W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

The Biblical topic of predestination and freewill has often been considered on this site.

Its integrity and clarity is pellucid and pure. There is nothing like it on earth, in this sphere. (See Predestination and Freewill (PF), with allied chapters such as  Tender Times for Timely Truths Chs.   2, 11; Repent or Perish Chs. 1, 2, 5, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.  4, News, Facts and Forecasts Ch.  4, SMR Appendix B, Ch.   5 and Licence for Liberty.

Today, our chief interests is just to quarry with some further intent into this principial point, that not only does the Bible alone provide the only harmony concerning the domains of materialism, spiritualism, responsibility, determinism and their ilk, but it has the only propositional basis for such a resolution. This is simply dependent on the fact that unless the realities are there, for the provision of harmony, the propositions are defenceless, like programs for scientific experiments on substances which neither do not can exist.

Freedom, which might profitably first be pursued in PF Ch. 1, is not possible without a capacity to change the person. In other words, to be free to be what you are, when what you are is not a result of any freedom, is merely capacity to continue. There must be capacity to be other than what you are. However, since what you are is a limit on understanding, a filter on capacity, a donation to orientation, a medley of preferences and positions, functionings and findings, all based in you, as you move in your environment, without the Creator, you cannot have liberty. You are already the site for preference: it is YOU, yourself, the non-free thing that is.

Free to do what it wants perhaps; but to what extent to want what it wants ? and free in any sense to want what it wants, to what extent free to orient its wantings ? The given is not free to be, merely to do what it is.

Lack of restriction, comparative, is not the same as liberty to be. Some feel this logical fact keenly when they wish to be other than what they are, wish they could voyage past their current psychological, spiritual or mental confines, but having them as confinements, see no way...

The first requirement for real responsibility therefore, is your Creator. Why ? Anyone or anything less than the One who has TOTAL understanding OBJECTIVELY of all that you are, is not in a position to interpret your wishes, but only his/her own. The rest is not fulfilment but manipulation, intentional or otherwise. Again, this is not enough. You need someone who has not merely a keen and accurate discernment of what you are, but who has understanding of the sort of thing that life really is, for otherwise there is merely an insertion of ignorant modification, not liberty for the individual concerned.

This too is defective. It does not work. Sickness is not liberty, when it is of the mind or spirit. You need someone who has the objective REMEDY to anything wrong with your spirit or mind. These requirements do not stop short of the Creator who having all knowledge ab initio, comprehensive and accurate, has remedy for your condition, and not mere indulgence for your follies. He has to know the difference. Letting a car with defective brakes 'chose' to go over a cliff is  mere enabling of error, not interpretation of desire.

In addition, to these things must be added the capacity to INTERPRET for you! IF you do the interpreting of liberty, then YOU are the source, centre and limit of the interpretation, and it is precisely this you-ness, this self-limitation, this mere exhibition of what you are in what you choose, that prevents the 'choice' from being more than you interpretation by you, and hence of you. YOU are the limit; and YOU did not choose to be you. This outworking of what you are is a psychological, spiritual, moral, physiological and social expression. How could it be otherwise ?

When it COULD not be otherwise, where is responsibility, why is guilt, and to what end is morality which, with goodness as an aim, and pondering as a mode, is far more real than bank accounts or war, to those who become involved in both in order to express their values, whether these be self-centred, pugnacious or benevolent; to exhibit their preferences which being of and to themselves, are as free as the winds which being subjected to many things, blow so freely where they must.

It is not a matter of matter: determinism, materialism is daft. When the very theory that you are thus, depends on the integrity of your logical thought, your error prone will, your clear or subverted purpose, it is apparent that you are the author of determinism, not it of you. If YOU are invalid in your expressions of non-materialistic purpose and will, then so is it. The invisible precedes the visible; the indeterminate precedes the determinate, and the psychological weighing of issues is merely evidence with errors, and with guilt and remorse, of the fact that matter is mere means (cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, PF Ch. 1). In fact (Barbs, Arrows and Balms   6-7, SMR Ch. 3), unless there is an objective truth beyond you, there is no way that you could discern the truth or falsity of ANY theory.

It is not so crass as that. It is a question of escape from yourself in order to be free to be other than what you are. What you are is matter , mind and spirit; how can you see beyond your capacities, understand beyond your limits, have absolute truth as your program for inspection, and then open the eyes with the will, and choose to be what you want to be. You are self-ordained! What freedom is that...

