Concept

Predestination

Overview

Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free will. In this usage, predestination can be regarded as a form of religious determinism; and usually predeterminism, also known as theological determinism.

Predestination has been a topic of debate throughout Jewish and Christian history. In pre-Christian texts like the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, some writings suggest a mix of determinism and free will, while authors like Ben Sira affirm human choice. Scholars debate New Testament passages such as Romans 8–11, with interpretations ranging from predestination being corporate or service-based, to God choosing some individuals for salvation while leaving others to reprobation. Jewish groups like the Essenes may have believed in predestination, but there were complex differences among sects.

In the early Christian centuries, the Patristic period saw varied views on predestination. Origen tied predestination to foreknowledge of individual merits, while others, like the Thomasines and Valentinus, developed systems of election or salvation according to one's innate spiritual nature. Augustine of Hippo later emphasized that salvation results from God's grace rather than human merit, sparking debates over double predestination. Subsequent thinkers, including John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ockham, further explored how God's providence, foreknowledge, and human freedom interact, with medieval and Reformation theologians like Gottschalk, Calvin, and Zwingli developing influential predestination doctrines, including double predestination.

Different Christian branches interpret predestination differently. Eastern Orthodoxy emphasizes the synergy of human effort and divine grace, while Roman Catholicism teaches that God predestines in harmony with human response and rejects predestining anyone to sin. Protestant traditions vary: Lutheranism affirms unconditional election to salvation but denies predestination to damnation, Calvinism teaches double predestination, and Arminianism links election to foreseen human faith. The LDS Church rejects predestination but teaches foreordination, emphasizing moral agency. Other variations, like corporate election, focus on God choosing groups or the church collectively rather than individuals.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Predestination is discussed.

For neither does this happen otherwise than by divine help, according to the prophet Jeremias (Lam. 5:21): "convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted." Yet predestination has in this way, in regard to its effect, the goodness of God for its reason; towards which the whole effect of predestination is directed as to an end; and from which it proceeds, as from its first moving principle.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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When, therefore, God said to that first man whom he had placed in Paradise, referring to the forbidden fruit, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,"[588] that threatening included not only the first part of the first death, by which the soul is deprived of God; nor only the subsequent part of the first death, by which the body is deprived of the soul; nor only the whole first death itself, by…
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
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There is destination to good and destination to evil; and as evil is moral or physical, theologians of all parties agree that there is no destination to moral evil, that is to say, that none is destined to sin. As for the greatest physical evil, which is damnation, one can distinguish between destination and predestination: for predestination appears to contain within itself an absolute destination, which is…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
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It also happened, after the establishment of Christianity and of Islamism, that this dogma, received by both cults in all its extent and in all its literal obscurity, has necessarily drawn with it predestination, which is, in other words, only the fatality of the ancients. Mohammed, more enthusiast than learned, and stronger in imagination than in reasoning, has not hesitated a moment, admitting it as an inevitable…
Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, The golden verses of Pythagoras
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And this whole controversy concerning the predestination of God, and the free-will of man, is not peculiar to Christian men.
Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04
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Predestination

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Predestination

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