1 Various Interpretations

The word “pre­des­ti­na­tion” occurs sev­er­al times in the Bible, but there are two main lines of thought about the under­stand­ing of this term.

• The first is pre­des­ti­na­tion on the basis of fore­knowl­edge. Pre­des­ti­na­tion is the eter­nal deci­sion of God, aris­ing from love, by which he sets out a his­tor­i­cal plan of sal­va­tion giv­ing every per­son the pos­si­bil­i­ty to receive eter­nal sal­va­tion. God pre­des­tined Jesus to be the only and absolute medi­a­tor between Him­self and mankind.
• The sec­ond is the belief that God is sov­er­eign and decides every­thing that will hap­pen regard­less of the will of man and that what God deter­mines no man can change. With­in this line of thought there are two direc­tions of under­stand­ing: “sin­gle pre­des­ti­na­tion”, which some Luther­ans believe in and “dou­ble pre­des­ti­na­tion”, which the Calvin­ists believe in. Sin­gle pre­des­ti­na­tion means that God elects in advance who will go to heav­en. Dou­ble pre­des­ti­na­tion means that God deter­mines in advance who will be in heav­en and who will go to hell.

In the rest of this arti­cle the word “pre­des­ti­na­tion” will be used for this sec­ond line of thought.

With­in this sec­ond stream of under­stand­ing of pre­des­ti­na­tion there are three impor­tant advo­cates:

1.1 Augustine (354–430)

Augus­tine was the first per­son to devel­op a sys­tem­at­ic teach­ing of pre­des­ti­na­tion. The com­pul­sion he felt to defend the unde­served, arbi­trary nature of grace led him to devel­op the doc­trine of pre­des­ti­na­tion. In “Ad Sim­pli­cianum” he devel­oped his teach­ing explain­ing Romans 5:12 and Romans 9.

So that the pur­pose of God does not stand accord­ing to elec­tion, but elec­tion is the result of the pur­pose of God. (Ad Sim­pli­cianum I,2,6)¹

More­over, he declares that God pre­des­tines as many men for heav­en as there were angels who desert­ed the faith. (Faith, Hope and Char­i­ty /Enchiridion de fide, spe et caritate/ 9,29)

1.2 Luther (1483–1546)

Mar­tin Luther, him­self a monk of the order of Augus­tine, adopt­ed and fur­ther devel­oped this teach­ing more than thou­sand years lat­er. In his most famous work “On the Bondage of the Will” he writes:

For if we believe it to be true, that God fore-knows and fore-ordains all things; that he can be nei­ther deceived nor hin­dered in his pre­science² and pre­des­ti­na­tion; and that noth­ing can take place but accord­ing to his will, (which rea­son her­self is com­pelled to con­fess;) then, even accord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny of rea­son her­self, there can be no Free-will—in man,—in angel,—or in any crea­ture!³

1.3 Calvin (1509–1564)

John Calv­in’s teach­ing gained a lot of influ­ence when it was dis­cussed and devel­oped at the Syn­od of Dort (1618–1619 in the Nether­lands) and became the offi­cial teach­ing of the Reformed Church in the Nether­lands.

By pre­des­ti­na­tion we mean the eter­nal decree of God, by which he deter­mined with him­self what­ev­er he wished to hap­pen with regard to every man. All are not cre­at­ed on equal terms, but some are pre­or­dained to eter­nal life, oth­ers to eter­nal damna­tion. (Insti­tu­tio Chris­tianae Reli­gio­n­is 3.21.5)

2 The Biblical Understanding

God lives in eter­ni­ty. He does not live in time as peo­ple do. For Him every­thing is present. There­fore He knows what choic­es men make. Because God knows who choos­es Him, He can elect and pre­des­tine them to become His obe­di­ent chil­dren.

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. And those whom he pre­des­tined he also called, and those whom he called he also jus­ti­fied, and those whom he jus­ti­fied he also glo­ri­fied. (Romans 8:29–30)

Verse 30 should be read in con­nec­tion with verse 29 where it is expressed that God elects accord­ing to fore­knowl­edge. This means that God does not choose at ran­dom but on the base of the deci­sion of man, which he foreknew. Every­body, about whom he knew that they choose Him, he pre­des­tined to be con­formed to the image of His Son.

