My Theological Stance after Searching with All of My Heart

The problem was that I had a huge emotional aversion to (Romans 9:20-24). That was my whole emotional rebellion against predestination I see now. I did not want to use that logic to defend the faith against its detractors.

After some meditation, I came to the conclusion that God was right in His ways, and I thought I was done. I was now a predestinationist. However, I went in search of more verses to test my newfound belief. There is much to gain from many counselors after all (Proverbs 11:14).

I came to know the power of His sovereignty, and I have great peace from it. I had to wrestle with the fact God is God. He is omnipotent and sovereign. He is reaching out to everyone, yet He is sovereign over all things. I see God is seated on His throne and we are grasshoppers to Him (Isaiah 40:22). I also love the image of God in (1 Kings 22:19-23) as the evidence of a God Who is in control and rules with an iron scepter.

That said, the weight of the biblical evidence is too great for me to stay predestinationist. Biblical evidence alone convinced me that God does allow choices, but in a limited way.

I will list now all that influenced me to my current “God grants choices to confound His will” viewpoint.

I attempted to understand Romans 9 as talking about the privileged status of Israel over the Gentiles. The Lord’s choice of stiff necked Israel as His people and His choice of wrath for the Egyptians and Pharaoh. Simply put, God lost patience with Pharaoh and the Egyptians and decided to make them into an example that would expand His fame, His glory, throughout the earth. That seems unjust emotionally as it seems capricious, give Israel’s rebellion especially with the golden calf. However, Paul is absolutely right in Romans 9 that God has the right to do what He wants to do with rebels. He can have mercy on whom He has mercy and compassion on whom Hw has compassion when working with rebellious lumps of clay. Of course, there are the righteous, like Moses, who are precious to the Lord and are not prepared for wrath but for blessing.

Next, I must ask what do I know from the Word of God factually speaking:

God wants all people to repent and accept His salvation.
-
(Isaiah 45:22)
(Ezekiel 18:23)
(Ezekiel 18:32)
(Ezekiel 33:31)
(1 Timothy 2:1-6)
(2 Peter 3:7-9)
(Matthew 23:37)
(Jeremiah 18:3-12)

People can make choices opposed to God’s will.
-
(Genesis 15:12-15)
(Exodus 34:9)
(Exodus 33:3 and Exodus 33:5);
(Deuteronomy 9:6 and Deuteronomy 9:13);
(Deuteronomy 10:16); (Deuteronomy 31:27);
(Judges 2:19);
(2 Kings 17:14);
(2 Chronicles 30:8);
(2 Chronicles 36:13);
(Nehemiah 9:16);
(Isaiah 46:12);
(Isaiah 48:4);
(Jeremiah 7:26);
(Hosea 4:16)

And I know there are more than this in the bible.

I am also struck by the logic in Jonah 3 and Jonah 4 that the Lord uses for why He is saving Nineveh. It seems to indicate that everyone should be given a chance to repent. I find logic like this all throughout the bible really.

In addition, I asked the question: “Does the bible ever make it clear that God gave man the ability to obey Him or not?” The answer seems to be a huge YES as God is constantly calling people to embrace His will throughout the bible, and He keeps telling people the rewards and penalties of obedience and disobedience to His will.

The book of life itself talked of in Exodus 32:31-33, Revelation 3:5, Psalms 139:16, Revelation 13:8, Revelation 17:8 indicates that everyone is written in the book and they are blotted out for iniquity.

Also, Paul’s prayer for the salvation of others surprised me. He prays in Romans 10:1 that the Israelites may be saved. I found in my own prayer life that this was odd if I was a predestinationist, as my intention was to pray for others to be saved with His will not mine done. This made more sense, since I supposed it was fully in His will to save or not save people.

It seems we have the ability to reject His drawing Spirit, who works and at times speaks through the apostles, evangelists, and believers, especially before kings and authorities (Matthew 10:19-20). This to draw all people to Christ, including many who eventually rejected the apostles, evangelists, believers, and old testament prophets, and the Spirit who spoke to them.

I also have a severe problem with Calvin and Luther and Zwingli and their teachings, given the warning in (Matthew 7:15-20). That I should be careful of the character in the teachers and prophets I go to. All three persecuted and murdered martyrs. I consider them thorn bushes to pick from for this reason alone, let alone their well recognized, public sins.

I must say that faith is not a work as Romans 11 contrasts it with works. It is the very least we owe God.

What really convinced me on my current position was that I asked myself “what is free will?” I have discovered that the term seems loaded, libertarian, and humanocentric. Instead, "free will" seems to be God granting others power over Himself and His will taking effect through our choices, I can only suspect out of love for them as people made in His image. The bible is full of instances of this it seems, especially in the Old Testament. God gave the people of Israel power over Him emotionally like a man gives to His wife. I cannot fathom how to argue against such a claim given the books of the prophets. How can I put it though, God can do this because He is absolute sovereign over all He has created. God is unfair in that we are puny to Him and He made us this way. We are all heading to the Day of Judgment for eternal blessing or eternal rejection. He is in charge, even over our eternal destinies based on our obedience or disobedience to Him.

Regardless, how “free will” works as some type of infinite sovereignty over the self is ridiculous and unbiblical. It is a humanocentric attempt to make man into God or like God. At most we have the “free will” to accept or reject God’s initiative, which are His precepts and commands to us. To thwart God’s will, but we should be in reverent fear for what awaits those who would tell the Lord “no.”

It seems to me that Paul concentrates on the foreknowing of the Lord in his perspective, but this perspective still takes into account the fact Believers and false believers will stand or fall on the Day of Judgment based on their choices, which he so often warns them of.

So to conclude, choice is about being able to interact with God as a person it seems. We are like sheep interacting with a shepherd or small children interacting with an adult. There is a darker side here in that we are capable of so much more evil to each other than a sheep or a child even though we still don’t threaten God except to hurt Him through our rejection of His will.

Verses that give me pause on what I currently believe:

(Psalms 139:16)
(John 6:39-40)
(2 Thessalonians 2:13-14)
(Romans 8:29-30)
(Ephesians 1:3-14)

To these scriptures I say that how the Lord’s foreknowing works in relation to all else about God and His interaction with us does not make sense right now fully, but will be understood in heaven. We still look through a glass darkly, but given the many bible verses gone through in this thread I see that having some verses putting the idea of "election" and "predestination" is allowable given the weight of biblical verses that God allows a limited amount of choice in his sheep or children, especially to obey or disobey Him. Of course, the many verses on the security of the Believer show that once a person is brought to salvation and is indwelt by the Spirit they are eternally marked for glory.

OK, please critique my new viewpoint. We are to test all things and hold to what is good after all (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

 

Oops, sorry I should have better proofread, and it rambles a bit.

 

I agree. Jesus was crucified from before the beginning of the world (1 Peter 1:20-21). This implies that God, at the very least, knew that someone would eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God knew in Daniel so much about the political future of the earth. Of Alexander's empire and the fact it would be split into four parts. The Father knows the day and hour of the End of the Age even. We do not have absolute free will. We only have the limited ability to choose that God gives us, an ability to choose that is meant for us to choose to obey Him.

 

So far as I have skimmed, the work is almost entirely written from logic like a work of Anselm or Augustine. Do you know of a work that bases its foundation on a study of the bible and all its verses on the subject instead?

 

I have struggled with this for years. This was the first time I did an exhaustive biblical study on the matter. I am now at peace after having been in turmoil on the issue for years. I believe I have a biblical and utterly defensible position. My great surprise was getting to my current belief. I thought I would be Reformed by this point in time, but the Word of God testifies to something very different I have found.