Reprobate

So my Muslim friend at work and I start having a conversation today.  It starts because he has a question regarding the term "reprobate."  He wants to know what that means in Christian theology.

I tell him that it means "foreordained to damnation."  Of course, I follow up by clarifying that the real question is WHO foreordains a reprobate person to hell.  Since I am not a hyper-calvinist I want to be clear with him that I don't think its God.

I tell him that we foreordain ourselves in light of the natural state of sin in which we come into this world.  I explained that we are all actively at odds with God, giving him the bird so to speak, in one way or another...from paganism to athieism.  Thus, I said, we are destined by who were are in our hearts for the pit of fire.

He jumped in to ask how that can be since we have free will.  I tried to use my ice cream illustration (actually Greg Koukl's illustration) about the interaction of our nature and our free-will.  In summary, our will can only act in accordance with our nature.  I told my friend that we will never freely choose God as long as our nature is set against him, in the same way a person who loves vanilla and hates chocolate will never choose chocolate if the choice is laid before them.

My friend didn't like the idea that we don't have libertarian free will.  I tried then to steer the conversation towards the idea that God is incredibly merciful to rescue any of us from ourselves given that all rebel aganist him and deserve eternal death.  My friend agreed with me and said that he could see how that was merciful indeed.

Then, he changed the subject and pondered why God wouldn't just create a world in which everyone was saved...why does anyone have to go to hell.  I told him that I didn't know the answer to that one.  God certainly COULD have done that - yet, he chose not to.  I don't know why, but I trust him in the way that a child must trust a parent even if they don't understand.

I did formulate one guess to that question.  I said that it could be argued from Scripture that God is both love and wrath.,,he is both merciful and righteous.  In that case he may have chosen to create this world because it is the best way to display both aspects of his character.

In any case, I suggested that we needed to throw away our modern and conventional ideas about "free-will" and "God is love" because the Bible doesn't explain those things the same way that our culture does.

At this point my friend had to head back to his task and we didn't get to talk anymore.  Bummer.  I used to get to interact with folks at work more often about these important topics.  My newest projects have largely kept me from those conversations.  Maybe opportunities will reopen soon.