Podcast: Answering Hard Questions about Predestination and Free Will (Andy Naselli)

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Thinking through a Difficult Doctrine

In this episode, Andy Naselli answers a few of the most common questions about the doctrine of predestination, including what the Bible really says about it and what impact this teaching may have on the idea of free will.

Andrew David Naselli

In this addition to the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series, Andrew David Naselli carefully examines the doctrine of predestination and encourages believers to respond in worship.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

Matt Tully
Andy, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Andy Naselli
My pleasure, Matt.

Matt Tully
Very briefly here, how would you explain the doctrine of predestination to a fifth grader?

Andy Naselli
Well, election just means that you choose. So I might, depending where I’m at, let’s say we’re in a room with some objects—like we’re in a kitchen and there’s a bowl full of apples; maybe there are seven apples in the bowl—and I’d say if I want an apple, and I choose an apple, then that means I’m electing that apple.

Matt Tully
Why are you using the word electing now? We said predestination, but you’re bringing in this other other word.

Andy Naselli
Predestination is the big umbrella term that includes, theologically, when God actively chooses and when he passes over. So I chose the word elect to illustrate the positive aspect of he’s choosing some. So I would say I chose that apple, and I passed over the rest. That whole transaction of me choosing some and not the others illustrates the big picture of predestination.

Matt Tully
So predestination is the overarching concept, and then within that we have election. And then what’s the term for passing over?

Andy Naselli
Well, there’s not a clear Bible word for this. There are different phrases the Bible uses, not just one. The word that theologians use is reprobation, and that sounds scary.

Matt Tully
That’s a big, scary word that some people listening are already like, I don’t like this.

Andy Naselli
It’s just a way of trying to summarize, concisely, the concept that I believe is in the Bible, that God sovereignly and justly chose to pass over non-elect sinners and punish them. So whatever that is, you can call it something else, but that concept is what I want to say the Bible teaches.

Matt Tully
You said that a couple times, that this is from the Bible. What’s the one or two key passages that you would point to to defend this idea of predestination?

Andy Naselli
The main passage is Romans 9. Romans 9 is probably the main passage for election and reprobation. But if I was going to make a case for God ultimately causing reprobation, I’d go to Romans 9 and show that God the potter prepared vessels of wrath for destruction. That’s Romans 9:20–23—the analogy of a potter and pottery, potter and clay.

Matt Tully
That passage strikes me as a more proactive statement of what’s happening in reprobation than even the example you gave before of passing over. There’s a certain lack of activity that’s implied there, whereas the idea of preparing vessels for destruction feels a little bit more proactive, which, again, is sort of an uncomfortable way to talk about it.

Andy Naselli
Yeah. And it’s not just there. In Jude it says that these certain people were long ago designated for this condemnation. So God designated certain people long ago for condemnation. This is in the Bible. There are passages in Revelation in chapters 13 and 17 that say that God intentionally did not write the names of certain individuals in the Book of Life before he created the world. He could have included their names, but he didn’t. Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wises and understanding.” So God hid Jesus’s message from the wise and understanding, and Jesus is praising the Father for that. There are other texts, but those are some key ones that show that there’s something here where God ultimately causes this.

Matt Tully
I wonder if you could take a moment and speak pastorally here. Do you understand, and can you even resonate personally with, the discomfort that we often feel when we hear these kinds of things explained, this understanding of what Scripture’s teaching? Obviously, it is somewhat controversial at times, and others have different approaches to these passages. But can you resonate with the discomfort that we often feel?

Andy Naselli
Absolutely. My wife actually was a little bit unnerved that I was writing this book. When I told her I was going to write a book on predestination, she was fearful. She rejoices in the doctrine of predestination and God’s sovereignty, so she believes it all, but it was frightening to her because we have daughters. Right now they’re 14, 11, 10, and 5, and it’s a debilitating thought to imagine that one of your own children rejects Jesus. And when you talk about this, it feels like it’s outta your hands. If God chose, then what can we do about it?

Matt Tully
I think you’re right. Having kids, in particular, makes this doctrine feel all the more weighty and serious. It was theoretical to some extent, but children sort of drive it home in a way that feels, at least for me, unparalleled in thinking about it.

