"So,
my question is why do you think predestination is the right way?"
Many reasons could be given, and I suppose that I have touched on many of them throughout this response. For now, I will just briefly list a few here:
1. First and foremost, because I believe it is the overwhelming teaching of Scripture. I think many people would be stunned by the sheer volume of texts that either explicitly or implicitly teach it, as well as Reformed theology in general. This is why many say that the strength of the Reformed view is the exegesis/exposition of Scripture. I have personally interacted with many, many such texts, and I still did not/have not even scratched the surface. You can read my interaction with various texts by reading any of the articles I have written on the topic found here: http://www.geocities.com/johnandursula/musings (see especially the article entitled Calvinism Defended. These link also deals with various texts with regard to the five points of Calvinism: http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Doctrines-of-Grace/Scripture/ ; and http://www.fivesolas.com/tulipscriptures.htm.
I would venture to say that if we removed the concept of
predestination and foreordination from the Bible, our Bibles would be very small
indeed, if not non-existent altogether. Consider the following.
If we removed the concept of predestination and foreordination from the
Bible:
a. Gone would be the promises made to the patriarchs in the
Book of Genesis that spoke of the future blessings of
Abraham and his seed, because God guaranteed what would (not what might),
transpire with regard to those promises.
b. Gone would be the Exodus, because God would not
have the power to absolutely guarantee that He would deliver Israel from the
bondage of Pharaoh, which He had beforehand announced
to Moses (what if Moses, by his “free will” did not “allow” God to do
what God had decreed? Or,
conversely, what if Pharaoh's heart was not hardened?
Obviously, these are rhetorical questions stated to merely demonstrate
the incorrectness of the so-called free will position).
c. Gone would be
the historical books, such as Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kings, Chronicles, Samuel,
etc., because those all report the workings of God in the affairs of Israel, the
nations around her, and the future blessings that would
eventually come from her, none of which could have occurred had God not ordained
and directed the affairs of mankind according to His infallible, predetermined
plans and purposes.
d. Gone would be
all of the prophetic books (how could God tell us the future if He did not
determine the future beforehand?). This
would not only include all of the prophetic books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, the 12 Minor Prophets, and the Book of Revelation), but any single
passage that spoke of future events, such as the numerous Messianic passages in
the Psalms, and the prophetic statements made by Jesus in the Gospels concerning
the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the end of the age.
e. Gone would be
Christ’s work on the cross, because that all took place according to the “determined
purpose and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23).
f. Gone would be
Christ Himself, because Christ was the foretold Messiah that would
come, who fulfilled all of the Messianic prophecies (which, again, there would
be none if God did not ordain all things that come to pass).
g. We could
never pray, because prayer is predicated on the power of God to accomplish His
purposes. But if God has no purposes
(which must be determined beforehand), and is not in control of the affairs of
men, then that means we can never be certain that God can act on behalf of those
who pray. We could never pray the
prayer of faith, believing that we will receive what we pray for, because God
has no control over the forces of the universe, especially the so-called “free
will” of man. Think about this:
every time you pray for someone’s salvation, what are you praying for?
If you’re like me, you pray that God would open that person’s eyes,
and give them a new heart whereby they would in fact come to Christ.
We never pray “Oh Lord, I hope that John Doe would “allow” you to
come into his heart.” Why not?
Because we understand that the person’s will really isn’t all that
free after all, but is in bondage to sin, and we pray with the sure knowledge
that if that person is ever going to come to Christ, God must make
the person willing. This is nothing
but pure Calvinism, and Calvinism is about the text of Scripture, and the grace
and glory of an Almighty God and Savior who never fails to accomplish His
predetermined plans and purposes. As
Spurgeon noted, “Calvinism is just a nickname for Biblical Christianity.”
h. We could
never know for certain what our eternal destiny would be, because God would not
be in control of destiny. Destiny would always hang in the balance because we
don’t know what our will is going to freely choose next.
I'm sure many more insights could be made, but, I'll leave it there J
2. Because I believe in all
of the infinite perfections of God’s Being, which include His absolute
sovereignty, omnipotence, and omniscience. It’s
not that God can exercise
those things, but then chooses not to; rather, it is that He must
and does exercise those
things, because that is who He is by nature, and because of those things He is
able to accomplish all of His purposes to His glory.
It is the actual exercise of those things that make Him God.
Most Christians would say "Amen!" to everything I just said
without really thinking about it. And,
that's the problem: we don't think
about those things. As
soon as we do think, and have to deal with the implications of such as the
absolute sovereignty of God (or even something as seemingly simple as God's
omniscience), we begin to realize that those things, as basic and
"right" as they might sound to us, nevertheless present huge problems
when taken to their logical conclusion, and usually undermine all of our
preconceptions and ideas about God, man, and the even the Gospel itself. So,
we will say that, “God is sovereign, but…” Unfortunately, the
things that follow the word “but” usually deny any true sense of the
biblical notion of God’s sovereignty.
