Predestination

Predestination in the Christian world means a divine foreknowledge of all things that happen.  Some use predestination to shape their definition of elect, a people chosen by God, to include only an elect few.  Some believe in double-election saying God elected some to be saved, while others are elected to be damned.  I don’t any Christians in my community who advocate such a view, but it seems implied in our society at large. I belong to one of the two major political parties in this country.  I won’t say which one, but I do receive letters from the national organization around election time, and if I took seriously everything written in those letters, I would believe my party to be elected by God to save this nation from economic and moral disaster, while the other party is been damned by a faulty political philosophy that will lead to economic and moral ruin.  Whether we say it or not, we practice in our two party system a “double election” in national politics!  Personally speaking, whether in religion or in politics, such a view divides us from one another, which is the root problem of our sin.  

One reaction to this idea of double election is single election, meaning God elects all, or predestines all to be saved, an idea that originated in the ancient teachings of church fathers like Clement of Alexandria in the Catechetical school in Alexandria and continued by Origen who followed as Clements’ successor. Today, post-modern Christian authors continue to explore single election with books like If Grace is True 2003 and The Evangelical Universalist 2006, writings in the past ten years that lift up the idea of a God who elects to save every person.   I think it sounds great, but there is that haunting, evocative question read in Hebrews 2:3, “How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?”  This suggests a choice to be made, and it appears to be a choice that we choose to either accept or ignore?

There is another way to look at predestination:  all of us are predestined to be loved.  John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world...”  Paul writes in Romans 8:38 – 39 that nothing he knows of can ever make God stop loving us.  If we are predestined to be loved, then God has made a choice.  God chose you, but what choice will you make?

We will explore this topic more as we continue our sermon series in the sanctuary on basic beliefs.  Join us as we dig deeper into basic Christian beliefs like salvation, sanctification.  We’ll explore all these beliefs from our United Methodist tradition.