“Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.”
The King James Version translates: “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” There is ambiguity as to whether the “book” literally references the Book of Life or metaphorically references God’s mind, just as whether the “members” references prenatal body parts or the days of our life.
The Psalmist presents a poetic expression of God’s intimate knowledge and remarkable care for us, even from the womb. If such intimacy were to include God’s plan and purpose for our life, then it would be consistent with Ephesians 2:10 which speaks of “good works” that God “planned beforehand.” Job 14:5 speaks of the “days” of our life which are “determined.” Proverbs 20:24 speaks of “man’s steps” being “ordained by the Lord.” Acts 17:27 speaks of God’s determination of the “appointed times and boundaries” of our “habitation.” These concepts, however, would not necessarily rule out contingency in God’s determinations, either. For instance, God had to use a whale to get Jonah to do the good work that was ordained for him to do in preaching to Nineveh. Jesus lamented over Jerusalem for the “peace” that had been ordained for them but “now they have been hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42). The Pharisees “rejected God’s purpose for themselves” (Luke 7:30). Calvinists would have to say that God intended precisely all of it, and meticulously determined it so.
What do Calvinists believe?
The events of our life are predestined from before we are born, and if the days are fixed, so too must the content of those days, and since we are all interconnected, all things must necessarily, therefore, be fixed and determined by God.
Our reply:
Calvinists certainly hold to those concepts, though given the ambiguity of the text, it is doubtful that Calvinists would unanimously assert it as a proof-text as they do elsewhere.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
