The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Double Predestination

Tom,

For me it isn't 'brain surgery'... IF predestination = pre-determination, then what is the objection that God pre-determined the end of the wicked no less than the end of the elect? Substituting a word, e.g., foreordination for predestination does nothing because to foreordain simply means to order, determine, decree something before it occurs. No matter which way someone tries to weasel out of using the term predestination in regard to the end of the wicked, the result is always the same... God from all eternity decreed the Fall, decreed that Jesus Christ would be a Redeemer for fallen mankind and then decreed that a remnant of the entire human race would be redeemed in Christ (aka: elect) and the remainder would suffer eternal punishment. Thus God 'ordained', 'predestinated', 'determined', 'decreed' reprobation.

It's biblical and thus logical. But to deny that God decreed, foreordained, predestinated, appointed the damnation of a specific number of people is to deny not only the absolute sovereignty of God but also God's unassailable divine providence.

The classic and infamous passage which sets it in full view is of course:

Romans 9:11-13 ASV "for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, (12) it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. (13) Even as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."

Not only do you have a direct, propositional statement that it is God's eternal will that Esau would be damned and Jacob saved (the remainder of the chapter establishes this indisputable fact), and the purpose for it; election which is a specific application of predestination, but you have the 'motive' behind God's pre-determination, aka: predestination; hate and love. The objections then flow like water which Paul then answers pointedly. The objectors are full aware of what Paul was saying which evidently your friend and/or Tony Warren do not.