Peter, an apos­tle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as aliens, scat­tered through­out Pontus…who are cho­sen accord­ing to the fore­knowl­edge of God the Father, by the sanc­ti­fy­ing work of the Spir­it, to obey Jesus Christ.… (1 Peter 1:1–2, NASB)

God in his love desires to pre­des­tine (elect and save) all peo­ple to be togeth­er with him for­ev­er but he does not force any­body to have a rela­tion­ship with Him.

This is good, and it is pleas­ing in the sight of God our Sav­iour, who desires all peo­ple to be saved and to come to the knowl­edge of the truth. (1 Tim­o­thy 2:3–4)

The Lord is not slow to ful­fil his promise as some count slow­ness, but is patient towards you, not wish­ing that any should per­ish, but that all should reach repen­tance. (2 Peter 3:9)

In the Bible we find the clear teach­ing that God wants every­one to be saved, but that peo­ple have a free will to choose against this. If God did not con­sid­er the deci­sion of peo­ple, hell would be emp­ty because God would indeed save every­one.

…but the Phar­isees and the lawyers reject­ed the pur­pose of God for them­selves, not hav­ing been bap­tized by him (John). (Luke 7:30)

So the Phar­isees and the lawyers them­selves decid­ed not to take part in God’s pur­pose. God also want­ed them to come to repen­tance, but they were not will­ing.

3 The Aim of the World

God cre­at­ed the world because He is love. He want­ed to share His love with peo­ple. There­fore He cre­at­ed us to be holy, as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16). God nev­er intend­ed for peo­ple to sin. The fact that man was dis­obe­di­ent and sinned against God is a dis­tor­tion of the orig­i­nal plan. The orig­i­nal aim was for man to have a rela­tion­ship with the Cre­ator. Now, we know that God is love and that He is right­eous and that all oth­er virtues are com­bined in His being. There­fore His plan to cre­ate the world was pure as well. He loves the beings He cre­at­ed. If He had decid­ed that every­thing should hap­pen accord­ing to his will, the ful­fil­ment of His plan for a world full of love and peace would remain unchanged even today. Since He respects the will of peo­ple, sin could come into the world through their deci­sion.The teach­ing of pre­des­ti­na­tion implies, in fact, that God planned in advance for men to sin and wants the major­i­ty of peo­ple to go to hell. This would make God the author of sin. Before they are even born it has already been decid­ed that the major­i­ty of peo­ple will nev­er have the chance to be saved (accord­ing to Calvin).

Have I any plea­sure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? …Cast away from you all the trans­gres­sions that you have com­mit­ted, and make your­selves a new heart and a new spir­it! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no plea­sure in the death of any­one, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live. (Ezekiel 18:23,31–32)

In the Bible peo­ple are very often called to “Repent!” This pre­sup­pos­es that it is pos­si­ble to respond to this call! When Jesus calls: “Repent!” he does not order, but he encour­ages, asks, urges, implores. It is not a humil­i­a­tion for the Almighty God to ask us, because he is per­fect­ly hum­ble: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be rec­on­ciled to God.” (2 Corinthi­ans 5:20).

3.1 Relationship, Love and Will

The pur­pose of man’s exis­tence is to have a rela­tion­ship with God (John 17:3). The most impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tics of a rela­tion­ship are love and a free will. If some­one is forced to be togeth­er with some­body else, it is not an expres­sion of love. A rela­tion­ship is based on love when both par­ties have the free­dom to choose to stay togeth­er and the pos­si­bil­i­ty to sep­a­rate. If you can con­trol some­body’s will, he has become like a robot. Robots do what you have made them for. God did not cre­ate robots, but human beings that have the choice to love Him, or not to do so.

I call heav­en and earth to wit­ness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, bless­ing and curse. There­fore choose life, that you and your off­spring may live, lov­ing the LORD your God, obey­ing his voice and hold­ing fast to him.…” (Deuteron­o­my 30:19–20a)

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gath­ered your chil­dren togeth­er as a hen gath­ers her brood under her wings, and you would not! (Matthew 23:37)

If you do well, will you not be accept­ed? And if you do not do well, sin is crouch­ing at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. (Gen­e­sis 4:7)

Even after the fall of humankind peo­ple are not under the com­pul­sion to sin but have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to rule over it.

