May 4, 2008 | 8:00 a.m.

That Question about Predestination

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 68:1–10, 32–35
Acts 1:6–11

The conviction that predestination was somehow Calvin’s “central” belief,
which dominated many discussions of his theology in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, has now largely dissipated. He probably had
no single “central” doctrine, but at any rate this was not it.

William Placher
The Domestication of Transcendence

This morning I’d like to speak to you about predestination. It’s not a central doctrine in our tradition, and yet historically it has been possibly the most famous, or notorious, doctrine in our tradition. In the past two weeks, I’ve been asked three times in various contexts in the church to explain it, so it seemed time for a sermon on the subject.

Clearly, there is some nervousness, some trepidation about this doctrine.

There’s an entry about predestination in a little book called The Presbyterian Handbook. The Presbyterian Handbook is a book that is kind of like “Presbyterianism for Dummies,” or “The Idiot’s Guide to Presbyterianism.” It’s an accessible, lighthearted approach to the fundamentals of our faith, and it covers a whole range of topics. There’s a chapter on the origins of the Presbyterian church and another on “How to Pray.” There’s even a chapter called “How to Stay Alert in Church.” There’s also a page on predestination. If you turn to it, you see that it’s the one page in the book surrounded by a gray border with text wrapping the page, and the text says, “Warning, it may take multiple readings—and time—to understand this concept.”

Clearly, there is some nervousness, some trepidation about this doctrine.

There are a certain number of things in life that you can understand without any prior knowledge. If you said to me, “What’s a baseball game?” or “What’s a sandwich?” I could explain to you, even if you’d never seen either one—that there are four bases, and that the bread goes on the top and the bottom and the stuff goes in the middle—and I could get you to understand things that I understand about baseball and sandwiches.

Other things in life require some context, some prior knowledge. A perfect fourth, as written on a page of music, and the theory of relativity as it relates to the passage of time are both understandable concepts, but it takes some background—in music theory, in physics—to understand terms like those.

Likewise, predestination is a concept—it’s an idea, it’s a theory—but it’s different from theory in music or science, because even if you have background in theology, you won’t totally understand predestination. It’s one of many ideas in the field of theology where well-meaning ministers and theologians have done their very best with the limited resources of the human mind and language to try to explain something that, at the end of the day, none of us fully understands. It has to do with how God saves us.

I start with that introduction because I want you to know that in my words this morning, I’m not trying to be cagey about the subject of predestination. It’s not that I know what it is and I’m just not willing to tell you because I want to be the smart guy in the room. Predestination is, at the end of the day, a mystery.

This morning, I’m going to try to give you just enough theological background on the subject to help you understand what matters about predestination.

The Bible refers to predestination most explicitly in Romans 8, where Paul says this:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified. What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Paul writes this passage as the culmination of his message about the salvation of Jews and Gentiles alike. He’s just finished a long explanation of the many ways that God has acted as a gracious parent, looking out for his disobedient children in all times and places. Writing to Christians who are currently struggling, even suffering, in the process of trying to build up the church in the midst of being the religious minorities of their time, Paul seems to say, “Take heart. If God is for us, who can be against us? God has called you and predestined you for greatness ever since the creation of the world. Trust God, and keep on the path even when it’s tough, because God has proven to us throughout time that God can be trusted.” That’s how Paul uses the term predestination.

Three hundred years later, by the fourth century, Christianity has become the official religion of the Roman Empire. In most places, Christians are no longer under persecution. But there’s a Christian named Augustine, a bishop in North Africa, who you might say was persecuted by his own guilty conscience. Augustine wasn’t born a Christian; he’s a secular man. He’s reared in the schools of Greek philosophy, and he earns a reputation as one of the great persuasive orators of his day. You might say that, from the outside, he appears to have it made. But Augustine hasn’t found what he’s looking for; he always desires something more. He seeks satisfaction among cultural influences and intellectual exercises and also by having a lot of sex with a lot of women. But the desires, for Augustine, just would not go away. Then one day Augustine, in a fit of depression, picks up a Bible. And there he finds what he’s been waiting for: at one of the darkest moments in his life, Augustine reads a passage from Paul telling him not to surround himself with the things he’s been chasing, but to surround himself with God instead. In this he sees that there is a God who knows him, a God who has known him all along, a God who knows that under Augustine’s successful exterior, Augustine is weak and full of doubt. This God means to save Augustine from himself, and Augustine takes the offer. Augustine was a great writer and a great orator; he shared with others the message he had heard, and the doctrine of predestination, the idea that we can trust God to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves, came into a church that ruled an empire.

