Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what the early Christians believed about predestination and free will. Now, I'm going to tell you at the outset that for many of you, tonight's message is not going to be an adequate discussion of the topic. That's because to fully grasp what the early Christians believed on predestination and free will, you also have to understand what they believed about salvation, the fall of man, and the atonement.
Because these are all interlinked with their beliefs on free will and predestination. So if at the end of tonight's message you still have unanswered questions on the subject, let me refer you to the messages I've previously given on salvation and the atonement. And the atonement set also covers the fall of man. I also recommend that you listen to the two sets of messages that I've recently prepared. One is how do we harmonize Paul and James?
And the other one is," Does God really view our righteous acts as filthy rags?" Now, if you've listened to all of those, I think it'll totally cover this subject. The basic approach I'm going to take tonight will be the standard plan that I think I've used on every one of these messages on what the early Christians believed. First, I'm going to briefly tell you in a few sentences what they did believe.
Secondly, I will go to their writings and read passages from their writings so you can hear them speak for yourselves. Third, we're going to then look at the Bible passages that explain why they believed what they did. And I'll be presenting arguments as to why I think their explanations on the subject fit the Bible better than most of the other ones I hear.
Finally, we're going to look at some of the passages in Scripture that naturally raise questions on this subject, and hopefully we'll be able to answer those questions. So to begin, in a nutshell, this is what they believed. Man has free will. He did not lose that free will in the fall. We do have the power to choose to obey God or choose to disobey Him. The fall of man did not destroy our free will. All right, number two, God has perfect foreknowledge of the future.
So he already knows who will maintain an obedient love-faith relationship with Jesus Christ to the end, and who won't. But right now, as you and I are living, we are writing the script, if you want to put it that way, of our life, and of our eternal destination. Now God has already read that script because He was able to look into the future before we were ever born. But we are the ones who write the script, not God. I'll give you an illustration of how this works.
This is from, I think, back in 1985, when I was still attending an evangelical church. And even though I didn't watch football very often, I usually did watch the Super Bowl each year. Well, this particular Sunday that the Super Bowl fell on, there was also a Twila Paris concert. She's a Christian singer in a nearby town. And Deborah and I really wanted to hear her concert. So I was a little bit torn.
All right, do I watch the Super Bowl or do I do something a little bit more spiritual and go to this Christian music concert? Well, I decided the right thing to do was to go to the concert, but I then put our VCR on so that it would automatically record the Super Bowl. Well, the concert went fine. We came back home later that night, and I had no idea of who had won the Super Bowl, but I had it all recorded. Now at that point, I was in a similar position to where God is before we were born.
In fact, before the Earth was even created. I could at any time look into the future and find out who won the Super Bowl and by how much. All of that was fixed. There was nothing that could be changed at that point in time. It had already been determined, and it was all right there on the videotape. But I'm not the one who wrote the script for the Super Bowl. Those players had total free will. Whoever won won because of being a better football team or at least playing a better game on that particular day.
The final result was purely a result of what they did. I had no involvement with it at all. The fact that now later that night I could sit down and go forward in the videotape and find out what the score was at halftime, or what it was at the end of the third quarter, or anything else, in no way took away their ability to play that game the way they wanted to. Now, the only difference is that in the case of God, He sees this before we're ever even born.
So right now we're writing the script that he's already looked at. Or to put it another way, right now you and I are playing the Super Bowl. We're the players out there. We have the free will to make right decisions, to make wrong decisions. But God is also one of the players in the Super Bowl of our life. He gives us guidance and power and that sort of thing. But he's also videotaping, to use the illustration, this Super Bowl of our life.
It's all being recorded down, and instead of looking at it at the end of our life, he has the ability to look at it before we're even born. But the results are exactly the same. And let me just say so there's no misunderstanding. I'm not endorsing either football or the Super Bowl or television. Those are all things that were in the past part of my life. Now let's let them explain what they believed in their own words.
First quotation is from Justin Martyr from about the year 160." Lest some suppose from what has been said by us that we say that whatever occurs happens by a fatal necessity because it is foretold as known beforehand, this too we explain. We have learned from the prophets and we hold it to be true that punishments, chastisements, and good rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man's actions. Now, if this is not so, but all things happen by fate, then neither is anything at all in our own power.
For if it is predetermined that this man will be good and this other man will be evil, neither is the first one meritorious nor the latter man to be blamed. And again, unless the human race has the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions. Again, he wrote," It was God's desire for both angels and men who were endowed with free will that if they chose the things acceptable to him, he would keep them free from death and from punishment.
However, if they did evil, he would punish each as he sees fit." Now, I remember when I first read that quotation nearly 20 years ago, I was so surprised to see the term" free will." I had always thought that was a term that had been coined after the Reformation or maybe even in the 19th century or something. But no, it was a term that the early Christians use. In fact, they use it quite a lot. They're the ones who coined it. Tatian, another Christian apologist writing about the year 160.
He says each of these two orders of creatures, he was talking about men and angels, was made free to act as it pleased. They did not have the nature of good, which again is with God alone. However, it is brought to perfection in men through their freedom of choice. In this manner, the bad man can be justly punished, having become depraved through his own fault.
