What Is Predestination? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

The word predestination wasn’t invented by Augustine or Luther or Calvin. It is found in the New Testament itself, and therefore, it is not peculiar to a movement in church history after the Apostolic age. The word refers to a biblical concept, and anyone who is convinced of the authority of Scripture must recognize that in order to submit to the Apostolic word, one must have some understanding of the doctrine of predestination.

Predestination does not refer to the course of the stars, God’s general divine superintendence, His providence over the universe, or His governance over natural laws. Rather, Paul is talking about salvation—a predestined salvation in which, from the foundation of the world, believers were chosen by God to be saved.

One example is the Greek word proorizō. The prefix pro-corresponds to the English prefix pre-, meaning something that takes place in advance, in front of, or before something else that follows later, while orizō means “to appoint, designate, assign.” Therefore, proorizō refers to ordaining or designating something beforehand.

Without being fatalists, thinking that everything that happens falls out according to some impersonal guiding principle, we can say that we each have a destiny. In God’s providence, that destiny is in His hand and in His eternal plan. Before any of us were born, our destinies were written by God before the foundation of the earth.

Certainly, every detail of our lives is foreordained by God, but that truth belongs more properly to the doctrine of God’s providence.

Though all churches and Christians don’t agree about the nature of predestination, one point can be agreed on: God, in His sovereignty, in some way predestines who gets to heaven and who does not. That’s the simplest definition of predestination. The focal point of predestination is the doctrine of election we find in the New Testament, and that has to do with God’s choosing and making a decision about heaven or hell.

The prescient view of predestination holds that God, from all eternity, looks down the corridors of history and knows in advance who will and will not respond positively to the invitation of Christ and His gospel. He knows that some will say yes to Christ and others will say no. From all eternity, God ordains that every person who says yes to the gospel will go to heaven. He chooses them for heaven based on their foreseen faith.

The Augustinian view, also called the Reformation view, holds that God, from all eternity, not only predestines those who will believe to be saved, but He also predestines those who will believe to believe. In other words, apart from God’s predestinating grace, no one would ever believe. People are not predestined to heaven because they believe or because God knows that they will believe; they are predestined to believe that they might go to heaven.

Virtually all of the errors that plague the church and her doctrine relate to one of two errors: either an underestimation of the greatness of God or an overestimation of the greatness of man.

The order of salvation has something in common with the question of the chicken and the egg: What comes (at least logically) first?

Therefore, it is safe to assume here (though Paul does not mention sanctification in the list in Romans 8) that the text contains a sequential ordering, since it begins with foreknowledge in eternity past and ends with glorification in the future.

The external call is the basic proclamation of the gospel message to all people. Some respond positively; others reject it.

The Augustinian position, however, is that God predestines people to an inward call by the Holy Spirit, and everyone whom God predestines unto salvation will be called, justified, and glorified. The Augustinian view holds that God cannot predestine anyone, for any reason, to anything of which He has no knowledge. God does not predestine unknown people. Obviously, foreknowledge must be first in any succession of the decrees of God, since He doesn’t decree anything for anyone of whom He knows nothing.

Someone once noted, “All people are by nature Pelagian.” By this, he meant that people naturally believe that man is not fundamentally enslaved by sin as a result of the fall of Adam, and that they still have the power in their fallen natures (if they believe they’re fallen at all) to incline themselves toward faith and make a decision for Christ.

They know that they could not be redeemed apart from the grace of God or the work of Jesus Christ, but they assume that the reason they believed, while their friends persisted in unbelief, was that they made the right decision and their friends made the wrong decision. Such Christians assume that somehow they, not God, were the decisive factor.

This seems to equate faith with works, when faith is by grace, as seen in Eph 2:8,9.

Grace is something that God is never obligated to give—God doesn’t owe anyone grace.

Injustice is a category of evil that is absolutely antithetical to justice.

