Secular view of Predestination

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ColdSilverMoon

Puritan Board Senior
Here is a segment from my favorite fiction novel, Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin. Helprin is a secular Jew, though he has an obvious belief in God. Here is his view of predestination, which is a recurring theme in his novels and short stories. I'd love to here opinions on it:

"Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of the great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.

"And yet there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to rise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend at one glance the enormous and detailed canvas we have been given-so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can easily be overcome; not by chasing light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is-and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished, and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but as something that is."
 
CSM,
He was raised in a Jewish home and probably had some exposure to OT. scriptural teaching as well as parental instruction. Having cast off most of this teaching he is still writing about the light of nature that God has given to all men;
1The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

2Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

3There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.

4Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
His lack of knowledge of the true and living God as the sovereign comes out in these statements;
If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined
Rather to acknowledge God he holds out for the false philosphical idea of free will. As if this would allow him to be free of his corrupt nature.
Maybe you can drop him a line, and offer up Isa 46, for him to consider:think:
 
He appears to replace the omniscient Sovereign with what appears to be dumb luck. He seems to assert that everything goes as it should because everything goes, and because of that, everything is as it should be. His idea of Presdestination is effectively emasculated because of the lack of theistic presence in his description. Nothing can be predetermined because there is no one there to determine it. Only things may be determined presently, by the "Free Will", again in a bid to usurp the Sovereign with mancentric domination.

Or maybe I'm wrong. :p
 
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