Chapter 7: What They Believed About Predestination and Free Will. Many evangelical Christians think that Luther's Reformation returned the Church to the standards of the early believers. Many also suppose that today's evangelical Christians are teaching the same things as Luther did. However, both of those assumptions are incorrect. It probably surprised you to learn that our present doctrine of salvation by faith is different from what the early Christians taught.
It may surprise you even more to know that our doctrine of salvation is also different from what Martin Luther and other leaders of the Reformation taught as well. In fact, we teach only half of the Reformation doctrine of salvation. While it's true that Luther sometimes said that man is saved by faith alone, he also taught that man is so totally depraved that he is unable even to have faith in God or to accept the gift of salvation.
Therefore, the only persons who have saving faith are those to whom God has given such faith. And God has given such faith only to those whom He arbitrarily predestined before the creation of the world. By arbitrarily, I mean that according to Luther, God's decision to give faith to some and not to others wasn't based on any desire, faith, righteousness, actions, or even prayers of the recipient. In the end, Luther could only bemoan.
This is the highest degree of faith: to believe that He is merciful, the very One who saves so few and damns so many. To believe that He is just, the One who, according to His own will, makes us necessarily damnable. So the Reformation didn't teach that man is saved by faith alone or that he is saved by accepting Christ. It taught that the predestined are saved by grace alone, and the rest of mankind are eternally damned.
It's a popular myth that John Calvin introduced this doctrine of predestination, but Calvin was simply repeating established Reformation theology. So today, those who say that the offer of salvation is open to everyone contradict a basic Reformation doctrine. After the Reformation, evangelical Christians tried for centuries to convince a scoffing world that our lives and eternal fates were arbitrarily predestined by God and that this was a God we should love.
How ironic, therefore, that originally it was the Christians who tried to convince a scoffing world that our lives and fates were not predestined. Our first subheading: Believers in Free Will. The early Christians were strong believers in free will. For example, Justin Martyr made this argument to the Romans: "We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true that punishments, chastisements, and rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man's actions.
Otherwise, if all things happen by fate, then nothing is in our own power. For if it is predestined that one man be good and another man evil, then the first is not deserving of praise or the other to be blamed. Unless humans have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions, whatever they may be. For neither would a man be worthy of reward or praise if he did not of himself choose the good, but was merely created for that end.
Likewise, if a man were evil, he would not deserve punishment, since he was not evil of himself, being unable to do anything else than what he was made for." Clement echoed the same belief: "Neither praise nor condemnation, neither rewards nor punishments are right if the soul does not have the power of choice and avoidance, if evil is involuntary." Archelaus, writing a few decades later, repeated the same understanding, saying: "All the creatures that God made, He made very good, and He gave to every individual
the sense of free will, by which standard He also instituted the law of judgment.
And certainly, whoever will may keep the commandments. Whoever despises them and turns aside to what is contrary to them shall yet without doubt have to face this law of judgment.
There can be no doubt that every individual, in using his own proper power of will, may shape his course in whatever direction he pleases." Methodius, a Christian martyr who lived near the end of the third century, wrote similarly: "Those pagans who decide that man does not have free will, but say that he is governed by the unavoidable necessities of fate, are guilty of impiety toward God Himself, making Him out to be the cause and author of human evils." The early Christians weren't simply speculating about this
matter, but rather they based their beliefs on the following scriptures, among others: John 3:16, it says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." And again, 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Revelation 22:17, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him
who hears say, Come, and let him who thirsts come, and whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely." Finally, Deuteronomy 30:19, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live." So originally, it was the pagan world, not the Christians, who believed in predestination.
Yet in one of the strange quirks of Christian history, Martin Luther took the side of the pagan Romans against the early Christians. I don't mean that, in effect, he took their side; I mean he literally sided with them.
For example, Luther wrote concerning fate or predestination: "But why should these things be difficult for we Christians to understand, so that it should be considered irreligious, curious, and vain to discuss and know them, when heathen poets and the common people themselves have them in their mouths in the most frequent use? How often does Virgil, who was a pagan Roman poet, alone make mention of fate?
He says, 'All things stand fixed by unchangeable law.' Again, 'Fixed is the day of every man.' Again, 'If the fates summon you.' And again, 'If you will break the binding chain of fate.'" The aim of this poet was to show that in the destruction of Troy and in raising up the Roman Empire, fate did more than all the devoted efforts of man. From which we can see that the knowledge of predestination and of the foreknowledge of God was no less left in the world than the notion of divinity itself.
And those who wished to appear wise went so far in their debates that, their hearts being darkened, they became fools. They denied or pretended not to know those things which their poets and the common folk and even their own consciences held to be universally known, most certain, and most true. Our next subheading: But doesn't the Bible say? From what I have observed, many, perhaps most evangelical Christians, say they believe in predestination. Yet their prayers and actions show they really don't.
