just as 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, according to the good pleasure of His will. (Eph. 1:4-5)
God is omniscient and omnipotent. This is what everybody acknowledges. However, God's predestination of men is not such a simple question to answer.
It is because everything including man's fall, war, murder, and pain is going to be considered God's predestination if we insist that God planned man's destiny 100 percent and works according to His plan. Then we could not think of God as the subject of goodness, and man's effort or hope toward salvation and completion becomes meaningless.
Conversely, if man's will, not God's 100 percent predestination, decides everything on earth, God only falls into a powerless being who cannot rule man according to His will. This will lead us to the denial of God's being omniscience and omnipotence.
Then how did God predestinate man?
Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? (Rom. 9:21)
Calvin emphasized God's absolute authority. He said that salvation is the act by God only, and that man has no ability and authority to decide upon his ultimate destiny.
God saves us in spite of our fault and weakness. We shall be truly grateful to God when we understand that our destiny is predestinated by God.
However, according to Calvin, we come to a conclusion that those who will go to heaven and those who will go to hell are already predestinated by God.
That means however hard men try, they cannot change their destiny at all since their destiny was already decided before their birth.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. (Matt. 7:7-8)
And the prayer of the faith will save the sick. (James 5:15)
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. (Matt. 28-19)
If God had predestinated men to go either to heaven or hell, men do not need to have any free will or responsibility. Life would be just like a pendulum of a clock.
However, God says that we have to pray for sick brothers. In addition, Jesus gave his disciples the mission of witnessing. According to the theory of predestination, believers and non-believers are supposedly picked already. Then why should we pray, have faith, and try to do good things?
who desires all men to be saved and to come to knwledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:4)
Besides, the double predestination goes against God's love because God, our Paren, cannot predestine whom to go to pain or hell even before men, His children, are born.
For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, Nor shall evil dwell with You. (Psalms 5:4)
If everything is predestinated, so are hell, fall, and evil. However, the Bible says that God cannot dwell with sinfulness and He hates evil.
Then would it be that man's act has an influence on God's providence?
We come across many biblical verses that show contradictory aspect should we read them only from their literal meaning without knowing understanding their hidden meaning. We will investigate the question of predestination into two parts; God's predestination of the will and man's responsibility.
Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matt. 5:48)
Since God is the essence of love, He aimed to have the world of love. Since He is the essence of goodness, He regarded the world of goodness as an ideal. Besides, since God is perfect, He wanted His children to have a complete character. In other words, God predestinated goodness only.
However, this world became a world of sin and evil as Adam and Eve failed to resemble God's character and become good men. If such evil results had been the necessary product of God's predestination, He would not have regretted the evil result of His own predestination. If He had so, Calvin's theory of absolute predestination would be nothing but a theory in theology.
And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. (Gen. 6:6)
However, as God is the predestinator of goodness, He feels pain so deeply when He sees His children are evil, ignorant, fight against each other, kill each other, and suffer pain.
. . . Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it. (Isaiah 46:11)
God - Goodness God - Eternal, Unchageable, Absolute God's Ideal of Creation- Goodness God's Purpose - Eternal, Unchageable, Absolute The Purpose of
the Providence - Goodness
of RestorationGod's will - Purpose of Creation and Providence of Restoration Predestination - Only Goodness God's will -
God is the absolute being-unique, eternal, and unchangeable; so God's purpose of creation must be the same.
God, since the fall of mankind and beginning from Adam's family, has been unfolding the providence of salvation in order to deliver man as early as possible and establish His good will on the earth again.
Even though man may betray God' true will, God will not forsake His hope toward man forever.
God calls a central figure in doing the providence of restoration. When a person chosen for the will fails to accomplish it, God goes on to fulfill it, even by setting up another person in place of the one who failed.
Since God' will of the realization of heavenly kingdom is absolute, He tried to fulfill through Jesus the responsibility that Adam failed to do (I Cor. 15:21) and now through Jesus of the Second Advent.
For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (I John 5:3)
God's will, which is to realize heavenly kingdom, cannot be fulfilled by God alone. It can be made possible only when man accomplishes his own portion of responsibility. It is because heavenly kingdom is the world of love.
God's good `will' is an absolute one, whereas the fulfillment of the will is relative. It is because the will is predestined
Love cannot be realized by one individual alone. Neither can it be by force. God loved men and endowed them with a free will, and wanted them to love God by themselves.
Adam and Eve had the responsibility of having to believe God's love. It was to believe and obey God's word. It applies to us, either.
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. (John 3:16)
God sent Jesus to save the world, not to destroy it. God's will can see its fulfillment when we fulfill our portion of responsibility of believing in Jesus and following him.
. . . Your faith has made you well. (Mark 5:34)
If everything is going to be done by God's one-sided will, there will be no reason to emphasize man's effort or to scold his mistake.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that God's providence is swayed by man's own thinking. Then what will be the relationship between God's responsibility and man's responsibility?
