"I’ve never heard that preached in a Methodist Church before!"
That was not a criticism. It was a statement of thanks.
Today’s lectionary had, as one of its readings, St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. And wouldn’t you know, it came from the 8th chapter—a chapter that so many theologians and would be theologues have cut their teeth on.
I honed in on verses 29-30. That’s the infamous passage about predestination.
I am convinced that so many in our culture (outside of the Reformed tradition which pretty much "gets" it) when they hear that word immediately jump to two variants of conclusions that center around either infralapsarian double predestination (and no, I am not going to explain that. You have the ability to double click any word in my blog to find out what it means), or the loss of free will. Neither of which are true.
The aboriginal impulse of the doctrine of predestination is to assert that God is beyond our manipulation. Period. That’s the main point. And honestly, most people miss that. You cannot manipulate God (Now you can influence him and what he will do . . . but that is another post).
Being a man who has been heavily influenced by the thinking of that Anglican priest, John Wesley, I honed in on his viewpoint in the sermon. I’m not sure that I will try to go through that argument here. But in some cursory fashion, predestination tends to swing around the nub of two things.
Number one, you do have free will 24/7. God never takes that away from you ev-er. Holy cow, there’s enough evil in this world to document that.
Number two. For God, (even though Paul speaks of it in Romans) there is no such thing a "foreknowledge" or "after knowledge". God is way beyond time and space. So that to get a grasp of it, God has the ability to see the past, present, and future in one eternal "now." He sees it all (Again, time is only one small part of eternity). And seeing it all, God knows in every tribe and nation, throughout time, those people who are going to be predisposed to believe (and that is still another post . . . or two . . . or three . . . or . . . ) and those are the people he predestines to salvation (still another post). And there you basically have it.
‘Nuf o’ dat.