EITHER FREE WILL OR PREDESTINATION

Roy Harrisville III

The Visitors

They are polite and usually come in pairs. They want to talk about your eternal soul and which path you will choose to avoid damnation. They mean well, but they put the fear of God into people who have no theological background. Instead of hiding behind couches or angrily dismissing them with a slam of the door, invite them in. Offer them coffee or tea and ask them if they created themselves. If they believe in “free will,” they must believe in auto-generation, for only then would they be perfectly free from the devil or God’s influence.1 That’s what free will means, in the end. It means that I must have created myself without the aid of the Creator. It’s the only way I can be truly free from God’s or anyone else’s influence. They will respond that God gave them free will, that God granted them the freedom to choose. Then ask them where it says that in scripture. They will probably refer to Joshua 24:15: “…choose this day whom you will serve…” And you are off to the debate over free will and predestination.

Compulsion

The debate over free will and has raged incessantly for millennia. Most Lutherans don’t know anything about it because pastors are too shy to address it or because they don’t understand it themselves. I have frequently heard the language of “invitation” in Lutheran churches lately. To invite means to allow the invited freedom to choose. The pastor will tell people that Jesus invites them to the kingdom, or some such phrase. Perhaps the pastor is thinking of that parable in Luke’s Gospel in which the master invites people to his feast.2 But it’s a parable, not a whole theology of invitation. More importantly, all the guests who were “invited” turned him down! It was then the master told his servants to “compel” people to come to his feast. Compulsion is hardly invitation. Instead of the language of invitation we find that God calls people into the kingdom.3 A calling is an imperative, a command, not an invitation. Such observations are important if one is to present the gospel in its full light. With that in mind, it only takes some close exegesis to notice that in Joshua 24 the choice Joshua gave his people was not between false idols and the true God, but between two sets of false idols!4 Paying attention to the words and the context does make a difference.

Bondage of the Will

Paying attention to the language of scripture is what Martin Luther did in his famous book: On the Bondage of the Will (1525). Luther wrote his book in response to Erasmus of Rotterdam’s diatribe: Discussion, or Collation, concerning Free Will (1524). “The Bondage of the Will is the greatest piece of theological writing that ever came from Luther’s pen,” according to Packer and Johnston.5 Whether that is true or not, it is true that this work is at the center of the Reformation and supplies the engine for the theologies of justification, sanctification, faith, and salvation, etc. If one wishes to find the core of Luther’s theology one need only read the Large Catechism, and The Bondage of the Will. To read that second book with humility and honesty will mean the demise of one’s trust in autonomy – the confidence in the self. For it is the self and it’s will that fight against the will of God. It can be quite upsetting at first to encounter this kind of theology. That is why I have always joked that one should read it in broad daylight with a friend.

American Autonomy

That is because it goes against every common theological instinct (especially in America). Free Will is a doctrine that is universal in the human family. Most people simply assume it. Many Christians do so because they do not want God to be the author of sin and suffering. Free will supplies a neat excuse for letting God off that hook. If people have free will, then God is not responsible for their sinning. I imagine that people want to believe in a God who is all sweetness and light. But it’s hard to get comfortable with such a powerful and awesome God who has sovereignty over all creation, including us. However, a God who allows his creatures perfect sovereignty over their own lives seems like a good and gracious deity. Besides, free will just makes sense in everyday life, why not in theology?

The Hidden God

Everyday life is comprehensible to the average human being, but God is not. We may have “free will” when it comes to reasonable things that our minds can understand, but God is inscrutable.6 Erasmus was concerned that God never be the cause of death. Luther countered that God hides himself. While God is known through his Word and the preaching of it, that Word does not reveal all there is to know about God. Scripture tells us what we need to know things concerning this life, but has not exhausted the depths of the Lord. The will of God is disclosed in part – the will that chooses our life, our good, and our salvation. But there is more to God. “Who has known the mind of the Lord?”7

Erasmus

God has an inscrutable will that is beyond the understanding of mortals. We can know about that God, but we cannot understand that God. That is why we live by faith and not sight.8 Faith in God is not knowledge about God. Faith requires mystery beyond sight and knowledge. The hidden God is also the reason why Christianity cannot be boiled down to some simple romantic doctrine of love. Sappy sentimentalism ala Hollywood will not do for the Lord of the Universe. God’s hiddenness requires our reverence and awe. We must allow mystery in our faith.9

