A Response to a Man I Really Admire: Predestination and the Golden Chain

So, my pastor recently did a supplementary teaching on Romans 8:29, the golden chain of redemption. He argued that when the text speaks of God "foreknowing" people, it only means that God knew beforehand who would have faith and who wouldn't. On that basis, God predestines those who He knows would have faith to eternal life-and thus, predestination isn't based off God's sovereign pleasure, but rather our free will response. According to this interpretation, God's sovereign pleasure IS the salvation of everyone; however, given our free will, we reject God's grace and embrace hell. My pastor is uber respectful, and again, someone I really admire. His presentation is a model of how Christians can disagree with charity. That being said, I must respectfully disagree. 

Reformed view of Predestination 
First, I have to define what people in my camp mean when they speak of predestination. We believe that all of humanity is totally depraved, and thus totally worthy of damnation. There would be no injustice on God's part to damn humanity to hell. The Apostle Paul has this to say: [7] For the mind that is set on the flesh does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. [8] Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
[9] You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. [10] But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. [11] If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:7-11 ESV)

Romans 1, additionally, speaks of how all people universally rebel against God. Note the contrast between verses 8 and 9; the only people who are not in the flesh are those in the Spirit, and thus, those who belong to Christ (verse 9b). Those who do not have the Spirit of Christ do not belong to God; thus, the implication is that those who do belong to God. In light of the universal rebellion of mankind, God stands over us in judgment. Christ saves us from the holy and just wrath of God (Romans 5:9). So with all of this in mind, what is predestination on the Calvinist view? 

Predestination is the decree of God, made from eternity past, to save a particular people (i.e the elect) and to pass over others and leave them under His judgment, not according to anything good or bad He sees in them, but according to His Sovereign pleasure and hidden purposes alone. It means that God, from eternity, decreed some to eternal life, and some to eternal damnation, not on the basis of anything He saw in them, but according to His will alone. 

Now two preliminary objections will inevitably arise. Doesn't this make God unfair? No, because as we've considered, everyone is worthy of hell. Salvation is of grace alone (God's unmerited favor); hence, God couldn't possibly be unjust for not saving people who deserved His wrath anyway. This, however, doesn't mean the reprobate (those who are destined for hell) are reprobate because they were worse than the elect; I deserve hell infinitely so. God's decree to damn them wasn't based off of anything good or bad He saw in anyone; however, it's rendered just in light of the fact that everyone deserves hell. In other words, God didn't pass over the reprobate because they were worse than me, and they didn't have the character or whatever to believe. He passed over them for reasons I do not have access to, and He saved me for reasons I do not have access to. All I know is that He saved me by utter grace-it had nothing to do with anything good or bad God saw in me, which strips me of any ground for boasting. 

The second objection is this: doesn't this make salvation a coin toss? As my former pastor said, doesn't this mean that God just kinda sorts souls on a shelf, and ships the bad shelf off to hell and the good shelf on to heaven ("I hope I'm not on the bad shelf"!-he continued). No. God is not arbitrary; that God hasn't revealed His reasons to me (and that those reasons aren't based in anything God saw in me) does not at all entail that He doesn't have good reasons, or any reason at all. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God." 

Now to the actual text. 

[28] And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. [29] For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. [30] And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Romans 8:28-30 ESV)

The first thing to note is that verses 28 and 29 are connected by "for". In other words, verse 29 is the explanatory basis for verse 28 ("My face is in pain, for my pet monkey punched me in the face"). So what's the link? Well, Paul's trying to ballast the claim that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him. How? Because those who God foreknew (we'll return to that word in a second), He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn of many brothers. And then the chain comes in at verse 30. Now, notice something about verse 30; those predestined are called, those called are justified, and those justified are glorified. There's no break in this chain here; the group that's predestined makes it through to glorification. Verse 30 is connected to verse 29 by the "and", which means that it too is part of the explanatory basis for verse 28. So how does verses 29-30 give support to verse 28? We know that God works all things together for good (i.e in this context, in order to conform us to Jesus in our eschatological-i.e end time, when God redeems creation and resurrects us and gives us new, redeemed bodies-glorification), because everyone in Christ is in Christ to the end. Hence, everything in our lives is ultimately being directed to conform us to the end of being like Christ in the eschatological resurrection of the elect.

So then, in order to understand which view of predestination is right, we have to understand what is meant by the word "foreknow". In the OT, whenever it speaks of God "knowing" a nation, it does not mean that God had foreknowledge. That was assumed on the part of the Israelites. Consider this:

[1] Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:
[2] “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. (Amos 3:1-2 ESV)

[5] “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5 ESV)

Also consider the texts that speak of Adam "knowing" His wife. The knowledge here is covenantal. It is an active verb-something God is doing rather than something God has had. In these above examples, it clearly doesn't mean that God had knowledge beforehand of Israel or Jeremiah. Surely, God did (Isaiah 40-55), but that's not the point here. Think about Amos 3:2-God's not saying that Israel was the only nation He had knowledge of. He's speaking about a special choice; Israel was the only nation God specially chose to enter into covenant with. It refers to God's choice with respect to His covenantal (i.e redemptive) purposes-His purposes to make a people for Himself. Likewise, in Jeremiah 1:5, it speaks of God appointing Jeremiah a prophet to the nations before he was born. The knowledge there is again covenantal. It refers to a special choice God makes. When God "foreknows" something as an active verb, it's not talking about passive foreknowledge. The authors are referring to God's special choice-His choice to know the object in a special way. 

