Determinism, Calvinism, and Predestination- Do We Truly Possess Free Will or Are We a Programmed Species like Robots?

              Do we human beings truly possess free will? Are our human cognitive processes truly determined and operated by us alone, or are we wound up like some placiticized toy preconditioned to be greatly limited in what we can do? If we do possess true free will, then to what extent do we possess that free will? Countless of philosophers both theists and atheists, along with, of course their rivals, the devout monotheists, creationists, and sectarians of all sorts have debated issues like this for centuries. Ever since the dawns of every new age and era, most especially the 20^th and 21^st centuries of ever-evolving technology, a multitude of philosophical, evolutionary, scientific, and religious theories of all sort have reared themselves into society. Each one seemingly to have one or two aspects of convincing claims of proposed truth, each one being competently defended by its devout groups of proponents writing books, giving speeches, and influencing our various cultures in which make it outstandingly difficult for anyone searching for absolute truth.

               Perhaps one of the most infamous philosophical inspections ever to exist would have to be of God and His objective nature. In the midst of all of these various religions combating each other with pertinacity about who God is, how He affects us, and what his plans and intentions are for us, it appears as though we, ourselves, are attempting to determine God’s fate for us through our sincere acts of influence. Regardless of what religion may or may not be objectively true, there is one particular query in which intellectuals are perhaps so pestered by and cannot excuse. This being mankind’s reality of free will.

               For those of us who believe in a creator, the general consensus of our multi-qualitative creator is Him being omniscient. Since we assert His omniscience, we must say He knows everything about us human beings, our likes and dislikes, our personalities, and so forth, because after all He did create us. He knows the beginning from the end and everything from each moment of the past and of the present and the future. For those of us who choose to operate in this thought process of faith in God, some of us like the idea and some of us don’t like the idea of  God setting up a blueprint for our lives or writing our entire life story, so to speak. Jeremiah 29:11- “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end,” a heart-warming scripture amongst other prolific scriptures messaged to us by the Judea Christian God moves devout believers to think of God as an unambiguous peace-loving, gracious, compassionate, and good God promising all of His followers prosperity. It continues on to say, “Then ye shall call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” It is not only the Judea Christian God who makes such promises like this to His followers but it is also the gods of the other monotheistic religions as well, such as Allah. Some of us will wrangle with the theory of God preplanning our decisions for us such as what careers we will undertake, what colleges we will attend, who we will marry and so forth, because we like the thought of knowing that we are in complete control of everything.

               Although, whatever the objective truth may be, whether God truly is predetermining every decision that we make to be what He so desired of us to make, or is predetermining certain decisions and leaving the rest for us to make, we cannot possibly know which theory is irrefutable. Or can we know which theory is irrefutable? Did God predetermine me to write this essay expressing a bit of cynicism and perturbing quandary? Some Christians and believers of God (not all) would say that what I am doing right now is implicative of challenging God or having mistrust in Him, some may even venture to say that I am quite possibly beginning to journey down a slippery slope of backsliding due to a frequent attitude of implacability in my process of querying.  

               Being the fact that I grew up in a Christian household, was taught Christian values, and during all of my early childhood and adolescent years partook in protestant practices and conformed to traditional customary standards, I have been highly predisposed to particular patterns of cognizance, cognitive   behavior, and beliefs. Ever since I entered into college, I have begun to develop a deep inquisitiveness about the origins and validities of everything that I have been encompassed by. Through the process of conversing and spending time with other interesting individuals all from other different Christian sects, from different religions, of different philosophical thought being atheistic, agnostic, theistic, and so forth, much has been learned and discovered. It has been such a journey of ambition, exhilaration, entailments of satisfaction and unsatisfaction, equally; nevertheless, strengths and weaknesses have been adopted. As I continue in my endeavor, I am creating a situation conducively possible of but not absolutely inevitable of rendering spiritual peril or impending faithlessness or inexorablly insufferable ambivalence.

