The Most Dangerous Words In Theology?

1 Peter 1:20

He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.

We puny humans have a terrible conundrum in trying to understand God and God’s control over everything.  There are these two multisyllabic theo-babble words that get thrown around, “predestination” and “foreknowledge”.  Both leave God flapping in the breeze-morally speaking.

“Predestination” (see the word ‘destiny’ in there?), God has set everything in motion because God is in control.  Great, except when one starts to consider evil, poverty, genocide, epidemics, disasters, wars, death, and destruction.  If God Predestines the good stuff, God also Predestines the bad stuff.  Taken to an extreme, “double predestination”, some of us destined for heaven, others of us destined for hell.

“Foreknowledge” is a theological concept that implies ‘plausible deniability’ for God.  God knows all, but God does not command all.  So God truly gives us free will, something impossible under predestination, but still knows everything that is going to happen.  So, instead of controlling evil, poverty, genocide, epidemics, disasters, wars, death, and destruction, God knows about it and lets it happen.  That leaves us with two possibilities.  One, God is too weak to control what God knows is going to happen.  Two, God is morally ambivalent and appears not to care what is going to happen.

“He was destined”, Jesus was destined.  Left to our own devices, we are taking the world into hell by ourselves.  We don’t need predestination or foreknowledge or any theologically-nimble shade in between.  What we need is salvation.  What we need to know is that God put the solution into play and it is up to us to share that joy with the world.  “Pre…” and “Fore…” are human attempts to understand divine attributes.  They are limited because we are limited.

Praise God that Jesus is not so limited.