Likewise, the just man can be deservedly praised for his virtuous deeds, since in the exercise of his free choice, he refrained from transgressing the will of God. And the power of the Logos has in itself a faculty to foresee future events. He foretold from time to time the issue of things to come, not as having been fated, but as taking place by the choice of free agents.
Melito, who was a bishop in the early church, writing about the year 170, said," There is therefore nothing to hinder you from changing your evil manner of life because you are a free man." Theophilus, another early Christian apologist writing about the year 180. He said," If on the other hand, talking about man, he would turn to the things of death, disobeying God, he would himself be the cause of death to himself.
For God made man free and with power of himself." Irenaeus, who served as bishop in Lyon, France, writing about the year 170 or 180, said," But man, being endowed with reason, and in this respect similar to God, having been made free in his will and with power over himself is himself his own cause that sometimes he becomes wheat and sometimes becomes chaff." Again, Irenaeus wrote," God has always preserved freedom and the power of self-government in man.
Yet at the same time, he issued his own exhortations in order that those who do not obey him would be righteously judged because they have not obeyed him, and those who have obeyed and believed on him should be honored with immortality." Again, Irenaeus writes, quoting from scriptures," Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds." And then again quoting from Jesus, He says," Why call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things that I say?" Irenaeus continues now," All such passages demonstrate
the independent will of man, for it is in man's power to disobey God and to forfeit what is good." One final passage from Irenaeus.
He said," If then it were not in our power to do or not to do these things, what reason did the apostle have, and much more the Lord Himself, to give us counsel to do some things and to abstain from others?" But because man is possessed of free will from the beginning, and God is possessed of free will in whose likeness man was created, advice is always given to him to hold fast to the good, which is done through obedience to God. God has preserved the will of man free and under man's own control.
This is not merely in works, but also in faith. Clement of Alexandria, writing about the year 195, says," We have believed and are saved by voluntary choice." Incidentally, these writers were scattered all over the globe. Irenaeus was in what would today be France. Justin Martyr was in the city of Rome. Tatian was in Syria. Clement of Alexandria was in Alexandria, Egypt. And yet they all say the same thing.
Again from Clement of Alexandria, he says," Each one of us who sins with his own free will chooses punishment." So the blame lies with Him who chooses. God is without blame. Incidentally, the reason they talk about this subject so much is that the predominant philosophy in Rome at this time was Stoicism. And the Stoics were strong believers in predestination that all actions, good and bad, were already predetermined by the gods. And so we're not free to do good or to do bad.
It's already been determined by the gods what we will do. And the early Christians were having to write to counter that and to explain the truth of what Christianity teaches in contrast to Stoic philosophy. Another passage from Clement, he says," Neither praises nor censures, neither rewards nor punishments are right if the soul does not have the power of inclination and disinclination, and if evil is involuntary." In no respect is God the author of evil.
But since free choice and inclination originate sins, punishments are justly inflicted. And again, he writes," Sin then is voluntary on my part." Another quote from Clement:" Perhaps the father himself draws to himself everyone who has led a pure life and who has reached the conception of the blessed and incorruptible nature. Or perhaps the free will that is in us, by reaching the knowledge of the good, leaps and bounds over the barriers, as the gymnasts say.
Either way, it is not without imminent grace that the soul is winged, soars, and is raised above the higher spheres. I wanted to read that one just as a reminder that in talking about free will and we're just focusing on the quotations that deal with free will, these same early Christian writers were not denying the absolutely essential role that Grace plays in our salvation.
And that's why I said you really need to hear what they have to say about the subjects of salvation and some of these other topics that I have covered in other messages. Because tonight I'm focusing just on the ones that deal with predestination and free will. But I would hate for you to come away from this thinking that they believe that we save ourselves since we have free will. No, they did believe man was fallen and that we are not capable of saving ourselves, that we are saved through grace.
But they did believe we have the capacity to choose to obey, choose to believe in Jesus Christ, or not to believe Him, or to disobey Him. But we can't live a sinless life, number 1, and number 2, we're not going to live a godly holy life without the power of the Holy Spirit. One last quote from Clement. He says," Choice depended on the man as being free, but the gift depended on God as the Lord. And he gives to those who are willing, are exceedingly earnest, and who ask. So their salvation becomes their own.
For God does not compel. So they certainly didn't believe in irresistible grace, but they did believe in the essential need for grace. Tertullian. Writing now in North Africa, in the city of Carthage, this is about the year 207, said," Man is free with a will either for obedience or resistance." Hippolytus. Writing about the year 225, said," God made nothing evil, and man possesses the capacity of self-determination, for man is able to both will and not to will.
He is endowed with power to do both." And Hippolytus lived in Rome. Origen, writing from Alexandria, Egypt, says," It is our responsibility to live virtuously.
God asked this of us as being our own doing, not as being dependent on Him, nor on any other, nor on fate, as some think." The prophet Micah proves this when he says," If it has been announced to you, O man, what is good, or what does the Lord require of you, except to do justice and to love mercy?" Origen continues, Moses too said," I have placed before your face the way of life and the way of death.
