Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist, professor of political science, and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. Like many climate scientists, she thinks human activity is causing dangerously rapid global warming and that we ought to take expensive steps to stop it. She also identifies as an evangelical, and that’s why mainstream media give her so much attention—Time magazine having named her one of the 100 most influential people of 2014.

When some evangelicals, scientific laymen like myself, disagree with her stance on climate change, she appeals in part to her scientific credentials. Fair enough, except that there are plenty of evangelical climate scientists with equal or better credentials and experience who also disagree with her—like Roy Spencer, David Legates, Neil Frank, Anthony Lupo, John Christy, Charles Clough, and Anthony Sadar, to name just a few.

Yesterday, though, Dr. Hayhoe ventured into different territory, in which she has no credentials: theology. Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), to be precise. The doctrine of predestination, to be a little more precise. An intellectual minefield if ever there was one. Here’s what she Tweeted:

There is indeed a stream of Biblical interpretation that holds that predestination applies only to nations, not to individuals. But it’s difficult to reconcile that claim with the actual use of the word predestine (the Greek proorizo) in the New Testament. It appears in five verses:

• Acts 4:28, where Peter, in prayer to God, says that when Herod, Pontius Pilate, and various Jews and Gentiles put Jesus to death, they did “whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” There, what was predestined was a particular event: the crucifixion of Jesus. But it’s also pretty clear that God predestined those who crucified Jesus to do that. (Peter made a similar point, though not using the word predestine, in Acts 2:22–23, when he said to the crowd in Jerusalem, “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”)
• Romans 8:29–30, where Paul wrote, “… those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” In the context, this clearly applies to individual believers, not to nations, whether Jews or Gentiles.
• Ephesians 1:3 and 11, which make best sense when accompanied by the intervening verses: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will ….” This context, too, clearly has individuals, not nations, in mind.

So the idea that the Bible speaks of predestination only with regard to nations, not to individuals, runs up against the actual usage of the word in the New Testament.

Dr. Hayhoe not only misunderstands the Biblical use of the term predestine, but also misunderstands the theology of those who affirm individual predestination. She says they deny human free will.

Why does Hayhoe assert a link between what she calls “climate dismissives” and “predestinarians”? Apparently because she thinks the predestinarians would infer, from their belief in predestination, that people don’t have free wills and therefore aren’t accountable, responsible, for what they do to the environment. I suspect she would have a difficult time finding any evangelical skeptics of her climate alarmism who reason that way. I certainly don’t know of any. It seems it’s just her straw-man argument, a caricature that she wouldn’t be able to sustain by quotations from those she has in mind.

Now, in the history of theology there has been tremendous controversy over the meaning of free will, whether humans actually have it, and the implications of their having it or not having it, and various theologians have held various views. What none of them has held, though, is that our choices aren’t voluntary and consequently we aren’t responsible for them. Some, like Martin Luther in his book The Bondage of the Will, have argued that the human will, because of our sinful nature inherited from Adam, is in bondage to sin (Romans 6:17–18: “… thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”) so that we cannot, in and of ourselves, please God. Some, like John Calvin, Charles Hodge, and Gordon H. Clark (e.g., in his book God and Evil: The Problem Solved), have held that people are free agents even though, because of their sinful natures, they don’t have free wills, precisely because their wills are enslaved by their sinful natures. (The distinction is rather refined. I’ve discussed it in my book Evangelical Heathenism? Examining Contemporary Revivalism, which is out of print, but if you want a copy, email me at Calvin@CornwallAlliance.org and I can tell you how to get one.) But when these theologians say people’s wills are bound, they mean they are bound by their own sinful natures—not by some external force. Their decisions are their own, and they are responsible for them.

Whatever Dr. Hayhoe meant by her Tweet, it certainly is not the case that evangelical climate skeptics like myself are skeptical because we deny human accountability for our choices. We don’t.