The Appomattox Courthouse Presbyterian Church Pulpit

"Answering Some Questions About Predestination"
By the Rev. W. Twyman Williams, D.D.
Pastor of Appomattox Court House Presbyterian Church, 1948-1961
The Lord's Day, March 27, 1960

INTRODUCTION
A wise and important observation of John Calvin seems a most appropriate preface to this sermon:

"The discussion of predestination - a subject of itself rather intricate - is made very perplexed, and therefore dangerous, by human curiosity, which no barriers can restrain from wandering into forbidden labyrinths, and from soaring beyond its sphere, as if determined to leave none of the Divine secrets unscrutinized or unexplored….Let us then, in the first place, bear in mind that to desire any more knowledge of predestination than that which is unfolded in the Word of God, indicates as great folly as to walk through impassable roads, or to see in the dark."

The Westminster Confession of Faith calls predestination "a high mystery to be handled with special prudence and care." But it's prominence in Holy Scripture is of itself good reason why a preacher should not refuse to handle it, in spite of whatever difficulty and danger may be involved.

There is another reason too, as appears in this fine statement of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Episcopal Church:

"…the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ."

This same paragraph of the Thirty-Nine Articles continues to say that in the case of people who lack the Spirit of Christ, Satan may make predestination "a dangerous downfall," impelling them to give up hope of salvation and even to abandon themselves to sinful living. More likely, since it is almost impossible to convince a non-Christian of the truth of predestination, it may if over-emphasized, cause an unconverted person to revolt against the Gospel itself. That is why, in undertaking this sermon, I asked especially for the prayer I covet from you always.

So in preparing this sermon, after several requests for it, I have had in mind not theologians and philosophers, but people like myself who are neither the one nor the other. One of those who asked for a sermon on predestination said, "Make it plain and practical." That is what I shall try to do, and I shall try also to keep within the bounds Holy Scripture has obviously set in its presentation of the subject. To accomplish both purposes, I shall attempt only what is indicated in the subject I have given this sermon, "Answering Some Questions About Predestination" - some of the questions I have found most often in people's minds.

QUESTION #1
Is predestination a belief on which Presbyterians have a monopoly?
     It is surprising how many people, even Presbyterians, think so. It is quite generally supposed that John Calvin invented it, and that his followers, the Presbyterians in all their varieties - there are about one hundred Presbyterian denominations, found on every continent and in some thirty or more countries - mostly hold on to it by some queer mental twist, while all other Christians, more sensible, reject it.

As a matter of fact, it was taught by Martin Luther as clearly as by John Calvin, and rather more vigorously. It is in the historic creeds of the Lutherans. All branches of the Reformed Church - French, German, Dutch, Swiss, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, have it in their creeds. Huguenots from France, Puritans from England, and Covenanters from Scotland, all held it. The Seventeenth Article of the Thirty-Nine, adopted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth [I] and still in the prayer book of the Episcopal Church in Great Britain and in the United States, affirms it as "the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) He hath constantly decreed by His counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He chosen in Christ out of the world, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor." Indeed, a thousand years before Calvin, the greatest of the Latin Church Fathers, Augustine, vindicated it as apostolic teaching, and for a time it was Roman Catholic doctrine, while at no time ahs that church ever officially rejected it. It has its Augustinians still. The Baptist, the Disciple, and the Congregational Churches, though they have no creeds like the Lutheran, the Episcopal, the Reformed, and the Presbyterian, if their greatest theologians speak for them, believe in predestination. So does one branch (the Welsh Whitfieldian) of the Methodist Church, which as a church does not - the very first organized church or denomination to reject it. Until then, no longer ago than 1784, the denial of predestination was considered heresy and was found - to quote another's words - "on the outskirts of true religion." Note well that Dr. Boettner did not say "outside the bounds of true religion!"

QUESTION #2
Is predestination, whatever it may be, really in the Bible?
     How can you account for the fact that it is found in the creeds of all branches of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, that have creeds, and in the writings of representative theologians of the churches that do not have creeds? Such a thing, especially since predestination is certainly no popular doctrine, simply could not have happened if it were not very clearly in the Bible. I am sure all my hearers will admit that it is in the Scripture lesson read just now - Romans 9 and 11. But other Scripture from Old Testament and New could be quoted for the rest of the hour. I shall limit myself to that in which are found the word or a synonym.

     Romans 8:29-30 [Editor's Note: All subsequent Scripture citations are from the King James Version] 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. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
     Ephesians 1:4-5 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will….
     Ephesians 1:11-12 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.
     1 Peter 1:2 Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ….
     Matthew 24:24 Our Lord's words: For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
     Mark 13:20 Our Lord's words again: And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.
     Romans 8:33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?