Others simply throw up their hands admitting, "I don't know what to believe." The dilemma we face is that the Bible tells us to choose life that we may live—that's from Deuteronomy—but it also tells us that it does not depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy—that's Romans 9:16. On the one hand, the scriptures teach that God is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance—from 2 Peter that we've already read.
But on the other hand, it says that God has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills, He hardens—from Romans 9:18. I have wrestled with these seemingly contradictory passages most of my adult life. So it was very comforting to discover that the early Christians had logical and scripturally sound explanations for these seeming contradictions. In fact, their understandings about God's foreknowledge and man's free will are among the most reasonable I've ever heard.
In contrast, it was once again some of the Gnostic teachers who taught that humans are arbitrarily predestined for either salvation or punishment. Obviously, if we are totally depraved as a result of our being created by an unjust, inferior God, as the Gnostics taught, our salvation can only come about by the arbitrary election from God. In his work entitled On First Things, Origen addressed many of the scriptural arguments the Gnostics were using.
He also answered some of the questions about free will and predestination that his students had posed to him. Here is an excerpt from Origen's discussion: "One of the doctrines included in the teaching of the Church is that there is a just judgment of God. This fact incites those who believe it to live virtuously and to shun sin. They acknowledge that the things worthy of praise and blame are within our own power. It is our responsibility to live righteously.
God asked this of us not as though it were dependent on Him, nor on any other, or upon fate as some think, but as being dependent on us. The prophet Micah demonstrated this when he said, 'It has been announced to you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, to do justice and to love mercy.' Moses also said, 'I have set before you the way of life and the way of death.
Choose what is good and walk in it.'" Notice how Paul also speaks to us with the understanding that we have freedom of the will and that we ourselves are the cause of our own ruin or our own salvation. He says, "Do you show contempt for the riches of His goodness, patience, and long-suffering, not realizing that God's goodness leads you towards repentance?
But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are treasuring up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. God will render to each one according to his works. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are contentious and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be anger, wrath, and tribulation." Now I'm still reading from Origen.
This is a long passage I'm reading from. He continues, "But certain statements in the Old and New Testament might lead to the opposite conclusion, that it does not depend on us to keep the commandments and to be saved, or to transgress them and to be lost." So let's examine them one by one. First, the statements concerning Pharaoh have troubled many.
God declared several times, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart." Of course, if Pharaoh was hardened by God and sinned as a result of being hardened, he was not the cause of his own sin, so he did not possess free will. Along with this passage, let's also look at the passage in Paul. It says, "But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall 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?'" Since we consider God to be both good and just, let's see how the good and just God could harden the heart of Pharaoh. Perhaps by an illustration used by the apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we can show that by the same operation, God can show mercy to one man while He hardens another, although not intending to harden.
The ground, he says, he's quoting here from Hebrews, "drinks in the rain that falls upon it and produces crops for the farmer, being blessed by God. But the ground that produces thorns and briars is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. Its end is to be burned." Now, it may seem strange for him who produces rain to say, "I produce both the fruit and the thorns from the earth." Yet, although strange, it is true. If the rain had not fallen, there would have been neither fruit nor thorns.
The blessing of the rain, therefore, fell even on the unproductive land. But since it was neglected and uncultivated, it produced thorns and thistles. In the same way, the wonderful acts of God are like the rain. The differing results are like the cultivated and the neglected land. The acts of God are also like the sun, which could say, "I both soften and harden." Although these two actions are opposite, the sun would not speak falsely because the same heat both softens wax and hardens mud.
Similarly, on the one hand, the miracles performed through Moses hardened Pharaoh because of his own wickedness, but they softened the mixed Egyptian multitude who left Egypt with the Hebrews. Let's look at another passage from Romans 9:16, "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him that runs, but of God who shows mercy." Now, Paul is not denying that something also has to be done by human means, but he gratefully refers the benefit to God who brings it to completion.
The mere human desire is insufficient to attain the end. The mere running does not in itself enable athletes to gain the prize, nor does it enable Christians to obtain the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Those things are only accomplished with the assistance of God. As if speaking about farming, Paul says, "I planted, Apollos watered, and God made it grow." So then neither is he who plants anything, nor he that waters, but God who made it grow.
Now, we could not correctly say that the growing of crops is the work of the farmer alone, nor of the one who irrigates. It is ultimately the work of God. Likewise, it is not as though we ourselves play no role in our spiritual growth to perfection, yet it is not completed by us, for God produces the greater part of it. So also with our salvation, what God does is infinitely greater than what we do. And that's the end of this passage from Origen. Our final subheading, can God foresee the future?
Although not believing in predestination, the early Christians strongly believed in God's sovereignty and in his ability to foresee the future. For example, they understood God's prophecies about Jacob and Esau to be a result of his foreseeing the future, not a result of his arbitrarily predestining those men to a particular fate. But the early Christians saw a significant difference between foreseeing something and causing it.