Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Foreordained, or predestined?
"In spite of the widespread scholarly acknowledgment that Arminians do believe in predestination, popular Christian opinion has become firmly convinced that the difference between Calvinists and Arminians is that the former believe in predestination and the latter believe in free will. That has been elevated to the status of a truism in American pop theology and folk religion. But it is false. The fact is that many Calvinists believe in free will that is compatible with determinism. They distinguish it from libertarian freedom, which is incompatible with determinism and is the Arminian view of free will. It is also a fact that all true Arminians believe in predestination, but not in Calvinist foreordination. That is, they believe that God foreknows every person's ultimate and final decision regarding Jesus Christ, and on that basis God predestines people to salvation or damnation. But Arminians do not believe God predetermines or preselects people for either heaven or hell apart from their free acts of accepting or resisting the grace of God. Furthermore, Arminians interpret the biblical concept of unconditional election (predestination to salvation) as corporate. Thus, predestination has an individual meaning (foreknowledge of individual choices) and it has a collective meaning (election of a people). The former is conditional; the latter is unconditional. God's predestination of individuals is conditioned by their faith; God's election of a people for his glory is unconditional. The latter will comprise all those who believe."—Arminian Theology, pages 179-180.
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I have been pondering and trying to conceptualize the concepts of both predestination and foreordination. I believe in the scriptures. I believe that we did have a life, spiritually, before we came here to this earth (and will continue in life after this earth). I believe that this life is similar in teachings from our pre-earth life...line upon line, precept upon precept.
Foreordination seems to differ from predestination in that foreordination implies that we already had agency before we came to earth. Thus we chose to flourish or possibly be mediocre in expounding our talents and testimony in our pre-earth life. This leads me to believe that all or most of us may have been foreordained in one or many things to accomplish on earth based on our faithfulness and striving with our talents and testimony here as well. I suppose if God is the same today, yesterday, and forever, that also implies Christ himself was foreordained and had agency to choose. All the prophets and human beings throughout time. That gives us equal opportunity in the eyes of the Lord. We are all born with agency.
Predestination seems to imply rather that we do not have agency. That God set things up and we are living according to his static rules of a sort of spiritual "Caste System". This would make God a respecter of persons, so I'm for foreordination!
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