Does God or wo/man determine a person's destiny? Predestination or human free will? Does one option devalue God, does the other devalue human choice and dignity? Which came first, the chicken or the egg, and by the way WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD and what the fat was the actual explanation of everything in the final episode of LOST? Because I have no idea even though I invested years into that tv show.
Through my years of talking with so many people about their faith, the Bible, their doubts and questions (at William & Mary, Greensboro, L.A., Pasadena, Memphis, Charlotte and various travels) I've pondered and encountered this fundamental dichotomy over and over. The most memorable discussion I ever had about it was with a lapsed Roman Catholic Costa Rican olympian marathoner running 20 miles in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia as I mountain biked beside him (one of a few adventures I shared with friend and deceased ministry mentor Max Helton).
One of my summer reading projects has to do with refreshing my engagement with Reformed Theology as my own chosen Christian stream or tradition. Today I ran across a 17th century Enlightenment Reformed Orthodox theologian named Benedict Pictet (1655-1724), whose views on this question confirm and more eloquently expand my own. Perhaps his words will be helpful to you as well when it comes to this question that is a stumbling block to those who would like to believe, and oftentimes a theological roadblock to those who already know Jesus by faith:
These two things are certain: 1. That nothing happens that God has not decreed to do or to permit; for this truth cannot be denied except if one were to question that God knows everything from eternity and is capable of everything...2. It is no less certain that we act freely, and that this suffices for us.
After listing attempts by both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians to "reconcile God's decrees (i.e. predestination) with human freedom," Pictet concludes his argument by remarking that he places himself:
...in the company of those who take pride in their ignorance and believe these two things--God's decrees and human freedom--without worrying about how to reconcile the two. This is the safest solution, and the one we follow, because all other views leave great difficulties (as quoted in Van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, p. 188).
I think this is not just the 'safest solution,' and the one with the least amount of 'great difficulties.' I find it to be the most faithful to God's revelation to us in the Bible. God elects, wo/man chooses. Both/and.
I look forward to reconvening this discussion in a Parisian salon in the Kingdom of God one day after Christ returns, judges, and makes all things new. I would like to be sitting between Jean Calvin and Jacobus Arminius as the LORD breaks down how this was going down during human history. See you there, friends.