Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Predestination

Last week I visited friends and joined in with their Bible Study. We were looking at Psalm 139.
After reading verse 16 -
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all
were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.

I commented that this shows God's predestination. The Bible Study leader later said that this verse isn't relevant at all to the doctrine of Predestination, but I disagree!!
After thinking about it for a while though, I realised there is more than one way of 'interpreting' the word predestination.
Berkhof's Systematic Theology helps explain...
The word 'predestination' is not always used in the same sense. Sometimes it is employed simply as a synonym of the generic word 'decree'. In other cases it serves to designate the purpose of God respecting all His moral creatures. Most frequently, however, it denotes "the counsel of God concerning fallen men, including the sovereign election of some and the righteous reprobation of the rest."
Given that very brief definition, I still think that this verse still points to a sense of predestination in a small way.
David sings God's praise, saying that He knows every part of him, all his inmost parts, all parts yet unformed, all days set out for him, even when he had not lived them yet.
All this points to God's omniscience - He knows all things - comprehensively. Berkhof writes -
God knows Himself and in Himself all things that come from Him. He knows all
things as they actually come to pass, past, present and future, and knows them
in their real relations. He knows the hidden essence of things, to which the
knowledge of man cannot penetrate. He sees not as man sees, who observes only
the outward manifestations of life, but penetrates to the depths of the human
heart... God has decreed all things, and has decreed them with their causes and
conditions in the exact order in which they come to pass; and His foreknowledge
of future things and also of contingent events rests of His decree.

Given that God is omniscient and omnipotent, that He is in control of all things and has decreed all things - how can you say that it doesn't point to the predestination of man?