on election and predestination

A friend recommended I look into Calvinism, so I obliged and poured through several books on the subject of Predestination & Election (the two major points of contention between Calvinism and its arch-nemesis Arminianism). Coming from a Church of Christ background, I’ve always leaned towards Arminianism, notably in regards to the belief that people have the capacity to accept or reject the gospel, and also the capacity to lose salvation if they abandon faith in Christ. As I read through major works on the subject, I felt my heart stirred by the doctrine. It’s a beautiful doctrine, it really is, and this shouldn’t be surprising: there’s a reason it’s the biggest approach to systematic theology in the Western world, and why it’s survived since its rugged inception between Saint Augustine and John Calvin (with all the other reformers thrown in between). Calvinism is sound doctrine: it’s derived from the text, fits with a systematic reading of the text, and is cogent with orthodox Christianity. While Arminians like to point out the “flaws” of Calvinism (always attacking, as it were, a caricature rather than the real thing), we should be honest and admit (no matter our stance) that both Calvinism and Arminianism make sense of the biblical text, are simple in their elegance, and speak to issues beyond their immediate scope. Both Calvinism and Arminianism deal adequately with God’s sovereignty and mankind’s freedom, and both present salvation solely as a work of God due to his grace and love (Calvinists often attack Arminians directly on this point, but this is the same sin committed by Arminians time and again: attacking caricatures is fun and easy, but it’s just noise absent substance). The contention between the two approaches isn’t one between “true Christians” and “false Christians” as has often been approached: there are devoted Christians on either side, and one’s position on the nature of election and predestination isn’t symptomatic of the quality of his or her faith. This sort of thinking runs contrary to the gospel and dovetails with those who, in the New Testament, declared that “works of the law” must be practiced in accordance with faith in Christ: by making one’s stance on these subjects a litmus test of authentic faith, we’re in league with the Judaizers whom Paul condemns with a curse. So after reading up on both systems, what’s my take? Before answering that, I want to establish what I believe to be some pretty important points.

a) First, both systems came into existence around the 16th century: Calvinism through John Calvin and Martin Luther, and Arminianism through Jacob Arminius.  

b) Both are direct results of the Protestant reformation and represent Protestantism over against the Catholic Church, emphasizing sola scriptura, sola gratia, and sola fides.  

c) Both systems understand election (and, consequently, predestination) to be individualistic in nature; both systems were derived during the early Renaissance period immediately following the Black Plague of Europe, which served as a violent transition from a collectivistic (group-focused) understanding of identity to an individualistic understanding of identity, which remains prevalent in our western culture today.  

d) Both systems thus understand the New Testament and Old Testament texts on election to be individualistically focused. And yet historians and biblical scholars agree that individualistic thinking didn’t evolve until about 1500 years after the writing of the New Testament; ergo, the New Testament writers couldn’t possibly be writing from an individualistic perspective. New Testament authors, thinking in accordance with their collectivistic societies, would’ve approached such terms as election and predestination from a corporate rather than individual perspective. This means, then, that there may be serious error in both Calvinism and Arminianism insofar as the focus is upon individuals rather than upon groups.

One of my least-favorite college classes has turned out to be one of the most formative. Hermeneutics, the study of biblical interpretation, was more unbearable four hours a week at once than three hours a week spread out. Taking it as a block class, I sat through lecture after lecture bored out of my mind. After slogging through the exam and celebrating my freedom, I tossed away all the books and decided to get on with the “real business” of my education: digging into the little nuances of the Bible in my upper-classmen courses. As I soon realized, those principles I learned in Hermeneutics were quickly put to the test, and in the course of things I found that many of my preconceived notions and interpretations of scripture crumbled, and others emerged from the rubble to stand tall and elegant on the shoulders of plain and simple contextual interpretation. There are three laws of hermeneutics that should be employed when studying the scriptures: (1) let scripture interpret scripture, (2) always look for the simplest interpretation of the text, and (3) context: “How would the original readers of the letter understand what’s written from their own first-century A.D. Mediterranean and/or Jewish perspectives?” There’s a reason my favorite biblical scholars include N.T. Wright, James D.G. Dunn, and Michael Gorman: these scholars investigate the text not from a Western point-of-view but from the perspective of first-century Jews and pagans.

