Predestination? Free Will?

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AnAtheist,
With God being omnipotent and omniscient, I fail to see the difference. The outcome is exactly the same, the same group of people end up in heaven and hell.
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God is certainly omnipotent and omniscient. Yet that doesn’t mean God did not give us free will to choose evil.

I think of salvific grace similarly to the gift of manna from heaven. God could have popped the manna right into the bellies of his people if he wanted to merely to feed them. Yet, he didn’t. While God does not require our natural deservedness to receive His gifts, he does insist upon our free will obedience to receive his gifts. Manna had to be collected in a way which showed their obedience to God. If they disobeyed God, the manna turned to worms, and was not efficacious toward its purpose. Manna was still an undeserved gift, but was not received efficaciously when collected disobediently. Yet, when they obeyed God, the gift was efficacious toward feeding God’s people. The gift of food was not produced by man’s effort, but was a undeserved gift from God. The gift does not feed the disobedient.

Heretical predestination would assert that those in hell were positively predetermined to hell, and that God gave them no opportunity to receive his gift of eternal life. However, Catholics would disagree.

Catholic predestination asserts that those in hell are there due to disobedience, due to their own personal guilt. They rejected the gift by disobedience, they rejected that light that shines upon all men, through their own fault. God does not want forced love, because that is no longer love.
"those who do not belong to this number of the predestinated … [some] receive the grace of God, but they are only for a season, and do not persevere; they forsake and are forsaken. For by their free will, as they have not received the gift of perseverance, they are sent away by the righteous and hidden judgment of God" (St. Augustine, “On Rebuke and Grace” (De Correptione et Gratis, Ch. 42)

“That light, however, does not nourish the eyes of irrational birds, but the pure hearts of those men who believe in God and turn from the love of visible and temporal things to the fulfilling of His precepts. All men can do this if they will, because that light illuminates every man coming into this world.” (St. Augustine, Genesis Defended Against the Manicheans, AD 389)
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I am settled on this question. I have come to the conclusion that we have free will to believe in predestination. :rotfl:
 
Hello Trelow,

One must remember that God exists outside of physical time. Physical time is the measurement of change between mass, energy and empty space. God created all these things at the beginning of “time”. God exists as Spirit after the “end of time”. God is Spiritually Omnipresent to the whole of physical time.

On judgement day, when Jesus judges the actions of men, God will erase or not erase a person’s name from the ‘book of life’. The ‘book of life’ is Spiritual. Anyone with their name erased from the ‘book of life’ at judgement day will not be in the ‘book of life’ before creation. Do not try to trap Spiritual things into the confines of physical time.

Spiritual Beings and Spiritual things exist outside of physical time. The Spiritual world exists in Omnipresence to the whole of physical time.

**EXODUS 32:30 **

On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a grave sin. I will go up to the LORD, then; perhaps I may be able to make atonement for your sin.” So Moses went back to the LORD and said, "Ah, this people has indeed committed a grave sin in making a god of gold for themselves! If you would only *forgive *their sin! If you will not, then strike me out of the book that you have written."

**NAB REVELATION 3:5 **

"The victor will thus be dressed in white, and** I will never erase his name from the book of life** but will acknowledge his name in the presence of my Father and of his angels.​
EXODUS 32:33

The LORD answered, "Him only who has sinned against me will I strike out of my book. Now, go and lead the people whither I have told you. My angel will go before you. When it is time for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin." Thus the LORD smote the people for having had Aaron make the calf for them.
​


​
**NAB JOHN 12:47 **

(Jesus is speaking.)
"If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I am not the one to condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save it. Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words already has his judge, namely, the word I have spoken - it is that which will condemn him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own; no, the Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to speak. Since I know that his commandment means eternal life, whatever I say is spoken just as he instructed me." NAB JOHN 5:27

(Jesus is speaking.)
“The Father has given over to him power to pass judgment because he is Son of Man; no need for you to be surprised at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his voice and come forth. **Those who have done right shall rise to live; the evildoers shall rise to be damned.” **NAB REVELATION 22:12

(Jesus is speaking.)
“Remember, I am coming soon! I bring with me the reward that will be given to each man as his conduct deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End! Happy are they who wash their robes so as to have free access to the tree of life and enter the city through its gates Outside are the dogs and sorcerers, the fornicators and murderers, the idol-worshipers and all who love falsehood.”

Peace in Christ,

Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com
 
I think y’all are going to hurt your heads thinking about this. Part of the problem of even trying to discuss this is that the only experience we have is of time; there is always a past, a present, and a future. We are always in the present, but always with a past, and always with a future.

Part of revelation is that Man has free will; that he is able to choose between good and bad. Go back to Genesis; it’s pretty clear that free will exists.

Where it all gets loopy is when we speak of God; God is not “in” time, because to be “in” time is to change, and got is unchangeable. All things are present to God at once. There is no past or future with God. God is also all knowing; so in that, God “knows” our end; he “knows” our choices. So, effectively, we can say that we are predestined, in terms of God’s knowledge, to whatever is our end; God doesn’t have to “watch” us, as the end has already happened, is happening, and will happen at the same time (this is where the head hurts…). Thus, we end up on this path of language that “God foreordained from all time…”; except that the language used puts God in time, and He isn’t. We simply do not have language to describe not being “in” time adequately. Since God is not “in” time, He (already) knows what our choice will be as far as we are concerned, because we are in time and He is not. We simply have no way to adequately express the fact that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling when it is already done. Except that it is not done, as He has given us “time” in which to work it out.

The net result is that it is not an either/or; free will or predestination; it is both/and; free will as our gift from God, and predestination as far as God is concerned, since by creating us in time but not being in time Himself, all things have happened, and are happening, and will happen.
 
Trelow, first of all I want to thank you for your profound interest in this soteriological matter. However, I do have a scruple in your post regarding the options you give: Free Will or Predestination. When discussing such issues as this, we must consider that these terms are not necessarily diametrically opposed. Even though we think of these schools of thought to be clashing head on, we must recognize that picking a side could only hinder us from discovering the mystery of God. I will agree with you that there are points for both sides on this debate. In the book of Jeremiah, God speaks about knowing Jeremiah and appointing him as prophet when he was in his mother’s womb. Paul also is a prime example of how God elected him on his journey to Damascus. On the other hand, Paul seems to write abundantly on God’s saving grace towards all mankind. In 1 Timothy 2:3-7, Paul explicitly writes that God’s desire is for all men to be saved. These scriptures may seem contradictory, however when we consider these scriptures we should formulate a broader understanding of God that isn’t as black and white such as Predestination or Free Will. So in order to grasp terms such as Predestination and Free Will, let us not accept one side and repudiate the other. The concepts of Predestination and Free Will are constructed to expand and stretch our minds to comprehend truths about God, not to place limits and restrictions on Him. Let us continue in seeking God that He will reveal more of his truths through philosophies of Predestination and Free Will.
 
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