Free Will Vs Predestination: Does God Know Your Choices Before You Make Them?

By Theodore R. Johnstone M.D.

A little more than five hundred years ago, Martin Luther should have nailed ninety-six theses to the church door instead of only ninety-five. The ninety-sixth could have been about predestination, wherewith Luther could have prevented a schism developing in Protestantism over the Doctrine of Predestination. John Calvin, another Reformer who followed Luther quite a few years later, mistakenly taught that predestination, as described in the New Testament, applies to individuals instead of to the Christian Church as a whole. As a result, no one can choose eternal life or eternal damnation because every person has been predestined by God for one or the other. It is the church as a whole that was predestined by God ahead of time and not the individual. However, each individual can choose whether or not to join the church. This book shows Calvin’s mistake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490794891

Theodore R. Johnstone M.D.

Born in 1930s, Ted Johnstone, son of a country doctor, grew up on a farm near the small town of Hanford California. Ted was the third of four children, the eldest of whom was Dorothy, who had graduated from medical school and finished her internship just before their father's untimely death at age 56 in 1949. She took over the medical practice and Ted, at 17, took over the family farm, running the dairy, growing cotton, and attending school all at the same time. Six years later in 1955, he graduated from college with a B.A. degree with a major in chemistry and a minor in physics. Graduation from medical school occurred four years later in 1959, followed by a rotating internship. From there he joined his sister, Dorothy Johnstone Smith, M.D., in practice back in Hanford. Dorothy died unexpectedly in 1965. Ted and his wife Kitsy, then decided for him accept a position as a medical doctor overseas and she as a nurse. They served together in two countries, Nigeria and Ghana, for 18 months. Then Ted, Kitsy, and their four daughters returned to the U.S. and in 1968 settled in Madera California, where Ted went into private practice. Kitsy, after more training as a family nurse practitioner, later joined him in a practice limited to pediatrics. Ted is a member of the Fresno-Madera County Medical Society, and on the medical staff at Madera Community Hospital. All four daughters have college degrees and between them have four master degrees, one RN, and one PhD... They also have presented their parents with six wonderful grandchildren.

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Copyright 2019 Theodore R. Johnstone, M. D.

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1    Man’s Free Will and God’s Sovereignty

Chapter 2    Man’s Free Will and God’s Sovereignty (Part Two)

Chapter 3    Man’s Free Will and Romans 9

Chapter 4    Prophecy and Man’s Free Will

Chapter 5    Science and Man’s Free Will

Preface

From the outset, Christianity has had to survive multiple man made divisions. The first one developed among the followers of Jesus soon after His ascension. At its center was the question of whether a non-Jewish person, who wanted to become a Christian, should be required to follow Jewish laws and customs. Not the least among these Jewish requirements, was whether or not gentile men should be circumcised. After a debate of early Church leaders led by Peter, it was decided that gentiles would not be required to follow most Jewish customs and laws, one of which was circumcision. (See Acts 15.) With this decision in place, Christianity gradually spread over most of Europe and Asia Minor.

Then in 1054 A.D., the eastern section of Christianity broke away from the western section forming what became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church. This left the mostly European division to become known as the Catholic, or universal Church. About 500 years after this geographic divide, the Reformation arose, led by Martin Luther. It split Christianity into two groups, the Catholics and the Protestants.

Next, about three decades after Luther, John Calvin came along as part of the Reformation, expounding the doctrine of Double Predestination. According to Calvin, God lives in an eternal now which allows Him to simultaneously see the past, present, and future, as in one continuous metaphorical sweep. Therefore God, in the beginning, could look ahead and actually create and predestine each person to eternal life or eternal damnation. This concept has divided Protestantism into two groups; those who believe the Bible teaches that each person’s Free Will equips them to choose whether or not they want to become Christians or those who believe God has predestined each individual to their eternal destination, even before they were born. Calvin based this doctrine of Double Predestination, mainly on his interpretation of Ephesians chapter one and Romans chapter eight. These scriptures, along with others, are analyzed in this book.

One of the reasons for writing of this little five-chapter book occurred as a result of seeing the doctrine of Predestination divide the church that my wife and I attend. We saw the problems this doctrine caused among otherwise solid believing Protestant Christians. It ended with the congregation splitting, when two of the five pastors led about three hundred people to leave our congregation of around 3,000 and form another church. Fortunately, for both sides, very little, if any animosity existed then or now about the separation. This undoubtedly was due to the way the head pastor handled the situation; plus the fact that the group that split off were given a six-figure amount of money to start up their new church.