Andy Naselli
Yeah. I have a note here that she wrote me. She said that as she read my book that rather than predestination frightening her, she said it helped change her heart and caused her to worship and love our good God even more. And that was surprising to her. So I think when you just study everything and you correlate what the Bible says about God’s predestining work, the result should be that you come away encouraged and praising God and just humbled. And often when people talk about it, it’s the exact opposite, isn’t it? It’s they’re sinfully proud or they may be anxious or they’re not encouraged.

Matt Tully
We’ve spent a lot of our time already just talking about reprobation, the negative side of predestination, but maybe just to briefly hit on election again, when you think about it on its own terms, predestination is an incredibly encouraging, uplifting idea that God chose us. Unpack that a little bit.

Andy Naselli
If I had to define it in one concise sentence, election is that God sovereignly and graciously chose to save individual sinners. So if you compare passages that say “vessels of mercy, which God prepared beforehand for glory” versus “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,” that’s comparing election and reparation. Or in Romans 11:7, it’s the elect and the rest. In John 10 you have Jesus’s sheep and those who are not Jesus’s sheep. So election is this positive predestination for eternal life, and it’s in accord with God’s love and mercy and grace. And it has all these distinct goals that are so encouraging.

Matt Tully
The natural next question that someone might ask about all of this is, Okay, I accept this is what the Bible’s teaching. How is this fair, though? And maybe to put it even more bluntly, How is this just? How can this be what God is actually doing?

Andy Naselli
The way I would approach that is I’d take two steps. My first step would be to turn to Romans 9 and read verses 14 to 18. In that passage Paul addresses that very question, basically, Is there any injustice with God over his choosing to save some and not others?

Matt Tully
So he literally asks, Does this make God unjust?

Andy Naselli
Yeah, it’s this very question. And I’d answer this passage teaches that God is fair when he sovereignly has mercy on whomever he wants. That’s what that passage teaches. So that’d be my first step is just to work through Romans 9, And then I’d illustrate it, secondly, with a parable that Jesus told in Matthew 20. Do you remember the story about the landowner and he hires workers? He hires them at like 6:00AM—

Matt Tully
Different times of the day, and then pays them all the same.

Andy Naselli
Yeah. Those are the different times: 6:00AM, 9:00AM, noon, 3PM, and 5:00PM. At 6:00PM he then pays him in reverse order a denarius, a day’s wage. As he’s paying them a denarius, the ones who started at the beginning of the day think, Oh, we’re going to get some more.
We agreed to a denarius, but if he’s paying them a denarius, what’s he going to pay us? And you get to the end and the master says to the foreman to pay the guys who’ve worked all day the same. And they’re grumbling. They’re grumbling. And the master says to one of the grumblers, Friend, I’m doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose—I elect—to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? I know this passage isn’t about the doctrine of election per se, but it’s indirectly illustrating a principle. The principle is that God is not unfair when he’s undeservedly kind to some and not others.

Matt Tully
Because I think I would read that parable and apply it to salvation in that everyone is being saved, and some people are saved early in life and they live a godly life; others are saved on their deathbed, but we all receive the same ultimate reward, in a sense. So that’s how that would address the criticism of unfairness. But what about those who don’t get paid anything?

Andy Naselli
The principle here is does God give everyone what they deserve? And for some people, in God’s graciousness, Jesus absorbs his wrath and takes what we deserve so that the sin is paid for and we get mercy and grace. If we are all going to insist on, Hey, we want fairness! We want justice! then we all go to hell.

Matt Tully
Then that gets at the core idea here that is undergirding this doctrine, which is the conviction that we all deserve death, that we all deserve punishment. None of us are starting from this neutral spot.

Andy Naselli
Right. We are a bunch of rebels, and God, in his kindness, decided to save some. And we don’t know all the reasons he chose some and not others. He just just says, like with Israel, I loved you because I loved you, not because you were lovely. It’s not like God chooses the strongest and the prettiest and the bravest. That’s not why.

Matt Tully
The next obvious question is, How does predestination fit with free will—the idea that we can make choices that matter?

Andy Naselli
The book is divided into a bunch of chapters, and the chapter on free will, I think I spent more time on that chapter than the rest of the book combined. And I didn’t plan it that way. It’s just such a landmine philosophically and exegetically, just putting it all together. So how long do we have here?

