Reader questions: free will, election, and the God who saves

Let every soul be Jesus' guest

Gentle reader,

It’s been some time since I addressed questions submitted by readers. Last time I did so, I gathered up a number of questions about hell, in this post.

I’m not sure what’s gotten into me today, but I’m going to take on a set of questions about the relationship between predestination and free will. I can promise this won’t be an exhaustive treatment of the topics (ha!), but I can offer a few thoughts about how I interact with these questions, spiritually and theologically.

From a reader: (though I’ve edited the question a bit)

I am struggling with the concept of election and how that relates to our free will. Can we reconcile those two concepts?

First, I’ll note that I’m some kind of Wesleyan/Arminian. That is, I embrace a stream of Protestant theology which sorts through these questions by affirming the reality of human free will and the enormity of divine grace. For Wesleyan/Arminian theology, human free will has to be real—not just illusion—in order for the love of God for us and our love for God to also be real. God is not a puppet master. God freely loves free creatures and wants our free love in return.

Statue of John Wesley, located at Asbury Theological Seminaray, photo from Wikimedia commons

Now, arguably I am a weird kind of Wesleyan/Arminian. I’ve joked that it’s my vocation to convince Calvinists that Arminians aren’t Pelagian, while it’s also my vocation to convince Arminians that Arminians aren’t Pelagian.

In briefest brief, “Pelagian” means believing that humans are capable of turning to God in love, in a way that puts us into right relationship with God. Pelagianism has long been rejected by Catholics and Protestants as a denial of the biblical witness to the depth of human brokenness, a denial of our need for a savior. In Protestant terms, Pelagianism leads to “works righteousness,” in which we try to earn salvation.

Why would anyone think Arminians are Pelagian? It’s because that affirmation of real human free will can be twisted into an affirmation of human independence from God, a vision of a humanity that has what it takes to love rightly. Such a humanity is no longer in desperate need of a savior, because their situation just isn’t that bad.

Against this, Catholics and Protestants have said that we humans are fundamentally broken. We need healing. At its best, this is not an invitation to smear humanity. It doesn’t mean that humans are trash, though it can be twisted in that direction. It does mean that we stand in need of the healing that is ours in Jesus Christ.

John Wesley puts it like this:

“know thy disease, know thy cure.”

That is, an appreciation of what is wrong with us ought to lead to embrace of and gratitude for the One who would heal us.

Now, a Wesleyan theological concept becomes key: prevenient grace (Randy Maddox’s book, Responsible Grace, is very helpful here).

“Prevenient” means “goes before,” and various Christian traditions used the phrase before John Wesley did, in ways that are different from Wesley’s use, but in my opinion, Wesley’s definition of prevenient grace is the stroke of theological genius that helps us to see how human free will and the human need for grace can both be the truth about us, at the same time.

We do—or don’t—turn to God, freely, and we’re too broken to do that turning by our own power; we can only do so with divine help.

John Wesley understands prevenient grace as the beginning of salvation. Prevenient grace is not just the “common grace” that does all kinds of good things in the world; prevenient grace is specifically soteriological (meaning, having to do with salvation).

Prevenient grace provides a degree of healing which enables human free will. This healing is universally available, through the death and resurrection of Christ.

So, if we turn to God, we can do so freely, our human will undergirded by divine will. At the same time, that turning would be impossible without divine will.

The reader who submitted the first questions, above, added this:

“In church earlier this year, our pastor spoke on election and the belief that God predestines all who will come to faith in Him by initiating the salvation process which the elect can then respond to.”

I don’t agree with the reader’s pastor. The pastor is describing something like prevenient grace but is supposing that said grace is restricted to only those who will be saved. It’s for the elect alone. It may make those elect, in some sense, free, but it gives us a God who does not love all people and want all people to come to him.

I agree with my reader that this is a deeply disturbing vision of God, and I don’t read that vision as fitting with the love of God as that love is revealed to us in scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ.

Prevenient grace is universally available, to any and all. God loves every one of us, and God has not made anyone outside of that love.

So, do I not believe in predestination? I do believe in it. (It’s a rather key biblical concept), but I believe in it in the standard Arminian way. (Yes, Arminians affirm predestination).

Predestination describes God’s knowledge of our free will as that will cooperates with or refuses the power offered it through prevenient grace. That is, predestination is based on God’s “foreknowledge,” a word I don’t love as I think there is no before or after for God, but I suppose the word does work analogically; when God names the elect it’s as if God looked into the future and saw their freely graced free response to God’s free offer of love.

“compatibilism” Print products with this image are available without the watermark at my Redbubble store.

I’m some kind of compatibilist, (see chapter 2 in Tom McCall’s An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology) (though plenty of people would define compatibilism in a much more deterministic way than I find comfortable). I believe that human freedom and agency are compatible with divine freedom and agency. God’s power isn’t in competition with our power nor, God forbid, is ours in competition with God’s. Free will isn’t a zero sum game.

I am not, then, in line with the theological school of open theism, which would “solve” the problem of freedom and grace by restricting God’s freedom. I just think that God is God enough for there to be enough freedom to go around.

We’re broken by sin. We are unfree. Our willing is bound to sin.

And prevenient grace, flowing from the blood of Jesus, offers the beginning of universal healing, so that we might unite our willing with God’s and, empowered by grace, begin to turn to God in love.

God will not force our turning. God invites. God beckons. God loves.

Or, better, as Charles Wesley put it in his hymn:

“Come, sinners, to the gospel feast;
Let every soul be Jesus’ guest;
Ye need not one be left behind,
For God hath bid all humankind.”

Grace & peace,

BFJ

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