If now you are able to be confronted by your Creator, who knows the objective truth and is it, and able to be enabled by Him to choose, then there would be an abstract POSSIBILITY of freedom. However, in practice, there has to be the enablement of your inputted self, cruising on the seas of society, culture and philosophy, inputs of various kinds, and following often enough what it does not hold, and again, often enough, changing what it does hold, and then seeing the error of the procedure and so on, to have remedy for its relativised conditionings, the worse in that often they are not realised, and without absolute truth, CANNOT be, for there is no criterion except the limitations of the self which, if it is very sure of itself, is merely the more blind through such an illusion.

You need then the remedy for pollution, mental and spiritual, moral, psychological. Hazy atmosphere does not enable accurate shooting; intoxicating atmosphere is worse.

However, if you are REMEDIED without being in a position to know whether or not the remedy is a good idea in your own opinion, this could become manipulation. HOW can you tell ? WHEN it is done, you are DIFFERENT! In what are you interpreted ?

WHO provides absolute truth, absolute and objective remedy, and absolutely sure confinement to absolute truth in making any change ? ONLY the one who IS absolute truth, PROVIDES absolute remedy and ENABLES the change with ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE. Who is such a being ? Only God.

Further, what denies the love of God to mankind is not capable here either. In that case, the SOVEREIGN desires of the ABSOLUTE TRUTH, of God, become the disposer but not the liberator of your life. ONLY when there is love, is there a meaning to the restraint which does not force you, cajole you, charm you, entice you, direct you, submerge you or with whatever other pressure, principle or order of power might arrive and act, endue you to be what you are going to be. If DESIGN on you is the point, then you are not really free, merely desired. If LOVE for you is involved, then the restraint of love (as distinct from lust) does not force you into any mould.

However, even with love there is restraint, without an aspect being quite clear. It is this. There has to be a love which is willing to act in bringing you into a remedied condition, without self-indulgence being the thrust of the operation. It is to be one which does not indulge itself, but liberates you into what is neither the mere expression of what in your diseased limits, you are, nor the mere expression of what He, the Lord, wants of you for some organisational plan of His own, pivoting exclusively on His own apart  purposes.

It has to be love which is love indeed, with integrity finding for you what does not (because He knows you better than you know yourself) violate you with any kind of force, and which yet (because you would have to be healed and godly in order even to understand the nature of the choice as I Cor. 2:13ff. so vigorously and logically affirms) transcends your own mere self-knowledge.  It has therefore sovereignty in mode, but liberation in substance. There are results and these are made known in this way, and in that. They are however there.

Thus, we need for liberty, a divine being of omniscience, a divine love of the uttermost purity and a divine remedy of the fullest proportions, for liberty.

Love which does not co-opt, but is willing not to be received, alone is rightly named non-forced action, alone can relate interpretatively to its object. HOW OFTEN does God speak in precisely these terms (as in Matthew 23:37, John 1:11-12, 3:16-18, Ezekiel 18, Hosea 7:1, Jeremiah 9:1ff., Isaiah 5, Hosea 11)! With what eloquence! (Luke 19:41ff., Matthew 22:1-10), and with what depth (I Timothy 2:1ff., 4:1ff.), with what absolute affirmation towards the entire universe, spiritual and material, in the most categorical of terms (Colossians 1:19-23), and with what passion to the uttermost (I John 2:2) in the scope of the effectual offering provided for mankind, on his behalf. In this, NONE is omitted, the provision is sufficient for any.

Naturally, it is not redemptive for those who do not receive it (Romans 8:32), for those in whose place He has come to die, and redeem, for whom He is actually delivered up, not merely offered, these are they who are to possess "all things" which is not a constituent function in hell! Cheques not cashed alter no one's balance!

ONLY in Christianity is there this combination of love, non-force, absolute truth, transcending of your own limits, provision of remedy. There is in fact NO OTHER SAVIOUR on offer, who is God. Therefore no other can know you as you are and beyond yourself, indeed in truth, and love you without dissembling or mere utilitarian manipulation, restore you by Himself to your status as created for, by and through God, and as Colossians puts it, re-establish you so that you have taken a justly renewed and soundly re-established nature, "renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him" (3:10).

