# From a Christian perspective - What's the case against pre-destination?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 4, 2024, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144 "2024-05-04T20:54:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/1 "2024-05-04T20:54:32Z")
My view (as a Christian) is that pre-destination goes against the choice that we make of our own free will. If I have to receive Christ as my Lord & Savior in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven, then I am making a choice. If I’m making a choice, then it’s not pre-determined. I could go in either direction, without anyone or God knowing beforehand.
But if it’s not pre-determined, then that also means that God is not omniscient. He doesn’t know the exact position of every particle in the Universe, nor does he know the future position of every particle in the Universe. God seems omnipotent to us, as mere Humans, since he’s the creator. But there has to be a limit to his knowledge, unless he has pre-programmed every action or thought in my entire life.
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### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/2 "2024-05-04T20:58:13Z")
My take on it is that pre-destination becomes something of a “Okay, so what?” problem.
Say one sports team attempts a field goal kick, and it is wide right. “God predestined it to go wide right!”
But if that kick went in the middle instead, they say, “God predestined it to be good!”
Then you have to ask if predestination is nothing but a tautology. What’s the meaningfulness of it? It has no meaning. In fact, it even means I was predestined to type up this reply to you. What’s the point? It becomes utterly point-less, no substance, no effect, and doesn’t make any difference.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/3 "2024-05-04T21:06:06Z")
In the movie _The Omega Code_, Michael York’s character asks, “If I am predestined to become the Anti-Christ, will God punish me for it?”
The character later suffers brain damage and demonic possession, and **then** becomes the Anti-Christ. Which kind of sidesteps the question, but I will give them credit for raising it.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/4 "2024-05-04T21:10:01Z")
As for the question originally asked, it seems to me that an omniscient being would know the future. But an omnipotent being could voluntarily forgo knowledge of the future. It doesn’t mean that He has, but He could. So we are obligated to act as if He did, and try to live our lives as morally as we are able.
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### Author:  [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/5 "2024-05-04T21:13:53Z")
I’m an atheist and not a Christian. But it seems to me the OP is making a category error. If you posit an omniscient God, that is not the same as pre-destination of events or decisions. Knowledge is not will, and God’s complete knowledge of everything that will happen does not mean that those happenings have been willed by God.
This, of course, conflicts with the notion of an omnipotent God, but I’m not responsible for the contradictions in Christian theology.
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### Author:  [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/6 "2024-05-04T21:14:42Z")
If everything is pre-destined, then it’s all meaningless in my view. Why even send Jesus down to Earth to save us if it’s pre-destined. There’s no point. He would already know which one of us is going to Hell. So, that would make our lives a cruel joke, IMO.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/7 "2024-05-04T21:16:17Z")
You cannot assume that an omniscient, omnipotent god would be bound by the laws of physics. A creator is larger than that which is created and should by definition be above any rules in the creation. And the creator can change the rules at any times without those inside the creation even noticing. It was always and will be always. And not meant to be questioned too closely or literally.
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### Author:  [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/8 "2024-05-04T21:17:02Z")
If he created everything and had perfect knowledge of the future, then I don’t think any outcome would be against his will. He created it all, and knows everything that is happening and that will happen…and he knew all that before he even created it. It’s not against his will.
My only way out of this is to say there’s a limit to God.
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### Author:  [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/9 "2024-05-04T21:21:45Z")
🙂 quote=“Exapno\_Mapcase, post:7, topic:1001144”]
It was always and will be always. And not meant to be questioned too closely or literally.
[/quote]
OK, but I’m questioning it right now. God must have known 13.7 billion years ago that I’d be sitting here today questioning his limits?
I think in our tiny part of the cosmos, God seems to be infinite. But I don’t think he can literally be infinite in knowledge…there has to be a limit somewhere…like…“infinity minus 2”…🙂
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/10 "2024-05-04T21:28:50Z")
Perhaps the big picture is preordained, but the details are left to free will.
The concentration camp is predestined.
But you have a choice:
You can join the bad guys, and become a guard at the camp, and be damned.
Or you can join the good guys, and become an inmate at the camp, and be blessed.
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### Author:  [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/11 "2024-05-04T21:29:02Z")
An omniscient God knows everything, so She knows the consequences of every possible choice you may have made in every possible universe, and (for all I know) in all of the impossible ones too. This basically means you have free will and pre-destination at the same time.
Don’t worry about it. You only get to live in one of all the possible worlds, so make the best choices you can.
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### Author:  [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/12 "2024-05-04T21:29:35Z")
> [@survinga](#):
>
> I don’t think any outcome would be against his will.
He might be the clockwork creator, who sets things in motion at the start and then stands aside, so to speak. He knows what is going to happen because of omniscience (as posited), but does not exercise any will to affect it. And the original setting of things in motion was not done in sufficient detail that your eventual faith or lack of faith is an inevitable fact at the beginning of things (this last bit is just me spit-balling, I have no idea if this is an actual doctrine or not).
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> It was always and will be always. And not meant to be questioned too closely or literally.
Why shouldn’t people question it? Or maybe you meant “not subject to being successfully questioned,” that is, people can question it but will never know or learn any of the answers.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/13 "2024-05-04T21:41:32Z")
> [@survinga](#):
>
> OK, but I’m questioning it right now.
Well, stop it.
OK, I’m being facetious but serious at the same time. I meant it when I said that Christianity as written is not meant to be questioned.
Religion is a fiction. Judaism was meant to be a set of moral guidance stories but those were played out in practice and so annoyed a small set of people about 2000 years ago. They set about writing a new set of stories. They literally changed the rules in the story that was Judaism. More fan fiction was written about the new central character by a set of other people after the originators were dead and couldn’t object. None of them had a goal of thinking the book through thoroughly logically. Logic was in fact antagonistic to belief, although later writers saw the many conundrums and created a series of apologetics to try to make a collection of loose ends rigorous. They can be ignored; the vast majority of believers may never have even heard of them. Believers want to believe and so cast aside all obstacles.