Matt Tully
Thirty seconds.

Matt Tully
Just briefly, how would you address that with a Christian coming to you as their pastor, perhaps. Sitting down across the table with coffee and saying, I just don’t understand how this can fit with any concept of free will that has any meaning to it.

Andy Naselli
So here’s how I initially answer. Initially, I go to Romans 9 again. So earlier I said I would go to Romans 9. That was Romans 9:14–18. This time it would be Romans 9:19–23. And I would show two responses Paul has when someone objects, It’s not fair for God to blame people for doing what he ordained they would do. So it’s exactly your question. Response one in Romans 9 is surprising: “Who are you to say that it’s unfair for God to blame people?” That’s not even a philosophical answer. It’s just putting you in your place.

Matt Tully
Yeah. You don’t have standing to even ask the question.

Andy Naselli
Don’t accuse God of wrong. Put your hand over your mouth before you do that. So that’s just the first thing. I think we should be careful that we don’t sinfully accuse God of wrong. That’s first. Second, I’d say the potter, that’s God, is free to mold the clay, that’s us, however he wants. That’s what the text says. And then people will say, Well then in what sense do we have free will? Because when I do things, everything in my sense experience says I chose to do it. I’m sitting here in a chair. I chose to sit in this chair. That was my decision. You didn’t make me. I did it. So fair enough. We make genuine choices. Our choices are genuine choices, but the problem is that many of us presuppose that because our choices are genuine choices, that therefore God couldn’t have ordained those free choices.

Matt Tully
They feel like they’re mutually exclusive.

Andy Naselli
Right. And that’s where we have to press in. So some would wrongly conclude that God would be guilty of forcing us to sin. He would be unjust for condemning certain individuals for doing what he ordained they would do. So they say what God wants is not mechanical, pre-programmed, robotic outcomes, and that’s what the Calvinist view of election is, basically, they’d say.

Matt Tully
Why isn’t it that? If I took my son and grabbed his arm and made him hit his sister, and then I turned around and punished my son for doing that, I think everyone would acknowledge it wasn’t his fault. He’s not morally culpable for that act. So how is that not what is going on when it comes to God?

Andy Naselli
Several steps to take here. Step one would be the foundational truth that God and not God are two distinct categories. God, the creator, is distinct from his creation. In your analogy, , what we have is a person. Everyone in your story, they’re all creatures. So when one creature insists on getting his way, he’s a bully.

Matt Tully
He doesn’t have the right to do that.

Andy Naselli
For one to get his will, the other one doesn’t get his will. Well, that whole framework doesn’t work. A better analogy would be to say a novelist and the characters in the story. So you pick a story like C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Edmund betrays some people—I won’t give it away in case you haven’t read the book. And if you haven’t read the book, you should repent and go read it.
So is C. S. Lewis responsible for Edmund’s betrayal, or is Edmund responsible for Edmund’s betrayal? Is the author 50% responsible and the character is 50% responsible, or is it 90 /10, 75/25? And the answer is 100/100. They’re responsible fully but in different ways and in different senses. C. S. Lewis is the author of the book. He’s responsible because he ordained what Edmund freely chose to do. His responsibility is as the creator and the author of a fictional story, but Edmund’s responsibility is a moral responsibility for an evil choice as a creature, as a character in a story. Now that’s something like what we mean when you say that God—

Matt Tully
Yeah. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it kind of suggests it. Because I think that the danger with that is that Edmund is a fictional creation. He’s not real. And so there is no moral culpability that he faces. He does only in the context of this fictional story.

Andy Naselli
Everybody always says that. Whenever I give this illustration, that’s the response. And I concede with you, brother, that it’s more complicated than that. So yes, the analogy fails in that it has limitations. But it has a bigger limitation than that. And this is the one no one ever puts their finger on. So the issue is that you say humans in the real world are much greater than people in a fictional story. But I’ve never heard someone say this objection: but God is far more powerful and knowledgeable and benevolent than C. S. Lewis, the author.
In other words, God is way bigger than that. He can write not just a fictional story, but he can design the universe with complex characters who freely and responsibly choose precisely what he ordains. And if it offends you to be compared to a character in a fictional story, look at half a dozen passages in Scripture that compare you to a clay pot.

