In his post A definition of Scripture that conforms to the realia of the text John Hobbins hides some nuggets about God and predestination, which deserve to be repeated in a post where they are not a digression (John’s own word). This is the central one:
an all-powerful, all-knowing God cannot intend anything without predetermining everything unless that same God is all-loving.
The argument seems to be that only an all-loving God, like the one we read about in the Bible, is able to
not allow what he knows will happen in the future to predetermine everything he does in the present.
John illustrates this as follows:
like God, since I am a loving parent, I predetermine that I will not completely determine, for example, my son Giovanni’s choice with respect to where to go to university.
This is of course a completely biblical way of looking at the matter:
Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.Psalm 32:9 (TNIV)
That is, God does not want to control our every decision as if “by bit and bridle”, but wants us to make our own choices based on understanding.
This is true of the big decisions in life as well as the small ones. And that means it is also true of the greatest decision of all, whether or not to give one’s life to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Indeed we can only come to him if God draws us (John 6:44), but Jesus who is also God draws everyone to himself (John 11:32; I’m sure there is no real distinction between the Father and Jesus drawing people to him), so no one is left out. In this connection another equine proverb, although not biblical, is true:
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.
Similarly, God can lead lost human beings to the true living water, but he cannot make them drink, not without violating their humanity. He doesn’t want us to be “like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding”, so he allows us to make our own choices whether or not to accept his gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. In his kingdom he wants not animals who are there by force, but persons who have decided for themselves to live with him in love for ever.
Thanks, Peter, for the link.
Two qualifications. It’s true that God’s determination pro nobis (on our behalf) is not necessarily realized in details either large or small, but it is also true that it can be.
As the famous poem has it, God sometimes is like the Hound of Heaven who hunts us down for our own good and saves us though we run the other way, not once, but over and over again.
God is sometimes like the Genie in the movie Aladdin. The street rat the Genie adopted is thrown off a cliff into the deep blue sea and is about to drown. He is completely incapable of speech and using one of his three wishes to ask for help but the Genie takes note and says, “I take that as a Yes,” and saves him.
God does that kind of thing sometimes.
Finally, we should never rule out God’s post-determination pro nobis. See Revelation 21:24-26; 22:2: after Judgment day, the nations continue to stream into the New Jerusalem and find healing in the leaves of the tree of life.
I found your post here so helpful
Thank you
John, thanks for these qualifications. Yes, I’m sure God sometimes hounds people to do what is right, but ultimately he lets them say no. He can certainly understand people’s unspoken pleas for salvation when in extreme conditions. As for whether people can still be saved after death, I leave judgment on such matters to God.
By the way, despite putting forward this very Arminian position, do you still call yourself a Calvinist?
Rachel, I’m glad to be of help. Of course you should realise that not everyone agrees with me, or John. The strict Calvinists may still have their say in this comment thread.
Peter,
I should take it a compliment that you want to make me into an Arminian heretic, but I am not.
I do not believe that God always respects our decisions. Just as a loving parent will, God does not always respect the decisions of his children. He overrides them as the occasion requires, without their consent.
In point of fact, God limits human freedom in countless ways.
Furthermore, just as is a parent’s love for his children, God’s love for humanity is unconditional. Humanity’s “no” will never change that. He meets our “no” with a “yes” on the cross. Close observation of humanity confirms that the “no” is total except insofar as God brings about the contrary by common and special grace.
As soon as you make salvation dependent on a “yes” that is not itself a gift of grace, you have left Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley behind.
At some point, a self-identifying Arminian has to decide if he or she can answer the questions Charles Simeon posed to Wesley in the same way as Wesley did:
Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart?
Yes, I do indeed.
And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?
Yes, solely through Christ.
But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?
No, I must be saved by Christ from first to last.
Allowing, then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?
No.
What then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother’s arms?
Yes, altogether.
And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto His heavenly kingdom?
Yes, I have no hope but in Him.
As Simeon said, so I say:
“this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I hold.”
So, John, you are going to let your son decide on his own university and then override his decision? I can understand you wanting to protect him from a bad decision, but it would be dishonest for you to tell him that he had a free choice but in fact intend to override that choice if you don’t like the result.
I do not actually agree with Wesley and Simeon on all of the exchange you quote. I do not accept that an unsaved human being would not even think of turning to God. Of course I can appeal to the get-out “if God had not first put it into your heart” on the common grace basis that there is nothing in my heart which God has not first put there. God has put into every human heart the desire to find him, Acts 17:27, which has been spoiled but not removed by the fall.
Indeed there are many people in the world who are seeking God but not from a position of faith in Jesus. But they fail to find him because they are looking in the wrong place, such as in religion as Paul is talking about in Acts 17, not on the only road by which they can find him, which is through Jesus Christ. The reason why few find that right way is that Satan, not God, has blinded them to it, 2 Corinthians 4:4.
Note that I appeal not to “authorities” like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley but to the only authority I recognise, that of the Bible, in fact the words of Paul who you claim as supporting your position when he doesn’t.
Peter,
I didn’t say that a parent or God as Sovereign Lord always overrides the decisions of someone under his or her responsibility. Only when that is appropriate – not an easy thing to determine, as every parent knows.
You are indeed an Arminian and I am dismayed by it. What Arminians do is take Jesus’s saying (Matthew 22:14) – many are called [invited] but few are chosen – and rewrite it to say: many are invited but few choose to accept the invitation.
Jesus’s emphasis and the Bible’s emphasis is on God’s choosing us, not us choosing him (a response, nothing more, and nothing less, to God’s prior action). You think Paul is on your side, but he isn’t. Look who is doing the choosing in 1 Cor 1:18-31 – just an example.
This is not to suggest that God’s choice with respect to those who are not chosen is arbitrary. On the contrary: those who are not chosen are not worthy (so, e.g., Matthew 22). On the other hand, those are chosen are also not worthy (you follow Paul at least this far, I imagine). This fact ought to make us cautious about the number of those whom God will ultimately save: it may be larger than appears now.
As for your seeming suggestion that Satan is the ultimate explanation why some people are saved and others not: that’s just perverse. Now it’s Satan, not God, who chooses who is saved and who not?
Or perhaps you assume without realizing it that God and Satan agree on who is to be saved/damned, so that you can, after the fact, give God the credit for saving those he (God) saves, and Satan the blame for those he (Satan) damns.
I’d rather be a Calvinist any day.