4 Consequences of This Teaching

• Peo­ple who believe in pre­des­ti­na­tion deny that man has a free will to accept or reject God’s offer of sal­va­tion.
• They also believe that man is total­ly depraved, because if a man is able to do good, he can choose the good and seek God.

For when Gen­tiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to them­selves.… (Romans 2:14)

• Fur­ther­more if you are pre­des­tined to live an eter­nal life with God, it is impos­si­ble to go away from God, so if some­one teach­es pre­des­ti­na­tion, he also has to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of apos­ta­sy.

(See our arti­cle enti­tled “Apos­ta­sy”)

• More­over some­one who is elect­ed can­not resist the “grace”, because those who are pre­des­tined will come to God with cer­tain­ty.

You stiff-necked peo­ple, uncir­cum­cised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spir­it. As your fathers did, so do you. (Acts 7:51)

• Pre­des­ti­na­tion annuls the impor­tance of deeds. The Bible speaks very clear­ly of the fact that “faith with­out deeds is dead” and that faith alone can­not save a per­son.

(See our arti­cle enti­tled “Faith and Works”)

What good is it, my broth­ers, if some­one says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? …Do you want to be shown, you fool­ish per­son, that faith apart from works is use­less? (James 2:14,20)

This teach­ing, by strip­ping the deeds of their sig­nif­i­cance, main­tains that it is not pos­si­ble to see accord­ing to the fruits of a per­son whether he is a Chris­t­ian or not.

(See our arti­cle enti­tled “What Does It Mean to Be a Chris­t­ian?”)

This is a con­tra­dic­tion to Matthew 7:16 which tells us that we will rec­og­nize a tree by its fruit.

You will rec­og­nize them by their fruits. Are grapes gath­ered from thorn bush­es, or figs from this­tles? (Matthew 7:16)

Real faith is fol­lowed by deeds of devo­tion.

• “Church” los­es its mean­ing because it is not clear any­more who belongs to the church and who does not. With­in local “church” assem­blies today there are many unbe­liev­ers, although it is clear­ly stat­ed in 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14–7:1 that believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers can not be yoked togeth­er and fight for the same king­dom.

Do not be unequal­ly yoked with unbe­liev­ers. For what part­ner­ship has right­eous­ness with law­less­ness? Or what fel­low­ship has light with dark­ness?
What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what por­tion does a believ­er share with an unbe­liev­er? What agree­ment has the tem­ple of God with idols? For we are the tem­ple of the liv­ing God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my peo­ple.
There­fore go out from their midst, and be sep­a­rate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will wel­come you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daugh­ters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promis­es, beloved, let us cleanse our­selves from every defile­ment of body and spir­it, bring­ing holi­ness to com­ple­tion in the fear of God. (2 Corinthi­ans 6:14–7:1)

There­fore a dis­tinc­tion has been made between the local “vis­i­ble” church assem­blies (where there are also unbe­liev­ers) and the “invis­i­ble church” made up of true believ­ers inde­pen­dent of place and time. But this arti­fi­cial dis­tinc­tion does not have any bib­li­cal basis.

(See our arti­cle enti­tled “The Vis­i­ble Church”)

• Pre­des­ti­na­tion also means that even if some­one wants to repent today, he can­not, because he has to wait till God “con­verts” him. This means that he can­not start to live a holy life pleas­ing to God, although in Hebrews 3:7–8 and Psalm 95:7–8 it is writ­ten: “Today if you hear his voice, do not hard­en your hearts as when they pro­voked me.” This is a dis­as­trous decep­tion, which brings about pas­siv­i­ty in peo­ple.
• False Image of God: If God pre­des­tined men regard­less of their will, it would mean that God’s wrath is upon those he does not save and that he would pun­ish peo­ple whom he does not want to save in real­i­ty. It is not right­eous to pun­ish some­one for some­thing he is not respon­si­ble for; it is not his fault.
• Pre­des­ti­na­tion states that every­thing hap­pens accord­ing to the eter­nal plan of God. This would mean that God not only wants good, but also evil. This makes God the author of sin.
• There may be dif­fer­ent teach­ings about pre­des­ti­na­tion: sin­gle and dou­ble pre­des­ti­na­tion. In the end there is no deci­sive dif­fer­ence. Both teach­ings exclude the free will of man. If God “only” choos­es those who will go to heav­en, then the oth­ers will auto­mat­i­cal­ly go to hell. In this way God’s own nature is the rea­son for the con­dem­na­tion of peo­ple.
• Who­ev­er teach­es pre­des­ti­na­tion should be con­scious of the fact that he under­stands and defines the nature of man in a wrong way. He dep­re­cates the val­ue of human being as a per­son. For being a per­son means being able and oblig­ed to act out of lib­er­ty and rea­son, fol­low­ing cer­tain motives and goals. It means being able to gain access to the sense of life and expe­ri­enc­ing the effects that one’s cho­sen way of life brings.

