism, Baha'i, Druze, Zoroastrianism, Shinto, and Christianity
God foreknew from the [START] whether Hank would choose Christianity or reject it, but He also knew from the [START] every choice Hank would make in his life along that journey to reach that exact end. God, in His sovereignty and power, can have even prepared choices in front of Hank with opportunity to make the "right" choice toward God. For instance, another person's freedom of choices might have led them to encounter Hank and to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with him.
Hank still had the free will to choose or reject from among all of his options in life whatever they had been.
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
[1 Corinthians 10:13]
We can choose to take that way of escape or indulge in our temptation. If we are divinely appointed to sin, how can we justly be held accountable for indulging in that sin if we had no choice in the matter? And whose ability are we not tempted beyond? Ours. Even though Christians are in-dwelled by the Holy Spirit, that also implies that it is indeed a free choice.
God's word tells us to choose:
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 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, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”[Deuteronomy 30:15-20 - emphasis mine]
“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”[Joshua 24:14-15 - emphasis mine]
And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word.[1 Kings 18:21]
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.[Acts 2:38]
Repentance itself is a choice. Love also requires a choice; love forced is not love. Mankind must have freedom to love. Without that freedom to love, a person who landed in Christianity would essentially be an automaton rather than a son or daughter.
If free-will choices were not legitimate options, would not that make God's word in these instances amount to impotence, taunting, and mockery?
Both And
I believe God's sovereignty is absolute, eternal, and immutable. I also believe that free will is a gift of unhindered will that operates subordinate to and within the confines of God's sovereignty. I believe the two can both be true at the same time. Naturally, a finite man's freedom cannot override an infinite God's sovereignty, but God's sovereignty and man's freedom are not in conflict.
One has to consider the infinitude of God. It is impossible for us finite creations to comprehend His infinite nature. It's difficult enough to get even a basic concept of it.
One must also consider God's attributes. His attributes are maximal and immutable meaning they can't be changed, lessened, or increased. Although His other attributes factored into His work of creation, let's look specifically at His omniscience, His perfection, His Omniscience, His wisdom, and His goodness.
Perfection
Because of God's perfection, He could not create anything less than a perfect creation that would fulfill His perfect will. To do so would counter His innate attribute of perfection. It is a self-defeating consideration.
God knew from all the possible creations that He could make which singular creation would bring His greatest glory and yield the greatest good for His creation out of the innumerable possibilities of creations that He could have made. Bringing about His greatest glory and the greatest good for His creation would be the perfect creation option.
Some skeptics have argued that it isn't a perfect creation if evil and death exists and that some people would spend eternity in hell. The problem is that they don't take into account that if people did not have the freedom to choose between good and evil, or between self and God, that it wouldn't have been a perfect creation. It would have been a creation of automatons incapable of choice and incapable of love and devotion like a digital computer program.
Omniscience
God's omniscience, or His "all knowing" is often defined as His knowing everything about everything, but that falls incredibly short of His full knowledge. With this perfect creation in mind, God knew every single conceivable outcome of every single choice of every single being of every innumerable potential creation. This is the meaning of His omniscience. It doesn't simply mean God knows everything about everything. It means that God knows everything about every possible everything.
Now here's the difficult part for us to grasp (as if everything before this has been easy, right?):
Wisdom
In His wisdom, God so intimately foreknew even before creation what the development and character of each and every person's thoughts, inclinations, desires, aversions, reasonings, and impulses would be that He knew what choices every single person throughout every second of time would freely make when presented options. That does not equate to Him directing choices. It equates to Him allowing those choices to play out. Those choices are legitimately before all of us, and we are legitimately allowed to freely choose, but our choices are in accordance with what He already foreknew about us before creation.
Goodness
That is a perfect pairing of God's infinitude of sovereignty and His gift to mankind of free-will. It's difficult to understand, but consider it this way:
To create the greatest possible creation, one that results in God's greatest glory and His creation's greatest good, God uttered "Let there be..." with the foreknowledge of every choice that every single individual would freely make rather than a creation that forced every single individual to inescapably follow dictated lives.