On the subject of election and predestination, then, taking an individualistic approach to these subjects runs aground on the principle that such an orientation in thinking would’ve been foreign to those actually writing the texts. Both Calvinism & Arminianism, taking different approaches to the issues but agreeing that they’re individualistic in scope, are pulled into suspicion. I’m not the only one who’s seen this little conflict (really, I’m not as brilliant as you think I am, and certainly not as brilliant as I think I am), and over the past couple decades a new approach has emerged, dubbed corporate election. While different from Calvinism and Arminianism, some of the concepts tend to be more Arminian in nature, such as the belief in a sort of free will and responsibility for our own choices coupled with the ability to either choose or not choose God by our own volition; but, it must be pointed out, corporate election doesn’t make concessions to Arminianism but, rather, acknowledges that these beliefs were held by most practicing Jews at the time and by the early church fathers. This is important: would the writers of the New Testament, almost exclusively Jewish, propose an approach wildly divergent from Jewish norms without some sort of explanation? And if so, why would the early church fathers (many of whom were friends or students of the apostles) pull a sort of retrograde into acknowledging human freedom and responsibility for faith if the apostles themselves adamantly taught otherwise? That the Jewish assumption and the early church’s assumption (speaking, of course, in generic rather than absolute terms) about these issues is coherent with an Arminian approach and in conflict with a Calvinist approach should tell us something. The New Testament wasn’t written in a vacuum, and if the Calvinistic idea of people being without the capability to choose Christ is true, then we must concede that this is a truth that was here for but a time during the writing of the New Testament, disappeared in the days of the early church, and then “came back” with the Protestant Reformation. Corporate election, I believe, makes better sense of the text, is simple in its elegance, speaks to issues beyond its immediate scope, and fits with our understanding of history. The latter is a big point.

The bottom line of corporate election is the idea that election isn’t God’s choice of this person over that person out of his unmerited grace, or even God’s choice of this person over that based upon their faith, but his corporate choice of the church. Ephesians 1.4, a popular text on election, could thus be read like this: “For God chose us, the church, in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” This reading understands the “chosen ones” not as a collection of isolated individuals but precisely as the corporate group of the church. The focus isn’t on the individuals within the group (the church) but upon the group itself. While this may seem strange, it builds upon what we find regarding election in the Old Testament. Yes, sometimes the word “election” is used in the Old Testament to refer to an individual, such as a king; but, generally, the word’s focused on a corporate group of people rather than individuals. When election is focused on individuals (such as Cyrus in Isaiah 45.1), these individuals aren’t elected to salvation but to some task or mission rooted in history. The Hebrew word for “elect”, bahir, is most often found in the plural, speaking of Israel as a collective entity. Election is collective and national in its approach, and the beating heart of election is seen in God’s choosing of Israel to be his own people. The Old Testament emphasizes the corporate identity of Israel: she’s a bride, a congregation, a flock, a house, a vine, et al. Individuals within Israel understood their place within the wider body of Israel: an Israelite’s fate, be it salvation or damnation, was wrapped up with the fate of the nation of Israel. The focus wasn’t on one’s own interior world, detached from the outside world, but upon Israel as a corporate group within which Israelites found their place and identity. When we go from Malachi to Matthew, this Old Testament idea of election as a corporate rather than individualistic reality is the backdrop; and the very fact that the New Testament uses such terms as “elect” without any side-explanations serves as a hint that the ethos of the word hadn’t yet changed: it remained a corporate rather than individualistic reality.

