Q: Doesn’t the doctrine of predestination raise questions about God’s goodness?

On the cognitive aspect of the eschatological limit

Thinking about the intersections and dissonances between popular religion, classical theism, and biblical dogma, I decided to revisit and finally finish a catechism I began writing a decade ago. Thanks to a long vacation called cancer I never completed it. My plan is to rework what I had written, as God has made me otherwise than who I was back then, and to write new entries for the questions that I left unaddressed.

There is a long tradition in the historic church, especially in the Reformation, of distilling the faith down into concise questions and answers with brief supporting scriptures. As Luther intended his own Small Catechism, the Q/A's of a catechism are, really, the pretense for a longer dialogue, in Luther’s case a conversation between parents and their children. Given the post-Christian world in which we will live, I think it's important to outline the faith such that people can see— and learn— the philosophical foundation beneath it. It's important for people, in and out of the faith, to see that ours is a faith which isn't afraid of doubt even as it takes the reasons for doubt with moral seriousness. Ours is a faith that has ancient answers for modern questions, a faith that will always rely upon God's self-revelation but it is not irrational for all truth is God's truth. In other words, ours is a faith with the resources to tame the cynicism of a post-Christian culture.

You can see my last entry:

Q: Does the One-Way Love of God Necessarily Entail Predestination? A: Sorry, yes

20. Doesn’t the doctrine of predestination raise questions about God’s goodness?

Yes.

Within any theology enlivened by the Reformation, a doctrine of predestination is merely the article of justification rendered in the active voice, with respect to God.

Faith clings to the God who promises to save sinners apart from human earning or deserving. Therefore, predestination is a Christocentric doctrine; that is, whatever the triune God might have planned or is yet planning for the destiny of his creatures, those plans are already disclosed fully in the glad tidings of the gospel. What the Lord predestines for his creatures, then, is Jesus Christ. The certainty of salvation, which the doctrine of predestination has always intended to reckon to anxious consciences, is found neither in human works nor in singular signs but in faith that the Lord of the covenant keeps his promises.

If we are to speak of God at all, we thereby speak of some sort of predestination.

Indeed when we speak to God in prayer, petitioning the Lord to act on our behalf, we do nothing less than acknowledge that nothing happens outside the will of God.