Not a Deistic God

Yet, the teaching about predestination, though it certainly touches upon the teaching of the hidden God, is actually built upon the teaching of grace. In numerous places in scripture, for instance, the doctrine of election is plain. It is there in the creation, the call of Abraham, the Exodus, the call of the disciples in the New Testament, the crucifixion and resurrection, and Romans chapter nine. Each time the context is one of grace, in which God chooses to do something wonderful. Both testaments witness to God’s election of Israel.10 This theme of gracious choosing cannot be expunged from scripture in favor of free will. Jesus chose his disciples; they did not choose him.11 That was actually quite unusual since most teachers at that time would hang out their shingle and see who came calling. Jesus was not willing to wait for someone to notice him. God is not willing to wait for people to choose him. God is not like a coach who sends in plays and strategies to the players on the field, all the while being relegated to the sidelines. It is his creation, his world, and he will enter it where and when and how he wills. To do anything less would be to become a clockmaker god who makes the clock, winds it up, and leaves it in its own care.

God cares too much for his creation to stand idly by and let it sink not oblivion by the light of its own mortal sense and reason. The expected Messiah unexpectedly did not raise an army and conquer the world, as many had hoped. Instead, he came and placed himself under the cruelty and arrogance of his own creatures, to the reasonable astonishment of them all. No one asked him to do that. He elected his own demise as a gracious act of redemption that would shatter all preconceptions, reasonable and otherwise. Gardeners do not simply plant seeds and walk away. Why should God?

Determinism

Luther well understood that people were certainly capable of making their own choices in this life as far as their reason can take them. But in the things beyond reason, such as the Almighty Lord God, they are not free to choose.

Another misconception has to do with the idea of determinism. Determinism, as I understand it, is the determination of every breath and step we take by some outside force. That is not what is meant by predestination. Predestination has to do with the ultimate destination of each person, not with the paths they take on the way. As mentioned above, Luther well understood that people were certainly capable of making their own choices in this life as far as their reason can take them. But in the things beyond reason, such as the Almighty Lord God, they are not free to choose.

“So we learn from Ecclesiasticus that man falls under two Luther well understood that people were certainly capable of making their own choices in this life as far as their reason can take them. But in the things beyond reason, such as the Almighty Lord God, they are not free to choose.

So we learn from Ecclesiasticus that man falls under two kingdoms. In the one, he is led by his own will and counsel not by any precepts and commandments of God; that is, in the realm of things below him…In the other kingdom, however, man is not left in the hand of his own counsel, but is directed and led by the will and counsel of God.”12

Thus, the idea of determinism is eliminated in Luther’s theology and replaced by things “below” (where we can choose), and things “above” (where God alone chooses).

No doubt the two visitors will counter all this with the accusation that if there is no free will when it comes to choosing God, then how can our faith be genuine, authentic, real? Are we robots who have no will of their own? What about all those people who don’t believe? Why doesn’t God elect everybody?

The Issue of Faith

The issue of faith then becomes the focus of the debate. But here again, the two visitors need to read scripture closely to find out that it is precisely because of God’s grace and election that faith is a gift, not a choice. According to Romans 4:3-5, the great exemplar of faith, Abraham, did not believe by his own efforts. John’s Gospel states that faith is “… not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man…”13 “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.”14 Nowhere in all of scripture is faith in God described as a matter of one’s own mortal will. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit.15 Such faith is real. It is genuine. Just as one’s breath is an unchosen gift at birth and continues to be authentic through life, so too one’s gift of faith is quite real. Christmas gifts are real, even though they are often not what one wanted! Faith is very genuine even though it is a gift.

The charge of being robots carries no water either since it is not a question of determinism, but of one’s final destination. Yet, the final accusation, that God is unjust to choose some and not others, seems quite an effective retort. Yet, it too fails to achieve its goal.

Lutherans Are Not Calvinists

Lutherans are not Calvinists. Calvinists adhere to the idea that some are destined to heaven and others to hell.16 Though God may have elected to damn a few “vessels of wrath made for destruction,”17 Lutherans do not need to believe in a densely populated hell. Martin Luther never developed the same kind of double-predestination theology as Calvin did. Instead, one might call it “single” predestination in that Lutherans believe God graciously chooses his children who are destined to share eternity with Him, but as for the rest, though they may live under the threat of condemnation because of unbelief, one can never tell if in the end they might be gifted with faith. St. Paul needed to be ambushed by the risen Lord before he believed.18 So too, it is possible that those who are now living without faith in God may yet have a similar experience. The mechanism of predestination is probably the most neuralgic of issues. Many think that God chooses people in some long-forgotten age while twiddling his thumbs on the clouds. Indeed, ancient Jewish apocryphal books testified as much. But for the New Testament it is different. The word is the avenue by which people are given faith and therefore are chosen.19 The word is the avenue of election. When someone preaches, teaches, or talks about Jesus to another person and that person’s heart is warmed by what he or she hears, that is the very immediate and very personal moment of predestination. It happens when you are there, not when you are not.