God's good `will' is an absolute one, whereas the predestination for the fulfillment of the will is not. It is because the will predestined to be fulfilled only when God's portion of 95 percent responsibility and man's portion of 5 percent responsibility are accomplished together. Indicating the proportion of man's responsibility as 5 percent is only to say that man's responsibility is extremely small compared to God's. Nevertheless, we must understand that, for man, it means 100 percent effort.
God has prepared the environment for man to build heavenly kingdom and has been taking care of man. However, it is man's own portion of responsibility whether Adam and Eve believe in God's word and obey it.
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. (Gen. 2:17)
When God predestines man, He always does that comparatively. Rather, He just has to do that in that way as man is left with his own responsibility to fulfill. The road ahead of man such as faith and disbelief, obedience and betrayal, love and hatred, righteousness and unrighteousness, and goodness and evil, is the one which man must choose of his own. Adam also had two ways in front of him. One was the way that leads him to death by eating the fruit of the Tree and the other was the road to eternal life by not eating the fruit.
Aaron shall be gathered to his people, for he shall not enter the land which I have given to the children of Israel, because you rebelled against My word at the water of Meribah. (Numbers 20:24)
Moses was predestined to be the great leader capable of bringing the elected people to the blessed land of Canaan, but only by accomplishing his own portion of responsibility (Exodus 3:10).
Accordingly, God's predestination of the will is absolute, and the predestination for the fulfillment of the will or of man is relative, because the predestination toward man's 5 percent responsibility should be accompanied by man's own effort.
Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (Rom. 8:30)
The question is the meaning contained in the verses which say as if God predestines man's destiny 100%.
God's providence begins with the selection of central figure. Although God sets up some person as a central figure, each and every mankind is predestined to be saved in the last day since the purpose of God's providence of restoration lies in the complete restoration of the fallen world into the ideal world of creation.
God sets up an individual to set up a family, sets up a family to save a nation, and sets up chosen people and Christianity to save the entire world.
We can see this by Jesus' effort to unfold the providence to his 3 disciples, 12 disciples, 70 apostles, 120 elders, Jewish people, Rome, and the world.
Juda was also one of the 12 chosen disciples. However, he became a betrayer when he failed to fulfill his responsibility. As is shown, the power of making one glorious lies in God. In spite of that, He can achieve His predestination of making man glorious only when man fulfills his portion of responsibility.
For the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, . . . Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. (Rom. 9:11-13)
What does this biblical verse of absolute predestination mean? The above verse says that God loved Jacob and hated Esau even when they were in their mother's womb and that the elder shall serve the younger.
Had man not fallen, every man would have attended God only. Due to the fall, however, man who had connection with Satan cannot but serve two as his lord.
Since God is goodness, He could not deal with man who has both good and evil within himself.
Accordingly, God divided man into God's side and Satan's side. Jacob represents God's side at Abel's lineage, and Esau represents Satan's side at Cain's lineage.
Here God could deal only with Jacob at the good side. Esau could deal with God only through the central figure, Jacob.
God is the owner of goodness. God is love. Evil exists.
We live while keeping a contradiction amongst these three propositions.
How can we explain the apparent existence of evilness of nature such as miserable earthquake or germs which cause diseases, and the existence of the evilness of man such as lust, arrogance, and killing of another man.
The evilness from nature simply comes from the working of natural law, but man's evilness is caused from the grace of promise and responsibility that was bestowed upon man.
God knows all the possibility of the future. However, it depends on mankind which among these possibilities God puts into reality. Accordingly, evil cannot come into being so long as man does not do unrighteous things. Can't it be that the accident of fall in the Bible explains the origin of evil?
If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:31-32)
Man's having his portion of responsibility is an important essence of mankind. It is not what restrict man, but God's present of love to make man become complete.
If man fails to do his responsibility, God's sovereignty just has to be limited to a certain degree. God knows all the possibility open to us, but He cannot know that until man takes any action. We can go contrary to His will.
Since God is love, He may feel empty and unhappy should man become just like a robot and do not have the creativity. God knew that He cannot feel happiness from man in that position. This is why God was willing to restrict Himself though He knew the possibility of man's action and His potential pain which is resulted by that action.
Man want freedom away from God. However, it is a restraint in the end. It is because true love exist in the realm of truth rooted in the love which exist for the sake of living for others.
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (2 Pet. 3:9)
God's will was to create the world of love and goodness. God's will toward this is absolute and unchangeable. Accordingly, the providence of restoration should be to return to the original world of creation from the fallen world.
However, there is man's portion of responsibility in realizing God's will. Hence, the salvation cannot be realized all of a sudden, but is possible by gradual providence through the Messiah.
Since man is in a position where he cannot face God directly because of the fall, God's will can be fulfilled when man believes in and follow the Messiah whom God sends as a mediator. We certainly have to fulfill God's predestination like this.
This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent. (John 6:29)
