PREDESTINATION

as Paul describes it

This is a gratis post in which my ministry as an Anglican priest comes across for those who share my Christian faith.

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“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29 KJV).”

This means that sanctification is all about bringing each of us into the love shared among the Persons of the Trinity. Transforming each of us into a holy person, that is, into a saint, is essential to the love we have from the Father. That also is why no particular specific sin has ever been the will of God.

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Lost in translation, lost as early as the translation of Greek into Latin, is the fullness of “And the Word was with God (John 1:1).” The Greek pros ton theon is translated by my brother, David Bentley Hart, as “Present to God,” indicating that the Word, the Logos, was toward God, or facing God. We see the first relation of love within the godhead, God the Father and God the Son face to face beholding, and with this love as the first Divine attribute the Holy Spirit effects the work of all creation. God is love, and this is not self-love as we would experience, but the honest love of the Persons who share the same unknowable substance of Divine nature, rejoicing in the truth that the object of love is worthy of infinite love because truth delights in perfection and goodness. The whole of creation is the Father’s gift of love to His eternally begotten Son, or as Saint Paul also tells us, “All things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him (Colossians 1:17,18 David Bentley Hart - DBH - translation).”

Keep all of that in mind as we consider what it means that God has marked out a destiny, the real meaning of “predestinated (proorizo),” for each one whom He foreknew. It is no more in definition than choosing a destination before setting out on a journey. From at least the time of Augustine, the very word “predestination” has taken on a meaning that is simply not what the actual Greek New Testament teaches. Taken to the extreme it has come to mean, for many people, that God has deprived his intelligent creatures of freewill, and that every decision of the human heart is really as if programmed in advance; for them the script is written. In milder, yet also mistaken, versions of predestination it may mean only that God’s plan for salvation and for the end of history on the Last Day requires that He has willed certain people to commit specific sins. They imagine a God of limited power, able to exercise Providence only by giving himself a “handicap” in the game, namely, by predestinating certain individuals to commit evil deeds. As I have written before,

‘But God foresaw, and made use of, the outworking of history. God’s will was to save Israel and preserve them in the time of famine. So, when the brothers of Joseph did what was inevitable, foreseen by the God who knows all things, Providence produced what was good. In no way could their evil acts prevent the will of God; indeed, because He “enacts all things in accord with the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11),” even the most sinful acts have to result in bringing about the good purpose of Almighty God. It was never the will of God for Judas to betray Christ, nor for the Sanhedrin to falsely convict Him, nor for the Romans to go about their violent and murderous acts with such schadenfreude. But, as a master of Chess makes use of every move by his opponent, God works providentially. In the worst of these theological systems Providence is a misunderstood concept. In these systems his wisdom and power must be limited, for why else would their notion of predestination rule out even the very existence of free will? I do not mean the doctrine that man cannot choose God without his grace, for that is sound in itself (especially when one considers that existence itself is a gift, that is, grace). In the extreme forms of Augustinianism, Thomism, and Calvinism everything has been predetermined by God.

‘Now, it was the will of God for the Son to offer Himself willingly for the sins of the whole world. It was the will of God for Jesus to surrender himself as the obedient suffering servant. The inevitable evil of a world hostile to God and to all goodness was very much within the foresight of the Almighty. Carrying out his will, to do good, was not prevented by human evil; indeed, whatever evil men do, God has the almighty power, nonetheless, to turn it to good.’

In the words Acts 4:27, 28 “Both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done (KJV).”

What exactly had God’s hand and counsel determined?

“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father (John 10:17,18).”

Indeed, inasmuch as “the carnal mind is enmity with God (Romans 8:7)” we can be sure that the crucifixion was the inevitable result of the Incarnation. To offer himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Jesus did not need Judas Iscariot to betray him, nor for Caiaphas and Herod to hand him over to Pontius Pilate, nor for any specific sin that required the Father to deprive those men of freewill, to “predestine” them to become evil on that day as one who writes a program for a computer. In Calvinist circles, much is made of God “hardening Pharoah’s heart.” If one reads carelessly, it comes across as if God worked directly on the mind of Pharoah in such a way that the man was unable to think rationally, or to choose good over evil. But in the actual account of Exodus what we see is God working mighty signs and wonders, and each time Egypt receives a plague, Pharoah reacts by fortifying the stubbornness that was an obvious flaw in his character. But when the first Passover proved to be too much for him, he relented. Even after all that, he relented again, and went after the people of Israel, and sent his ill-fated army into the Red Sea. Pharoah was such a flawed human being that every word and every sign only brought out the worst in him. What hardened his heart was each plague that first taught him, and then each plague that reminded him, that the God of Moses was the One with unlimited power, not himself as an emperor god, the Pharoah.