YOU always have to be relevant, or else are the mere puppet of circumstances or sovereign majesty WITHOUT any such commitment of love to the race, and to its members, at all. Liberty to be, not liberty to be manipulated, is the liberty which is as Christ put it, the one which makes you "free indeed" (John 8:36). It is, as He declares, when the Son (of man, Mark 2, and of God, Matthew 16, Luke 1) makes you free, that you are indeed free! The only other option is sin, or the violation of the work of God which you ARE, including the image-bearing property of (in creatures' case, limited) independence and will. The beauty and holiness of Christianity is this, at this level, that you are not only liberated from the abuse of what you are, which is not liberty but destructive folly ending in death, and of course judgment, but enabled to BE what you are, without the pollution, without manipulation, not for the sake of ulterior motives which are alien to what you in fact are, but in terms of intrinsic motives on the part of the Creator who wants you to be what He has made you to be, in the image of Himself in liberty in love, but in the willing co-operation with Himself as loving back what first loved.

It is not liberty to be what you do not know, or cannot have true relation to, like a gamble or exotic flair into the romance of the unknown, which is not liberty but lust; it is not liberty to be a cog in someone else's machine, so that you are merely moved, not flowering into the exact nature of what you have been made to be, glorious because it has this image-of-God quality, by which you can truly know, love and understand, and do so in TRUTH. It is liberty to be what you are, ex-disease of mind and spirit, in truth by the propriety of your own Creator. Nothing else offers this, for there is no other Creator, and no other Saviour even offered, who is God, and hence knows what you are, and can interpret what you should be objectively in truth, with all wisdom and understanding.

Two points arise. Firstly, there is no other SAVIOUR who is God, your Creator, so that there is no other POWER provided for your liberation into truth, beyond yourself but not alien. Secondly, there is no other GOD who is Saviour, so that there is no other SOURCE for this power which has the qualificaitons for liberation.

Now there is one further aspect which needs attention before we can complete this short summary of points relative to the wonder of liberty in Christ, which is merely one of the aspects of Christianity which answers all philosophic problems in the area, covers all facts and in this, is alone. While all the above does provide what is needed in terms of principles, there is also a need for commendation of the God who is love, in terms of His nature.

What is the good of communism with its high-pitched cries of DEMOCRACY, the DEMOCRATIC republic of this and that, when that promised or implied liberty is precisely what the individual-damning indictment of its individually crafted philosophy crunches into virtual oblivion.  Does the word do it for you ? or does it require the fact ?

So here. Does the word 'love' do it for you, or is it the fact ?

Here in total contrast with Communism in its verbal lunge into 'democracy' and 'liberation', there is demonstration. It is of course not found in Rome (cf. SMR pp. 1032ff.), so notorious for its clamour and claims for world dominion, in its Unam Sanctam (q.v.), in its Inquisitions (SMR
loc. cit., News 101), and in its conduct in World War II (cf. SMR  pp. 920, 952ff.). The very concept of such world rule is contrary to Christ at the outset (cf. John 18:36-37). Its methods only make the gulf between Romanism  and Biblical Christianity an abyss. It is not relevant except in fulfilling biblical prophecy of false prophets (as in I Timothy 4).

It is not to be found, either in the sickly sects which scythe their way with dictatorial requirements invented by the leaders.

It is found very simply in this way: in what follows what Christ has commanded, right down to NOT using force to implement the religion.  It is found in what does what He insists on, "teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you" - Matthew 28:20. In short, Biblical Christianity is found where it is practised. It is not supposed to be perfect (I John 3:7ff.), but it IS supposed to be sincere.

The perfect practice of Biblical Christianity has however come from the Messiah, whose work (cf. SMR Ch. 6, Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Biblical Blessings Appendix IV) perfectly fits,

• from all history, in date,
• in dealings,
• in character,
• in requirement performance criteria from the prophets (cf. SMR Ch. 9),
• in results in the specifications written beforehand in detail for the Gospel,
• in turn wholly dependent on the Messiah doing all in life and death and resurrection prescribed (cf. Joyful Jottings Chs. 21- 25),
• in the predicted adoption by many, including kings, among the Gentiles and so on as shown in great detail elsewhere.

He fits in all this, but for the present purpose, the things needed are LOVE which is objective, and SELF-RESTRAINT which is pure, together with EXHIBITION in practice of the objective character of the love, and the actual power of God, as the designer whose design with love, is the criterion of being what one is, so that one may become at all what one may desire, rather than achieve an abortive aberration starting from being diverse from what one was constructed to be.

