Matt Slick Live - Double Predestination

Let's get to Danny from on Skype. Danny, how are you doing? Good, how are you? Doing alright, man.

What do you got, buddy? Yeah, I've got a question about double predestination. So From what

I understand you teach that God elects the sinners to hell and then he would elect the saved to heaven, is that correct?

No, no, I believe God elects only certain groups to be saved and lets the others go where they're naturally going to go.

Okay, yeah, that's kind of what I believe too because if if double predestination will be true, then it will make

God God would be his fault for sin, no? No. A lot of people mistake this.

If God's going to create the universe then he knows what's called what are called counterfactuals.

What that means is he knows what might have existed in different circumstances but those things don't exist because God has not chosen to bring them into existence.

In Calvinism or Reformed theology, we have the doctrine of election, which is right out of Scripture Ephesians 1, 4, and 5, for example, and so where God chooses people to be saved.

This makes sense because Jesus says all that the Father has given to me and they will come to him and he'll lose none.

That's the chosen ones, looks like. So no problem there. But some people will say well if God is choosing only certain people then isn't he choosing others to not be saved?

Well, there's a yes and a no to that. If there's a hundred people and I select 25 to come over to my house for dinner

I'm actively selecting the 25 but I'm also not actively selecting the other 75.

I'm choosing a specific group but I'm not choosing the other group.

What I'm doing is not choosing the other group. So the active act of choosing is for one group of people but it's not an act of choosing for the others.

I'm just letting them be where they are. So in this analogy God is actively choosing certain people to go to heaven.

The others he's letting them go to where they're naturally going to go, to hell.

Now on the other hand God who knows all things knows that if he does not choose those other people they're going to be going to hell.

So in that sense he's choosing not to choose them, if that makes sense.

And so he's letting them go and he's choosing to let them go where they're naturally going to go. What it looks like in Christian theology, biblical theology here, is that when we find the term elect in reference to the people it has to do with a specific group.

Those chosen by God for the purpose of salvation. In 1st Thessalonians 5 .21 there are elect angels as well.

They're the ones chosen not to have fallen. So it looks like election has to do with for humans saving them out of their fall and with angels saving them from the fall.

So this is how I would look at it here. However when we go to Romans chapter 9, and this is a controversial chapter, and I believe it's controversial and I'm going to say this make people mad at me, because people don't want to believe what it actually says.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for glory.

This seems to support double predestination. Verse 22 of Romans 9.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and make his power known, endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

The question we have to ask at this point is did God look into the future and then decide who is going to prepare for destruction?

No, because then God would be basing his decision on the counterfactuals, on the things that don't really exist but could have under different circumstances, and so he picked the best one he liked.

That's a problem. I didn't go into why it's a problem, but it's a problem. Makes God contingent on future events and implies he was learning.

Now, could it be then that the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction are those whom he chose not to choose and that necessarily they're prepared for destruction because that's their end?

We could look at it that way as well. We don't have all of the answers. When we come to example for Proverbs 16 .4,

it says this, The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.

Now, let me get into something a little complicated. You got a minute? We have what's called predestination, we have what's called ordination, and we have

God's will. So let me start with his will. We have in theology divisions of his will so that we can explain different aspects.

We have what's called the decretive will of God. He decrees certain things to exist. Let there be light.

That's his direct creation. He decreed the cross, etc. We have his prescriptive will.

It's a prescription, a prescription that should be done. So the prescriptive will of God, do not lie, do not commit adultery.

He's giving us the moral law. So we have the decretive will where he directly creates and causes, the prescriptive will where he prescribes by his moral law what should happen, and then the permissive will, which is

God permits people to disobey his prescriptive will, to violate his prescriptive will.

So he says don't lie, but he allows them to lie. So we have to say that God wills to allow them to disobey.

He chooses to allow them to disobey. Now in this we can see what we call ordination.

Nothing occurs in the universe that God is not, let's just say,

I don't want to say, is super control of because that implies that he's causing sin.

We don't want to get that. So what I'm going to say is that ordination is a little bit different.

It means to put in order, to decree, but there are different kinds of decrees as well, and it can mean to cause something to happen or to allow to happen depending on the context.

So God ordained the fall of man in that he arranged the circumstances and decreed those specific circumstances to allow the fall to occur, but yet he's not guilty of the fall because the fall is the work of the devil and Adam and Eve.

Each made free will choices, the choices that were consistent with their natures, and where the devil rebelled against God, he had that ability, so did

Adam and so did Eve. So God ordained that they would fall, but did not cause them to fall.

This is where a lot of people who argue against reformed theology will say that if you're saying that God predestines and ordains certain things like the fall, then he's causing it, but that's not the position.

It's not the position, and an illustration I will use is I can go up to my daughter in her room and say could you please clean up your room?

