“God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”
― John Calvin
“if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House
is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the "paradox of free will", whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free will. In this usage, predestination can be regarded as a form of religious determinism; and usually predeterminism.
The theory of Predestination is a very complex one. It tries to resolve the contradiction of teaching about God's omniscience and free will.
I believe the entire issue of Predestination can be resolved very easily if we take seriously
Jesus' teachings about God being a Parent of True Love.
The question then would be: what would God actually predestine?
Would God predestine the sinful behavior of any of his children?
That is extremely unlikely. No decent parent would, when looking at his newborn child, say "oh this one is going to be a bad one." All good parents only foresee the best things for their children.
We can only think that if God is a better parent than any of us, He would do likewise.
We can only think that if God is a better parent than any of us, He would do likewise.
Consequently, there can only be one type of predestination. The predestination to be good.
God in his Heart can only see His children doing good. In fact, God could have only seen his children doing good.
For this reason God desires to save everyone as I Timothy 2:4 says: 3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the [c]knowledge of the truth.
When we think of God we must always keep in mind that He is our Heavenly Parents (Father and Mother). We must remember that Jesus told us that God is a better parent than we are to our children.
Now what parent would look at his newborn child and see a negative future, thinking that the child is going to fail in his/her life, and will probably end up as a drug addict.
Absolutely, no parent of love would even think like that.
The only thoughts of good parents is that their newborn child will become a great person.
Consequently, in God's Mind could only be the Best Possible Thoughts concerning each newborn child. For this reason we have to see that the idea of God predestine some people, either through His Will or, indirectly, through His knowledge of the Future, to some horrible destiny is FALSE.
We began this post citing John Calvin. We will finish with another cite from Calvin.
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| Calvin on Predestination |
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