Matt Tully
Yeah, that’s helpful. That’s a good recalibration. And so this gets into this topic of compatibilism. And so you’re kind of advocating that these two things can be true at once, even though we can’t fit them together fully—the idea that God is completely sovereign and over our choices and that we are making real choices that we’re responsible for.

Andy Naselli
The next step in trying to explain free will is just that we’ve got to define our terms. And it can be scary to someone to hear compatibilism. What are we talking about? So basically, is God’s meticulous sovereignty—that he’s sovereign over everything, not just generally but specifically—is that compatible with our human freedom? If so, then you believe in compatibilism, which I do. And Calvinists typically do.

Matt Tully
Because the other approach, the approach of maybe a hyper Calvinist, would be to say, No, they’re not compatible, and that means we’re getting get rid of human freedom.

Andy Naselli
Correct.

Matt Tully
There’s no such thing as human freedom.

Andy Naselli
So there are two errors here. You can deny human freedom, or you can deny God’s meticulous sovereignty. Now what , incompatibilists do is say that God’s meticulous sovereignty is not compatible with human freedom. And then further, the incompatibilists and the compatibilists define human freedom differently. And typically, Arminians are incompatibilists. They would say that we have a free will in the sense that we can choose differently. We can equally make alternative choices in the same circumstances. And I would say, as a compatibilist, that we have a free will in the sense that we always choose what we most want. We voluntarily choose what we most want in any given circumstance as long as our choices aren’t constrained. And when it comes to choosing Christ, you can see the difference here. So an incompatibilist would say something like this: I’m just as free to choose Christ as I am free to reject Christ. As a radically depraved sinner, I’m able to choose Christ because of prevenient grace. It enables me to freely do so, if I decide. And I would say, as a compatibilist and as a Calvinist, I am unable to choose Christ until God changes my heart, because I always choose what my heart desires. And I always choose what I choose because I want what I want because I am who I am, and I am who I am because of my heart. I choose according to my nature. Just like a tomato plant can’t produce apples, I can’t choose Christ unless God changes my wanter—my nature, my heart.

Matt Tully
Maybe pressing into this particular topic, how would you respond to the concern that predestination renders the idea of this free offer of the gospel? This is something that we often say in our circles, especially when we’re talking about evangelism, that the free offer of the gospel renders it some kind of mirage. There can’t be any genuine free offer of the gospel extended to all people in a predestined kind of world.

Andy Naselli
It depends how you define the word free. What Calvinists mean by that is we indiscriminately offer the gospel to everyone, which is kind of like preaching in a cemetery, and God has to raise the dead. But we don’t know which people God’s planning to raise from the dead. So it’s not like we can be picky and choosy with whom we share this good news with. God didn’t tell us that. He just said preach it to everybody. So our job is to proclaim this gospel to everybody indiscriminately.

Matt Tully
Going back more broadly to this idea of positive predestination, namely election, maybe the Arminian types listening might say, Well, I believe in predestination. I believe in election, but it’s election based on God foreseeing our faith, seeing faith that we freely choose to have. So why isn’t that what you think is going on?

Andy Naselli
Basically, the question is, What’s the basis of God’s choosing? Did he choose on the basis of something we do? And Arminians and Calvinists agree the basis is foreknowledge. There are several passages that say explicitly that God chose based on foreknowledge, but the controversy comes with how you define foreknowledge. And the way you defined it was a specific kind of view that the Arminians hold. It’s called conditional election. They would say that foreknowing is basically God’s foreseeing; that is, his foreknowledge of what humans would freely choose. So some call this prescience or foreseen faith or simple foreknowledge. The idea is God foresaw that specific individuals, like Matt, would first freely choose to believe in Christ, and then afterwards he chose to save those individuals.

Matt Tully
He elects them.

Andy Naselli
Yeah. That’s basically the view that you propose in your question. But there’s another view which I think is more persuasive from Scripture, and that’s that foreknowing is not foreseeing but foreloving. God’s foreknowledge is his personal commitment to specific individuals. The idea is he intimately knew you, Matt, and loved specific individuals beforehand. He personally committed himself to certain individuals before they even existed.

