I've been meaning to post about this for a while and after a recent chat with a friend I’ve been inspired to do so. My friend told me how he was at party were a theological student, a stranger, asked him if he believed in predestination and went on to explain why he did and that the more he studied the bible the more he was convinced of predestination. I am not.
Predestination is the idea that your life and relationship with God is all preplanned, just waiting to unfold. This idea is based on a few false precursor ideas.
1. God is outside of time.
2. God is all knowing and all powerful.
3. Since God is outside time, knows everything including the future and God is all powerful, we do not have the power to change the future.
I think these 3 things are not biblical ideas. If you believe them it is not possible believe in prayer or free will as you have no power to change your destination. I’ve heard some explanations trying to reconcile this which usually involved some pretty amazing mental gymnastics or stories about two train tracks look like they meet but never actually do.
So here are my thoughts.
1. God is not outside of time.
2. God does not know the future.
Instead God makes plans for the future. God even repents of things done in the past. God does not know the future, God has made some plans and promises and is pretty good at keeping them. We have free will, not just the illusion but actual free will.
Finally the actual bible verse from which all of this predestination talk actually comes from is Romans 8:29. In this verse we are just predestined to become more like Christ. This simply means if you become Xn you're going to become more like Christ as God's spirit works in you. So this one passage is actually something fairly simple rather than some huge new radical concept through which the rest of the bible must be explained.
I know this is a short post given the topic. I’m happy to expand if people want.
Predestination is the idea that your life and relationship with God is all preplanned, just waiting to unfold. This idea is based on a few false precursor ideas.
1. God is outside of time.
2. God is all knowing and all powerful.
3. Since God is outside time, knows everything including the future and God is all powerful, we do not have the power to change the future.
I think these 3 things are not biblical ideas. If you believe them it is not possible believe in prayer or free will as you have no power to change your destination. I’ve heard some explanations trying to reconcile this which usually involved some pretty amazing mental gymnastics or stories about two train tracks look like they meet but never actually do.
So here are my thoughts.
1. God is not outside of time.
2. God does not know the future.
Instead God makes plans for the future. God even repents of things done in the past. God does not know the future, God has made some plans and promises and is pretty good at keeping them. We have free will, not just the illusion but actual free will.
Finally the actual bible verse from which all of this predestination talk actually comes from is Romans 8:29. In this verse we are just predestined to become more like Christ. This simply means if you become Xn you're going to become more like Christ as God's spirit works in you. So this one passage is actually something fairly simple rather than some huge new radical concept through which the rest of the bible must be explained.
I know this is a short post given the topic. I’m happy to expand if people want.
6 comments:
i guess my issue with this reasoning is that the assumption is that if god is outside of time and knows the future that it is predestined, whereas i think thats making a few jumps that i think are incorrect.
theres a difference between knowing and planning, between being one who exists now as one did before the beginning and at the same time as one does at the end.
there's also a huge jump in our understanding of "knowing" as we assume it's the same as we "know" whereas god is not us and god's knowing is beyond our knowing.
there's also i believe a jump in the understanding that god knows therefore god is all powerful and does not feel. we hear in scriptures the lengths at which god feels, grieves and celebrates in life and death and suffering and evil. knowing and feeling do not separate in the understanding that god is in yet not in time, outside yet not out of time...
i think this gets closer to the scripture's understanding of i am who i am, or i am who i will be, or i will be who i will be...
Just been thinking some more...
I don't believe in pre-destination, but I do believe that God being outside of time is a theological and biblical "truth"
We say as we read Genesis "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
I would argue that theologically speaking there was no time until God created it, and as such God is outside of, or not of time, beyond time... and as such cannot be in time, not entirely...
mmmmmm
not arguing, just thinking...
I have some questions concerning what u believe.
1. What is your biblical understanding of the word predestination?
2. How do u arrive at god not being outside of time?
3. How is it that god does not know the future. How could he have planned the death of his son ,and told the prophet isaiah exactly how it was going to happen if he does not know the future.
4. I was of the understanding from the scriptures that it is man that needs to repent for their sins, I dont think god falls into that category.
Actually your god sounds very much like a man , not all knowing , not all powerful, really quite helpless and just hoping things turn out for the best. I would go back to my friend if I were u and try to understand him more. Also John Pipers site desiring god has alot of stuff on this topic.
Hello Darren and Lesley,
I think there are a few good issues that you have both raised. Mostly from stuff that I have badly explained.
1. Is God outside of time? I'll write a post on this as soon as I can get around to it. In short I don't think there is anything explicit in the Bible that says that God is outside of time. In fact I think it's only really an idea that the ancient Greeks thought of. There are certainly poetic passages that might seem to reaffirm that idea, like Psalm 90:4 "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night." But is not a basis for this belief in the first place.
2. My understanding of the usual understanding of "predestined" is pretty much the same as predetermined. (correct me if I'm wrong on this - I still thinking of myself as predestined, just predestined to be more like Christ). My thought was along the line that if someone (ie: God) knows the future that the future must therefore be fixed.
3. How is it that God does not know the future. I think there are 2 possibilities that could make sense of Isaiah, either (1) God does know and is telling Isaiah exactly what is going to happen. or (2) God has a pretty good idea of what would happen should Jesus come to earth and has the ability to make certain things happen. So for example if a prophet had predicted that Jesus would heal a shepard. Would that shepard have been healed because (a) God knew the future or because (b) God knew what Jesus would be like and was able to make the healing happen there and then. I realise Many people would argue for both a and b. But I don't think having a God who is inside time and does not know the future, means that God is less powerful as we would believing in a God who can make the future happen rather than one who can see the future.
4. God repenting. Sorry to spring that on you, repenting is not always associated with sin (although often is). The repenting that God does is not of a "sin" but rather something that God had regretted doing. It is in Genesis 6:6-7 "And the Lord was SORRY that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am SORRY that I have made them." The Hebrew word for sorry is translated as sorry in most other parts of the Hebrew
Anyway if the issue doesn't really bother you too much either way. I'm not on a crusade to convince you one way or another. I just decided to write this as I know lots of people who struggle with the whole freewill, predestination and God knowing the future thing and rarely meet Xns who have ideas about it all similar to me.
Thanks for reading
cheers for that,
im not one to argue abotu it really, not fussed either way, but i still don't make the automatic jump you seem to make in "if someone (ie: God) knows the future that the future must therefore be fixed."
there's a difference between knowing and being fixed, and that's the bit I still have issues with, where I am at the moment the theology is rather conservative and would say it is fixed, I don't subscribe to that, but then again I can still hold in balance God knowing the future and God not have fixed my future...
Hey Darren,
Yes indeed I have made that jump. I will revisit that idea and get back to you.
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