Predestination
[3] Ben Sira affirms free will, where God allows a choice of bad or good before the human and thus they can choose which one to follow.
[6] Francis Watson has also argued on the basis of 4 Ezra, a document dated to the first century AD, that Jewish beliefs in predestination are primarily concerned with God's choice to save some individual Jews.
The Catholic biblical commentator Brendan Byrne wrote that the predestination mentioned in this passage should be interpreted as applied to the Christian community corporately rather than individuals.
[16][17] Some verses in the Odes of Solomon, which was made by an Essene convert into Christianity, might possibly suggest a predestinarian worldview, where God chooses who are saved and go into heaven, although there is controversy about what it teaches.
[20] Valentinus believed in a form of predestination, in his view humans are born into one of three natures, depending on which elements prevail in the person.
[26] Scholars are divided over whether Augustine's teaching implies double predestination, or the belief that God chooses some people for damnation as well as some for salvation.
Pelagius denied Augustine's view of predestination in order to affirm that salvation is achieved by an act of free will.
[35] Augustine stated, "And thus Christ's Church has never failed to hold the faith of this predestination, which is now being defended with new solicitude against these modern heretics.
[39] In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas taught that God predestines certain people to the beatific vision based solely on his own goodness rather than that of creatures.
[42] In the thirteenth century, William of Ockham taught that God does not cause human choices and equated predestination with divine foreknowledge.
[56] The Eastern Orthodox view was summarized by Bishop Theophan the Recluse in response to the question, "What is the relationship between the Divine provision and our free will?"
[citation needed] According to the Roman Catholic Church, God does not will anyone to mortally sin and so to deserve punishment in hell.
[59] Pope John Paul II wrote:[60] The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church.
It enables each person to attain salvation through his or her free cooperation.Augustine of Hippo laid the foundation for much of the later Roman Catholic teaching on predestination.
II) Thomas Aquinas' views concerning predestination are largely in agreement with Augustine and can be summarized by many of his writings in his Summa Theologiæ: God does reprobate some.
The Belgic Confession of 1561 affirmed that God "delivers and preserves" from perdition "all whom he, in his eternal and unchangeable council, of mere goodness hath elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, without respect to their works" (Article XVI).
In this common, loose sense of the term, to affirm or to deny predestination has particular reference to the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election.
Calvinists do not pretend to understand how this works; but they are insistent that the Scriptures teach both the sovereign control of God and the responsibility and freedom of human decisions.
In spite of the division, many Calvinist theologians would consider the debate surrounding the infra- and supralapsarian positions one in which scant Scriptural evidence can be mustered in either direction, and that, at any rate, has little effect on the overall doctrine.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius formulated Arminianism and disagreed with Calvin in particular on election and predestination.
[70] This mode of providence affirms the compatibility between human free will and divine foreknowledge, but its incompatibility with theological determinism.
Foreordination, an important doctrine of the LDS Church,[75][76] teaches that during the pre-mortal existence, God selected ("foreordained") particular people to fulfill certain missions ("callings") during their mortal lives.
The LDS Church teaches the doctrine of moral agency, the ability to choose and act for oneself, and decide whether to accept Christ's atonement.
[81] Supralapsarianism is the doctrine that God's decree of predestination for salvation and reprobation logically precedes his preordination of the human race's fall into sin.
During the Protestant Reformation John Calvin held this double predestinarian view:[82][83] "By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.
[85] Some trace this doctrine to statements made by Augustine in the early fifth century that on their own also seem to teach double predestination, but in the context of his other writings it is not clear whether he held this view.
[citation needed] Middle knowledge is a concept that was developed by Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, and exists under a doctrine called Molinism.
It attempts to deal with the topic of predestination by reconciling God's sovereign providence with the notion of libertarian free will.
Thus, Middle Knowledge holds that before the world was created, God knew what every existing creature capable of libertarian freedom (e.g. every individual human) would freely choose to do in all possible circumstances.
In this way, Middle Knowledge is thought of by its proponents to be consistent with any theological doctrines that assert God as having divine providence and man having a libertarian freedom (e.g. Calvinism, Catholicism, Lutheranism), and to offer a potential solution to the concerns that God's providence somehow nullifies man from having true liberty in his choices.
