Marcus critiques a Calvinist theodicy and theory of predestination here. Generally, I’m suspicious of theodicy – it seems like a problem that’s above our pay grade, and I’d be surprised to find out that most theodicies have provided any actual comfort to those in need of it.
Still, it’s a topic that inevitably comes up. I tried to deal with it in relation to the Atonement (see here, here, here, here and here – whew!) as a way of putting it in a more concretely Christian context.
Regarding predestination, I’m right in the middle of Paul Althaus’s book on Luther’s theology and he says that Luther makes a distinction between God’s “revealed will” and his “hidden will.” God’s revealed will comes to us in the Gospel proclamation – God seeks to be merciful to sinners. But God’s hidden will is that he predestines some to salvation and some to perdition.
To reconcile this with God’s justice, Luther takes what philosophers would call a “compatibilist” view of free will. That is, I am responsible for my rejection of God’s grace because it is my will to remain obstinate in my sin. This is true even though my will is determined by causes outside of my control.
I happen to think compatibilism has serious problems, but in fairness, so do virtually all other accounts of free will. The deeper issue here, though, is the theology that underwrites the notion of predestination.
What Luther (and Augustine and Calvin among others) were interested in safeguarding was God’s sovereignty and the efficacy of his grace. For Luther in particular, God’s grace is manifested in the fact that he has mercy on whom he wills to have mercy, and that mercy is effective in bringing to salvation. If a human response is necessary for God’s grace to be effective, then Luther thinks we are right back to works righteousness. My being saved is dependent on something I do.
The trick is reconciling God’s efficacious grace with a) the claim that God wants to save us all and b) the claim that at least some people, and possibly a majority of people, are going to be damned. If God’s grace is completely efficacious (i.e. it doesn’t depend on anything we do) and God wants to save everyone, then it seems to follow that everyone will in fact be saved.
Both a and b seem to have scriptural support. Thus the resort to the “hidden will” of God. God wants to save us all in the sense that the Gospel is proclamed to all as an unconditional promise of forgiveness and new life, but in fact some people will not respond to the proclamation and will not be saved. And this failure to respond is itself predestined by God from all eternity.
The problem with the theory of the hidden will, as Althaus points out, is that it seems to contradict Luther’s firm belief that Jesus reveals the Father to us. In fact, this belief, Althaus says, was the lynchpin of Luther’s Christology. It was the answer he found to the burning existential question of how we can know what God’s attitude toward us is. Jesus reveals to us a God who loves us so much that he comes to us to offer forgiveness, take away our sins and give us new life.
But if the “real” will of God is the “hidden will” that predestines to salvation and damnation, how can we say that Christ truly reveals the Father? The merciful Father that Jesus reveals to us seems to be trumped by the inscrutable deity of predestination.
It seems safer to stick with this bedrock theological principle – that Jesus reveals a God who really wants to save all of us, and let the other chips fall where they may (either in the direction of universalism or some form of Arminianism). After all, it was Luther himself who said “I know of no other God except the one called Jesus Christ.”
A Thinking Reed 
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