Choose what is good and walk in it." Origen continues, Isaiah also said," If you are willing and hear me, you will eat the good of the land." And Origen continues," And the Savior also when he commands, but I say to you, resist not evil." And Origen continues," By any other commandments that he gives, he declares that it lies with us to keep what is commanded, and that we will reasonably be liable to condemnation if we transgress." Again, talking about those who believed in predestination or fate, he says," To such
an interpretation, all the scriptures are opposed.
They emphasize the freedom of the will. They condemn those who sin, and they approve those who do right. We are responsible for our being good and worthy of being called honorable vessels. Likewise, we are responsible for being bad and worthy of being cast aside. For it is not the nature in us that is the cause of the evil, rather it is the voluntary choice that works evil.
Likewise, our nature is not the cause of righteousness, as though it were incapable of admitting unrighteousness." Cyprian writing about the year 250 from Carthage, North Africa, said the liberty of believing or of not believing is placed in free choice. In Deuteronomy, it says," Look, I have set before your face life and death, good and evil.
Choose for yourself life that you may live." Also in Isaiah it says," And if you are willing and hear me, you will eat the good of the land." Now we're going to read a passage from Methodius writing about the year 290. He said some persons decide that man is not possessed of free will. Rather, they assert that he is governed by the unavoidable necessities of fate and her unwritten commands. Such persons are guilty of impiety towards God Himself, for they make him out to be the cause and author of human evils.
Again, Methodius wrote," God, purposing to honor man in this manner and to grant him an understanding of better things has given man the power of being able to do what he wishes. He commends the use of his power for better things. However, it is not that God deprives man again of free will. Rather, he wishes to point out to us the better way. For the power is present with man, and he receives the commandment.
But God exhorts man to turn his power of choice to better things." Okay, another Christian apologist Arnobius writing about the year 305 said talking to the pagans," If your quote wisdom is so great that you consider the things that are offered by Christ to be ridiculous and absurd, why should he keep on inviting you? For his only duty is to make the enjoyment of his gift dependent upon your own free choice." So salvation is a gift. They recognize that, a gift from God, but it's dependent on our free choice.
And the last quotation is from a debate between Archelaus and Manes, who was a teacher of Manicheism, which was a type of Gnostic religion. And in that we hear," Certainly whoever wishes to may keep the commandments, and whoever will despise them and turn aside to what is contrary to them, he will yet undoubtedly have to face this law of judgment.
All persons will not follow the example of Satan's fall and ruin, for everyone is given liberty of will." Incidentally, I didn't give you the volume and page numbers of the quotations I've just read, because they all come from the dictionary of early Christian beliefs that I edited, and you can find them under the topic free will and predestination. I assume most of you have a copy of the dictionary, and you're going to find there's plenty of other quotes. I've only used about half of them.
Now I want to read to you some further quotations on what they said about God's foreknowledge, and these you can find in the dictionary again under the heading foreknowledge of God. I'm going to read to you just some sample ones. Justin Martyr, writing about the year 160, said," If the Word of God foretells that some angels and men will be certainly punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeable. That is, they would remain wicked.
However, this is not because God has created them so, for all who wish for it can obtain mercy from God if they repent. Tatian, writing about the same time," The power of the Logos," that would be Jesus Christ, the Word of God, has in itself a faculty to foresee future events. Yet these events are not fated, but take place by the choice of free agents. For the Logos foretold from time to time, the issues of things to come.
Irenaeus, writing about the year 180, said," When the number is completed, which he had predetermined in his own counsel, all those who have been enrolled for life will rise again. So the number of mankind corresponding to the foreordination of God will be completed. Thereby they may fully realize the design formed by the Father." And again, Irenaeus wrote," God knows the number of those who will not believe since He foreknows all things.
He has given them over to unbelief and turned away His face for men of this mold." So as you're seeing as I'm reading this, the early Christians very definitely believed in God's foreknowledge of future events. If all of the hairs on our head are numbered, likewise they said God knows all of the people who will ever live, and He knows who will be faithful to Him and who will not.
And that the total amount of the ungodly and the total amount of those who will receive eternal life has already been determined by God based upon His foreknowledge, not based upon any arbitrary decision that he made.
Clement of Alexandria wrote, this is about the year 195," Those who were already ordained whom God predestined, for he knew before the foundation of the world that they would be righteous." Again, Clement wrote," As God, he foresaw both what he would be asked and what each one would answer Him." At the same time, the early Christians believe that God deals with us, not based on His foreknowledge of where we will end up, but based on where we are right now.
In other words, we're writing the script, we're the ones playing the Super Bowl, and he interacts with us in this script. He doesn't go and say," Well, I'm going to jump ahead and see how you're going to turn out." If you come to Him in repentance, He's going to treat you that way. He's going to accept you into admission on the vine, being a branch on the vine of Jesus Christ.
He's not going to say," Oh, I can foresee in the future that I'm going to have to cut you off of the vine." So there's no point even allowing you to get on the vine in the first place, because I can foresee how it's all going to end up. Now, he deals with us and treats us in the present. He doesn't use his foreknowledge in the normal course of his interaction with us. Tertullian wrote, this is about the year 207," Saul is chosen, for he is not yet the despiser of the prophet Samuel.