My decision to embark on such a quest was influenced by my incertitude if whether or not I have been blindly following Christianity because of my proclivity to conform to its ubiquitous existence. Naturally, I have always been a person of enormous curiosity and always wanted to know more. Perhaps now, when I look deeply into retrospect, I see myself unknowingly keeping dormant within me the manifestation of my distinctive inclination to pry in order to avoid social constraint. Now that college has opened up a new world for me I have been impelled to embrace my curiosity to the maximum extent, and the act of questioning is perhaps not as insidious as some people would like to make me think.          

               With all of this now being said I shall present the focal point of my essay. It is an issue that continues to bother me, and it is the question: Does God program certain people to reject Him and certain people not to reject Him? This is a question in which revolves around the denomination of Calvinism and its theory of predestination. Much deliberate disputation has revolved around this doctrine for only God knows how long, and both sides of the colloquy seemingly have equally cogent evidence which I believe makes it unbelievably difficult for one to choose how to accurately perceive the nature of God. It is chiefly difficult for those who are non-believers, people whom we would like to minister to, or the nascent believers, people whom we intend to aid in their spiritual growth through loving care and counsel, to successfully and intimately unite with God.

The theory of predestination only implies one thing, and that one thing not being God predetermining our every move and step, but having chosen or elected certain individuals to come to repentance and receive salvation. If we as Christians are interpreting the text accurately and are preaching the gospel according to the theory of predestination, how can anyone possibly deem of our loving care and counsel and our Judea Christian God to be containing veracious trustworthiness and helpfulness? How can we trust a God who appears to be much like a child hovering above his set of toys making them do whatever destructive things He revels in having them do? How can we trust a God who offers grace, mercy, and salvation to a favorable elect, and punishes unrepentant sinners and rejecters of Him when He preconditioned them to do so? And for those of us who have repented and accepted Jesus into our heart, how do we know that God has not preplanned us to reject Him in the future, and thus will reject and punish us for what He designated? Conclusively, it seems as though we should all do what Paul says in the New Testament, “drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!” What is the use of straining ourselves to work so hard to be moral and pleasing to God when we might inevitably be of the large percent of the population who are a part of, what is said in Matthew 22:14 “Many are called, but few are chosen!” 

               Since this might be the case, someone like me has the tendency to claim the doctrine of predestination to be spurious because of its initial inclination to cause unbelievers and perhaps even the believers to repudiate God, and not only, it seems to contradict the loving nature of God that the Bible preaches. But what if the Bible truly is self-contradictory like many skeptics and non-believers disparage it to be?

Let’s juxtapose a few scriptures, shall we? These first two verses are among a good quantity of other verses involving the idea of predestination. Romans 8:29-30 “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.” And in Ephesians 1:3-6 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 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. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.”

               Apparently, verses such as 1 Timothy 2-4 seem to be contradictory to predestination saying, “For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of truth.” And likewise we also have 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

               All of my life I have be in defense against predestination, however, an interesting thought crosses my mind reverts us back to the idea of God’s all-knowingness. If God knows the past and present as well as He knows everything to take place in the future, then of course, He knows of all of those who will reject Him and accept Him before He creates them. So then why would he create those who He knows will inevitably reject Him? Does He do it to balance everything out in reality and in the universe? If the rejecters of God were not in existence then we would be living in an impeccable world vacant of social constraint perpetuated by religions diversity and conflict, thus being vacant of the need for faith, growth, strength, effort to persevere, brilliance, and admirable meaning. One may ask, “Well, then, what is wrong with having a world like that? Why couldn’t it be heaven on earth? There is a heaven in existence after death anyways, isn’t there? Why did certain people have to be created to suffer?”

               This is perhaps the basis and or causation of atheism or agnostic aspersion against God. It is easier to deny God and believe that He doesn’t exist rather than to have to strain your mind to think about such things as this. Likewise, it is easier to asperse and despise God, do whatever you want, and live your life to the fullest before you die, because you have no idea where you are going after you die, and there is no way you can determine your fate. Conclusively, you might as well “Drink and be merry for tomorrow you die!”