I can understand those concerns, and I certainly understand the struggle
of dealing with these difficult concepts. After all, there was a time when I was
adamantly opposed to the whole idea of Reformed theology.
The problem though that I want my brothers and sisters who are not
Reformed/Calvinistic to see is that if we say that God does not exercise
his absolute sovereignty, we have, in essence, denied the very thing that makes
God who He is by nature. To speak of
a god that is not absolutely sovereign is a contradiction in terms along the
same lines of saying that water isn’t wet, ice isn’t frozen, or a government
doesn’t govern (once a government fails to govern, it is no longer a
government). Thus, the absolute
sovereignty of God is the most basic, elementary truth revealed in Scripture,
and serves as the foundation upon which all other truths rest.
Jonathan Edwards, the 18th century pastor and theologian who
is considered by all objective observers to be the greatest scholar
3. I believe that our
salvation is all of grace, and that God alone
receives all of the glory for our salvation. In
the Reformed view, there is nothing good, either actual or foreseen in the
individual that serves as the basis for God's electing one in Christ.
Man cannot even take
credit for his faith, for even that was something that had to be bestowed upon
him by God.
Of course, all that I have said contradicts the popular idea that so many seem to have today that “it is mine to believe, and it is the part of God’s grace to assist.” But, this is fundamentally incorrect. Salvation is not a joint venture and work by God and man, where God does His part and then leaves it up to man to do the rest (or as one evangelist once remarked, God does 99% of the work, and leaves the 1% for man to do). Man must believe, but God’s grace must do far more than “assist” us. What is needed is spiritual resurrection, not spiritual assistance. It’s not that man is floating on top of the water, and God just throws a lifeline to him and tells him to just take hold of it. It’s that man has drowned and has actually sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor, and God must dive in after him, pull him up onto shore, tilt his head back, and breathe new life into him. When God does this, the moment that life comes into us, our heart cries out, “Jesus save me!”
Hence, salvation is all of grace, not some of grace. It is all of grace, not simply because it is undeserved (even the Roman Catholic acknowledges that much), but because every aspect of our salvation, to include our ability to come to Him, is given to us by God. It is all of grace because it is not merely assisting grace, but saving grace. It is grace that actually saves, not merely potentially saves. It is all of grace because it is grace that is able to overcome our resistance, not grace that is held in check by the supposedly sovereign, omnipotent will of almighty man. Grace is amazing, not because it merely helps men essentially save themselves, but because it does what man is unable to do. To deny these things, as so many Evangelicals do today, is to deny both the Scriptural testimony, as well as the very heart soul of the Protestant Reformation.
Many more reasons could be given, but this is already long enough J
Here is a summary statement I provided in an article I wrote entitled Why
I am a Calvinist (http://www.geocities.com/johnandursula/whycalvinist)
that sums it up nicely:
"So,
I am a Calvinist...I believe in the absolute sovereignty of God.
I believe in the absolute inability of the unregenerate sinful man to do
anything to the spiritual good. I
believe that the only reason I chose God is because God first chose me, and He
did that not on the basis of anything good in me, or good foreseen in me, but
according to the kind intention of His will alone. I believe that Christ
actually accomplished redemption on the cross, and that there is no possibility
that any part of His work could ever fail—Jesus didn’t and doesn’t merely try
to save; He actually does save. As
the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen stated, “It isn’t the cross plus
my converted heart that equals salvation; rather, it is the cross that gives
me a converted heart and therefore
salvation.”
I believe that at just the right time, God breathed life into my dead
spirit; He raised me from spiritual death to spiritual life, taking out my stony
heart and giving me a heart of flesh, whereby I could do something that I
previously was unable to do: submit
myself to the Lordship of Christ. I
believe that those whom God has
chosen, and for whom Christ has died, and whom the Spirit has made alive, will
endure to the end. God is the
One who preserves and keeps His people by His sovereign power; He does for us
what we could never do for ourselves, and to Him alone be all of
the glory.
In
short, I believe that our
perfect God had a perfect plan to save a multitude of imperfect sinners from
every nation, tribe, and tongue, whom He calls His sheep, by sending His perfect
Son to accomplish all of His perfect holy will, and He sent forth His perfect
Holy Spirit to perfectly apply and bring about all that is related to His
perfect plan. And it is all by grace
alone, God’s unmerited favor bestowed upon completely unworthy sinners, and it
is all to His glory alone. This is
why I am a Calvinist. Soli Deo Gloria. Amen."
By the way, that article provides a good overview of my testimony on how/why I came to embrace to the Reformed view, and I would recommend that if you are going to read the other things I mentioned, that you read that first. Unlike most things I write, it is actually brief (relatively speaking, that is). :-)