Various views on Christian predestination
There is a resounding consistency in the early church fathers regarding the freedom of human choices. This polemic was crucial in the Christian confrontation with
Cynicism and some of the chief forms of
Gnosticism, such as
Manichaeism, which taught that man is by nature flawed and therefore not responsible for evil in himself or in the world. At the same time, belief in a sovereign and predestinating God was held without clear attempt to reconcile these ideas with one another. That this was an uneasy tension eventually became obvious with the confrontation between
Augustine of Hippo and
Pelagius culminating in condemnation of Pelagianism (as interpreted by Augustine) in
417. The British monk
Pelagius denied Augustine's view of "predestination" in order to affirm that salvation is achieved by an act of free will.
Leading to this controversy, Augustine's own early writings clearly affirmed that God's predestinating grace was granted on the basis of his foreknowledge of the human desire to pursue salvation. After 396, however, his understanding began to turn increasingly toward the necessity of God granting this grace in order for the desire for salvation to be awakened. Thus his thoughts took a more determinist direction, especially as Augustine wrestled with the implications of the writings of the
Apostle Paul.
One of Augustine's motivating concerns was the question of truth, and his solution to the problem of salvation was not to deny that man has freedom to choose, but to assert that on account of
Original Sin, human free choice is necessarily subject to error and enslaved to sin (
liberum arbitrium captivatum). The individual does not lack knowledge of what God's will is and knows it to be good, but is deprived of the ability to
desire to do God's will, and subsequently freely chooses what is desired, which is
sin. The grace of God cures this disease, which has as its main symptom the absence of any desire to be cured, setting the person free to choose God's will (
liberum arbitrium liberatum). God's grace acts first on the human heart, to awaken the desire to do His will, and cooperates with the individual in a process of granting prayers for the greater desire and ability to choose His will and to do it, according to Augustine's later thought on the issues.
Augustine's formulation is neither complete nor universally accepted by Christians. In a real sense, all ideas of predestination are further developments of this same struggle to reconcile the idea of free will with the idea of predestinating grace, both of which are affirmed in Scripture and throughout Christian tradition. Especially in Western Christianity, the history of this development is traced through Augustine.
[edit] Conditional predestination
Conditional Predestination, or more commonly referred to as
conditional election, is a theological stance stemming from the writings and teachings of
Jacobus Arminius, after whom
Arminianism is named. Arminius studied under the staunch Reformed scholar
Theodore Beza, whose views of
election, Arminius eventually argued, could not reconcile
freedom with
moral responsibility.
Arminius used a philosophy called
Molinism (named for the philosopher,
Luis de Molina) that attempted to reconcile freedom with God's
omniscience. They both saw human freedom in terms of the
Libertarian philosophy: man's choice is not decided by God's choice, thus God's choice is "conditional", depending on what man chooses. Arminius saw God "looking down the corridors of time" to see the free choices of man, and choosing those who will respond in faith and love to God's love and promises, revealed in
Jesus.
Arminianism sees the choice of Christ as an impossibility, apart from God's grace; and the freedom to choose is given to all, because God's
prevenient grace is universal (given to everyone). Therefore, God predestines on the basis of foreknowledge of how some will respond to his universal love ("conditional"). In contrast,
Calvinism views universal grace as resistible and not sufficient for leading to salvation--or denies universal grace altogether--and instead supposes grace that leads to salvation to be particular and
irresistible, given to some but not to others on the basis of God's predestinating choice ("unconditional"). This is also known as "double-predestination."
[edit] Temporal predestination
Temporal predestination is the view that God only determines temporal matters, and not eternal ones. This Christian view is analogous to the traditional Jewish view, which distinguishes between
preordination and
predestination. Temporal matters are pre-ordained by God, but eternal matters, being supra-temporal, are subject to absolute freedom of choice.
J. Kenneth Grider
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