               Allow me to look at things from a bit of an atheistic perspective as much as I possibly can. What if there really is no creator or omniscient, omnipotent God but maybe just some higher power of some sort? What if there is something metaphysical that possesses some governance over us but not complete sovereignty? What if there is some cosmic entity like what Karl Marx thought, a ‘dialectical materialism’ meaning that human beings are determined by an evolutionary economic class struggle. Karl Marx was a staunch atheist of course, though, additionally, in the metaphysical study of the branch of economic and social determinism, his theory seems to be an involuntarily inserted allusion to a higher being, not quite God and not quite human either, but definitely some external force of some sort. This type of thought can be used to avoid the whole scenario of the emotional and spiritual struggle involved in attempting to comprehend predestination and the entailments of religion. Alas, it is only a type hypothesis which cannot be verified, therefore causing one to run the risk of being reprobated after earthly demise. And of course, no one wants to run that risk, hence a believer contemplating on becoming a non-believer will retract from following through in becoming a non-believer.

               In now soon bringing this essay to a closure, I will end it with some good news after now expressing extreme cynicism and incertitude. In this final segment when I make reference to myself I am also being inclusive of everyone else who has repented unto God with a genuinely contrite heart and has truly trusted in Him and His gift of salvation, even though some of us have greatly wavered in faith and/or may have backslidden. I spoke with a friend last night whom is a devout believer of predestination, and I asked her, “If I decided to deny Jesus, this very night, after living a life for Him all of this time, are you saying that according to the theory of predestination, God had predestinated me to turn away from Him after having accepted Him all of these years?” To my surprise her reply was a yes. Slightly conversely, according to what is said in the gospel of Romans, my eternal salvation and destiny to abide in heaven cannot be lost, because all of my sin committed in the past, present, and future has been accounted for and washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ. At the age of seven when I repented of my sins and asked for forgiveness, I can still hereby assert that I did so with solemnity, and from thereupon did with my best efforts to live wholeheartedly for Jesus Christ. If I am sinning right now in my trepidation, doubt, resentment, and spiritual fatigue, and all of what these emotions entail, I will not suffer infernal punishment because I had asked for forgiveness and repented of everything in my earlier years. Furthermore, my repentance was authenticated through sincere contemplation on allegiance to God. After all, did God intend for me to write this essay to provoke my audience (you) in such a unique way that is highly unlike what you may expect from one who purports to be a believer of Christ?  

               The issue now for me and for those who are like me or are in a similar situation may be left to wonder if whether or not we are among the elect chosen by God. Dr. Richard P. Bucher of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lexington, Kentucky poses a very interesting point to those of us asking who the elect are.

               “Who, then, are those who have been predestined for salvation? Is it possible to know? And, is it possible for us to know if we are among the elect? Yes, and again, yes! We must follow the Bible’s way of speaking about predestination. The Bible teaches this: If you currently trust in Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God who took away your sins, who along is your savior and the way to heaven, then the Bible addresses you as one of the elect. This was Paul’s method of teaching in his epistle to the Ephesians. He addressed the members of the Ephesian church at that time, those who had been saved by grace through faith in Jesus, as chosen, ‘before the foundation of the world… predestined’ (Ephesians 1:4-5) Paul does the same thing in his epistle to the Romans. He calls those members of the church of Rome who had been justified by faith ‘God’s elect.’ (Romans 8:33). If you now believe in Jesus as your personal Savior, the Bible addresses you as the elect. You are predestined for salvation! The Bible doesn’t teach, ‘Now you are a believer in Jesus Christ- but whether you are predestined to be finally saved no one can know for sure, only God knows.’ Such a teaching would plunge even the true Christians into deep doubt and despair. For how could they ever know for sure if they were going to be saved, if the identity of the elect was shrouded in mystery?”