Once, in an informal talk on Presbyterian doctrines to a group of young people, after I had quoted such Scripture, one of them, who had declared that he did not believe in predestination, spoke up thoughtfully: "Well, whatever it is, it certainly is in the Bible. Maybe before I say I don't believe in it, I'd better be sure I know what it is." A very sensible remark. Undoubtedly, the reason many people do not believe in it is just that they don't know what it is.

QUESTION #3
What is predestination?
     Look again at the Scripture quoted. The verb elect, the adjective elect, and the noun election, of course always refer to God's choice of men to His favor and their salvation. But - and this is a fact to be keenly noted - the other words expressive of God's sovereign choice and purpose, foreknow, foreordain, [and] predestinate, are also never used with reference to God's disfavor and man's perdition. Predestinate is found four times, only in Romans 8 and Ephesians 1, as quoted just now, and every time to denote God's choice and purpose that the persons predestinated should have His favor and find salvation. The same Greek word is given two other translations in our English Bible. One is in Acts 4:28, in which passage Herod, Pontius Pilate, Gentiles and Jews, are described as gathered together to do whatsoever God's hand and counsel "determined before to be done." But some of these Jews and Gentiles who had part in our Lord's death, repented and believed at Pentecost or subsequently, and were saved. So there is no statement here that predestined any of them to be lost. The other different translation of the word is in 1 Corinthians 2:7, in which verse Paul speaks of a hidden wisdom of God, which God "ordained before the world unto our glory."

As for the words foreknew and foreknowledge, when they refer to God, the Greek words so translated are found in Paul's familiar statement, "Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate" and in Peter's greeting to the scattered Christians to whom he wrote as "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God." The same verb is once translated foreordain - in Peter's reference to our Lord as predestined before the foundation of the world to be the Lamb of God, (1 Peter 1:19-20). It is the same word Paul used when He said of Israel, "God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew." (Romans 11:2). Thus these three words, foreknow, foreordain, predestinate, like elect, always refer to God's choice and purpose to bless. But are there not other words?

Yes, there is one, translated ordain in a verse that clearly states the purpose for which they were ordained. Acts 13:48 reads: "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed." This word is found in but one other place in the New Testament - "The powers that be are ordained of God." (Romans 13:1).

There is another word, which means literally write beforehand. Jude uses it, speaking (verse 4) of certain ungodly men, getting unawares into the church and denying the faith, who, he says, "were before of old ordained to this condemnation." But the word translated of old is one never in the New Testament used to mean from eternity, and obviously "before ordained to this condemnation" (such as Jude expressed) is by no means equivalent to "predestined to perdition."

There is but one more word, which is used in only one place where it may seem to mean predestination. In his 1st Epistle (2:8), referring to the plain fact of history that the Lord Jesus Christ is precious to some, but "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense" to others, who, he says, "stumble at the word, being disobedient", Peter adds, "whereunto they were appointed." Here again it is not said they were foreordained or predestined to their disobedience and unbelief.

But this careful use of words in these passages of Scripture is not the only reason why Presbyterians, believing in predestination, do not believe that it means a decree of God back in eternity that certain of the human race should be lost. That, it is true, appears on the surface to be the meaning of the [Westminster] Confession of Faith in its statement: "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death." Great and good men have indeed so understood it. But surely the sense in which foreordained is used in that statement is explained in the statement following: "The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice."

To pass by sinners who prefer sin to holiness, self to God, leaving them as they are and wish to be, ordaining them to punishment for being what they are, is a vastly different thing from foreordaining, predestinating in eternity before the sinners ever existed that they should sin and never repent and believe. Scripture, as we have seen, nowhere says that God did such a thing, nor does the Presbyterian doctrine of predestination assert it.

The truth is that God's predestination, in its particular form of election, is always the sole reason why anybody is saved, and never the reason why anybody is lost. C.S. Lewis, in "The Great Divorce", puts it strikingly: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done!' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done!' All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly seeks joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."

No one, let it be repeated, is ever lost for any other reason than that he is a sinner, chooses to remain a sinner, and so deserves to be lost, and all the more if he has heard the Gospel and refused the Savior it offers. Our Lord said just that too plainly to mistake: "And this is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).

QUESTION #4
How can predestination be a good thing, or even a fair thing?
     It can't - when misunderstood in such a way as to make God condemn innocent people to perdition, refuse salvation to any who really seek it, shut the door of heaven to anyone who sincerely desires to enter. Predestination has to do not with innocent people, but with sinful and guilty people. The Thirty-Nine Articles have a more logical order here than the Confession of Faith, for before the one on predestination, there is this one: "The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us (that is, coming to us before or first), that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have the good will."