The word “election” and its associates pops up again and again throughout the New Testament. While Reformed tradition (as well as Arminianism) likes to take this in a sense divergent from Old Testament usage, such a divergence is unwarranted, especially when the texts make much more sense in light of the Old Testament’s approach. The elect are those who are identified corporately as the “body of Christ” (Eph 1.22-23, 2.16, 3.6, 4.12, 5.23,30); they are “members of God’s household” (Eph 2.19) and “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2.9-10). All these terms and phrases (with the exception of the first) are drawn from stock imagery used in the Old Testament to refer to Israel collectively as God’s people. In this sense, God has chosen an elect body to save (not individuals), and that body is, precisely, the body of Christ. Election, then, becomes primarily corporate and secondarily individual, and individual election is based upon whether or not one is a part of the body of Christ, the church. The way all this works comes back to the Jewish idea of representation and incorporation.

In the Old Testament, God chose the people of Israel in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel (the patriarchs). The line of “true Israel” was winnowed down from Abraham to Jacob, and the ethnic winnowing stopped there: all of Jacob’s descendants belonged to Israel. Thus all of Jacob’s descendants belonged to the covenant. Jacob thus became the covenant representative, and Israel understood her election to be founded upon her identification with Jacob and her affiliation with the head of the group (going all the way to the top to Father Abraham). Thus an Israelite (it was assumed) was a true Israelite (a member of the elect) by virtue of identification and affiliation with the head of the covenant, the patriarchs (most notably Jacob and Abraham). In the New Testament, this understanding of representation and incorporation is reworked around Christ: one is “elect” if he or she is incorporated into the group (the church) by faith in Christ (the group’s representative head).

The foundation of this approach isn’t some new systematic approach to scripture but reading the text in its original landscape. The first-century Mediterranean world and Judaism was corporate rather than individualistic in its outlook. The first-century didn’t think like we do, and it would not have shared our own idea of the individual. While we find our identity within ourselves and often wrestle with an existentialist need to “discover ourselves”, Mediterranean and Jewish peoples of the day understood themselves not in their isolation as individuals but by their relationships with others (this still holds true for much of the eastern world). One’s identity was bound up in a complicated web of interpersonal relationships, and there was no sort of “real identity” lurking beneath the epidermis. Although individualism dominates our western world, evidenced in our modern readings of the text, it would’ve been wholly foreign to the writers of the New Testament: neither Judaism nor paganism was built to think in such ways. In the Old Testament, one’s identity was founded upon the community of which they were a part. In terms of salvation, it wasn’t that people individually pursued God on their own time, and belonged to Israel at the same time; one’s salvation was dependant upon Israel’s. One’s fate was the fate of the group, and that fate was sealed insofar as the person continued living as a part of that group; only through persistent sin could a person be considered outside the covenant and, subsequently, outside salvation. Salvation always remained something of concern for the Israelite nation as a whole (or, in some cases, for a sub-group or sect within the nation; e.g. the Essenes), and individuals could chart their fate within the group only if they kept within the covenantal boundaries. Mediterranean culture, Jewish self-understanding, and the New Testament’s use of the concept of election without any sort of explanation provides a strong case for New Testament election to be primarily corporate rather than individualistic.

Taking election to be corporate rather than individualistic, we find that the biblical texts make sense in an elegant, simple manner. We’re not forced to interpret certain texts in certain ways, and we’re not bound to explain the inconsistency between the prevalent thinking paradigms of the day and those found in the New Testament. The simplest understanding of election is that understanding which would’ve been commonplace to the original readers of these letters, and corporate election does just that. Even more, corporate election speaks to issues beyond its immediate scope: it makes better sense of some of the issues swirling around the subject, particularly the nature of predestination and the importance of perseverance coupled with the threat of apostasy.