That love as noted succinctly in Romans 5, is profound, and as shown in Matthew 23:37 and Luke 19:41ff., in precise accord with the Old Testament likewise (cf. Ezekiel 33:11), is not self-fulfilling. Love does not seek its own, in the sense of its own pleasure or self-satisfaction. Its beauty and if you could use such a term, its genius is this, that it is outgoing with delight for impartation without compulsion, deliverance without payment, help without alloy, truth without pollution (cf. I Corinthians 13:5).

The contemptuous treatment accorded to Christ, this is the expression of man's disease, as it still is; for what man does instead IS diseased by comparison, with pride or self-will or devotion to moral superiority by one's own ignorant criteria, or by seizing of this or that, elevating oneself into the criterion as if king, when merely a creature.

Christ however SUFFERED the disease. Then He bore it. Then He provided for its removal, in His removal, since the dust-bin has to go for hygiene's sake; or otherwise put, His ransom involved His own sense of separation from His own eternal Father (Matthew 27:46), as precisely predicted (Psalm 22 and cf. Joyful Jottings 25) , and His death was a penal provision to cover our own, who in the liberty which the foreknowledge of God (Romans 8:29, logically prior to predestination) provides. It does not cover all (Romans 8:32), for as we have seen in this text,  those on whose account He is delivered up HAVE ALL THINGS, including heaven. But it is on offer to all. God is not 'having you on' when He makes such an offer. He is not REALLY excluding you by selectively ensuring you CANNOT come BECAUSE of your disease.

Such blasphemy is wholly contrary to the fact that GOD IS LOVE (I John 4:8), this is His own essential nature, not therefore subjectible to distortion or illusion, subjection to ulterior motives or mixed, always pure in itself. It also contradicts His express statements, as about Jerusalem (Luke 19:42ff.), so that He LAMENTED because they did not realise their opportunity (the day of your visitation), and wept. It was wholly contrary to the intent of His love that this should be so, but equally wholly contrary to its purity that He should distort its free expression, or dispose those who did not in His sight want it, as if they did. He is not a liar, and insists in all things on the truth.

Now we have come to the predestination area once again. In His own absolute knowledge, who plans all,  and before we so much as came into physical existence at all (Ephesians 1:4), He has FOREKNOWN His own people, and chosen them. Since (I Timothy 2), He is on record that HE WOULD HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED, in the very context of GOD being seen on the one hand, and MANKIND on the other, with but one mediator, then it is perfectly clear that the predestination, logically following the foreknowing in the divinely disclosed intrinsic sequence (logical rather than chronological, because time does not contain God, but God time - as in Romans 8:29, 38-39), merely ensures the due occurrence of what is KNOWN.

What is known is NOT what we would choose (as in Romans 9:11-23), for His sovereignty is not a mere reactor to disease or wilfulness! Nor is the choice irrelevant to our own selves (Matthew 23:37 cf. SMR Appendix B, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4). It is in terms of the actual DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE as in Ephesians 1:4, so that what we are seen to be in His love which does not force, beyond all our own contrivings or confusions, not in merit or desert but in what in His sight is due understanding of the soul yet to be, that His placement is made. That placement or predestination is not therefore an ogre to be feared, but a relief to be found. It is because of this that the soul can be liberated, beyond the negation which sin internally makes (as in I Cor. 2:14, Ephesians 4:17ff., Psalm 51:5, Romans 5:14,17,19 - the many were "constituted sinners"). There is no merit in what you do not do, do not make and cannot be! (as in Ephesians 2:8-10), and indeed the Christian himself, herself, is God's workmanship as there shown.

"YOU WOULD NOT" (Matthew 23:37, Luke 13:34 cf. SMR Appendix A), any more than the lament that they did not KNOW or realise the day of opportunity, even to tears and weeping, is not an invention in order to inscribe a lie, so that although HE STATES THAT HE WOULD^*1, He would really mean that He has carefully ensured that despite the flimsy appearance of desire in His heart, as it then would be comparatively, the essential profundity of love is not really there at all, so that if you will, the switch is turned off, so that it is mere public relationship. GOD! in an exercise of PR! What blasphemy is that! One can only hope that many who make this error in flat contradiction of the word of God, do not realise what they are doing!

"I wanted to gather you ... but you were not willing" - Luke 13:34 states the position. God is NOT a liar, and as we have seen (SMR Ch. 1, Barbs... Chs. 6-7, Repent or Perish Ch. 2), this is not even possible.

