I am a rare breed in that I believe that both free will and predestination exist as controlling forces in our lives. Yes, I do believe that God’s will brought about the acts of Hitler and the sacking of Constantinople, as well as all the heroic acts by all the individuals resisting these horrendous acts.
It is the duality I see in God’s creation, His ability to plan the whole thing out, to have it scripted down to the smallest detail, yet God, in His omnipotent power is able to let the creature create itself totally while living its completed predetermined life. This is true of all the critters God gave a choice too, for the worm up to man. When a worm can turn right or left in its search for nourishment and sex, it must make the choice, and by so doing becomes that which God planed. I, no less then the worm, must choose each decision placed before me, and by my free-will decisions I become that which God has scripted for me. Once a decision has been made it cannot be unmade.
As I see it each decision was made once. And once only and came with God’s act of creation. Everything that exist, exist now, or it does not exist at all. All of time is laid out like the pages in a book or the frames in a film, form beginning to end; it is God’s awareness that brings the book alive as we pass that point in the story.
Let me reiterate, once a decision is made, it is made for all of eternity, not half of eternity. That means every decision I ever made had been made for all times sake on the moment of the decision. As I was created, everything I will ever be was created. Tomorrow does not happen be chance, it is the unfolding of the Story. It is line-by-line, day-by-day that I live, but the Story is whole and complete from its creation. From Everlasting to Everlasting never changing, it cannot change, because it contains everything that could possibly be. If it is not in the story it cannot be, not ever. The Story is longer and in more detail then we can ever imagine, for it is in truth the Never Ending Story, and every tell ever told, or ever to be told, is in the Story, it only takes the eyes of God and his Word to bring it to life. When his Words are spoken as his Eyes see the Story time is brought into existence and the Story is lineated into a time line. But because it is stretched in to a line for the telling and living, does not mean that all time does not exist at the same time, just as all the words of a song are present at the beginning of the song, still the song must be sung for the song to be experienced.
It through God’s plan that death came into this world "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (I Cor. 15:53).’
1Pe Ch. 1 v 23: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. v24: For all flesh [is] as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
Rev. Ch. 12 v17: And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Here in lie the basics of my argument: Adam and Eve were borne into corruptible flesh and to be born again into the incorruptible, Satin, at God’s command, went to war with the off springs of Eve, bringing death into the world, for without the fall they never could be a need for Jesus Christ, and the incorruptible would never have been obtainable. Maybe God could have done it another way, but He chose to do it this way, and all of history has been the working out of mankind’s salvation. No amount of additional faith could have prevented Adam from being tempted and bringing about the fall.
And as to whether or not anyone has a choice about being saved:
Isa 42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, [in whom] my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
Isa 45:4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.
Isa 65:9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there.
Isa 65:22 They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree [are] the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
Mat 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Mar 13:27 And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
Luk 18:7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
Rom 8:33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? [It is] God that justifieth.
Col 3:12 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
Tts 1:1 Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness;
1Pe 1:2 Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
Remember the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. His brothers, with evil in their hearts threw him into a pit, then sold him into slavery to be rid of him because of the love that their father had for him. Joseph was taken down into Egypt where, because of his attitude, dream interpretation ability, and demeanor he became adviser to Pharaoh and was put into the position that allowed him to save his family from the famine that struck the land for seven years. Joseph could have been all vindictive and mean when his brothers came before him, but you know the story, the tribe was preserved and Jesus was born. God’s plan for Joseph was worked through the evil in his brother’s heart. It is hard to see how Joseph could have went into Egypt, become Pharaoh’s right hand man, and put into a position to save his family’s life without first having been sold into slavery.
It was predestined for Joseph to be in Egypt and have a position that would enable him to preserve the Chosen People, but the acts of Joseph’s brothers were act of free will, as were the decision of the slavers who decision led them to the pit that Joseph had been cast. What do you get when you have million and millions, even billion and billions of free wills trying to determine the course of their lives. Do you not get a lot of friction, confusion, and interference? You would if everyone truly had free will, but when you consider it, no one can have true free will because they seldom have anything to do with the choices that are presented to them after they pick a direction, and that direction is picked as they come out of the womb. They do have an illusion that they are the masters of their souls, but what person in his sixties dreamed of the place when he was twenty that he found himself today? Circumstances buffeted him million upon millions of times in his life. Coincidences shaped his choices time and time again. He was born in this country, what choice in that? He was born into that family, what choice in that? What choice did he have in the school he went to when he was a child? How did he decide to go to work or go to collage? Was that choice not made largely by the circumstances of his life then? Were his parents rich, poor, or indifferent to the value of an education? Was their a depression going on?
Either we believe that God has a Plan, and everything is going according to this plan, or Darwin is in charge and everything is as it is just because of chance. The kind act done to us, the forgiveness bestowed upon us, all the product of just random molecules that swarmed together and happen to start reacting together to make a star of just the right type, that some how spawned a planets with just the right size, temperature range, etc., that fostered life in a batch of chemicals that just happen to come together at just the right time and under just the right conditions, and in just the right portions to instigate an spontaneous ignition of a life then by accidental chance it continue to become more and more organized, more complex until man walked the face of the earth. And become good or evil all by chance.
But I regress, God had to get Joseph down into Egypt to save the Tribes of Israel in the future so he worked through Joseph’s brothers bad evil acts in order to work His plan. This begs the question of fault and blame. Again I ask are Joseph’s brother’s responsible for the evil they preformed if in their acts they were performing the Will of God?