That dark problem, how a God of infinite love and wisdom and power could create a world in which men and women would fall into sin like that, is as much a problem for those who reject predestination as for those who believe it. That God did that very thing is obvious fact - the world is here and sin is here. That, being God, he did not have to do it, no one who accepts the Bible's revelation of an omnipotent God can question. But God did it. Why? The only thing we can say is what Abraham said, facing the destruction God told him that he was about to visit on Sodom and Gomorrah: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" That is what our Confession of Faith means by saying that God's passing sinners by will be seen at last, if not seen now, as showing the glory of His holiness and justice. Indeed, we have in the light of the Gospel, something better to say than Abraham had, who knew he could trust God to do right. For to us God is "He that spared not His own Son but delivered him up for us all," and we can trust a God like that to do not only the right thing, but the good thing and the loving thing for the world He loved so much as to give His Son to save it.

But I am quite aware that by this time I have laid myself open to the charge of oversimplification, maybe even the charge of evading the real problem. On the occasion already mentioned, when I made a talk to a young people's society, after the talk, one of the adults present came up to me enthusiastically. "You handled that subject so well," she said. "Not to have touched on it, you handled it better than anyone I ever heard." I think she meant that I did not try to solve a humanly unsolvable problem. That problem, of course, is how God's predestination of all that comes to pass is compatible with man's freedom and responsibility. Is there not such a contradiction involved that reason must reject predestination?

If God, as the Presbyterian creed asserts, has "foreordained whatsoever comes to pass," aren't human beings just puppets, doing only what they must as God pulls the strings? And how then can God fairly hold them responsible for what is in fact His doing? More darkly still, if there are those whom God passes by, those to whom consequently His gift if faith by which to be saved never comes, is not the Gospel for them a cruel mockery with its offer of a Savior that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish but have everlasting life?

With all humility, yet with all confidence, I think the answer is this: the contradiction exists to our minds because we do not know all the factors of the problem. God does know them all, and so He sees no contradiction and no problem. But we do, and Dr. Cunningham, in his massive work on "Historical Theology," tells the truth when he says that although probably no subject has occupied more of the attention of intelligent men in every age, or been more fully discussed with the highest ability, ingenuity, and acuteness brought to bear upon the discussion, not only have the difficulties attaching to predestination never been fully solved, but "we are warranted in saying that they never will be, unless God gives us either a fuller revelation or greatly enlarged capacities."

"A fuller revelation" - new factors of the problem, factors of which we are as yet unaware. Because God is quite aware of them all, and because He delights above all things in our faith, He has not explained how His predestination of everything that comes to pass leaves any freedom to human beings. But in His Word He makes it plain that it does, and that consequently, as could not be the case if it did not, all human beings are responsible for what they believe and do and are, and justly to be condemned if they are not what they ought to be in faith and conduct and character.

Here is the best illustration I have ever found of this explanation of the contradiction as existing only because of some unknown factor or factors in the problem.

Someone has imagined Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C. who is credited with the discovery that the earth is spherical, might have announced the discovery to his students: "Young gentlemen, yesterday I discovered that if you were to travel due east and keep going long enough, you would come back to where you started." The class would agree that their teacher was slipping or else amusing himself at their expense, for nothing could be more certain, with the earth a plane, that after traveling east, the only way to get back to your starting point is to turn around and travel west. Next day, they were certain Pythagoras was crazy or took them to be, when he announced, "I have made a further discovery. I know that it is also true that if you were to travel due west and keep going far enough, you would get back to where you started." You see, they did not know one factor their teacher did know - that the earth is round, a sphere not a plane. Once they had that factor, what had seemed to them an absolute contradiction, an impossibility, became quite obviously true. On a round earth you can travel either east or west and get back to your starting point.

Is it so hard or so humiliating for us to admit that God may be aware of a few things that have not yet occurred to us, or even to the wisest of humankind? When His well-attested Word, the Bible, clearly asserts two things which, because we do not know all the factors involved, look flatly contradictory, is it unreasonable to believe them both?

THE FOREKNOWLEDGE FACTOR
     But is it at all likely that there are factors at present unknown to us that would solve or lessen this particular problem of predestination? Certainly it is not solved, nor much lessened, if we reduce predestination to no more than foreknowledge, as some do, and say that God does not foreordain everything, but does foreknow everything. For, as C.S. Lewis says in his book, "Beyond Personality," "Everyone who believes in God at all, believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how am I free to do otherwise?"