No matter what time or place in which the Logos would be incarnate, the inevitable result of God coming directly into the sinful and fallen world as a man had to be enmity. The carnal mind must kill God if only to destroy the light that pierces through the comfort of darkness. It must snuff out the truth that shatters the shelter of lies.

“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:7,8).” No specific evil on the part of any individual is necessary for the plan of God to be accomplished. As I said before, when it comes to the subjects of Predestination and of Eschatology, many Christians are in danger of adopting a manner of thinking in which the will of God can be separated from the commandments of God. All God needed to do to fulfill what His hand and counsel had determined was to work the miracle of the Incarnation. The deaths of many persecuted prophets was brought to full measure when the owner of the vineyard sent his own son. As soon as the Blessed Virgin Mary said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word (Luke 1:38),” the crucifixion was set in motion (and, of course, with it the resurrection). God had determined to save the world, and I do mean that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit had so determined, for God is One. All it took was the incarnation; that was enough to set it all in motion. Indeed, even as a small child his family had to flee for his life to be spared, no doubt to the Jewish community in Alexandria Egypt. For the enmity against God that is the lot of carnal men is dominated by something more evil and more powerful.

Much has been made over the centuries by those who hate the Jewish people, none of it right or good. Persecution of the Jews has been a black mark against many who have called themselves Christians, some even now. The excuse has been to call them “Christ killers.” Of course, that Jesus himself, his mother, and his disciples, all make that label a complete lie, for they were all Jews; and without them we would have no Church and no Faith. But we can even take a close look at the Book of the Acts of the Apostles and discover what transpired in the personal lives of many people who, on that first Good Friday, were shouting “Away with this man. Give us Barabbas!” and “Crucify him! Crucify him!” In the third chapter of that book, we see that Peter and John worked the miracle of healing a crippled man at the gate of the temple. A crowd formed, and for the second time in only a few days, Peter preached a sermon and hauled in a mighty catch. Pay close attention to his words, and you will discover that Peter knew that he was speaking to much the same exact crowd, the very individuals who had, only weeks earlier, demanded the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Was it God’s will to punish them, or do we see something altogether different from the Apostle’s own words to them?

‘”You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with our fathers, telling Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ And God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”...But many of those who had heard the discourse had faith, and the number of men grew to be five thousand. (Acts 3:25,26 and 4:4 DBH).’

So, even those who said “His blood be on us and on our children (Matthew 27:25)” were blessed by God, not cursed. His blood was on them, but as the cleansing flood that washes away sin and guilt. God can always bring good out of any evil men can do; that does not mean the He needs the evil. Why did Jesus call Judas “friend” right at the time in which the betrayal was most obvious: “Friend, wherefore art thou come (Matthew 26:50)?” Was Judas there to be his friend? No. Judas was, nonetheless, the object of Christ’s love, which “rejoiceth not in iniquity (I Corinthians 13:6).” To will that any particular individual commit a specific sin is contrary to Divine love; but to bring good from evil is consistent with it.

Actual Predestination

Are you a believer in Christ? God has indeed predestined you, but not by programming you. And salvation is not simply “going to heaven.” It is not even limited to being raised from the dead on the Last Day. What you are predestinated to become, that is the intended destination of the journey God has laid out for you, is to become a saint, that is, a holy person (I Corinthians 1:2). In a very real way, Paul is giving us a deeper understanding of salvation, that is, that we are predestined by the Father to be “conformed to the image of his son.” To this end He richly gives you every grace in His Son. The crowning virtue above all others is charity, and in order to obtain that virtue of saintliness you must know God for Who He is. And we know that “God is love (I John 4:8,16).” How do know this?

Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? (John 14:8,9 KJV).

Far from the caricature of those who preach that “Jesus saves us from God,” it is Jesus in the Father, and the Father in Jesus, who loves us and saves us from sin and death as we follow on to know the Lord. You can see the love of the Father by seeing Jesus who “Went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil (Acts 10:38).” And to appreciate that love you should consider that Saint Paul is saying that the destination chosen for you by God is to be “conformed to the image of his son.” God cannot will that you learn to see His commandments as separate from His will, or as alien to it. His love is why He wills for you to become holy, to be made perfect in charity, and even now, in this life, to be more and more the image, that is the very living icon, of Jesus. Even in this life you can, thereby, through His grace, have a foretaste of knowing God in eternity, and ultimately to enter into that same love in which the Divine Persons behold perfection and goodness. “The Logos was present to God.”