The purpose of election is two-fold, and its primary purpose isn’t what most Christians understand it to be. Remember that the concept of election can be traced all the way back to God’s covenant with Abraham. The Israelites prided themselves on being elect, on being God’s chosen people. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul continually revisits this theme, especially in Romans 9-11, making the point that the Israelites’ pride over their heritage and subsequent election isn’t about having a privileged covenant status but about being charged with a mission. The Israelites were to be the people through whom God brought healing to the world; but Israel became so wrapped up in her election that she forgot all about that. When Jesus came, he did what Israel was supposed to do all along: bring healing, restoration, and renewal to the world. In this sense he was the “true Israelite.” All this to say that election isn’t just about having a privileged status but about having a mission. In 1 Peter 2.9 we find, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (E.S.V.) Peter takes stock identifications of the Jewish people—chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, et al.—and refocuses them on Christians. Those who put their faith in Christ and who are thus privy to the effects of his death and resurrection are now “Israel.” This doesn’t simply mean that, like faithful Israel, they have covenant status; it means, on top of this, as Peter makes clear, that they have a God-ordained purpose: to proclaim the gospel. In other words, the function of the elect (that is, to be God’s standard-bearers in a world that has set its teeth against him) has now been shifted from the Israelite people to those who are in Christ. There’s a lesson in all of this: the Israelites forgot what it meant to be chosen, what it meant to be elect. It wasn’t about being personally chosen by God so that you could boast in covenant membership and feel better about yourself. God didn’t choose them just because it brought him pleasure. Their choosing, their calling, was rooted in purpose, a purpose that went beyond them to the wider world. God didn’t establish his covenant for Israel but for the sake of the world through Israel. Christians, who are elect, are chosen by God not for our own sakes, or even solely for God’s sake, but for the sake of the wider world. If we become prideful in our election, then we’re committing the meta-sin for which most of Israel stood condemned: we’ve become wholly solipsistic, we’ve forgotten our calling, and we’re on dangerous ground.

Election, then, isn’t just about those who are elect but about those whom God has saved and chosen as instruments to bring restoration to his world. Tying into this, we find in Ephesians 1.4 that God has purposed in Christ that his people will “be holy and blameless before Him.” Throughout Ephesians this purpose is emphasized again and again: 2.21; 3.14-19; 4.1-3, 13-32; 5.1-18. The fulfillment of this purpose, we find in Ephesians 5.27, is certain. But, and this is a point we’ll come back to in a moment, the fulfillment of this purpose for individuals is conditional upon remaining in Christ (Col 1.22-23). This conditionality of election finds its home in the conviction that election is universal, available to everyone who hears the gospel. Corporate election is in accordance with the biblical teaching that God loves everyone, calls all people through the gospel to trust in him and to be saved, and that he genuinely wants all people to be saved (Luke 19.10, John 3.16, Acts 17.30-31, 1 Timothy 2.4, 2 Peter 3.9). It’s not that God looks through history from the moment before creation and chooses certain individuals over others to be saved, and then gives them faith; it’s that those who repent and put their faith in Christ partake in his death and resurrection in baptism and become a part of the elect by virtue of their incorporation into Christ’s body by the power of the Spirit (1 Cor 12.13). Such people are elect, given a new purpose in life and having for themselves the destination of conformity to Christ (i.e. glorification) so long as they “continue in God’s kindness”, as Paul puts it in Romans 11.

This brings us, of course, to the subject of predestination. Calvinism teaches that those whom God chooses beforehand for no merit of their own are predestined to salvation; God’s grace will not return void, and his calling is irrevocable. Thus those whom he chooses will be saved, period. Arminians generally take the same line: those whom God chooses, based off his foreknowledge of who will accept the gospel, are predestined to salvation. The difference between the two is that in the first scheme it’s God who does the choosing and then makes sure it happens by giving his fore-chosen elect the gift of faith; in the second scheme, those who choose faith of their own volition are chosen before the foundation of the world by God’s foreknowledge and are thus predestined for salvation. Corporate election takes an entirely different approach to what predestination ultimately means. Of the six occurrences of the word in the New Testament, all but one come from Paul; in the scheme of corporate election, predestination places its emphasis on the future and final goals God has prepared for those incorporated into Christ. It isn’t about who will become Christians or how people become Christians. It isn’t that some individuals over others are predestined to become Christian. The point is that we, the church, are collectively predestined to a glorious future which God has promised us and which he’ll certainly bring to fruition. This future involves being conformed to the image of Christ (Rom 8.29), full adoption as God’s children through Christ (Eph 1.5), and to “bring praise to His glory” (Eph 1.11-12). This future is, of course, “the Christian hope,” when God will judge the world, bring healing to the cosmos, and restore everything (including his people) to its rightful place. This is the new heavens and new earth, God’s promise of consummation, and it’s guaranteed to the corporate body of Christ, individuals included. Predestination, then, isn’t focused on individuals but upon the corporate body of Christ, and only those who remain in Christ can claim for themselves God’s glorious future for his people.