5 Passages That Seem to Exclude the Free Will

5.1 Ephesians 1:3–5 & 11

We are aware of the dif­fi­cul­ty some­body who is used to this teach­ing may expe­ri­ence when read­ing some pas­sages in the NT. To gain a real sense of the mean­ing of vers­es which sound like pre­des­ti­na­tion would require an in-depth study. Nev­er­the­less, it is essen­tial to keep in mind what we know about God’s nature. After all, there are many oth­er expres­sions in the New and Old Tes­ta­ments that can­not be under­stood lit­er­al­ly.

(3) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spir­i­tu­al bless­ing in the heav­en­ly places, (4) even as he chose us in him before the foun­da­tion of the world, that we should be holy and blame­less before him. (5) In love he pre­des­tined us for adop­tion as sons through Jesus Christ, accord­ing to the pur­pose of his will.… (11) In him we have obtained an inher­i­tance, hav­ing been pre­des­tined accord­ing to the pur­pose of him who works all things accord­ing to the coun­sel of his will.… (Eph­esians 1:3–5 & 11)

What is empha­sized in verse 4? If we empha­size “He chose us”, then one could under­stand it in the way Calvin did. How­ev­er it is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter if one reads “He chose us in Him.” If we under­stand the state­ment in this way, then this verse is effec­tive­ly no dif­fer­ent from John 3:16. Hence it is stat­ed that God wants to save every­one who believes in His Son and that those who reject him will be con­demned.

In Eph­esians 1:4 this means that he elect­ed us in Christ and in Him alone. The same thought is expressed in vers­es 3, 5 and 11. Con­se­quent­ly this means that if we do not come to Christ, we place our­selves out­side of the elec­tion and pur­pose of God. The teach­ing of elec­tion or pre­des­ti­na­tion in Christ in this form is sim­ply an expres­sion that we can only be saved by the grace of God. It is not based on our deeds, but on the mer­cy God has on us. Yet this mer­cy is obtain­able for all peo­ple (1 Tim­o­thy 2:4), and not only for a pre­de­ter­mined num­ber of peo­ple as the Calvin­ists under­stand it.

There­fore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my pres­ence but much more in my absence, work out your own sal­va­tion with fear and trem­bling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good plea­sure.
(Philip­pi­ans 2:12–13)

In the begin­ning of the chap­ter Paul writes about the exam­ple Jesus gave us by hum­bling him­self total­ly and look­ing for the best for the oth­ers, giv­ing his life in every aspect for the peo­ple. There­fore His glo­ry was restored to Him.

There­fore God has high­ly exalt­ed him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.… (Philip­pi­ans 2:9)

In verse 12 Paul goes on to explain that “there­fore” we ought to do every thing pos­si­ble with­in our pow­er to hold onto our rela­tion­ship with God and reach the goal of our sal­va­tion. It is clear that for this deci­sion, our own pow­er and will are nev­er strong enough. There­fore we should turn to God with “fear and trem­bling”. This express­es hon­our, seri­ous­ness, respect and the con­scious­ness of stand­ing in front of the omni­scient almighty God (v 12), who strength­ens the lit­tle will we have (v 13). He can give us the pow­er to will and to act.