> [@survinga](#):
>
> My only way out of this is to say there’s a limit to God.
No, I’m giving you a God that has no limits in any way that the creations can define or even imagine. The ultimate Get Out of Questioning Free card. God can do anything including making a rock too heavy to lift. Anything less is denying the very God that you believe in. God can give you free will and know everything you will do. How? Because God. Take this gift. Atheists have to be satisfied in different ways.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/14 "2024-05-04T22:10:08Z")
> [@survinga](#):
>
> If I’m making a choice, then it’s not pre-determined. I could go in either direction, without anyone or God knowing beforehand.
What does “beforehand” mean when said about God? It may be that your mistake is thinking that God is within and subject to time.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2024, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/15 "2024-05-04T22:50:33Z")
I had a look at St. Augustine’s _On the Free Choice of the Will_, which I remembered addressing this issue, and which I found a PDF of online [here](https://philonew.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/augustine-augustine-on-the-free-choice-of-the-will-on-grace-and-free-choice-and-other-writings-2010.pdf).
Here are some relevant quotes, from pages 120, 123, and 125 of the PDF (p. 76, 79, and 81 of the printed text):
> [@](#):
>
> Surely what perplexes and upsets you is how these two claims are not opposed and inconsistent:
> [1] God foreknows everything that will be
> [2] We sin not by necessity but by the will
> For if God foreknows that someone is going to sin, you say, it is necessary that he sin; but if it is necessary, then there is no choice of the will in his sinning, but an unavoidable and fixed necessity instead.
> [@](#):
>
> For although He has foreknowledge of our will, it is the will of which He has foreknowlege. Therefore, it is going to be our will, since He has foreknowledge of our will. Nor could it be our will if it were not in our power. Therefore, He has foreknowledge of our power. Hence power is not taken away from me due to His foreknowledge – it is thus mine all the more certainly, since He whose foreknowledge does not err foreknew that it would be mine.
> [@](#):
>
> Just as you do not force past things to have happened by your memory, so too God does not force future things to happen by His foreknowledge. And just as you remember some of the things you have done and yet have not done all the things you remember\*, so too God foreknows all the things of which He is the author and yet is not the author of all the things He foresees.
>
> \* You can remember that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, for instance, though crossing the Rubicon is not something you yourself have done.
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### Author:  [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2024, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/16 "2024-05-05T02:29:58Z")
> [@survinga](#):
>
> He doesn’t know the exact position of every particle in the Universe, nor does he know the future position of every particle in the Universe.
I’d say the flaw is here. He does know the exact position of every particle in the Universe, but that doesn’t tell you what the human soul is going to do. The human soul essentially a supernatural thing, of you were able to accurately scan every particle in the human brain, that would not fully describe what is going on in the human soul, or tell you whether that human will choose pancakes or waffles tomorrow.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2024, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/17 "2024-05-05T10:38:26Z")
For this I like to look at the parable of the prodigal son in a Schrodinger’s cat sort of way. In that was the son actually on his own - yes. Was the son never on his own - also yes. Both realities existed at the same time while the son left till the point when the son returned (or decided to return - your pick). Once the son returned one of the realities collapses into non-existence and the son was never on his own but just learning under the father’s wisdom.
That is how I see our salvation, once we make that choice to accept Christ have that unconditional acceptance, and our ‘on our own part of living’ is washed pure white as if we were never on own own.
Looking at scriptures that have us preexist the womb:
Eph 1:4 _For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love_
Jer 1;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.”_
Ro 8:29 _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._
Also note the use of the words ‘knew’ and ‘foreknew’ in the above 2 verses in the context of
_Matt 7: 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’_
Also I have found the duality here interesting. In this I ask if the inmost being what God was knitting here, or what that just a body for it that God was making for a preexisting ‘soul’. Was our inmost being not made in the womb but ‘secret places in the depths of the earth’. Also considers our body a ‘tent’ which will one day be discarded according to Paul.
_PS 139:13For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;your works are wonderful,I know that full well.15My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be._
So it would seem like there is a case for pre-destination, but there is also independence where God does not know us. Again the Schrodinger’s cat can allow this duality. I also do believe in universal reconciliation based on many verses including :
**Colossians 1:19–20** : “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2024, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/18 "2024-05-05T19:12:31Z")
If you get on a rollercoaster that you’ve never been on before, do you just say “What’s the use-somebody pre-planned the route it will take”, or do you still get on the ride because _you_ don’t know where the ride will take you?
I’m just here for the ride.
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### Author:  [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2024, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/19 "2024-05-05T21:01:21Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> If you get on a rollercoaster that you’ve never been on before, do you just say “What’s the use-somebody pre-planned the route it will take”, or do you still get on the ride because _you_ don’t know where the ride will take you?
But what if you were being told that you could design the roller coaster ride yourself, and you went through the trouble of setting up all the loops, turns, and speeds…only to find out later that there was only one possible design?..
I’ve been told that I have free will in this thing, but some people think it’s all already decided. It can’t be the case that both are right.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2024, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-christian-perspective-whats-the-case-against-pre-destination/1001144/20 "2024-05-05T21:05:20Z")
> [@survinga](#):
>
> I’ve been told that I have free will in this thing, but some people think it’s all already decided. It can’t be the case that both are right.
Can’t it?
First, picture what it’d be like to do that stuff without free will. Then, picture what it’d be like to do it _with_ free will. Now take that second scenario, and figure I hop in a DeLorean and go back in time to watch as you do your free-will stuff in Scenario Two, where you had free will; what changes?
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