Matt Tully
So it’s using the word knowledge or know, like we might say to another person, I know you. It doesn’t just mean I know you exist or I know you did these things. It means there’s a relational kind of element to that?

Andy Naselli
Yeah. I’ve got a list in my book somewhere of a bunch of places where that word is used in Scripture and it doesn’t refer to just knowledge. Like Adam knew his wife Eve,

Matt Tully
Yeah. We know what that means.

Andy Naselli
That’s a little different than just just knowledge.

Matt Tully
So maybe one of the most pastorally challenging and sensitive questions that can come up related to this idea of predestination and election relates to babies—babies who have passed away at a very early age, maybe even in the womb. Does the Bible help us understand how we should think about the death of babies and others who lacked the mental faculties to have faith potentially? Do we have any understanding of what would’ve happened to them?

Andy Naselli
The Bible doesn’t directly answer that difficult question anywhere, but it’s natural for us to consider it and it’s good to talk about it. The way I would proceed here is to try to say, What are the puzzle pieces in the Bible that we can assemble to start to answer that question?
So let me just put a few on the table here. One is that babies who die are sinners by nature, not sinners by choice. So the difference here is between original guilt and original sin. So original guilt means we’re guilty before God. Basically, we’re guilty before God because all humans are originally in Adam. So original sin means we inherit a sinful nature. So we don’t become sinners sometime after our conception.

Matt Tully
The first time we sin.

Andy Naselli
That’s right. We sin because we’re sinners. It’s not like early in our lives we become sinners by choice. We’re already sinners by nature. That’s why we sin. So that’s number one. Number two is that God condemns people who consciously rebel against him. So I know I’m working off of inferences here. This isn’t directly answering your question.

Matt Tully
When you say that though, that God condemns people who consciously sin against him, does that mean that the opposite is true, that God doesn’t condemn people who don’t consciously sin against them? And where do we see that in Scripture?

Andy Naselli
It would be just for God to condemn anyone who’s in Adam. That would be just.

Matt Tully
That’s right. Because we are guilty.

Andy Naselli
That’s right. But I’m looking at passages like Romans 1 that says, “The wrath of God is revealed against these ungodly men who suppressed the truth by their unrighteousness.” Those are the ones who are without excuse. And I just can’t imagine an infant in the womb being able to suppress the truth. Again, God would be just to punish anyone who has a sinful nature because they have original sin and original guilt. But I’m looking at this and there’s another passage—more than one—like 2 Corinthians 5:10 says that each one will receive what is due for what he’s done in the body. So you’re being judged for what you did. So I’m just suggesting if God condemns people who consciously rebel against him, that could imply that God does not condemn people who don’t consciously rebel against him.

Matt Tully
And there’s another passage with David where it kind of suggests perhaps that, in a more direct way, that babies might actually be saved.

Andy Naselli
That’s the story when David committed adultery with Bathsheba. He had a son, and the baby died.

Matt Tully
God punishes David.

Andy Naselli
That’s right. But what’s interesting is David’s mourning before the death and then not mourning after the death. Again, this isn’t addressing your question directly, but when David says, “I shall go to him. He won’t come to me; I will go to him,” it’s possible that he meant he’d join the son in the grave, not heaven. But I think it’s implying that God mercifully saves babies because David changes from being all mournful to being confident that he’ll see his son, and then he just responds differently when his son Absolom dies. He was a rebel, and then he did mourn. So there’s that, and then God judges some people more severely than others. Of course, no human is saved apart from Christ. You have to insist on that. But you just put all that together, and it’s my judgment—I could be wrong—my judgment is that the Bible implies that God mercifully saves babies who die. And I don’t know that with a hundred percent certainty. I think it’s almost certainly true, and I think it’s so probable that it’s pastorally responsible to comfort grieving parents with these truths. It has comforted me and my wife. We’ve lost a baby through miscarriage. We named the baby Anastasis Hope. Anastasis means resurrection. So we’re confidently expecting to see her or him. I actually don’t know. I have four daughters so I assumed it’s a girl, but maybe I have a son. But I don’t want to move on until I just say this. When I’m shepherding people through miscarriages, I’ll say basically what I just shared with you, but also I’ll add this: whatever God does in this situation is just and good, and you can trust him.