Verse 13 should not be mis­un­der­stood to mean that man can­not have an influ­ence on his own will, oth­er­wise Paul would nev­er have writ­ten in v 12, “work out your own sal­va­tion with fear and trem­bling”. To do this pre­sup­pos­es that a per­son has the free will to decide. Verse 13 starts with “for it is God who works in you”. This expres­sion shows that verse 13 explains why we should turn to God with fear and trem­bling, name­ly, because He is the only one who can help.⁴

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:44)

Jesus had just expressed in the pre­ced­ing vers­es that he is the true bread and he gives eter­nal life and peo­ple should believe in Him. There­fore he calls peo­ple to fol­low Him as the Mes­si­ah. For Jews it was always clear that they should fol­low only God. So it was very dif­fi­cult for them to accept the claim of Jesus (that peo­ple should fol­low him). For that rea­son he empha­sizes the deep uni­ty between the Father and Him­self. Jesus explains that the only way to Him is through the Father whom they already knew.

The fact that the Father draws a per­son express­es how some­one comes to Jesus, but does not say that the Father would not be will­ing to draw every­one if they were ready to fol­low.

Still more about the con­text:

The state­ment of Jesus is a direct reac­tion to the part­ly despis­ing, part­ly dis­ap­point­ed ques­tion in verse 42.

They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and moth­er we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heav­en’?” (John 6:42)

It would be entire­ly out of con­text if Jesus had replied in this way, “You don’t have any choice”, or, “The Father pre­des­tined the peo­ple who can have a rela­tion­ship with me.” But the reac­tion of the peo­ple shows that they under­stood that Jesus claimed to be the son of God com­ing down from heav­en, who is in com­plete uni­ty with the Father. In verse 45 he con­tin­ues:

It is writ­ten in the Prophets, “And they will all be taught by God.” Every­one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.… (John 6:45)

The vers­es speak about the right under­stand­ing of God’s rev­e­la­tion and the right atti­tude towards the Mes­si­ah, that is towards Jesus. Every­one is invit­ed, not only an elite group of peo­ple who do not know it yet.

5.2 Romans 9

5.2.1 The Problem of the Jews (Especially Romans 9:1–8,30–33)

The Jews relied on the law and on the promise giv­en to them in a for­mal­is­tic way and not spir­i­tu­al­ly (Luke 3:8). They did not lis­ten to Jesus (John 8:39). The con­se­quence was the para­dox that the gen­tiles, who did not seek sal­va­tion found it, and the Jews who eager­ly pur­sued sal­va­tion did not find it (Romans 9:30–32). Paul solves this “con­tra­dic­tion” in the ninth chap­ter of his let­ter to the Romans by say­ing that man and his activ­i­ty can­not set the stan­dard for right­eous­ness. He starts with the top­ic of the promise.

5.2.2 Now to the Text in Detail

In vers­es 1–5 Paul describes what Israel received: the adop­tion as sons, divine glo­ry, the covenants, the law, the Tem­ple wor­ship, the promis­es that the Mes­si­ah would be of Jew­ish descent. The Jews regard­ed these things as a guar­an­tee of sal­va­tion. Nev­er­the­less Paul states (vers­es 1–3) that most of them are not saved. For the Jews this is a con­tra­dic­tion. In respond­ing to the sup­posed ques­tion, “Has the word of God failed?” (verse 6) Paul shows what the reac­tion of the Jews is to this para­dox that on the one hand they are giv­en the promis­es and on the oth­er hand there will be no sal­va­tion for most of the Jews.

Verse 6: Has God’s word failed? Sure­ly not. The most impor­tant thing is not being a descen­dant, but being obe­di­ent to God—being a child of the promise who is regard­ed as Abra­ham’s off­spring. (V.7)

Vers­es 9–13: Paul writes about Isaac and Jacob. Jacob is an espe­cial­ly good exam­ple for the fact that the promise was not trans­mit­ted accord­ing to human stan­dards. Esau was the first-born and accord­ing to the cus­tom he should have been the heir of the promise. The real­i­ty was dif­fer­ent, which shows that God retained the right to decide who would be the bear­er of the promise.

Paul speaks here basi­cal­ly about the ques­tion of spir­i­tu­al tasks in the plan of sal­va­tion.

