The following article first appeared in the Doctrinal section of the 1926 edition of “The Preacher’s Magazine,” published by Nazarene Publishing House and edited by J.B. Chapman, former General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene. It reflects the traditional Arminian view of predestination being based on foreknowledge.
THE doctrine of predestination is an old one, but as taught in the days preceding the great Wesleyan revivals we hear comparatively little about it, and yet, like bad seed sown in a field, one is surprised to learn how many people are tinctured with the belief that somehow we are creatures of fate and although we may have received a blessed experience in grace, we were predestined to receive that experience.
That there is truth in the idea of predestination no one can intelligently deny, but when taught as fatalism, it destroys man’s free moral agency on the one hand, and God’s free grace offered to all men on the other. It nullifies the meaning of the atonement, it denies that “ prayer changes things,” it makes the sacrificial offering of Christ unnecessary, and does away with the power of Jesus’ blood to cleanse away and save from sin.
It may be asked, “Does God look down the ages and determine a soul’s destiny before its death?” Certainly, “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.” How can this statement be reconciled with the many invitations of Christ, like “The Spirit and the Bride say come, and let him that heareth say come, and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.” If a person is born to be damned—foreordained to perdition—how can such a one come? Just here is where the error creeps in.
No child is born to be damned. God is infinite while we are finite. He can look forward into the future just as well as He can look backward into the past. While we can do only the latter, and that imperfectly, God has made laws which are unchangeable—laws which no one but He himself can suspend. Man is created fully capable of choosing to obey or to disobey those laws. A choice to obey usually requires humiliation, confessing one’s sinful past, accepting God’s pardon and His grace, and equipment for the future. God
knows before one’s birth whether he will choose the right or choose the wrong way, and He has foreordained or predestined the fate accompanying the wrong choice and the blessing accompanying the right and those laws are as unalterable as the laws of nature.
But He says He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy,—what must a soul do if He will not have mercy? Let us ask first on whom will He have mercy? Let Isaiah answer, “ Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy” (Isa. 55:7). Then on whom will he not have mercy? On the wicked one who refuses to turn from his way and on the unrighteous man who refuses to forsake his thoughts. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”
I was on a train between Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon; before leaving Seattle a ticket scalper tried to sell me a ticket at a reduced rate, I didn’t choose to buy it, but purchased a regular ticket at full price at the ticket office. On the train the conductor took my ticket, looked at it, punched it, and passed on to the next seat. He looked at the man’s ticket, refused to accept it, and demanded full cash fare payment. The passenger didn’t know what to do, but finally paid his fare while the conductor took it and passed on. The conductor would accept tickets from whom he would accept tickets and whom he would he refused, but it was no whim of the conductor, my ticket was good, my neighbor’s was not, and the rules and orders were laid own and decided long before either my neighbor or I bought our tickets.
But suppose the situation is relieved on the ground that his will is arbitrarily fixed only within the limits of divine law with regard to which the human subject has no option. How is the statement “Whom he will he hardeneth” relieved, seeing that a soul becoming sufficiently hardened would then be incapable of choosing? True, but the hardening process comes with the exercise of free choice on the part of the individual. It is a known law of God that each time the light of God is rejected the harder it becomes to accept the next time, so that repeated refusals to accept and obey will, in time, render one’s conscience so hard that the truth no longer affects him. “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” As use of the hands causes callousness, so resistance of truth makes hardness of heart and conscience. It is the free agent that resists, it is the natural law of God against resisting light which hardens.
Does God ever suspend His law of free grace in a single case and for the good of man create him to be damned? No. Ah, but God said in the case of Pharaoh that He— God—hardened his heart, and added, “ In very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth” (Ex. 9:16).
Knowing even before the children are born who it is that will exercise their own will against His will, it is an easy matter for God to select such a one as will serve any particular purpose and to do so without interfering with any man’s free moral agency.
The Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and again that Pharaoh hardened his own heart; both statements are true. The light, and the proofs of God’s hand in the miracles performed by Moses shone on Pharaoh’s resisting heart and God by His natural law hardened it, and Pharaoh by resisting this light and refusing to choose to obey hardened his own heart. The housewife prepares the pan of biscuits, puts them in the hot oven and by so doing the housewife bakes the biscuits, and the oven, having been heated to the
proper temperature imparts the proper heat to the biscuits and the oven bakes the biscuits; the housewife bakes them by a voluntary act on her part, the oven bakes them by a natural law on its part.
From F.M. Messenger, “Predestination.” The Preacher’s Magazine, vol. 1, no. 6, Jun. 1926, pp. 4-5.
