The other day, a friend of mine was complaining about a religion class she had just left. They had begun discussing the doctrine of predestination, and she was a bit upset over the way her classmates insisted on overreacting to the issue instead of waiting to see what the professor had to say about it. The issue is one that I thought over a fair bit before I was comfortable coming here, so for those of you who aren't familiar, the basic gist most people use to describe predestination is as follows:
Whether you're going to heaven or not is essentially "determined" (poor semantic choice, in my opinion, but we'll get to that) before you ever have a chance to live.
Those people who are bound for heaven are generally referred to as the "Elect"; and back in the day (and even to a degree now) it was generally believed that the Elect could be identified while they were alive, frequently by material prosperity. The strongly traditional Calvinist views of many of the founding fathers are where we get a lot of the idea of America being the new Jerusalem (after all, God must have been with us if we beat the British!). As popular as this notion has been (and is), it's clearly un-Biblical and not supported within any official doctrine I've seen or been quoted (which is, admittedly, very little).
Many people also just like to assume that all people who claim themselves to be Christian are among the Elect, but this also has no support. Fundamentally, only God determines who the Elect are, and we have no way of knowing. Once I realized that neither of these two things were part of the doctrine of predestination, I decided to let the Heaven and Hell part of the issue out of the equation. I decided at the time that, minus the whole "pre" part, it was suitably vague in terms of who gets what at the end of time that I could deal.
Unfortunately for my friend, her classmates weren't nearly so cool, so they derailed a large part of their education complaining and asking how come God couldn't give these people a chance. This type of thought is, in my mind, really the poor kids being upset about the doctrine of Hell (and maybe a little bit of Limited Atonement) but being far too afraid to express their distaste for such a fundamental part of Christian theology.
The real complication, in my mind, has little to do with the final destination nearly so much as the journey, and what predestination can be interpreted to say about how that journey (I'm talking about life here) works. If we are predestined for Hell, then, obviously, we are predestined to live a life fit for Hell, as God us fundamentally just (also, if you don't understand how Hell can be just, which is a tricky issue in its own right, let me know, and I'll see what I can do there). So, what does this say about our free will? People who believe intently in predestination will tell you it's an illusion. THIS, I have difficulty with. However, over the last few years, I've been formulating a model of predestination that I'm relatively comfortable with. As you've probably guessed, I'm going to spend the next while explaining it to you. Also, if any of you happen to have Theologian parents *COUGH*, I'd actually be interested in hearing what type of heathen they think I am...
So, first thing's first. We need to remember that predestination is something that occurs and exists outside of the foreknowledge of God. Of course, God, existing outside of our concept of time, knows everything we will do and where we will end up in what could be called an experiential manner. Predestination goes beyond this, so any theory of predestination must take this into account. So, I ask you this, think about a person you know incredibly well: a parent or sibling, a close friend, a boy/girlfriend, or something of the like. Now, you've probably got a pretty good idea of how they will respond to most basic events, right? If you do something, knowing how they will respond, you didn't make them do that thing, did you? Obviously, abusing this knowledge for your own benefit (and/or their detriment) would be undesirable, but that's another issue.
Now, think about God, who knows you better than you know yourself; who has a fundamental understanding of every aspect of your character, every working of your heart and mind. Wouldn't such a God be able to know exactly the sort of life you would live without you needing to live it? Wouldn't, then, the outcome of your life be written in stone and known to such a God before it ever occurred?
Dilemma solved...except not really. This raises serious questions about the nature of our souls and our characters. If God created us as individuals who would actively lead lives deserving of damnation, isn't that just as bad as making us do these very things? Perhaps, but this assumes that our souls are temporal; that they have only existed within time. Obviously this is treading incredibly towards notions of Cartesian dualism (ironic, seeing as the other complication I'm about to get to delves closer into materialism than I tend to enjoy), but if the soul, as originally created, exists outside of the complications of The Fall, then such a thing could not be said; as it is only the fallen nature of creation that puts our souls in jeopardy (oh no! potential gnosticism!).
The other complication is the question of whether or not we could actually determine a person's behavior entirely from some aspects of their character. Such a proposition implies that materialist ideas that human behavior, and indeed, consciousness is merely the result of some sort of incredibly complicated function being applied over a set of inputs. I really don't know how I feel about this, as I've always wanted to err more towards the side of dualism than materialism (probably, in part, to justify the shitty care I take of myself =P), but as I think about it, the more I'm inclined to worry less. Think again for a moment about this: the results events generally accepted as random (coin tosses, die rolls, etc.), can be computed precisely given enough environmental information, but it's simply not worth the effort.
Now think of something as complicated as human consciousness; even if there is some sort of magical formula unique to each person determining exactly how they will respond to an event, it would be impossible for any living person to comprehend everything that a person takes into account, much less how it weighs, for a single individual, much less the entire human population that ever has lived, is living, or will live...if my behavior is the result of some complicated set of rules that can only be perceived by God, I think I'm okay with that.
And, I'm spent.
Of the, like, four of you who occasionally mention having read this, I doubt most of you care too much about higher theology...But I've been thinking about this for quite awhile, and the situation just seemed right. I'd welcome any critiques of my thoughts, corrections of my likely errant supporting theology, or guidance towards stronger resources for hashing these sorts of things out.
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A certain one of you (the intended one) did forward this on to a theologian parent, and his comments are worth commenting on here:
There are a few places where I didn't transition between points as smoothly as I felt I did (an incredibly common issue in my writing, especially when I don't take much time to edit). And these spots make it very easy to infer a strongly negative attitude towards what I falsely (and largely accidentally) make out to be traditional understandings of the doctrine.
First, the connection between predestination and material prosperity isn't a theological one. I was referring primarily to cultural artifacts that try to tie the concept into the "health and wealth" gospel that remains so popular among some groups of what I will call casual Christians.
I thought that by pointing out that this idea was unbiblical, and not supported by doctrine was enough to distance the idea from the actual concept of predestination. That said, all I did was state that a does not imply b while implying that many people still believe it does. I know full well that most people don't actually believe this, and I'm sorry for the lack of clarity.
Second, it would seem that I implied that the majority of proponents of predestination deny free will. This is also blatantly false. When writing this, I was thinking a lot of some conversations I had early in my time at Calvin in which I met some people who did take this point of view (or cited others who did); and while they were few in number, the fact that so many of them were around took me aback and has fundamentally affected my response to the issue.
Among other helpful things, he also noted very importantly that "At the end of the day, the doctrine of election is really just the invisible wiring inside the doctrine of salvation by Christ's grace alone." This really is the important thing to remember, and I'd hate to distract you from it with my random frustration.
So, thanks much to both the friend and her father, and sorry for being occasionally unclear. It seems to happen a lot =P
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