…though they were not yet born and had done noth­ing either good or bad.… (verse 11)

God made the deci­sion that Esau should serve Jacob. This sub­mis­sion of Esau to Jacob express­es by no means that God would have deter­mined who would be saved and who would be con­demned, but God decid­ed before their birth who would receive the promise. In this way, Jacob could not boast of hav­ing received this through his deeds. (V.12)

Many peo­ple inter­pret verse 13 to mean that Rebec­ca was told before the birth of the twins that God loves Jacob and hates Esau. This is wrong, because verse 13 is a quo­ta­tion of Malachi 1:1–5 and was writ­ten many cen­turies after the death of Esau and Jacob. What is meant here is sim­ply that God had reject­ed the nation of Esau (the Edomites), because they had a hos­tile atti­tude towards Israel from the very begin­ning (Num­bers 20:14–21). Again it is not Esau’s per­son­al fate which is the top­ic but the fate of the Edomites as a nation. Paul quotes Malachi to show that Israel (Jacob­s’s off­spring) is the cho­sen one.

Vers­es 14–16: Is God unjust? By no means. Because God choos­es and elects accord­ing to his own stan­dards and not accord­ing to human stan­dards or cus­toms, He has the right to deter­mine who the bear­er of the promise will be.

Vers­es 17–19: The sal­va­tion of Pharaoh is not the top­ic here, but the per­mis­sion for the Israelites to leave Egypt. God’s plans will be exe­cut­ed, even if, for instance, Pharaoh does not want to accept it. Nobody can stop God’s plan for mankind. Even if Pharaoh had per­mit­ted the Israelites to leave, he would­n’t have changed his belief, but would have remained an idol wor­ship­per. God cre­at­ed man in such a way that he hard­ens him­self if he rejects God. In this exam­ple it is clear that Paul does not want to explain why Pharaoh is con­demned and thus not elect­ed by God, but he wants to empha­size his wicked­ness in reject­ing the Jew­ish nation.

Vers­es 20–24: Paul derives the fol­low­ing thoughts from Jere­mi­ah 18:1–10: A pot­ter is form­ing the clay. It seems that he sees how peo­ple act and accord­ing to this he forms his ves­sels. But some­thing else hap­pens here. The pot­ter forms new ves­sels for glo­ry out of the ones that were destroyed. This means that this text speaks strong­ly against pre­des­ti­na­tion, instead under­lin­ing God’s mer­cy and grace.

Paul uses the para­ble of the pot­ter in two dif­fer­ent ways in vers­es 20–21 and 22–24.

First­ly in vers­es 20–21 Paul states that a man can­not crit­i­cize God for the way he is made. The pot­ter has the right to cre­ate one ves­sel “for hon­ourable use and anoth­er for dis­hon­ourable use”. It is impor­tant to notice that both the ves­sels for hon­ourable use and the ves­sels for dis­hon­ourable use are impor­tant in a house­hold. This means that these vers­es do not speak about sal­va­tion and con­dem­na­tion, but about an impor­tant and a less impor­tant pur­pose. God has the right to deter­mine that one per­son receives either an impor­tant or less impor­tant task.

In vers­es 22–24 Paul speaks about the ves­sels pre­pared for destruc­tion and ves­sels pre­pared before­hand for glo­ry. He iden­ti­fies the sec­ond group with Jew­ish and gen­tile Chris­tians. Ves­sels pre­pared for destruc­tion are peo­ple who have decid­ed against God. The fact that peo­ple decid­ed against God is not explic­it­ly men­tioned here, but we have to sup­pose it through oth­er pas­sages. We see that Paul touch­es the top­ic of sal­va­tion. He does not want to say that we can­not influ­ence our sal­va­tion but that man should sub­mit to God and to his paths which are pre­pared in advance (verse 23). It is dif­fi­cult to see a clear tran­si­tion between both top­ics. God’s promi­nence is empha­sized not because God decides arbi­trar­i­ly about some­body’s sal­va­tion but because man should sub­mit to God and to the way he pre­pared for us in Christ.

1. J. H. S. Burleigh, Augustine—Earlier Writ­ings, p. 390; 1953, SCM Press. ↩
2. Fore­knowl­edge. ↩
3. Mar­tin Luther, On the Bondage of the Will; trans­lat­ed by Hen­ry Cole; T. Bens­ley, Lon­don, 1823; pp. 374–375. ↩
4. The inter­play between God’s activ­i­ty and our own activ­i­ty is also expressed in Hebrews 13:21. ↩