Solomon is rejected, for he has now become a prey to foreign women and a slave to the idols of Moab and Sidon. What must the Creator do? Must he prematurely condemn men who are so far correct in their conduct because of future delinquencies? Yet it is not the mark of a good God to condemn beforehand persons who have not yet deserved condemnation.
One final quote from Hippolytus about the year 225 says," God is fully acquainted with whatever is about to take place, for He has foreknowledge." Now let's go to the Scriptures to see if what the early Christians believed about free will and predestination harmonizes with the Bible. But first, one little side point I'd like to mention. I've been asked before by some of my listeners, David, why don't you start with the Bible and then go to the early Christian writings?
It seems like you're elevating their writings above Scripture because you always start with them. No, I'm not elevating their writings above Scripture or even putting them anywhere near the level of Scripture, nor did they. They are writings of fallible, imperfect humans.
The reason I begin with the quotations from the early Christians is that the topic is not what the Bible teaches about predestination, or baptism, or any other subject, but what the early Christians believed about predestination or baptism or something else. Theologians have created many differing plans of systematic theology involving predestination and free will. And every one of those theologians will claim that his system is exactly what the Bible teaches about predestination.
So what's the point of David Bercot adding another system to what's already there? Because what you would really be getting would not be a message on what the Bible teaches about predestination, but rather what David Bercot thinks the Bible teaches on predestination. After all, if you picked up a book entitled" What the Bible Teaches on Predestination," do you really think you'd get the final answer to the subject from that book? Do you even know what the book would say the Bible teaches?
If you looked at who the author was, wouldn't that make a big difference as to what the book would say? If the author was John Calvin, what do you think he's going to say the Bible teaches about predestination? But what if the author was Jacob Arminius, who, in case you're not familiar with him, was an expositor of free will.
So the point isn't to elevate the early church, it's to get away from all of these systems of theology which have all been built on proof texts in the Scriptures, and say," Let's go to the historic record and see what the historic faith was." But of course, the only thing that matters in the end is what does the Bible teach on the subject?
And the only reason I have continued for over 15 years to teach messages on what the early Christians believed is that I have found all of their doctrines to fit exactly what the Bible teaches. If you look at the totality of what the Scriptures teach on a subject, any subject, and take each passage literally and seriously, I think you will always end up with the same teaching that the early Christians held to. And predestination is no exception.
As far as the issue of whether or not humans have free will, you have the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Look at how many passages there are in the Bible in which God gives commandments to humans, beginning with Adam and Eve. Now, Augustine, Luther and Calvin argued that humans originally had free will, but they say that was all lost in the fall of man. Now they say we no longer have the power to choose to obey or to even have faith. We can only choose evil because mankind is now totally depraved.
Well, all I can say, if that's the case, what do you do with Cain and Abel? Let me read to you from Genesis 4:4 through 11. It says," And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain," Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door.
And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it." Then skipping ahead after Cain murders his brother, the Lord says," What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth." Well, to me, it's rather obvious that man didn't lose his free will because of Adam and Eve's sin. Abel chose to do what was right. And Cain chose to do evil. But God even told Cain," If you do well, will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door." He said," And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it." From that, it should be pretty obvious that he had the ability to do right, to do well, and he had the ability to rule over sin and not let it get control of him. And from the fourth chapter of Genesis, a person can just keep going through the rest of the whole Bible.
And what he's going to find over and over again that God keeps giving commandments to humans, and humans were capable of obeying God, because there always were men and women who were faithful and obedient. People like Abel who are referred to in the Bible as being righteous. People like Job, who the Scriptures referred to as blameless. And it's because they lived godly lives. They chose to do what was right. They chose to believe in God's Word.
The same scriptures call other people evil, because they rejected God, and they refused to obey His commandments. You know, I could sit and read to you all night long passage after passage from Scripture that show we humans have the power of choosing. A couple of the early Christian writers I quoted earlier referred to Deuteronomy 30:19 and 20, where it says," I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore, choose life that both you and your descendants may live." How could Luther say we don't have the power to choose when right there we're plainly called to make that choice? Or Proverbs 1:29 through 31, where God is speaking and says," Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, they would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof.
Therefore, they will eat the fruit of their own way." Isaiah 1:19 and 20, which some of the early Christians quoted, says," If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword." And those are just a few examples.
Like I said, you could probably find an example on just about every page of the Bible, all the way to the Book of Revelation, which says," Because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which will come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. Behold, I come quickly. Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.
If you do have the set on harmonizing Paul and James, I invite you to go through all of the scriptures that are listed in there that show that obedience is required by God. There are literally hundreds of passages in the Scriptures, and perhaps even thousands. And do you want to know what Martin Luther did with all of that overwhelming evidence? He said," Well, just because God told people to do something or to choose something doesn't mean they were able to do it." Oh, I see.