Mr. Lewis suggests that the difficulty raised by this question may be due to our not knowing as much about time. As commonly understood, time implies succession, and appears to us as past, present, future. But whether or not with God time is like that, is by no means certain. As Mr. Lewis says, many learned men do not think that it is. "It was the theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same."

One of the latter, whom Mr. Lewis may or may not have had in mind, is J.W. Dunne. In 1927 he published a book, "An Experiment with Time," which has appeared in a number of revised editions, one as recent as 1942. Mr. Dunne relates some experiences of his own and of other people, which indicate that, as C.S. Lewis expressed it, "some things are not in Time at all," even with human beings. Mr. Lewis thinks that this may well mean something more than God's ability to see ahead into the future, as man cannot do. For, "Suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call tomorrow is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call today….He doesn't foresee you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way - because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you."

I am not saying that the nature of time is the factor, unknown to us at present, that will solve this intricate problem. I am trying t show the reasonableness of believing that there is such a factor. If it is reasonable to believe that there is, then it is reasonable also to accept on God's Word both the fact of predestination and the fact of our free-agency. As for the apparent contradiction involved, we may leave that problem to God in confidence that it is not an unsolvable problem to Him, although to us it continues to be.

QUESTION #5
Does it make any practical difference?
     My friend said, "Be practical as well as plain." Let Calvin answer:

"I would, in the first place, entreat my readers carefully to bear in memory the admonition which I offer - that this great subject is not, as many imagine, a mere thorny and noisy disputation, not a speculation which wearies the minds of men without any profit, but a solid discussion eminently adapted to the service of the godly, because it builds us up soundly in the faith, trains us to humility, and lifts us up into an admiration of the unbounded goodness of God toward us, while it elevates us to praise this goodness in our highest strains. For there is not a more effectual means of building up faith than the giving our open ears to the election of God, which the Holy Spirit seals upon our heart while we hear, showing us that it stands in the eternal and immutable goodwill of God towards us; and that, therefore, it cannot be moved or altered by any assaults of Satan, by any changes, by any fluctuations or weaknesses of the flesh. For our salvation is then sure to us, when we find the cause of it in the breast of God."

Commenting on these words of Calvin, Dr. Boettner, in his thorough study of predestination, in a chapter I wish all Christians might read, "The Practical Importance of the Doctrine," has this to say:

"The Christian who has this doctrine in his heart knows that he is following a heaven-directed course; that his course has been foreordained for him personally; and that it is a good course. He does not yet understand all of the details, but even amid adversities he can look forward confident of the future, knowing that his eternal destiny is fixed and forever blessed, and that nothing can possibly rob him of this priceless treasure. He realizes that after he has finished the course here he shall look back over it and see that every single event in it was designed of God for a particular purpose, and he will be thankful for having been led through these particular experiences. This exalted conception of God as high and lifted up yet personally concerned with even the smallest events leaves no place for what men call chance or luck or fortune. When a man sees himself as one of the Lord's chosen and knows that every one of his acts has an eternal significance, he realizes more clearly how serious life is, and he is fired with a new determination to make his life count for great things."

Other truths of our Christian faith may give us comfort and hope, but only this truth of predestination can give us certainty of our salvation and the joy that goes with it.

But what about those who are not Christians? It is not pleasant for us who are to think that anyone of those right around us, our close friends or relatives, may be those whom God passes by. But whether that is so or not is something we cannot know, and even in the case of those farthest as we see it from the Christian faith and life we have no right to conclude that it is so. And still less has anyone not a Christian but with real desire to be one any right to think that God will not have him come to Christ and find salvation.

In 2nd Timothy 2, there is a verse with a beautiful and practical application of this great truth: "The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." Someone has said that the first of these seals is inside this "foundation of God," which means that building which Paul describes in Ephesians 2, the holy temple of God's redeemed and elect people, the habitation of His Holy Spirit. We are not concerned with this first seal until we come inside. Only the one concerns us so long as we are outside: "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." That is God's command to believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, to repent of our sin and turn from it. That get us inside, and inside we see that other seal, "The Lord knoweth them that are His," and with a thrill we have the witness of His Spirit in our hearts that now we are His. It is very foolish to look inside from the outside at that seal and say, "But I don't know whether I am one of His or not. If I am, He will get me in without my doing anything about it. If I am not, nothing I can do will get me in." The seal outside says that what we are to do is to put our trust in Christ and turn away from sin. No one ever honestly and earnestly set out to do that without finding God's grace. For "the Lord is….not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).