Matt Tully
What would it look like to take the doctrine of predestination too far beyond what the Bible teaches?

Andy Naselli
Oh, there are so many ways you can mess this up. If you believe it in a way that thinks you don’t need to proclaim the gospel, that’s a massive error. That’s disobeying Scripture. If you conclude it doesn’t matter how I live—I’m either in or I’m out—massive error. If you conclude that God chooses people and does not choose people—rejects people—in the same way, I think that’s an error. So it’s not like the way that God chooses people is exactly the same way he passes over people. The Bible presents those—

Matt Tully
They’re not equivalent?

Andy Naselli
It’s not like predestination is symmetrical, where some call it double predestination, but people can use double predestination in a good way too. But the idea is some think that God elects and reprobates people in the same way, symmetrically, like they’re equally active decrees. Like God sovereignly chose to work unbelief in certain unfallen individuals and condemn them. I don’t think Scripture teaches that.

Matt Tully
You think we want to hold a little distinction there.

Andy Naselli
Yeah. In reprobation, God sovereignly and justly chose to pass over non-elect sinners and withhold his regenerating grace. So the difference is if it’s a picture of a mass of humans rebelling against God—running away from God, running to hell—and God, in his mercy, saves some. That’s more like what the Bible portrays as opposed to here’s this big group of innocent people, and God says, I’m going to make you do evil things and condemn you, and I’m going to make you do good things.

Matt Tully
Isn’t that more, though, what comes out in that picture of the potter and the vessels? There doesn’t seem to be a distinction in terms of how it speaks about how God makes some for salvation and some for condemnation.

Andy Naselli
It could, if that’s the only analogy you have. I see why some people conclude that.

Matt Tully
But you’re trying to bring what the full picture is that Scripture gives us and let that inform.

Andy Naselli
So what I’m doing is looking at everything Scripture says, and that informs how I understand an analogy. So with analogies, they can be tricky. When you use an analogy, often you have one point of comparison, and you can over-exegete an analogy, and I’m trying not to over-exegete that analogy.

Matt Tully
That’s good. Letting Scripture dictate how we talk about these things is so important. Pastorally speaking, I think sometimes people who would embrace this doctrine, as you’ve laid it out, would still struggle to know how to talk about it in everyday life, whether it’s parents to their kids or pastors to their congregations or just friends. So speak to the parent right now who their kids come to them and ask them a simple question that I’m sure all parents have heard: Does God love everybody? How should they respond in light of the doctrine of predestination?

Andy Naselli
The answer is yes, God does love everyone, but not in the same way. There’s a pastor named Mark Jones whom Crossway publishes, and he has an article called “Does God Hate the Sin and Love the Sinner?” or something like that. And in there he ends it with ten different ways that we can speak this way. Some of them are like this: God hates the sin and hates the non-elect sinner, because he’ll ultimately damn that person. He doesn’t just hate their sins. And you could say God hates the sin and loves the non-elect sinner. I mean, that person is still someone God created, and he shows much grace towards that person by letting him have his food and rain and sun and air and all that. And you can go on to all these different ways to talk about it. So you can say yes, God loves everyone, but you can flatten all of the other distinctives if you use that like a bumper sticker.

Matt Tully
So the answer is just a little bit more nuanced than we often want to give it.

Andy Naselli
Yes.

Matt Tully
Another question: What should we say and how should we talk about this doctrine, this truth, in the face of maybe the death of a family member, or a good friend, who wasn’t a believer, as far as we know? They never repented, never believed. So often it can be easy to take some solace from the fact that they never chose to believe. It was their choice and they rejected God, and so that provides us some measure of I suppose comfort maybe isn’t the right word. But it feels like it gets more complicated when we start to introduce the doctrine of predestination into that.