It would be like me telling my son to go out to the car and bring in the groceries. And so he obediently goes out, but he discovers that there are no groceries in the car. So he returns to me a bit puzzled and says," Dad, there aren't any groceries in the car." And I reply," Did I say there were? Just because I told you to go out and get them doesn't imply that there were any groceries in the car." What kind of convoluted logic is that? Would any of us treat our sons and daughters that way?
What a morbid, twisted view we would have to have of God to imagine that He gives us commandments when we can't possibly obey them, that He asks us to choose, when we don't have the ability to choose, that He punishes us for disobeying when we don't even have the ability to obey. And then He praises and rewards certain ones for obeying, when the only reason they obeyed is that He arbitrarily decided to give them, but not someone else, the power to obey.
Well, this is exactly what Martin Luther taught, and Augustine before him. Now I know we generally associate this teaching of predestination with John Calvin because he was the person who successfully spread this doctrine. But he was just following in the footsteps of Martin Luther. You know, sometimes I've been told by certain Christians that the early Christian doctrines are weird or strange. They are? Well, let me just ask you, what makes more sense to you?
That God would tell us to choose because we have the power to choose? That He would tell us to obey because we have the power to obey? Or that He tells us to choose even though He knows we can't? And He tells us to obey certain commandments when He knows it's impossible for us to do so. And then He punishes us for doing something beyond our capabilities to do.
And if the latter makes more sense to you, if Martin Luther's teaching makes more sense to you, all I can say is please don't say the early Christians were strange and weird, because to me, that's about as strange a doctrine as anyone could come up with. In fact, you might wonder, how could a doctrine that's so twisted, that goes against all common sense, goes against everything the Bible reveals to us about God, how could that ever win such a wide acceptance?
It's because the final conclusion of the doctrine pleases people. And that conclusion is we can't do anything good, we can't obey, so therefore we're relieved of all responsibility. As Luther taught, just believe in this doctrine, that you can do nothing good. And don't try to do anything good. Just believe that you are saved by grace alone, apart from obedience. And you'll be saved if you believe that.
In contrast, those poor suckers who are living a disciplined, separated life from the world are actually offending God. That's why such a perverted doctrine could be so widely believed, because it appeals to our flesh and to our hardened hearts. The net result of it is a gospel of easy believerism, and that's what people want to believe. In contrast, the biblical and early Christian doctrine of free will leaves us with responsibility. It by no means ignores God's grace and mercy, but it does require obedience.
It requires an obedient love-faith relationship with Jesus Christ. And as Jesus said, that's a narrow way that few will find. Now let's take a look at some of the Bible passages on which Calvinists rely to see if they're consistent with the historic teaching that was handed down by the church. And just so there's no misunderstanding, let me explain what Luther and Calvin and Augustine taught.
They taught that everybody before the creation of the universe has been arbitrarily predestined by God for either eternal life or eternal damnation. And the emphasis is on arbitrarily. Those aren't my words, that's what they taught, that it was not based on God's foreknowledge, but rather it's based on an absolutely arbitrary decision on the part of God. We play no role in it whatsoever, according, like I say, to Augustine, who came up with this doctrine, and then Luther and Calvin, who made it so popular.
And necessarily coupled with Calvinism, we'll call it Calvinism, even though it's really more Augustinianism, is that then we humans have absolutely no free will but to do what's evil. We cannot choose what is good. We cannot even believe in Jesus Christ unless God has predestined us to be able to believe. Now in contrast, the early Christian teaching was that we do have free will.
We are fallen, we cannot save ourselves, but we do have the free will to be able to choose the right course, and with empowering grace, we can obey Christ's commandments. Now because God has foreknowledge, he does know who will walk faithfully with him and his son and who won't, but the decision is ours, not his. Of course the crux of the matter is which position do the Scriptures support? Now we've already looked at a number of passages where God tells us to choose the right course.
And that the whole totality of the Scriptures indicate that we can obey God's commandments, that we can choose to do what is right, that we didn't lose our free will in the fall of man. But the Calvinists reply, sure, God tells us to do this or that, to choose this or that, but he knows that we can't do it. And so therefore he punishes us for not doing it. The only ones who can do it are the ones that he arbitrarily elected or chose before the creation of the world.
But you see, that makes God a horribly evil, sadistic being. It would be like a father who had a quadriplegic son and saying, I want you to go out and rake up all of the leaves, and I want you to carry those dead branches in the backyard over to the garbage pile. And the son says," But Dad, I can't. I don't have the use of my arms or my legs." Well that doesn't excuse you. You either do it or I'm gonna beat you.
I mean if any human parent did that, even the world would arrest such a sadistic parent and we would see that the love of Christ wasn't even remotely in such a person. But we're seeing something even worse about God. That He tells us to do something He knows we can't do. And He doesn't just beat us. He punishes us for eternity for not doing something that He made us where we can't do it.
Now if I'm going to believe that God is such a cruel, evil person, I want to see some absolutely incontrovertible passages from Scripture that clearly teach that. In a minute here, we're going to look at some of the scriptures that Calvinists rely upon to try to prove their theology. But before reading them, the first thing we need to do is clear our minds of all of the theological terms with which we've been indoctrinated.