Calvin

Because it is through the word that election happens in a very personal way, it is also through the agency of other persons that faith is broadcast. Therefore, if one is concerned with all those people who do not believe, then one has the wonderful opportunity to proclaim the gospel to them. That brings us back full circle to the two visitors.

After hearing these arguments our visitors may ask, “Why doesn’t God choose everyone?” If he loves the world so much, wouldn’t that make sense? The question seems logical and a debate stopper. But again, the underlying assumption in that question is what dooms it. The assumption is that people are born basically good and should all be chosen. But Psalm 51:5 (“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity…), and many other such verses, declare otherwise. If people are born sinful then the real question is why God would save any of them. That God does so is evidence of His good and gracious will. It is not a matter of why God does not save everyone, but, rather, why God saves anybody!

The two visitors may stomp off without praying for you (as mine once did!). Yet, one can always hope that as they listened, they learned that God’s election does not come from a desire to seem like an ogre, but quite the opposite. God’s love is so overwhelming that He is unwilling to leave his creatures to their own devices but will choose to act in love and mystery to redeem a fallen world.

Conclusion

The self will always want to have the assurance that it is secure from all harm and that its destiny is equally assured.

In the end, the teaching on free will and predestination in the Lutheran tradition provides the truest release from the self’s abiding concern for itself. The self will always want to have the assurance that it is secure from all harm and that its destiny is equally assured. If you don’t know where you are bound though, no path is right and anxiety builds. But if you believe that your end is secure and that no matter what path you take you will arrive at your proper destination, then you may be released from worrying about yourself everlastingly and take comfort in the assurance that even if you lose your way, get sidetracked, or even stalled, you’ll still end up in the right spot. If that is so, then self-denial is finally possible, from which comes a new life that is not curved in upon itself but rather points outward toward others. It is a life of gratitude for having been set free from worry and fear. It is not a perfect life, never that, but a genuine life focused on God and creation in which the greatest concern is with the other person and his or her welfare. Just as Christ never worried about himself but denied every selfish impulse, so too may the ones he redeemed live with love’s abandon for others. Think of how different our world would be if people actually believed that.

So, invite your visitors in. But before you do, read some Lutheran theology. Just remember to keep the lights on!

Roy A. Harrisville III, PhD, is a retired NALC/LCMC pastor who has taught New Testament at several institutions and has published three books. His most recent is The Faith of the New Testament: A Pauline Trajectory, Pickwick, 2023.

Endnotes:

1“If ‘free-will’ is ascribed to men, it is ascribed with no more propriety than divinity itself would be – and no blasphemy could exceed that!” J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, Martin Luther on The Bondage Of The Will: A New Translation of De Servo Arbitrio (1525): Martin Luther’s Reply to Erasmus of Rotterdam (Ada, Michigan: Revell, 1957), 105.

2Luke 14:15-24, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2001). All subsequent citations in this article use the ESV version.

3In Mark 1:17-20 Jesus called his disciples, he did not ask them to RSVP.

4“…choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.” Joshua 24:15.

5Packer and Johnston, 40.

6“… man should realize that in regard to his money and possessions he has a right to use them, to do or to leave undone, according to his own ‘free-will’…However, with regard to God, and in all that bears on salvation or damnation, he has no ‘free-will’, but is captive, prisoner and bondslave, either to the will of God, or to the will of Satan.” Packer/Johnston, 107.

7Romans 11:34

8“If I could by any means understand how this same God, who makes such a show of wrath and unrighteousness, can yet be the merciful and just, there would be no need for the exercise of faith when these things are preached and published; just as, when God kills, faith in life is exercised in death.” Packer/Johnston, 101.

9“That there may be room for faith, therefore, all that is believed must be hidden.” Packer/Johnston, 101.

10Deuteronomy 7:6-8; Romans 11:28-29, etc.

11John 15:16.

12Packer/Johnston, 151.

13John 1:12-13.

14Romans 9:16.

15Luther attests to this conclusion when he writes in the Small Catechism, “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith…” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 355.

16"This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could be no election without its opposite reprobation ... whom God passes by the reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children." John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by Henry Beveridge, Edinburgh, 1845, 3.23.1.

17Romans 9:22.

18Acts 9:1-9.

19“So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ,” Romans 10:17.