Very well, then, in ABSOLUTE FOREKNOWLEDGE, not of our wilful actions, but of HIS OWN SOVEREIGN understanding of what we are, He predestines; and in so doing, He implements OF COURSE, the ATTITUDE and PRINCIPLES shown when on earth, and stated by Paul at His inspiration (I Cor. 2:9-13). Thus IN predestining, He is employing the same LOVE for all that Christ protested and exhibited. This merely makes the thing more sure  on  the stated principles. It does not, because before time and process, in the least degree alter what is the reality and integrity of those things; rather it confirms them. God is all powerful, and always able to do to the uttermost what conforms to His chosen principles and procedures, here love with grace, and then judgment with justice.

Justice is thus met; love is met; liberty is engendered; remedy is provided and those who prefer, in God's OWN knowledge, above and apart from all spiritual or mental sickness, really prefer in HIS last analysis, in HIS knowledge, darkness can inherit it ... freely (John 3:19). It is a binding and blinding thing ? surely. Yet it is thrust upon none, though incalculably desired by many.

Liberty does not recruit heartless computers who secretly try to make the best of all possible world for their sovereign selves. God wants those who worship in spirit and truth, not spiritual hedonists. The possibility of His deception is non-existent. The possibility of error with Him is precluded.

There is this sparkling loveliness about the whole thing. It does not matter at ALL how bad you are, in this, that if you come to Him for remedy, and receive in reality what He provides, then your sin cancelled, you become in permanence, what you before had merely in form, an offspring of God John 1:12, I John 3:9, I Thess. 5:9-10). Nothing can impede. Someone may say, But what if someone has committed the unforgivable sin ?

Can he then come ? NO ONE COULD EVER COME. You do not have the power. As Christ declared, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day." HE KNOWS and so draws. It is GOD's OWN KNOWLEDGE and not something else which is an avenue of His love. What He knows is truth! It is however not possible to WANT to come and so come to Him, without, on duly and truly receiving Him as He presents Himself, finding Him. What He finds, he keeps. It is like the child's game, finders keepers. (John 10:9,27-28, Romans 5:1-11, I Thess. 5:9-10). Bogus fusses do not qualify. Actual coming does. No one who so comes has or could have committed any unforgivable sin for the very simple reason that he/she COULD not come, and so inherit with all the guarantee of God, eternal life, if this were already for some reason precluded! Coming is showing.

Thus liberty is real, responsibility is real, and you do not have to be as you are. Morality is real, and you do not need to be in the squalid recesses of proud pharisaic or other sin. Life has meaning, and indeed, far more meaning than many might desire. That is the nature of it. All that profound physiological brilliance is not the product of someone who does not care. It is mere instrumentality, in some ways limiting, but not in other ways when God Himself operates. But CAN your equipment in the last analysis be your final  limit, ONLY BECAUSE it is chosen as a base: is it then to be the  boss, or imperial source of edict.

That of course is ludicrous logically: fancy CHOOSING so to regard your own physiology as your director, when you can by various decisions, morals and choices, alter it at WILL, based on research, knowledge and philosophy, chosen with due respect to valid or invalid premises. Imagine thinking you have the inward VALIDITY to choose a theory of truth, if, as you may presuppose, you are merely a product of drafting orders! If you cannot, why utter it ? If you do not, then you merely are finding that your presupposition precludes your misuse of your own premises, and hence lands you in simple self-contradiction, a kind of logical impotence. If you want REASON, then you have to abandon such concepts.

You have to find an absolute truth to which you have access, so that what YOU are does not become the determinant of what you get from that source, but what HE IS. You have to have one which VERIFIES itself, since otherwise, you merely abandon reason, part of your created structure, in order to solve a problem. This is irrational by definition, and insults the source of reason, which is found as shown in these pages, when related to the revelation of the Bible, to have no residual problems at all.

It simply needs to relate to its source, which in validated and uniquely valid revelation, gives it meaning, place and opportunity in integrity to verify what God Himself validates. There is nothing else like that; this is a simple empirical fact.

So too with predestination and freewill, if you want reality and validity for thought and will, liberty that makes meaning of the data, then there is none found anywhere else on earth. This alone covers all the requisite criteria. Reason simply declares it; it is God who IS it. He is so well attested by His own will and grace, love and mercy, that it is available for such discovery by reason, so that one may as commanded, GIVE A REASON to him who asks. It is God who has made it possible by HIS PROVISIONS, His word and actions.

There is NONE other on record with such an offer, and of all offers, however internally defective for giving meaning to liberty, NONE other validated. THIS has it all, validity, rationality, verification, consistency and comprehensive accounting for all things.