Peter, Paul, John, and the other apostles were not theologians, and they didn't use theological terms in their writings. Rather, they used ordinary, everyday Greek words that any illiterate person could understand. Because, in fact, the majority of their hearers were illiterate. Take, for example, the word" elect." Today, it is almost automatically associated with predestination in many Christian minds. If you talked about the elect, oh, that means they've been predestined.
That shows how effective Luther and Calvin were as propagandists. But our English word" elect" is actually just a transliteration of the Greek word" eklektos," which was an ordinary, everyday word meaning to pick out or to choose. If a housewife sent her servant to the market to pick out some apples, that's the word she would have used, eklektos. In fact, in secular society today, our English word elect still basically means to choose to vote for somebody.
There's absolutely nothing in the Greek word eklektos that ties it in any way whatsoever with predestination. That would have never been a thought that would have come into the minds of Paul or Peter's hearers. Yes, we have been elected, we have been chosen, but nowhere in the Scriptures does it say that God's choosing is arbitrary. Yes, he chooses who will be a branch on this vine of Jesus Christ. And he chooses who will stay on it and who he will cut off.
But Jesus made it clear that He's going to cut off the branches, the people who don't love Jesus Christ. And Jesus said," If you love me, you will obey my commandments." The offer of salvation is open to everyone, and that offer is to repent, to believe in Jesus Christ, not just as Savior, but as Lord, to be baptized, to receive the new birth. Now some people pretend to do those things. They do it outwardly, but they don't become regenerated. Because God rejects them, their repentance isn't genuine.
Their faith isn't real. So yes, God does choose. We who are Christians are the elect, we are the chosen. But nowhere did the Scripture say again that that choosing was arbitrary. But that's what Augustine Luther and Calvin taught. As an essential part of the doctrine of salvation, it had to be arbitrary. It could not be based on foreknowledge. So let's look at the verses that are so often quoted by Calvinists.
Romans 8, 29, and 30, which says," For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, those he also called, whom he called these he also justified, and whom he justified these he also glorified." You know, actually the word predestined occurs only four times in the Scriptures, and this passage contains two of the four instances.
But again, predestined was a simple ordinary Greek word meaning to predetermine. This passage doesn't even say that he predetermined who would be branches on the vine, who would ultimately receive salvation. It says that those of us that he foreknew, see it says right there, whom he foreknew, which is just what the early Christians said, that those ones are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. So that passage hardly supports Calvinism.
It follows the very language that the early Christians used, whom he foreknew he predestined. 1 Peter 1, verses 1 and 2. It says," Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the pilgrims of the dispersion." Elect, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Well again, I mean how much more plain could Scripture be?
Elect or chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, precisely what the early Christians taught, precisely the opposite of what Luther and Calvin taught. Ephesians 1, verses 4 and 5 and verse 11.
It says," He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself." In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. Well, does that contradict any of the things the early Christians taught?
This passage doesn't specifically mention foreknowledge, but neither does it say it was arbitrary either. Now the other two passages, both state it's based on foreknowledge. So why would we come to this one and make this Scripture say something that would directly contradict the other two Scriptures? And that would directly contradict everything the Bible shows us about the loving character of God. That He would just arbitrarily pick and choose people to be damned or rewarded with eternal life.
Colossians 3:12 is sometimes quoted by Calvinist," Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies." What does that have to do with predestination? Again, the word" elect" just means" chosen". All Christians are chosen of God. We can't force ourselves into His kingdom. He has to admit us into His kingdom. But again, that passage says nothing about our being elected or chosen based on an arbitrary decision.
To a large degree, the popularity of the doctrine of predestination waned with the revival, the awakenings, and the missionary movements that began in the 1700s. Because obviously, if salvation is a matter of arbitrary predestination by God, there's not a whole lot of point in holding revivals to convert people. Likewise, why would you travel overseas to try to make converts of pagan people? If they really are of the elect, God is going to take care of them without our help.
There's nothing we can do to change their situation. So the pure Calvinistic doctrine of predestination lost a lot of its popularity. At the same time, evangelical Protestants weren't willing to openly acknowledge that Luther and Calvin were wrong, that they had been teaching a false doctrine. So the great evangelical compromise is this. We believe in both.
God has absolutely and arbitrarily predestined everyone to eternal life or eternal punishment, not based on his foreknowledge, based on his own arbitrary decision. At the same time, all of us have free will to choose to obey and believe in Christ or not to. It's a paradox, see? Well, I'm sorry, but that's not a paradox. That is an absurdity.
It's like saying," I believe that God instantly created Eve while Adam was sleeping." At the same time, I believe that Eve came into being through millions of years of evolution. It's a paradox, see? No, that's not a paradox. That's just simply a contradiction. My dictionary defines paradox as a statement that seems contradictory, but may be true, in fact.
And it gives the illustration from the poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where it says," Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." That would be a paradox. If there's water everywhere, you should have plenty to drink. But no, if it's salt water, you can't drink it. So what sounds contradictory is in fact true.