Now to be sure,  proginōskō can refer to passive foreknowledge of a thing...but the trouble is it's being used as an active verb here. Let's look at the one other place Paul uses the word (it happens to be used as an active verb here too): " [2] God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? [3] “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” [4] But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” [5] So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. [6] But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace."

(Romans 11:2-6 ESV)

In verse 2, it wouldn't make sense to say "God has not rejected his people who he had passive foreknowledge of". The fact that God has passive foreknowledge of Israel has nothing to do with whether God will reject them or not; God had passive foreknowledge of the Assyrians too, but that didn't stop them from devolving into pagan idolatry. In keeping with the OT usage of "know" as an active verb, it makes much more sense to say that God has not rejected the Jewish people that He chose. Why? Because He cannot go back on His promises; those whom he sovereignly chooses to conform to Christ, He will not let go. In fact, this makes perfect sense with the logic of the text. Verses 3-6 denote how God's reply to Elijah was His sovereign preservation of seven thousand who did not bow the knee to Baal. Paul connects that to the present in verse 5-the evidence that God has not backed down on His promises to the Jews is the fact that there's a remnant chosen by grace. This also makes sense with the rest of what Romans 11 has to say, since the text speaks of a time when God will reign back in the ethnically Jewish people en masse. Why? Because He has not rejected His people who He foreknew...i.e those whom He chose to know in a specially way. 

The Logic of the Golden Chain

Now let's turn our attention to the golden chain. Since this is something God is doing, not merely something God has, and since the usage of "foreknowledge" as an active verb normally denotes God's sovereign choice, we must infer that Paul is speaking of God's sovereign choosing of the elect. Once again, this makes perfect sense of the text. How do we know God works all things together for the good of those who love Him? Because (i.e verse 29: "For") those whom God sovereignly chose (i.e predestined), He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. In other words, every bad thing that happens to me is ultimately being worked by God for my good (my ultimate good being conformity to Christ). Since God has sovereignly chosen me, and since His choice entails my final glorification (verse 30-all those called end up glorified), that means that nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. 

Now, consider with me how the logic would be broken if the text was just speaking about God's passive foreknowledge. If salvation was ultimately contingent on my free choice-if the ultimate, decisive factor in my own salvation was a movement of my will-then how do I have any guarantee that I'll be a Christian until the end of my life? There may be something that comes along and sways my will. Paul's logic wouldn't work; if God just predestines those who He foreknows will have faith to be conformed to the Son, then how do I know God is working everything (note: everything-even my own sinfulness, though this is not a license to sin because of Romans 6) for my good? It wouldn't be true that God was working all things for my good, since He wouldn't be working my free will decision to perhaps break in covenant with Him for my good. Also, the logic of the chain wouldn't work; some of those predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son could use their free will to break away from Christ. 

However, if we consider "foreknowing" something as an active verb in the Jewish context of the OT, Paul's argument becomes solid (and this is the most likely reading especially in light of the fact that Paul was a first century Jewish Pharisee). Now, a lot of people confuse this position with "once saved always saved"-by that pithy little phrase, people tend to mean that if you're elect, then you can live like the devil, curse Christ, and still be saved. That's not what election is. Election is the decree of God to save someone from eternity past; He then, in time, regenerates a person's heart and creates faith in them, so that they are justified (i.e counted righteous) in His sight. So if one professes faith in Christ, but the fruit of loving obedience is not evident in their lives, then their profession of faith is false. That doesn't mean we'll be perfect; we stumble and fall. But the evidence of being saved is getting back up, hating sin, and running towards the light. As someone once said to me, "grace is there not so that we can fall, but in case we fall, and to make it so that we fall less and look more like Jesus over time". Thus, perseverance is necessary. So as a Calvinist, how do I know I will fight the fight of faith, and be a Christian by the end of my life? I'm 18 right now...I (Lord-willing) have a long way to go (unless He comes back first). But I believe that my God is exceedingly faithful to a former wretch like me. My newness comes from Christ alone; and my confidence comes from God's love displayed in Christ alone. Hence, I know I'll be a Christian not because of anything in me. If it were up to me, I'd have descended into dark depravity. No, I know I'll be a Christian because of the faithfulness of God. It has nothing to do with me; it has everything to do with a great, merciful King. Since God is faithful, nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. Nothing.