Selection is all. Whether it is choosing a life-partner, launching one career rather than another, or becoming a vegan, we have to choose. And the scary thing is that we make these choices on the basis of inadequate information. And that is a characteristically human way of going about things. It is something our present government is heavily into.
Milton's 'Paradise Lost' has a tongue-in-cheek scene in which the fallen angels are making the best of their miserable condition. They sit apart, they 'reason'd high of Providence, Will, and Fate, Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.' And it has to be admitted, over the centuries Christians have fallen into the same habit, chewing the fat, attempting to square the circle and getting nowhere.
Of course, it is not only Christians who plunge into this solemn chit-chat. When all is said and done, there is more said than done. But whatever we think about these issues, they continue to haunt us. With the best will in the world we can never get to the bottom of these questions.
And one issue in particular engages the mind at present. We know a lot more than we ever did about human biology, the development of the cosmos and the nature of human society. There is a strong deterministic streak in all this. We readily find ourselves falling in with the assumption that we are far from free, that our choices, our actions, our traditions are not so much chosen by us as imposed upon us -- by our genetic inheritance, by the random course of events in the natural world. It is, if you like, a modern version of thorough-going Calvinism in which divine decrees decided human destiny before human creatures were even thought of. We are sorry creatures, powerless to change things. That is not the impression we gain from Jesus' conversations with men and women in Galilee and Jerusalem.
The Christian Gospel accepts both ends of the argument. It acknowledges God as the high governor of the universe. It also accepts that God's creatures are seriously flawed but free to choose. If we have to select either determinism or choice, we must choose the latter.
PREDESTINATION
‘From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God – Predestination in the stride o’ yon’connectin’ rod.’ – Kipling.
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