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Allen asked:

Is the Christian Doctrine of Predestination still part of Christian belief today? How do you reconcile
this doctrine with the exercise of Free Will? Are there different doctrines of Predestination? If so, what
are the differences?

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It is a bit sweeping to say, "the Christian doctrine" of predestination. It is a Latinate doctrine if
anything (rather than Greek), and a Protestant (North European rather than Mediterranean) one at
that. You need a historical sense to grasp the meaning of predestination and the differences in
understanding of it, since these are not basically analytic, but soteriological (belonging to the theory of
salvation).

The Catholic Catechism (1995) doesn't list predestination in its detailed topical index, although
masturbation is listed and there is a whole page about it. Times have changed obviously. The
Magisterium is more concerned with masturbation than predestination.

Predestination is in the Old Testament, in the so-called "inter-testamental literature" especially and in
particular found in the Wisdom of Solomon and the Books of Esdra and various other passages under
the heading of Divine Providence. This latter is normally understood as co-operative (synergic) with
human free-will, whereas, predestination is usually associated with the notion of divine
foreknowledge. Are these two in contradiction you may well ask?

There are two ways that Christian philosophy thinks about the patterns of history. They are not
mutually exclusive but complimentary, although at various points of human discourse one way has
been over-emphasised at the expense of the other. The two ways are 'from above' (the God's eye
view of history) and 'from below' (the mortal view). The former view is quathe whole, or the unity of all
— the One — and the other is quaexistence here. The predestinarian view was over-emphasised by
Augustine in the 5th century in his dispute with Pelagius and even more famously in The City of God,
his masterpiece. The Council of Orange in 529 anathematised predestination to evil, which
Augustinians were preaching. In the Eastern churches Origen had taught (since the third century) that
eventually all would be saved. Although not strictly orthodox, the idea of the apocatastasis as it is
called, is a Christian hope, but contrary to Augustinian soteriology.

It was Calvin (and Calvinism in his wake) in The Institutes of the Christian Religion(1559) who
explicitly taught predestination. "No one who wishes to be thought religious dares outright to deny
predestination, by which God chooses some for the hope of life, and condemns others to eternal
death." (III.xxi). The Baptist Confession of Faith (1646) speaks of the "just condemnation" of the
damned (article III) and of "salvation for the elect" (article XXIII). The Catholic Council of Trent,
(1545-63), while not mincing words about Original Sin, affirmed that "Man can be justified before God,
by his own works" (Session VI Jan. 1547). Historically, predestination has never really been a
Catholic or Orthodox teaching. It is Protestant.

Anglicans wobbled. Predestination, according to William Beveridge's authoritative interpretation the
Thirty Nine Articles(in 1704), said God's predestination (a nod to Protestantism) concerned "the
mystery of mysteries" (a nod to Catholicism) "which must needs be infinitely above man's
apprehension" (On Article XVII 'Of Predestination and Election'). The differences in the doctrine of
predestination are denominational.

Matthew Del Nevo
http://www.sicetnon.com