Foreknowledge and Freewill
The concept of Freedom of the Will for mankind is not universally accepted in Christendom. Virtually all Christians believe that God is all-knowing. Many Christians, however, go the extra step and suggest that because God knows everything that will be done, that mankind (or any other creature, for that matter) essentially has no choice in his or her actions, and is limited to what God has foreordained them to do. This is often referred to as the doctrine of predestination, and is generally credited to John Calvin, one of the major players in the Protestant Reformation.
Another term, which is sometimes used synonymously with predestination, is preordination. For the purpose of this discussion, I will use the terms predestination and preordination slightly differently.
Let's look at these three definitions of preordination. The first two are narrow in scope, and the last one is essentially the theological definition of predestination -- very broad in scope.
I believe in preordination in the limited definition. That is, God ordains or decrees certain things in advance. Some prophecies are this way, such as with Cyrus king of Persia (see: Isaiah 44:28 - 45:3; Ezra 6:3; Daniel 10). Other prophecies simply take advantage of foreknowledge, such as Daniel 6-12.
Predestination is a superset of preordination, and is the doctrine that says that there is no such thing as freewill, and that everything has planned and decided in advance. This is way beyond foreknowledge. According to this doctrine, all who are to be saved were selected to be saved, and all who are to be lost were selected to be lost. The problem with this doctrine can be found immediately in John 3:14-16, among other places. After all, there's no point in saying that "whoever believes" will be saved, when you've already gone around and picked out the winning team in advance. It basically defeats the entire purpose of evangelism.
It is still accepted to varying degrees by other Christian denominations (beyond Calvinists), but is not that popular for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the number of conflicts it generates with many areas of the Bible. A lot of people, though, have problems separating foreknowledge from predestination, and a lot of this is because most seem to feel that if God does, in fact, have ultimate power and is not using it to address things that He could control, that He must be using it to control what we do see and experience.
We believe that some things have been ordained in advance (the Plan of Salvation from before the beginning of the world [1 Peter 1:19-20], for example, as well as both the first and second coming of Jesus) , but that the overriding principle of God as puppetmaster is not Biblically sound.
This is not a discussion about what God can do, because can do anything and everything. It is a discussion about what He does do. He is not incapable of completely controlling every moment of every life down to the level of which subatomic particle occupies which specific location at some specific time, but He has created us with freewill to love and accept Him as we decide. And God has such great respect for the concept of freedom of choice, that He has been willing to allow all the madness that we see on a daily basis to exist for a time -- which lead many to conclude that there can't be a God.
God does not allow His utter and complete foreknowledge of events to interfere with the ability of His created, sentient beings to make their own choices about how they will act at any given moment. Again, not because He can't, but because He won't. Not because He is limited by any external factors, but because that is how His character is. (If it helps, you can refer to the concept of not doing something just because you can, as "self control".) We must serve Him because we want to, not because we are puppets.
God has outlined His Will for each of us (Salvation, Reconciliation and a deep, abiding Relationship), and actively works with those who have willingly submitted their lives to Him and His direction. His plans are carried out by His followers, with power from the Holy Spirit.
We know all this because it is documented rather clearly throughout the Bible. We can validate this in our own lives as we build a personal relationship with God. Ultimately, God's Will *will* be done as it pertains to the eradication of sin, and the full restoration of the planet, but He's not going to trample on the freewill of any individual in order to accomplish it.
We'll continue this in another series of posts...