Now read these verses regarding pre-destination again with that in mind:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.(Ephesians 1:3-6)
In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11)
For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified he also glorified.(Romans 8:29-30)
In God's perfection, omniscience, wisdom, goodness, and all of His other infinite attributes, that singular creation is the one that came into existence at which He began with, "Let there be..."
He knew every acceptance or rejection or choices that would ever be made even before He said "Let there be..."
Before creation even existed, because He foreknew who would freely choose Him. We were predestined to become His but still by our free choices.
Could we have chosen differently? Yes.
Would we have chosen differently? No, and God knew we wouldn't when He said "Let there be...."
That brings us to another of God's attributes.
Justice
Revelation 20 says that every person will be judged according to their works. Matthew 25 further explains that after judgement of works, some will be awarded eternal life and some awarded eternal punishment based on whether their names are recorded in the Book of Life.
If a person's actions are predetermined and they have no choice in the matter, then where's the justice in holding them ultimately accountable? If a person was not free to choose either to accept or reject God, but that "choice" was an inescapable directive they had no control over, where would grace be in allowing that person into heaven and where would justice be in sending that person to hell? Or where would justice be in forcing a person who chose against God to endure His presence for eternity?
Justice is a moral absolute of God which is a communicable attribute Christians can share because of the Holy Spirit. Man's destiny boils down to God's Judgment: either eternal life with God through the blood of Jesus making us righteous (the Judgment Seat of Christ) or eternal separation from God (the Great White Throne judgment).
God is perfect in His justice, and injustice is contrary to His nature. It is another self-defeating consideration.
Now how does this passage in 2 Peter fit in if God already knows who chooses what?
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.[2 Peter 3:9]
First, God already knows that a vast number of people are going to perish and spend an eternity away from Him. In fact, by comparison of the entirety of all of humanity, He says that "few" will make it. Our hearts should break at that fact.
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.[Matthew 7:14]
This is not because God is callous or evil. He didn't create people specifically for eternal punishment. It is the byproduct of the gift of free will. The gift of free will became twisted and tainted because of a singular choice early in human history. Just as a choice you make may affect another person or persons for ill or for good, Adam's choice has created a ripple effect that touches every single person. That twisting resulted in a human free will tendency away from God in favor of self.
So it isn't a matter of God being unsure or surprised or hoping just a few more choose to follow Him before the buzzer.
Second, the passage is written to believers to reassure them that God isn't lollygagging around on fulfilling His promise of returning and the day of His judgement.
If God made creation with the absolute foreknowledge of every single person's every single choice, then it is reasonable to believe that God is waiting for the fulfillment of those He foreknew to accept Him and when the rampancy of evil leads Him to say "Enough is enough" just as He did in Noah's day.
God didn't bring the flood until Noah alone was found righteous out of the entirety of the earth's population of that time. So, it is also reasonable to believe that God foreknew there will be a point in time coming in our future, just as it came in the days of Noah, that no additional people on earth would choose to follow Him. All of His elect would at that time be secured.
For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.[Matthew 24:37-39]
Jesus spoke about the suddenness of God's judgement and how the wicked were unaware it and going about their daily lives. How else did God describe the lives of the wicked during the days of Noah?
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. [...] Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.[Genesis 6:5-8, 11-13 - emphases mine]
That you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.[2 Peter 2-3]
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God[2 Timothy 3:1-4]
God foreknew from before creation itself that not a single person that would freely choose Him will be lost. Just as God foreknew every single person's choices that led to the time when Noah alone stood righteous before God, God foreknew the hearts of every person that will be on earth on the very last day. On that day, He will justly call End Game at a precise moment.
Joshua's call still urgently echoes to us throughout all time until that day:
Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, I will serve the Lord.
Do you disagree or see biblical fallacy in my positions? Let me know!
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