In dialogue form, this book takes up the supposed experiences of a group of make believe modern day Christians as they explore the problems that arise when they compare and contrast Free Will with Predestination. Chapter one deals with God’s dilemma at the time of creation, as to how He would equip intelligent creatures to choose or not to choose. Chapter two lays out Biblical definitions needed to better understand the differences between the doctrines of Free Will and Predestination. Chapters three, four, and five, respectively, take up problems of interpretation, which are encountered with these two doctrines, as found in Ephesians and Romans, prophecies in general, and various divisions of science.

Theodore R. Johnstone, M.D.

Chapter One

Man’s Free Will and God’s Sovereignty

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Many devout Christians and their clergy rarely consider the effects that would accrue on God’s omniscience, all knowing (see 1 John 3:20), and omnipotence, all powerful (see Genesis 17:1), if God decided to give all intelligent creatures the ability to make independent, uncoerced, freewill choices before they were created. However, two questions regarding this decision beg to be answered:

1. When intelligent creatures were created, either angelic or human, did God choose to allow them to make independent, uncoerced, freewill choices, not under His sovereignty, in order to give them freedom to choose?

2. Would all their choices need to be unknowable to God until after they were made to guarantee that Deity could not be accused of originating the evil?

If God could create the universe, then He certainly would have possessed omniscience and omnipotence, meaning that He had infinite knowledge and power. Therefore God, if He wanted, would have had both all the knowledge and power needed to create intelligent creatures with choosing mechanisms, the choices of which He could not know until after they were made. Any contrary notion would place a limitation on what God would have been able to create. From a human perspective, an increase in knowledge frequently has a direct, positive effect on power, indicating that an increase in knowledge often produces an increase in power. As an example, with increased knowledge of the atom, physicists learned how to tap into the energy of the atomic nucleus. With this knowledge, they soon produced the atomic bomb and the release of its huge power. However, before creation, God’s omniscience and omnipotence were already infinite, so the simultaneous use of them would have resulted in a perfect creation.

A Divine Revelation

Now imagine the discussions and conclusions that would emerge from a make-believe group of modern-day Christians, if via an imaginary simultaneous Divine Revelation to each one in the group, God reenacted the last part of the sixth creation day in their collective presence. Suppose, in all of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, the group was shown, during three successive episodes, how Adam and Eve had been made in God’s image and three different but possible ways God could have equipped them to make choices regarding good and evil. But during each reenactment, keep in mind that if good or evil existed, both would have been powerless concepts bereft of an intelligent mind able to notice the differences and choose between the two. Then afterward, suppose that God made it possible for this group of Christians to observe what would have happened over time, if He had taken various routes with respect to how Adam and Eve had been equipped to choose.

But don’t forget that human goodness from God’s perspective always equates with unconditional love and unselfishness, both of which can be demonstrated by how we choose to place others. Goodness always chooses to place the other person first and itself last. Whereas, evil always is based on choosing to place oneself first and others last. In fact, when you violate any of the Ten Commandments, you inadvertently are placing yourself either above God or people. Breaking any of the first four places you above God and the violating any of last six attempts to elevate you above your fellow man. Placing yourself above someone else is a selfish act, which makes selfishness a disguised form of disrespect for the other person and usually has destructive effects on both the perpetrator and on the one to whom the selfishness is directed.

However, during each of the proposed reenactments, two questions should arise in the minds of this imaginary group of modern-day Christians: (1) Was disbelief in God coupled with selfish pride the root of Adam and Eve’s original sin in the garden? (2) Is disbelief in God and selfish pride the foundation of every sinful choice that humans ever have made?

Each of the three reveled episodes that follow will show what might have occurred in the afternoon on day six of creation and for a time afterward.

Episode I

What would have happened if God had placed a restriction in the brains of Adam and Eve that would have prevented them from making any selfish choice rooted in pride? Keep in mind that even if their brains had not been pre-fixed, making it impossible to choose anything selfish, it would have been difficult for them to make wrong choices in the Garden of Eden anyway. Just think, atheism would have been ruled out every time God visited them in the cool of the day. Neither had earthly