Andy Naselli
Well, the first thing, you don’t know with a hundred percent certainty necessarily whether a person trusted Christ at the end or not, especially if it’s a family member who knew the gospel. They may have turned at the end. You don’t know. But let’s say they didn’t. Well, you have to ask, What has God revealed to us in Scripture that says here’s why reprobation exists, here’s the goal? And there are two of them, at least. One of them is subservient to the second. One is to glorify God for his wrath and his power. That’s in Romans 9:17–18. And then that leads to the ultimate goal, which is to glorify God for the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy. That’s what Scripture says right there in Romans 9:22–23. Now this can sound callous, but it’s right there in Scripture. So the idea I have is when I bought my wife a diamond ring and went to a jeweler store (I never go to jeweler stores), and he put the ring under all these bright lights and beneath it he put a black velvet cloth. And I realize now he didn’t put a white pillow underneath. He put a black cloth because the black background with the bright light on the diamond let me see that diamond in ways I wouldn’t have seen without that background. And Scripture says one of the purposes for God’s passing over some is to glorify God for the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy. So that’s what the text says now.

Matt Tully
But would you say that to someone who had just lost a family member?

Andy Naselli
Of course not in that moment. But I’m trying to make sense theologically of how this all fits. As a Christian, how do I make sense of it? That is one piece of the puzzle Scripture gives us, to say God has his reasons, and I dare not hate God for something I don’t understand. So I’m just wanting to trust God, and he’s revealed some true things about this. That’s one of them, and I need to believe it. If I don’t, I’m being disobedient.

Matt Tully
How much of that is the proper Christian response to a doctrine like this? You talked about loving predestination, and I think we can understand ways that that could happen. Even for you today, is there a sense in which we have to just choose to trust God and cling to that hope that we have that he is just, he is good, and that maybe someday in glory we will understand better and even appreciate, to a certain extent, his choices on this stuff? Is there a kind of hoping in what we see coming in the future that is going to get us through some of these difficult topics?

Andy Naselli
Absolutely. But I think it’s immature to have the attitude, when you’re talking about a difficult doctrine in Scripture, to say, Well, here’s what the Bible says. I believe it, but I don’t like it—and try to apologize for the Bible. I think that is immature at best. What’s far better is to not just concede that yes, that’s what Scripture teaches, but to love God and love the truth, even if you don’t understand everything about it, but not question God in his ways. So this is true for what God says about men and women. My mentor, DA Carson, was counseling a couple, and they said something like, Okay, we see complementarianism is what Scripture teaches, but we don’t like it. And Carson said, Good. You’re halfway there.

Matt Tully
Don’t stay there. That’s not the ideal spot to be.

Andy Naselli
So that’s why I write a book like this is to help people consider everything Scripture says about it and come to love it.

Matt Tully
Maybe as a final question, one response to this whole conversation we’ve had today and to a book like yours is that this is really just unhelpful speculation that goes beyond what the Bible clearly says. Wouldn’t it be better to leave this topic vague and mysterious, to not try to logically fit these pieces together, but to instead just sort of back away and don’t get into the weeds as deeply as we have, lest we put God in a box or overly systematize something that we just simply can’t fully understand?

Andy Naselli
That certainly can happen. You can overdo it.

Matt Tully
So that is a danger?

Andy Naselli
Oh yeah. So what I try to do in this book is say here’s what Scripture says about election and reprobation. Here’s how I think it coheres. And if I ever speculate, I say so in the book. I’ll say, This is speculation, or I’m not sure about this. And I do that rarely. And I think that’s helpful to just distinguish between God revealed this, he didn’t reveal that. An example is when I talk about free will. I end it by saying, *How is this even possible that God can be meticulously sovereign and ordain what I would freely choose to do and not be in any way responsible for the sin that he ordained I would freely choose to do? How’s that possible? And the answer is I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

Matt Tully
That’s a helpful thing to hear you say as a Calvinist. Oftentimes Calvinists are charged with trying to explain everything logically and not acknowledging that there is mystery. But it seems like you would want to say no, no, no. That’s core to what we’re doing here iis we’re holding these two truths we see in Scripture together, and we’re not always able to explain it fully.

Andy Naselli
It’s just like the death of Christ. God predestined it, and the people who murdered Jesus are responsible.

Matt Tully
We literally see that.

Andy Naselli
Acts 2 and 4.

Matt Tully
Yeah, that says that. Well, Andy, thank you so much for helping us to think about these difficult, deep topics, challenging topics that do confront us in a certain way. We appreciate it.

Andy Naselli
My pleasure.

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