Predestination versus Free Will
Foreordination, or predestination, or election (for all three words have the same meaning) was once the most frequently discussed and preached element in the Christian Gospel. Milton, reflecting the thought of his age, gives us a picture of the more serious spirits among the hosts of the fallen angels, who "apart sat on a bill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate— Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." But probably the majority in this congregation feel no interest in the doctrine as they do not think that it has any hearing upon their vital Christian faith.
Paul devotes three chapters, the ninth, tenth and eleventh in Romans, to "the purpose of God according to election." He speaks in the same letter of Christians as "the called according to His purpose," and adds "For whom He foreknew. He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son." In this letter to the Ephesians he writes, "He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself." It is, of course, possible for us to differ from St. Paul, as we do regarding his attitude towards marriage, and his conception of the subordinate position of woman. But before we throw aside this religious teaching of his, we must make sure that we understand it, and that it is really at variance with the mind of Christ.
The whole course of history, both in its physical and moral aspects, is assumed to take place in accordance with the eternal decrees or purposes of God. The crucial problem is regarding man's ability to secure his own salvation. Theological determinists maintain that God has "elected some to everlasting life," and that such election, as an act of free grace, is the necessary condition of salvation. Thus Jonathan Edwards, in summing up his defense of Calvinism against the Arminians, claims: "If we put these things together, it will follow that God's assistance or influence must be determining and decisive, or must be attended with a moral necessity of the event; and so that God gives virtue, holiness, and conversion to sinners, by an influence which determines the effect in such a manner that the effect will infallibly follow by a moral necessity, which is what Calvinists mean by efficacious and irresistible grace."
Before the 5th century, little attention was paid to the dogmatic question of grace and its effects. It had merely been occasionally hinted at by the fathers of the Greek church. Pelagius, a native of Britain, having used some free expressions, which seemed lo attribute too little to the assistance of divine grace in the renovation of the heart of man, and too much to his own ability to do good, Augustine undertook an accurate investigation of this doctrine, with a zeal congenial to his ardent nature. He said that "man is by nature corrupt, and incapable of any good, and absolutely unable to do any thing for his own renovation; that, as he cannot even will that which is good, every thing must be effected by the internal operation of grace upon the heart." Hence, to be consistent with himself, he came to the opinion, which has since been so much discussed, that God, of his own free will, has foreordained some to eternal felicity, and others to irrevocable and eternal misery; that, in consequence of this decision, all children that die unhaptized, and even those among the baptized, not ordained to eternal life before they die, although they have committed no actual sin, are condemned without hope of deliverance; but that no one on earth knows who, of professed Christians, have been elected or who have been reprobated, and every one ought to give himself up to the inscrutable will of God.
From this view of Augustine, and the construction put upon a few passages of Scripture, originated the ecclesiastical dogma concerning predestination, which, among teachers of religion in the church, from the 5th century to the times of the reformation, and subsequently, has been a subject of warm discussion. The majority of those who called themselves Catholic or Orthodox, coincided with Augustine, and, with him, pronounced the Pelagians heretics, without accurately examining how far his opinion was founded on the Scriptures, which he himself was unable to read in the original. But even learned men, of later times, who excelled him in this respect, have been captivated by his philosophical aeuteness, and his great adroitness at interpreting passages so as to support his opinion, by the force of his reasoning, and his overpowerine eloquence.
Subsequently, the singular spectacle of a gradual change of sides was exhibited. On account of the increasing ignorance of the clergy, the doctrines of Augustine, concerning an unconditional and particular election, fell into oblivion, notwithstanding the reverence paid that saint; and therefore it was not difficult for the scholastic theology of the middle ages so to pervert him, that he should appear easily reconciled to the Pelagians. The view's of saint Thomas Aquinas might, at the least, be called semi-Pelagian. This appears from the quarrels of the Dominicans and Jesuits, the latter of whom, on account of dieir moderate views of the doctrine of election and the power of free will, were charged by the former with Pelagianism.
Calvin and Beza, and the great body of Calvinists, returned to the fundamental principles of Augustine, and made 8n unconditional divine predestination for the salvation of some men, and the damnation of others, an essential part of the creed of the reformed church. The Lutherans, in the mean time, approximated to the Catholics with respect to this doctrine. The evangelical Lutherans, in their form of concord, admitted that God bad ordained all men to eternal felicity, but knew beforehand who of them would render themselves unworthy of it, and, consequently, that election concerned only realIv good men, and would be the cause of tiieir salvation. In the mean time, however, die Catholics had not come to an agreement concerning this dogma.
In the 17th century, also, two new parties, which had their origin in die dispute concerning the doctrine of predestination, sprung up in the Nedierlands, namely, the Arminians, or Remonstrants, among the Protestants, and the Jansenists among the Catholics. The former held to a universal and conditional divine predestination for the salvation of all men, in opposition to the strict Calvinistic party, from whom they formally separated themselves. The latter, in consequence of the revival of the Augustinian system of doctrines by bishop Jansen, in a dispute with the Catholic church, which was then under the influence of moderate Jesuits, adopted the idea of a twofold and absolute divine predestination for the salvation and damnation of men.
From that time, the members of the Christian church have continued to differ upon this subject.
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