Predestination
I have been spending some time latterly thinking about Wesley and the doctrine of predestination. Wesley was a famous rejecter of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. To be more specific, he disagreed with the doctrine of double predestination, whereby some are elected to damnation.
Here is what he said:
“With regard to…Unconditional Election, I believe,
That God, before the foundation of the world, did unconditionally elect certain persons to do certain works, as Paul to preach the gospel:
that He has unconditionally elected some nations to receive peculiar privileges, the Jewish nation in particular:
that He has unconditionally elected some nations to hear the gospel…
that He has unconditionally elected some persons to peculiar advantages, both with regard to temporal and spiritual things:
And I do not deny (though I cannot prove that it is so), that He has unconditionally elected some persons [thence eminently styled ‘the Elect’] to eternal glory.
But I cannot believe, That all those who are not thus elected to glory must perish everlastingly;
or That there is one soul on earth who has not, [nor] ever had a possibility of escaping eternal damnation.”
Wesley was not able to escape the clear presence of the doctrine of predestination with in the Bible. But neither could he escape his clear experience of the role of human agency (free will) in our lives.
His classic attempt to reconcile this is in his sermon on predestination. There he suggests that God predestined before the beginning of time those people who he knew would eventually choose to become believers.
This always strikes me as a poor reconciliation. The central discomfort regarding predestination remains – that whether or not I chose to become a believer, it was always meant to be.
In Calvin’s case, God decided I would become a believer. In Wesley’s case, I chose to become a believer, but that is the choice I was always going to make anyway, as God knew from eternity. In either case, determinism is the reality of my spiritual life.
For myself, I cannot agree with Calvin. His God would send people to Hell in a capricious manner. I know that there are good Calvinist answers to this. But I cannot get passed that if God can save all, but chooses to save some, then he is immoral. Since God is the fountain of goodness-itself, God cannot be immoral – however else we put the pieces together.
Neither do I like Wesley’s version of predestination from his sermons. It seems a poorly argued copout for a man who has to deal with a scriptural word, but does not like the reality to which it seems to point.
I am still working on this one.
I have no clear leadings from the spirit, and I may never have this one figured out on this side of eternity.
