The Meaning of "Random"

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My, what a complicated spiritual world you inhabit.

Jesus left the disciples just a few days before, with promises to be with them to the end of the earth. Thay make a simple request of him - the first we have recorded, and of some importance - and although he is able to give a straightforward answer, perhaps he chooses (apparently against all their experience of meeting their requests whilst he was on earth) to toss a coin in heaven.

Yes, this is indeed possible. And it gives a whole new dimension to answered prayer.“If you ask for a fish, will he give you a serpent? No, he may just trust to luck.” Call me a fundamentalist, but I don’t buy it.

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I’ll call you a Calvinist heralding one side of a paradox.

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And the paradox in the context of the apostles casting lots and praying for God’s decision based on his knowing the hearts of men is what, exactly?

It was Wesley the Arminian who cast a lot to decide the doctrine of predestination, and the Calvinist Whitefield who criticised him for it.

Are we back to the old BioLogos decisions on evolutionary theory being based on not being Reformed?? Let me tell you, a majority in my church are Arminians, and if I asked ANY of them if God answers faithful prayer by random reply, I’d be off the eldership in a hurry.

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64

What’s with the condescension? I haven’t told you anything about the spiritual world I inhabit except that it doesn’t include dismissing ideas as absurd as readily as yours does.

Right – because Jesus always answered the disciples in the way they expected when he was on earth. Maybe Jesus really didn’t care which one they picked. Maybe being with them to the end of the earth wasn’t supposed to mean micromanaging. Maybe the author of Acts crafted this narrative to make a theological point of his own and it isn’t a verbatim account of what actually happened.

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Maybe. And if so, his theological point was apprently false - or if as is more likely he had access to one of the 120 who were there, both their interpretation of the Lord’s guidance, and the recording of their testimony by the canonical author, is trumped by some other principle from who knows what authoritative source, that choosing an apostle is “micromanagement,” and Jesus doesn’t do that.

Tell me why I should believe that version over the Evangelist’s account?

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Or maybe none of us – you, me, the disciples, the evangelist – are in a position to state categorically what God would, could, or did do in choosing a replacement for Judas. We’re all trying to understand even as we walk by faith, we’re all seeing in a glass darkly, and maybe we should all display a little humility every now and then. That is my only real point, and that is part of my spiritual world – feel free to mock it as you like.

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Of course not. I’m just having some fun.

Though in context it seems God did not pick either of the two that the apostles offered. He picked Paul in a totally “random” event of appearing to him on road.

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I wondered if that would come up, as it’s an argument a Brethren friend of mine used to use: it depends on saying that before the Holy Spirit came, the disciples were all at sea, and failed to realise Paul was in the pipeline.

But (getting past the humility of not believing sacred Scripture:grinning:) Luke has no hint of that - the scene he’s presenting is of the people - friends even - who’d witnessed, and been taught by, the risen Christ patiently awaiting their empowerment for his service.

Matthias was one of the (numerologically significant) twelve apostles to the Jews - Paul was chosen as the apostle to the Gentiles, and was not one of the Twelve (1 Cor 15:5; Acts 6:2).

Look at it this way - if Luke didn’t simply feel free to make up both events and theology, but sought to draw up a reliable account as Luke 1 says, he interviewed someone who was around after the resurrection to see what significant events he should record - and was given the story of 120 in the upper room in constant prayer, the calling of Matthias, and then the Pentecost account and its sequelae. If the calling of Matthias through lots and prayer had been a mistake, he would either have been told so as an object lesson, or it would have been forgotten or suppressed - and certainly not written under the banner of “How the ascended Jesus started his Church.”

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Im not following your logic, @jongarvey. If they prayed over the process… and then threw dice or flipped a coin… its all the same, isnt it?

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Which it seems is exactly the case!

It does seem to be a striking contrast in Acts. One appears to be the disciples best effort, and the other an act of God with far more significance.