By the Middle Ages, Augustine’s thought had been picked up by many of the major theologians of the age, and as time goes by, its influence gets stronger. One of predestination’s strongest advocates becomes John Calvin, the theological father of Presbyterianism, who takes the individual experience of Augustine and applies it to the whole lot of us. It’s an understandable argument. None of us are perfect. So the question, “Why are some people saved?” gets a rather obvious answer: “Surely not because of their own works,” but because it is God who determines our salvation. This is great news to Calvin, because as far as he’s concerned, none of us deserve God’s love, but the Bible says that we get it anyway. Importantly, though, Calvin never thought that we were supposed to be able to understand how God saves us. To even try to understand how, Calvin said, was like trying to “walk about in a pathless waste or to see in darkness” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion). For this reason, Calvin talked about predestination only rarely and never in the context of trying to describe God. The usefulness of predestination for Calvin, just like for Augustine, was that it reminds us that there is so much we can’t do for ourselves, but we should be amazingly thankful, because in trusting God we free ourselves of the things we can’t do and we allow God to help us.

It’s really after Calvin’s life that predestination gets distorted and comes to be what Calvin never intended. There are some communities of Calvin’s followers, some of them Presbyterians, some of them you may know as Puritans, who forgot Calvin’s warnings about trying to know too much and instead started trying to figure out who God had predestined to what. What is God’s plan for every one of us and what is going to happen to us when we die? Some of these later Calvinists made brutally explicit many ideas that Calvin left as mysteries. These theologians and ministers were faithful people. They had seen injustices in their churches and towns, injustices that they wanted to change, and they held people to strict codes of conduct because they wanted to make their societies as perfect as possible. Chaos resulted. The experiment of Puritanism was a failure because God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. Predestination is about trusting God because we know we can’t be perfect. These Puritans were God-fearing people; they were our theological ancestors; and on this particular topic they were just plain wrong. But they made a lot of waves, and because their Puritan experiment was so far-reaching, so politically significant, so important in the shaping of colonial America, people still come to Inquirers’ Class and ask in fearful tones, “But don’t Presbyterians believe in predestination?” as if it’s a bad thing to put your trust in God.

Predestination, when it is understood best, is always about people coming to a better understanding of what God is calling them to do and be, like God calling Augustine out of his depression and calling Calvin to lead the church in Geneva and reform the injustices of the church in the Middle Ages. Predestination always goes wrong when people make the mistake of trying to make it about who God is or what God is like or who and what God saves, like the Puritans chose to do. Predestination isn’t about understanding God; it’s about trusting God.

There’s a passage in Acts chapter 1 that I read today; I think it illustrates the point I’m trying to make about predestination. It’s sort of the end of the Easter story: Christ has risen from the dead, which is in itself an utterly inexplicable act. And as the story goes, once the disciples have assembled, they ask him, “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” And Christ answers by telling them about a mystery and giving them a call to action. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth.”

It’s an exchange similar to one I could see Jesus having with Presbyterians: “Jesus, is this the time you’re going to explain to us why we can’t do what you want us to do? Is this the time you’re going to explain how you manage to bring so much good into the world even though we do so many stupid things?” The answer: “No. That isn’t for you to know. But go on now. I’ve been teaching you all along, so do as I have taught you to do. Take care of one another. Care for the poor and the sick. Be the church as I have called it to be. You can’t do it yourselves, but my Holy Spirit will be with you, and you can trust me on that, because I’ve been with you all along.” And then something even more mysterious happens: Jesus ascends into heaven. The Bible doesn’t say why or how, just that he did. And predictably, the disciples are caught trying to figure it out: an angel says to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” It’s as if the angel is saying, There are some things you can’t figure out, but you know you can trust God and you know what God has called you to do. Go do it.

A few months ago, I went to the doctor to have a physical. The doc was a nice young internist, clearly very bright. He was thorough; he asked me all kinds of questions about my daily routine, what I eat and drink and how I take care of myself. He ran tests, and he took the time to answer all my questions. He took time to get to know me and my body, which I appreciated, and then, a few days later, I got a packet in the mail, just like he promised I would. In it were all the test results and about a half-page of prose from the doctor, explaining the results. At one point, it read, “Your cholesterol is slightly high. I would recommend a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and fresh fish.” That day I lost all my confidence in that doctor. I’m sure he studied hard, and I’ve no doubt that there’s some element of truth in his report. But this guy sat and talked with me; he knows me. And what the narrative should’ve said is, “Your cholesterol is slightly high. I would recommend exercising more often instead of sitting in the stands at Wrigley Field drinking Old Style and eating bratwurst.”

I use this illustration because some of the things that we choose to do in life we do not because we come to thoroughly understand the reasons behind them, but because we choose to enter into a relationship based on trusting someone who is trying to help us. Whether I’m told to eat more whole grains or less bratwurst doesn’t matter; I don’t understand enough about human physiology to make sense of why one is better than the other. But what does make a difference is that in order for me to change my life in a way that will make a positive difference, I have to trust the source that assures me of things that I don’t understand. And I trust the source who has proven that he knows me.

The point:God isn’t asking us to understand predestination. God’s just asking us to lay off the bratwurst and go get some exercise.

Predestination is believable because God is trustworthy. God has already done amazing things for us. Not a one of us can earn God’s love, but God sent Jesus Christ to be among us anyway. God sends Jesus not just to be with the best of us, but to be with the least of us. Because of that amazing, wonderful, undeserved gift that God has given us, God becomes like a trustworthy physician who gives us the straight talk so that we can look at all that God has done for us and say thank you.

Amen.