Before you make up your mind go a little further into the story of Israel’s delivery into and out of slavery. When God sent Moses to Pharaoh with His demands to let his people go how many times did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Is Pharaoh to be held accountable for defying God’s will when it was God Himself who set Pharaoh’s heart to do as he did? Taken even to the death of all Egypt’s firstborn sons, and on unto the death of Pharaoh.
Can Pharaoh be held to blame in any of the pelages that were called down upon Egypt? Did Pharaoh or Joseph have any free will to deify God’s plan? "And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay My hand upon Egypt, and bring forth Mine armies, and My people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth Mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them"
Some might argue that God did not plan for Joseph’s brothers to sell, but just worked through their evil to do good. How, pray, else was God going to get Joseph, an uneducated tribesman, with no ambition other then being a herdsman, from the Land of Canaan into the position of the second most powerful person in the greatest nation on the face of the earth? Consider the constrain which God has put on Himself to work within the framework of history to enact His plan. He does not resort to supernatural means to bring about very many events. Mostly God works within the hearts and minds of people to bring about His Kingdom. God does not go “Pooff” and change you from a truck driver to the Sectary of Defense in the wink of an eye.
If then Free Will is a demonstrable false idea why is held in such high esteem? It has dawned upon me that the reason we cling so dearly to the idea of Free Will is to be able to give credit and lay blame. To hold people accountable for their act through either rewards or punishment and balance out their account. But if the Glory is God’s then what part of doing good is to be credited to man, and by the same reasoning, what part of doing evil is to be credited to man?
If Darwinism is correct then this blame is a totally wrong-headed approach. To punish someone for acts they committed because of how their parents raised and treated them, or because of how their DNA predetermined their action is an evil in itself. What the Darwinist would have you do is treat the wrong doer as someone who had been made sick by circumstances outside their control. If you fix their environment, and give them good examples they will fix the error of their ways.
Most Christians pooh-paw this conception and condemn it as mollycoddling. When someone does wrong they want the perpetrator to acknowledge their wrongdoing, accept the blame, admit culpability, and be held accountable. If someone does something good they feel it is only right that person receives acclaims and kudos. In all of this they lay credit or blame up based upon the belief that the person acted under their own Free Will. Although many of them give lip service to the idea that God has a plan for mankind and works through man to realize that plan, when they see the plan in action they want to take the credit away from God and give it to the actors who follow his script. To God belongs the Glory and the Power.
Even the two prisoners who had been throne in jail with Joseph had to be scripted. One had stole the other had not. God sent dreams to each, Joseph interpreted both dreams with the abilities that God had given him. It was the cup bearing recounting of Joseph’s ability to correctly interpret dreams that took him into the position that enabled him to save his tribe. Had the one had hot been tempted to steal from Pharaoh, if the circumstances had not conspired to insured an innocent was arrested with the guilty (and not just any innocent, but one that had the ear of Pharaoh) then Joseph would have stayed in prison and the tribe would have starved to death and Jesus would have never been born. "Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: For God did send me before you to preserve life" (Gen. 45:5).
You have three ways you can look at that story: First you can believe the story is just a work of fiction and the plot worked as it did because it was wrote that way. Next you can believe that the story is true, but each event (being sold into slavery, being throne in prison, the innocent and guilty being put in prison, correct interpretation of the dreams, etc.) was completely true, but each happened accidentally with nothing to guide the juxtaposing of the events to the salvation of the Tribes of Israel but happenstance. Finally you can believe that God has a plan and each act was the enactment of that plan.
How you interpret this story determines how you view life, or is it that how you view life will determine how you interpret the story. The truth is you do not get to decide what you believe. God has given your beliefs to you, either by the world or by Jesus. Even if you are careful you can be blinded to God’s plan by you indignant sense of justice and see only the unfairness of the person who had to steal and be executed so Joseph could be placed in charge of Egypt’s grain production. Just remember, "For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" (Rom. 9:15).
If then, I know you will ask, if God has set us to sin then why does he hold us to blame for that sin? I will let Paul answer that question; “Nay but, O man, WHO ARE YOU that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, why have You made me thus? Has not the Potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?" (Rom. 9:20-21). "In Whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own Will" (Eph. 1:11).
The last nail in the coffin of Free Will is the belief that God has a foreknowledge of all that will ever happen. If God has an absolute true knowledge of the future then Free Will cannot order a change in God’s knowledge. If it is know afore then all that can be done it that which is know to be done. You can get around this by denying God has foreknowledge, but no other way. "Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, which appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. For that ye ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that" (James 4:13-15).
God made us as we are and we are weak in the flesh. If we do not get to decide what we believe then what are we but clay? It was from dust that we came and into dust, which we will return. Fatalism? Yeah, for sure! No need to try then? Just you try and get out of it! We will do God’s Will and happily believe it to be our own. You cannot choose to see the Truth, the Truth will choose you to see if it will. "Wherefore art Thou speaking in parables to them? ... To you has it been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of the heavens, yet to those it has NOT been given." (Matt.: 13:10-11).
That you have a will cannot be disputed, as discussed earlier, you must will all purposed motion of your body. You do not walk without an act of will. But as we have discussed before, all choices placed before you for your will to act upon is provided be a chain of events that at best you have only had marginal control over. How free can your will be when you have little choice in the choices placed before you is the question. If you ever did anything, then it was yours to do from the begging of time. And if you are ever to do anything it is not yours to avoid, just yours to do. Once something is done, it is done forever. There is no half of forever; it was forever long before it was done. How you react to the choices placed before you was determined for all times sake before you were born by the natural, God Willed, interaction between your strengths and weakness and the opportunities to do act according to your heart’s desire. Your nature has led you through the choice that have been placed before you until you find yourself in my vain glory reading these words.