Calling Matthias an error is going to far. Instead he was just irrelevant. They were worried about the numerology of making sure all twelve tribes were covered. God was concerned about ensuring the one blood of all mankind was covered. The story of Matthais serves to underscore that Paul was part of God’s work (not man’s wisdom) to bring the Gospel to all people. The disciples made there best effort, but it was small minded and ultimately irrelevant, even if it wasn’t an error. God has other plans.

Ironically for this discussion, his plan is correctly described, at least in vernacular, as “random”, Black swan “random”, non ergodic “random”, unpredictable “random”. His calling of Paul was far more uncontrollable than the cast of the lots which could not even in principle have picked Paul. His calling was a random event, a random contingency.

With all this randomness, how could anyone have a theological problem with the word “random”? Clearly God governed this randomness.

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@jongarvey,

What are we discussing here? If the disciples throw lots… it isnt a random result for God.

What exactly is in dispute?

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Another interesting example in the Bible:

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I already explained:

And also suffering PTSD from too many years with Biologos. I expect he will eventually recover, won’t you @jongarvey?

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@T_aquaticus

We all agree that Paul knee the cause.

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The argument seems to be one from silence - that Matthias is not mentioned again. He doesn’t appear by name in Acts again - but neither do nearly all the other apostles.

However, Paul does refer to “the Twelve” again, excluding himself, and so does Luke, referring to the apostles in Jerusalem. This, of course, is consistent with Jesus’ teaching the Twelve that they would judge the twelve tribes.

Matthias is, however, named in tradition, like the other apostles, which at the very least tells us that the early church didn’t interpret Acts in terms of “Paul, the proper replacement for Judas.”

However, it’s one possible interpretation - the issue is not the word “random,” which nobody in the history of the Church has used of the selection either of Matthias or of Paul, but the question of whether God makes decisions which are, to him, random.

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Your wording is actually not exact enough to delineate the problem: “it isnt a random result for God” might mean that God decided the outcome, so that from his point of view it wasn’t random, or that God wasn’t involved in the matter at all, so it was just a matter of human luck that Matthias got the job, and they screwed up properly.

To me, the first meaning is as plain as day. I started from the legitimate OT practice of casting lots (urim and thummin), and Proverbs 16:33 stating that though the result is random to the caster, every time the result is “from the Lord”.

The disciples followed that practice, following Peter’s sober suggestion, accompanied by prayer to the newly-ascended Jesus for a decision based on his knowledge of human hearts, and I argued that it follows that God determined the outcome of the lot in accordance with his purposes for the church, and in response to the simple entreaty of his church.

Glipsnort replied that that doesn’t follow - that neither we, not Luke, nor the disciples in the upper room, should presume that God would determine the outcome. God might well might simply have made his own random decision too.

In fact, he suggested, Luke might have made up the whole episode to make a theological point - presumably either a mistaken one that God did determine the lot according to his wisdom, or a more complicated one that disciples in upper rooms ought not to replace apostles by prayer, but should wait to be surprised by Saul on the Damascus road. Either way it would be the Bible lying for Jesus.

So the main dispute was, did God choose Matthias in response to the prayer and lots, or did he not care who got chosen, leave it to “ontological chance”, and not tell the disciples their prayer was misguided?

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Not if BioLogos theology simply migrates here.

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BioLogos will always be welcome here as one voice among many.

As for me, I am not an open theist, nor am I a process theologian. I affirm God’s providence. Though I am not really a Calvinist, or an Arminian. In this sense, I am more Lutheran.

As for you, you are welcome here too. You are, honestly, in the inner circle, despite our back and forth.

That isn’t so bad, right?

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Yes - interesting in that the sailors were pagans rather than Jewish priests, and they still got the right answer when they cast lots.

Which shows either that belief in the divine direction of lots was widespread and justified in the ANE, or (if you take the view that Jonah is a novelistic theological work rather than a historical account) that the belief was firmly entrenched in Israel’s theology.

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That I am not convinced of, except I’m not sure why God would care which one of the two it was. Matthias ends up seeming irrelevant. Though who knows what God really wanted. He doesn’t actually tell us on this in Scripture.