In terms of scientific method alone, there is no other option.

In terms of judgment, there is the bill for the will. Arbitrary irrationality by its very nature cannot be argued; and a rebellion without reason leaves no room for results other than a judgment with it.
 

*1
Thus and similarly, in II Chronicles 36:15-17, we find this.

1) "The LORD God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place."

This is expressed in the metaphorical terminology of man, though of course, it is literally true that the USE of men involved their being zealous and raised up early to seek His word and then zealously present it to the deafened nation.

Did the LORD, knowing all things, then, leave them deaf by some sort of selective non-intervention, and rise up early in the expression so graphically used, in order to secure the irrelevant, put on a PR job, give an impression, cultivate an image! Is truth to lie ! On the contrary, and wholly on the contrary, the words for the One who is in the Bible statedly omniscient, and statedly truth (John 14:6, Deuteronomy 32:1-4) mean that He deemed it fitting as an expression of His compassion to take action which was potentially REMEDIAL to the point of avoiding the destruction which OTHERWISE was assuredly coming.

The New Testament expression in John 3:16 is 'perishing' and the outcome for faith in Christ is not perishing. This is the perpetual issue, to be destroyed or not; to languish in ruins, whether temporal in a broken city, or eternal, in hell, or not to be so disposed; to be judged or delivered, by God in His truth and His mercy (cf. Psalm 89:14).

The divine design, desire, here expressed with vivid force, is to PREVENT this. To make it look as if this passionate zeal and haste, in some way is an expression of a NON-INTENTION to be of that assistance which alone would meet the case, is a clear distortion of scripture.

2) "But they mocked the messengers of God, deposed His words, and scoffed at His prophets, UNTIL the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy."

Here is the insertion of the cause of the rejection, in the face of the provision for mercy, passionate and protracted.

This states that despite the passionate earnestness of God to prevent the destruction, shown in a continuing and long protracted series of divine interventions with words, exhortations and warnings, wrought in compassion, if by any means that might seek Him and find Him, and so avert the destruction, there was a long and protracted series of events of a negative character. This involved MOCKERY of those sent with the message of divine willingness and desire to deliver. It meant DESPISING the words, as mocking the persons so sent. Those given prophetic office were SCOFFED at, as if in Amos, they were being told to stop spouting (literally there, dripping).

In view of this interposition of human negation, there arose a divine WRATH which went past remedy, for remedy was negated. It is precisely as in John 3:19 and 36. In other words, those of the Bible, "But they mocked ... UNTIL the wrath of the LORD arose ... TILL there was no remedy." This simply states that there was a cause of the wrath, that there was, as to this situation before the all-knowing God, who sees past all creation such as time (Romans 8:38-39), a ground for it to be found IN the rejection, and that this resulting in HIS rejection.

This is what is revealed. To talk of 'secret things' as if THESE were among them, when THIS is explicitly, graphically and categorically revealed, as indeed in express and generic principle in  I Timothy 2 and Colossians 1: that is a distortion of the word of God.

The wonder, then, is this. Since this IS what He says, therefore there is NO problem in the LIBERTY and hence responsibility of man. ALL the ingredients are there. NOTHING else has them. This IN ITSELF therefore is sufficient cause to receive Christian truth from the Bible: IT ALONE provides for an explanation of man and his ways, his guilt, his judgment, his liberty and his compulsions, in sin, in blindness, against the Lord who in His own sensitive and perfect way, knows who are His own, neither forcing them (as fearfully apparent here), even for their own good as if to distort what they ARE, nor ignoring them (as crucially evident here). Rather He is seen providing for them in reality and passion, to enable their coming not in terms of merit (which is not liberty but provision), not in terms of the exercise of their will (which is diseased and limited, both), but in terms of what they are seen to be in His own all-encompassing grace, beyond disease and not beyond His own self-limiting restraint.

It is a divine operation, the precise nature of which is not known (who can depict the 'form of God' - Philippians 2, as to its intimate working!), but its principles are known. We give a possible expression of it in SMR pp. 638-639 and related pages such as 635, but the ingredients are clear. The actuality of the operation of foreknowing in itself is not important here, but the presence of the principles stated in its action, and the effectuality of their function, this is the logical point at issue.

It is this which is crucial to apologetics, making this phase in itself, predestination and freewill, apart from all else, a demarcating definition of solution, of truth. It has and can have no equal, for nothing else has the necessary ingredients!