Predestination vs Foreordination, you decide!

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I used to go to church with my family in a mining town called Welkom in the Free State province of South Africa. I was very naive. As the congregation was small, the families spent a great deal of together. There were teenagers who were greatly admired by the young kids like myself. This was in the late 1960’s / early 1970’s.

I will never forget when the one older teenager, Colleen Parkins, brought her LP record to church. It was “Aqualung” by Jethro Tull. She showed me the “heretical words” on the cover of the album where it was said “and man made God in his own image”. I had never heard such a thing before in my young life. It was proof to me of the decline of modern society; that “overseas countries” were on the brink of collapse!

When I became a teenager later (as we all must), I really got to love his music (especially his skill with the flute) and think about what was implied in that statement. Ian describes himself as a mixture of a deist and a pagan.
A deist has many defining elements, the key elements to me are simply two things; 1) belief in a Supreme Being who does not interfere with mankind and 2) reject organised religions as priest craft.
A pagan is basically a term to describe non – Christian religions by early Christians.

As I have grown older, I have seen many religions change from when I was young in the 1960’s until today at the end of 2017. People living together was hush-hush when I was a kid; it was never polite to speak about the status of such people. I never even knew what homosexuality was until I read about it in the novels of various German authors as a teenager. I see that women are now allowed into the clergy in several religions whereas previously, such positions in the clergy were solely for men. Church attire has become more relaxed and casual in these days when compared to my youth. So yes, I suppose that there are grounds for Deism and I certainly understand where Ian was coming from.

But what does the above background have to do with the title of the article?

Simply put, language is key to understanding, but it is not a perfect vehicle. This of course becomes much more difficult when attempting to move ideas or concepts across the language barrier. History, cultures, and so on, must be considered, particularly without judgment.

So when one looks at the Bible, the term “creation” is found. Western scholars view the word as meaning “made out of nothing”. Generally, it is taken to mean that all life was made by God.

This causes a dilemma in my mind and a serious flaw, even from a point of logic.

Let us take a few general concepts as accepted by Christianity in general:

1. God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
2. God possesses all positive elements of character in perfection, such as kindness, love, mercy, patience, justice, knowledge and so on. If you can think of a good thing, then ultimately God has that attribute in perfection.
3. God has no characteristics of evil in his nature; he cannot lie nor sin in any way. All his works must be good.

So here is the dilemma, how does this planet operate? I see a great deal of misery and suffering, certainly not in line with God’s characteristics. Did not God make us all? Isn’t God perfect? Then why do his works seem to be so flawed? When these types of questions are asked of Christians, the general answer is that it is a mystery and beyond a mere mortal’s comprehension. To the questioner, it seems as if a Christian must leave their brains behind when confronted by logic.

The problem becomes greater when logic is applied as it was by the great minds of men such as Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin. Their core doctrines are election and predestination. These ideas are contrary to concepts such as justice and love to my way of thinking. To put these doctrines bluntly; 1) election – some people are saved at God’s whim or pleasure, regardless of any actions people make during mortality. 2) predestination – where any action of any mortal is fixed, there can be no possible deviation.

These ideas may seem horrific but they are based on sound logic. If God made us from nothing, then we are the workmanship of his hands. Any actions we do have been programmed into us. Therefore, if he made us all and we are helpless to choose, then any fate that comes upon us depends upon God, some will be saved into heaven and the rest will be doomed into hell.

Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, raised an interesting idea where it was stated that the essence of mankind is eternal in nature (intelligences). He contended that in Hebrew the word create is more closely aligned with “organised”, in other words, existing matter is organised into a physical shape. The intelligences were eventually placed into physical bodies etc.

If this is the case, then concepts such as agency to choose, and judgement have much more meaning and is no longer a charade because our decision-making is our own and not a divine string pulling us in pre-ordained patterns of conduct.
The next critical concept to consider is God’s foreknowledge of all events on this planet. If he can see the end from the beginning, how much choice can there really be for individuals? Are we not all trapped as a puppet would be in a puppet show?

Maybe this dilemma can be eased when we consider the example of a parent, who when looking upon their son, can see that the choices made by the son will have certain consequences. If the son is lazy and is not prepared to study, despite constant encouragement and even punishment, then the son will not be able to qualify to study further at a university. Did the parent’s understanding of the consequences for their son, cause their son to fail entrance to the university? I think not. So if God has all the divine attributes in perfection, he ought to be able to see the consequences of choices and actions of people, even on a global scale, even for thousands of years.

So it could be concluded that God’s foreknowledge will not influence the decisions that we make in life. I do not pretend to understand all the finer aspects of agency and God assisting mankind without compromising the integrity of mankind’s choices but I do believe the balance is maintained.

There are several comments made in the Bible that indicate that the spirit of man used to exist in the presence of God. (Ecclesiastes 12;7 and Jeremiah 1:4+5). The main points of these scriptures being that we existed before this earth life; that God knew our strengths and weaknesses; and God placed us here on earth at certain times and places that should allow for our optimum growth and influence.

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