ATSS: Bryan Ness, “Are We Predestined?”

In Romans chapter 9 Paul talks about various Old Testament individuals and how God chose to use them for his purposes. This chapter makes it sound like God has predestined certain individuals to play specific roles in history, with no choice on their part. This led theologians such as John Calvin to propose the doctrine of predestination. Adventists, and many other Christians, have long tried to explain away this apparent conundrum, arguing that God gave all humans free will. God forces no one to do anything. Everyone has a choice. Whether they accept or reject God is based entirely in free will.

Many modern discoveries in genetics and neuroscience have begun to question whether humans have free will or whether we are simply products of our genetics and neurophysiology. Many human behavioral traits are now known to be highly heritable, such as mental illness, personality traits, and even the political party people decide to support. Studies using brain scans while a subject is asked to make a choice between two alternatives suggest that the choice between these alternatives is made even before the conscious brain is aware, and subjects will then rationalize, after the fact, as to why they made the choice they did. Does this imply that we have no conscious free will in the choices we make?

In this week’s Sabbath Seminar I will be exploring the implications of these modern discoveries in terms of how free an individual is to make moral choices. Do we have the power to decide whether we choose to be a Democrat or a Republican, or is the choice already determined by our genes and brain chemistry? More importantly, is the degree to which someone is attracted to spiritual things largely inborn? If so, is it fair for God to hold people responsible for whether they can believe in his existence or not? Are some of us predestined to be believers and others nonbelievers?