Analogies help bring some things to light, and one analogy for corporate predestination has been floating around for about 150 years. Imagine the church, the body of Christ, as a ship sailing the ocean (since the analogy first appeared in the 1850s, try to imagine a steam-powered wooden battleship of French make). The ship is on course for its final destination (the Christian hope). This ship has been chosen by God to be his own vessel, and Christ has been elected as the ship’s captain. As the ship prowls the waters, God’s desire is that everyone would jump on board, and he’s made this easy to do through the ship’s captain. Those who accept the captain’s summons and reach out for safety are taken hold by the captain and pulled onto the ship. They’re guaranteed safety despite the stormy weather that may accost the ship, and so long as they remain aboard, they’re guaranteed to reach the final destination. However, if they decide to throw themselves over the side, perhaps not trusting the captain anymore, or wanting to go a different route, then they cease to be counted among the ship’s manifest, since their election is conditional upon their trust in the captain and thus by their presence on the ship (the church, the body of Christ). Although this analogy breaks down when you give it a good stretch (and, let’s be honest, all analogies do; if they don’t break down, they cease being analogies and become literal fact), it gives us a picture of corporate election and predestination. Election is about incorporation into Christ’s body through faith; and predestination is about the ship’s final destination. Those who put their faith in Christ and continue in that faith share the ship’s predestination. But those who decide, for whatever reason, to disembark the ship will meet quite a different fate. “How, then, is predestination truly predestination if it is conditional?” Predestination, remember, isn’t focused on the individual but upon the corporate group: if this or that individual disengages from the ship, the ship’s still going to keep steaming along. God’s going to have his party, and people have the right to court death and decay in themselves rather than life and human flourishing in Christ. God’s party is going to happen no matter what, and if a person refuses to join in that party, it doesn’t stop the party from taking place. The ship will reach safe harbor.

Such thinking, of course, runs contrary to Reformed church doctrine. Many Baptists, too, shirk at such statements about the conditionality of enjoying the party and reaching that “Golden Shore”; many non-Reformed Baptists continue holding to the Calvinistic doctrine dubbed “The Perseverance of the Saints,” painting it with a different color and calling it “Once Saved Always Saved.” Reformed church doctrine, as well as the Baptist hold-out version of the same, teaches that there’s really no such thing as apostasy, of rejecting the faith and falling from grace, but only apparent apostasy. Those who disown their faith (the apostate) were never really part of the elect people in the first place, and thus they never shared in the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of the elect. Their “faith” was really just a sham, perhaps even self-deception, and their disavowing of the faith is evidence that it was never really there at all. But yet the New Testament is chocked full of warnings about Christians falling prey to temptation, to grieving or quenching the Spirit in their lives, warnings against making shipwreck of their faith or even committing apostasy. If Reformed doctrine is correct, then these warnings are hollow: there’s no point in them. The elect cannot commit apostasy (by virtue of being elect), and those who are not elect but only pretending (or being self-deluded) cannot but become apostate. The writers of the New Testament, however, seem to believe that apostasy can happen to real Christians who have indeed been indwelt by the Spirit, who have been predestined to conformity to Christ, and thus either something’s seriously amiss with the Calvinistic approach or the New Testament writers were just plain wrong.