A good example from scripture of a paradox is the passage where Jesus says," He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it." Now at first glance, that sounds contradictory. But in reality, it isn't. If we don't lay down our earthly life with all of its rights for Jesus Christ, we will in fact lose our eternal life. But if we lay down our earthly life, we will find eternal life. There's no contradiction there. It only seemed contradictory.
Likewise, the authentic biblical doctrine of predestination and free will is paradoxical in the genuine sense of the word. I can rightly say that whether you or I will inherit eternal life has already been predestined. Yet you and I both have absolute free will to follow the course that leads to eternal life or to reject it. Now on the surface, that sounds contradictory, doesn't it? But in reality, there's no contradiction at all. Because those seemingly contradictory statements can be harmonized quite easily.
As we've already been discussing, we do have free will to choose or not to choose. To love Christ or not love Him, to obey Him or not to obey Him. At the same time, right now, our life is being videotaped, so to speak, by God. Back to my illustration of the Super Bowl. Right now the Super Bowl is in play, and it's being videotaped. But because God is God, and has such amazing powers, he's already watched the videotape of our life, even though we're living it out right now.
Predestination based on God's foreknowledge is not contradictory to free will. But predestination based upon an arbitrary decree of God absolutely contradicts free will. Don't let anybody kid you into thinking you can believe in both. And one of the wonderful things about God is that He does not ask us to believe absolutely contradictory things. Theologians ask us to, but not God.
Now if you're a Calvinist or someone else who does not believe in free will, you may be wondering, well, surely there was someone in the period of the early church who didn't believe in free will, who believed that we're utterly depraved? Yes, there was such a group. And for those of you who've listened to very many of my messages on what the early Christians believed, I'm sure you've already guessed who the group is. That group was the Gnostics.
They believe that the God of the Old Testament was not the same God as the God of the New Testament. In fact, they believe that the Old Testament God was an inferior god, a god with a little G, who was somewhat evil and who so badly botched up creation of the material world that we humans are all totally depraved as a result of it. Now, they didn't use the expression total depravity.
Rather, as Origen described them, quote," They destroy free will by introducing ruined natures incapable of salvation and by introducing others as being saved in such a way that they could not be lost." End quote. Hmm, whose theology does that sound like? Anyway, these Gnostics picked out a number of passages from the Old Testament to try to demonstrate that the Old Testament God is not just and fair, but is basically an evil god.
Interestingly, Luther and Calvin used those same passages that the Gnostics used to try to argue for their doctrine of absolute predestination based on arbitrary decisions that God made before the creation of the world. Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time on these passages because none of them say that God arbitrarily picks and chooses people for eternal life or eternal punishment.
Also, Origen gave a rather excellent response to the Gnostics and their favorite passages, and his response is reproduced in condensed form in the dictionary of early Christian beliefs under free will and predestination. So I want to refer you to that where you can read his response for yourself. Nevertheless, I would like to briefly address these passages, or some of them, showing you what the early Christians had to say about them.
The first passage is from Exodus, where it talks about God hardening the heart of Pharaoh. Here's what Irenaeus had to say about that.
We read the Marcionites, they were a quasi-gnostic sect, say," But God hardened the heart of Pharaoh and of His servants." Irenaeus continues," Now those who allege such difficulties do not read in the gospel the passage where the Lord replied to the disciples when they asked Him," Why do you speak in parables?" He replied," Because it is given to you to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven.
However, I speak to them in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear." Continuing," So God knows the number of those who will not believe since He foreknows all things. So He has given them over to unbelief and turned His face away from men of this character, leaving them in the darkness that they have chosen for themselves. So what is baffling if he gave Pharaoh and those who were with them over to their unbelief? For they would never have believed. End of quotation.
So such passages as God-hardening Pharaoh's heart really present no difficulty to the early Christian understanding of free will and predestination. Since God foreknows who will and who won't believe and obey him, he can, if he chooses, interact with us based on his foreknowledge. But there was nothing arbitrary about God's dealings with Pharaoh or Christ's dealings with the Jews of His day. So those verses do not contradict the historic understanding of free will and predestination.
Now, Origen suggested a different answer than Irenaeus that likewise is consistent with what the early Christians believed. Now what Origen pointed out is that God's hardening Pharaoh's heart doesn't necessarily mean that God intruded into Pharaoh's brain and his center of will, which we call the heart, and made Pharaoh do something he would not otherwise have done, making him to refuse to grant Moses' requests.
Instead, God may have simply read Pharaoh's heart or used his foreknowledge and knew that the miracles he was about to do would not soften Pharaoh's heart, as they should have, because Pharaoh was such a wicked man. Rather, he knew that the miracles would harden Pharaoh's heart. By way of illustration, place a lump of wet clay and also a wax candle out in the hot sun, maybe on a sidewalk in mid-July. What would happen? Well, the clay would harden, wouldn't it? But what about the wax? It would soften.
So as Origen said, the sun, if the sun was a person and could talk, could say," I'm going to harden that clay, but I'm going to soften that wax." And yet his action towards both would be the same. He dealt with them equally both the clay and the wax. Yet one would harden and the other one would soften based on their inherent traits, not based on what the sun was doing. Likewise with Pharaoh, the miracles caused him to harden his heart because of his own evil disposition, not because God made him act a certain way.