But consider mercy or grace. Is there anything wrong with a holy, righteous God being gracious or merciful? It would not be evil for a just and righteous Being to grant mercy or grace, because grace and mercy are laudable.

When people say they believe in God’s sovereignty, they often mean that they believe God has authority and power over His creation (and that is indeed an aspect of God’s sovereignty). But when the topic of the sovereignty of grace comes up, people don’t want to believe that God has the authority or the right to grant His mercy and grace as He wills.

An arbitrary or capricious person acts without any particular reason for doing so.

The very word counsel suggests an intelligent reason for acting. God never wills apart from His own counsel.

The very word counsel should alert us that the biblical idea of God’s sovereign grace is rooted in the wisdom of God, which is perfect. It is not irrational; it is eminently rational and far from arbitrary.

Teleology comes from the Greek word telos, which means “end, purpose, goal.”

The only reason we’re redeemed is not because of our value but because of the value of Christ. God is gracious to us in order to reward One who does deserve a reward—His only begotten Son.

What God chooses, He does so according to His good pleasure.

There is no such thing as the bad pleasure of God’s will. God does not take pleasure in evil.

The only thing that has ever pleased God is goodness, the only pleasure that He’s ever had is a good pleasure, and the only purpose that He’s ever had is a good purpose. Let us never suggest that in the mystery of His grace He is capricious or arbitrary. That the reason for our salvation does not rest in us does not mean it’s unreasonable and irrational or that God is without a purpose, counsel, or goodness.

As bad as the world may sometimes seem to our finite human minds, we can say with absolute certainty that the world would be a true disaster if we were in the place of God.

The dispute was brought on by a group called the Remonstrants, who were thus named because they remonstrated, or protested, against the Reformed doctrine of predestination. The controversy, which was addressed at the Synod of Dort in 1618–19, codified what is known as the five points of Calvinism.

This view of election, also called “conditional” election, is distinguished from the historic Augustinian view, which is “unconditional.” In the Augustinian view, God, without foreseeing any particular conditions met by man, sovereignly and eternally chooses people unto salvation. This does not mean that salvation has no conditions—it does. Faith is required for justification. But unconditional election means that God unconditionally chooses the elect for salvation and sovereignly enables them to exercise the faith that meets the necessary condition for salvation.

Augustine concluded that the fall of mankind is so great that even though we still are able to make choices, all of our choices proceed from a heart that is in bondage to sin, leaving us in a state of moral inability to choose what pleases God.

God sovereignly determines to quicken to spiritual life those whom He has chosen, and all who are so quickened come to faith. God Himself supplies the condition necessary for the sinner to respond.

The word “can” refers not to permission but to ability. “May” is used to describe permission, but “can” has to do with ability.

Rebirth is the prerequisite and the necessary condition for being able to come to Christ.

We’ve already considered the wonder of God’s mercy and grace as He unilaterally intrudes into the lives of sinners, snatching them from the fire and bringing them safely home to heaven. But we also must ask, What about those who do not receive that gift? What about those who do not receive regeneration? In other words: What about those who are not elect?

Part of the problem is that some people have a distorted understanding of predestination and election. They think of it as if God drags people kicking and screaming against their wills into the kingdom of God, and at the same time He prevents other people from coming to the kingdom who do want to be there.

The Augustinian doctrine of election unto salvation says this: no one wants Christ. No one wants to come into the kingdom of God. The heart is desperately wicked, and it desires only evil continuously. “No one seeks for God,” the Apostle Paul quoted (Rom. 3:11). If left to our own desires and inclinations, none of us would ever incline ourselves to come to Christ. So, in our natural state, none of us wants to enter the kingdom of God.

For us to be saved, God must first regenerate us. Regeneration is the raising to new spiritual life; it is a change in the disposition of hearts. Before regeneration, we don’t want anything to do with Christ; afterward, we love Him.

The Spirit makes us willing, so that we then choose Christ, and we choose Christ because we want Christ. Therefore, no one is dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom; everyone who enters the kingdom desires to be there.