Corporate election has an Arminian slant in that it acknowledges that apostasy is a real threat, and thus perseverance isn’t just something given but something that must be made true. The elect in the Old Testament weren’t guaranteed salvation come what may; apostasy could be committed, and it was a serious threat which God warned the Israelites against through countless prophets spanning Israelite history. One’s status as elect was conditioned upon remaining in the covenant, and when we come to the New Testament, this continues. Those who are in Christ must remain in the covenant; this doesn’t mean, of course, that those in Christ who continue falling prey to sin will be cast out. Covenant membership isn’t accomplished by our own merit, and it cannot be lost by a lack of merit. Covenant membership is a gift given to us by God in response to our faith in Christ; the only condition for covenant membership is faith, the only way to remain in the covenant is by perseverant faith in Christ, and the only way out of the covenant is by turning our faith from Christ. Jesus’ own warnings against apostasy, and exhortation to “remain in Me” in the latter chapters of John, are founded upon this point.

Individual election and perseverance is conditional upon faith in Christ. But it is unconditional for the corporate body of Christ. Ephesians 1.3-4 tells us that God chose “us” (the church, not individual Christians) in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Later in the letter (5.25-27), we find this same language: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” Here we find God’s purpose in grace, his ultimate aim which will be certainly accomplished: this will come to pass. In this sense it is unconditional. Nothing’s going to make it not happen. But, as we see in Colossians, this certain fulfillment for the church is not certain for believers, if they do not remain in Christ. Paul takes the same language he uses in Ephesians 1 and 5 and uses it in Colossians 1.21-23: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven.” Those who are incorporated into Christ’s body through his death share in the destiny of the church, if they continue in the faith. The ship’s going to reach its destined port, but only those who remain onboard will be able to disembark into the Promised Land. In Romans 8.28-39, Paul affirms that the corporate community in Christ is foreknown, predestined, and elect in God’s eternal purposes, and he affirms that all this will persevere to final glorification. The various trials that may threaten Christians won’t affect the certainty of their destiny, so long as they remain members of the body of Christ by abiding in him. The focus, again, isn’t on individuals but upon the elect community. A person who’s not residing in the community has absolutely no claim to partake of its promises. And thus the Catholic mantra is affirmed: EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS. “Outside the church there is no salvation.” Corporate election does justice to the biblical texts, works within the cultural and psychological framework of the period in which the letters were written, and sheds away some of the ambiguities inherent within alternate approaches that focus election upon the individual. In light of all this, corporate election seems to be the best understanding of election and predestination on offer. One of the biggest objections is that it negates individual election: “If corporate election is correct,” it’s surmised, “then there’s no such things as individuals being elect precisely as individuals.” But corporate election doesn’t exclude individuals: it simply reorients individual election. While corporate election is focused on the church, unconditional and certain, individual election comes secondary in the scheme and is conditional upon remaining in the church (the body of Christ). Individuals are certainly elect, but only so long as they’re a part of the group, so long as they cling to the Head, who is Christ. Individuals are included based on their membership in the group by virtue of their identification with the corporate representative. Election begins with the Head (Christ) and filters down to those who are associated with him by faith: it starts with the corporate head and, in cascade-fashion, trickles down to those individuals who are distinctly not the Head but who are incorporated into the Head by faith. That individuals are indeed elect is seen not only in the early church fathers (who would write of this-or-that person being elect) but also in 2 John: in 1.1 John is writing “to the elect lady and her children,” and in 1.13 he mentions her “elect sister”. This woman was elect by virtue of her faith in Christ; she was a part of the church by faith in Christ and was thus elect as an individual; but this isn’t to say that she could not have turned from the faith and become non-elect. Her election was dependant upon her initial and abiding faith in Christ.

In the midst of all the controversy and debate regarding this “hot button” issue in the church, we mustn’t lose sight of what’s most important: election is a gift of God, and those who are elect aren’t to sit around proud of their election but are commissioned with proclaiming the excellencies of him who has called them out of darkness and into marvelous light. We can become so lost in these debates, even committing ourselves to fighting for the “truth” of one side over another, that we lose sight of the forest for the trees. May we not succumb to the trap which ensnared the Israelites. May we not forget that election isn’t about us but about God choosing us for the sake of the wider world.