After all, those very same miracles caused a great multitude of Egyptians to leave Egypt and join up with the Israelites. So the very same act, the very same miracles, hardened one person's heart and softened the hearts of others. I see a very similar situation when Jesus told his followers that whoever ate his flesh and drank his blood would have eternal life. What resulted? Well, most of his followers were shocked by what he said, and they rejected him. They hardened their hearts.
But his closest disciples, the ones who were willing to stick with him through thick and thin, they were softened. They didn't know what Jesus was talking about, but they knew He was offering a way to eternal life, and they were going to stay with Him. Similarly, Jesus hardened the hearts of the Pharisees by the way He interacted with them. But He didn't take away their free will. It was their own evil hearts who were not willing to receive his harsh criticisms. And so they hardened their hearts against him.
But it was their decision. It wasn't something that he intruded inside of their brains or their hearts. And some Pharisees did soften their hearts and become Christians.
Now let's briefly talk about some of the passages in Paul, where he says, for example," It's not of Him that wills, nor of Him that runs, but of God who shows mercy, and that both to will and to do are of God, and that God has mercy upon whom he will have mercy and whom he wishes he hardens." And also the passage from Romans," But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it? Why have you made me like this? Does the potter not have power over the clay?
From the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?" Well, let me ask you a question. Do any of those statements from Paul's writing say that God interacts with us in an arbitrary manner? No, they don't. Do any of them say that we do not have free will, or that we play no role in our salvation? No, none of them say that. None of them deny that God deals with us based on how we respond to Him and to His teachings.
None of them deny that He can choose to show mercy based on our response to Him, or perhaps based on the intercession or faith of another person. The whole nation of Israel received special blessings based on God's rewarding Abraham for Abraham's faith. And the Gentiles didn't receive the same opportunities that the Israelites did. Yet in the end, it was the Israelites who, as a whole, rejected Christ, while the Gentiles responded more favorably to the gospel message.
That's what Paul is talking about in Romans chapter 9 when he discusses the potter and the clay. Read the context, read the whole thing, don't just grab verses here and there. He's talking about the Jews versus the Gentiles. God had extended mercy to the Gentiles and had rejected Israel. But this was hardly arbitrary on God's part, was it? The Jews stumbled over Jesus because He wasn't the type of Messiah they were expecting. Now God could have made it easier for the Jews to accept Christ.
He could have had Christ come and drive out the Romans from Palestine. But He didn't do that. And that's because God purposely tests us. If we stumble over His test and fail it, we have no standing to say back to God," Why did you do this to me? Why did you make me this way?" God could make it so easy that everyone on earth would believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior. But that's not what He wants. He wants people in His kingdom who will love and obey Him.
Even when the going gets tough and it requires great sacrifice on our part. But we are not all given the same test. But we are all tested. And we can learn enough about the character of God from the rest of the Scriptures to know that He will never do anything that is unjust or unloving. Paul was not teaching arbitrary predestination when he said that our salvation ultimately depends upon God.
Because if you look at the totality of what Paul taught, it's also quite clear that he taught that we have free will and that we as Christians all have sufficient grace and power to live godly lives. By way of illustration, think about a farmer. Now he can carefully cultivate his fields. He can plant high-quality seeds. He can add fertilizer. But if it doesn't rain, and he doesn't have a means of irrigation, all of his efforts will be for nothing. Likewise, God plays THE major role in our salvation.
As Jesus said in his illustration of the vine," Without Me, you can do nothing." So we have to abide on the vine because we can do nothing if we're not on that vine. Yet in that very same passage of John, Jesus also demonstrates that we play a major role on whether or not we abide on his vine. He says," We will only abide on it if we love Him. And if we love Him," he said," we will keep His commandments." So we play an essential role in our salvation as well.
But God plays the bigger role, just like with the farmer and rain. And again, all of these texts that Calvinists have brought forward that Augustine and Luther used, and before them, the Gnostics, none of them deny our free will or state that God arbitrarily predestines us or even arbitrarily interacts with us in a way that would be unloving. Now as a final thought, you may have noticed that I haven't said anything tonight about God having a plan for our lives.
This will probably surprise most of you, but the early Christians knew nothing about any such teaching. You won't find any mention whatsoever in their writings about God having a plan for our lives. I keep looking for the New Testament passage that teaches anything about a personal plan for each of us. And I'm still looking. You know, it's such a popular teaching. You hear it nearly everywhere. You'd think there was verse after verse in the New Testament that teaches it. But I certainly haven't found any.
Unfortunately, we don't have time to go any further into the subject tonight, but I want to recommend a book to you that discusses the subject in detail and does an admirable job. It's not only thorough, it's also a very readable book. It's entitled Decision Making and the Will of God. It's been around about 20 years now, or even longer, perhaps. You should be able to get it at any Christian bookstore. And Scroll Publishing is now carrying it in its catalog. I really encourage you to read it.
Well, I've enjoyed our discussion tonight about free will and predestination, and I certainly hope that you have as well. Good night.