You have an hour, and I leave and I come back in an hour. She's not done it. I've ordained the circumstances that would allow her rebellion, but did not cause her rebellion.

I ordained the circumstances by giving her a room, by my wife and I producing children, by giving her the freedom to be able to make choices, you know, and giving her a command that she had the ability to disobey.

I ordained in this sense the circumstances. She had the ability to resist, and in her resistance

I did not cause her to rebel, but I ordained the circumstances in place that allowed her rebellion to occur.

Now some will say if God knows all things, then doesn't that mean then that he knew

Adam would rebel, and he brought that about? In one sense yes, in another not. Because God who's in control of all things can't help but be in control of all things, and it would mean that if he created people in a certain condition, in a certain place, in a certain way, that what's going to happen is he knows the outcome.

But it's not because he looks in the future to see what's going to happen. It's because he doesn't do that. He knows all things eternally.

He knows all things consistently, without increase of knowledge. God can't help but know everything exhaustively, and when he brings the universe into existence he knows what will happen because he's ordained it all to happen.

He's ordained the freedom choices of certain creatures to be able to do certain things at certain times, and the fall is the result of his ordination.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have happened in the first place because God brought this into existence, but not caused them to sin.

Now, then we get into the issue of predestining bad things to occur, and this is where a lot of people,

I'll ask them a question. Would God ever predestine people to sin?

And then they'll say no he would not, never. And I'll say well, then what do you think predestination means?

Because God does predestine people to sin, and I'll prove it. This is

Acts 4 27 and 28. For truly in the city that were gathered together against your holy servant

Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

So Pontius Pilate Herod the Gentiles and the people of Israel were predestined to do whatever

God wanted them to do, and they sinned when they brought

Jesus to the cross. Let me read this again. For truly in this city that were gathered together against your holy servant

Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

Now some might say well, he predestined the crucifixion and took his hands off of everybody and they just did what they're really gonna do because God knew that's what would happen and therefore he let him do it.

Well, that would mean that God arranged things based on oh, I knew what you're gonna do so I chose to let you do it because my hands are off of you and I'll let this work and my choice is now dependent upon your choice.

That's violating the non -contingency and independence of God. God can't help but know all things because that's what he brought into existence when he created the universe and all things within that universe are ordained and predestined to occur by God.

But God does not cause them to sin but within his sovereign control and his sovereign will he predestines that they will do those things that are bad.

Now this is where we get into some thick stuff. How can God predestine people to do that which he doesn't want them to do?

He doesn't want people to sin but yet he predestines them to sin. That's the question we're at when we look at Acts 4 27 and 28.

But we can only get to that question by examining these issues and looking what the scriptures actually tell us.

We do know that God does not cause sin but we do know that he can predestine it.

There's something about the cause of our will, our fallenness, our freedom within God's sovereignty and his decrees that allows us to rebel against him but yet it also is within the sovereign decree and plan and predestining of God.

It's like a fish in a small fishbowl. He's free to move about where he wants but I'm free to take that fishbowl wherever I desire it to go.

So in the broad picture I can take this to this place and that fish goes along with me but in the small scheme the fish has a freedom to do what it wants within its limited realm.

It's kind of like this. Our freedom is a limited scope of ability but God who ordains all things is able to bring us to where he wants without violating our free will at the same time if that becomes a real issue.

God could put options between situations and before people knowing what choices will be made and ordaining them for that purpose.

Yet God brought that to begin with from the creation of the universe. So we get into paradoxes, we get into problems, we get into issues but the only reason we do is because we're understanding more and more what

God has said and then we get to the point where this is what's necessary. We say God we know you're holy, you don't cause sin.

We know you can predestine people to do sinful things but you're not causing them to do that.

Yet you're in sovereign control of all things and you work all things after the counsel of your will as Ephesians 1 .11

says, however Lord I don't understand how it all works together and at this point we need to throw our hands up in the air, look to God and say this belongs to you.

It does not belong to me. The solution, the complete understanding does not belong to me

Lord. You have not given me the wisdom. You have not given me the ability. You have not provided it in Scripture for us to fully understand.

So therefore at this point we say Lord you are the sovereign. I don't know how it all works, but I trust that in your greatness you are the sovereign

King who's in control of all things and yet you are not the cause of evil but yet you've allowed it to occur and you use it for your glory and we talk about how great

God is and then we bend the knee to him and we raise our hands to him. It's easier however in some people's minds to say it's just our free will and God just knows what we're going to do.

If that's where they want to stop, that's their privilege. But it does not answer a lot of the questions and it ignores a lot of the scriptures.

What we do though is bring those to fruition, hopefully those questions that need to be asked and hopefully what it does is it brings us to a place of humility before God and we trust in him through all things.

It may not be all that satisfying but at least it's more biblical than just simply saying hey,