Predestination

Predestination is an ancient and difficult question. Has God decided in advance who would be saved? Or are human beings free to respond to God? This debate matters, because what we believe influences the way we live, our relationship with God and our understanding of salvation. This lesson presents three main positions, then the texts that each one highlights.

Three positions

1. God controls everything

For this first position, God directs everything that happens and will happen. He has fixed his plans from eternity. Whatever we do, we will live what God has already decided.

It is therefore impossible to go against the divine will. Even those who reject God do so because God willed it. Those he has chosen, the elect, are predestined to salvation. In its strictest form, called “double predestination”, the others are predestined to perdition. This position is generally that of the Calvinists, heirs of the Reformer John Calvin.

2. Human beings are free

The second position affirms that God does not exercise rigid control over the universe. By creating beings capable of choosing, he has entrusted them with a measure of real freedom. God acts by influencing, not by compelling.

We are free to accept or refuse salvation. It is even possible to accept it for a time, then to reject it or lose it. This position is criticised for placing the human will above the sovereignty of God.

It is generally associated with the Arminians, named after the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius. It should be made clear, however, that classical Arminianism affirms that God knows the whole future in advance. The idea of a future that is still open, which God would not fully know, corresponds rather to a more recent position called “open theism”.

3. An intermediate position

The third position seeks a balance. God governs humanity by means of his foreknowledge. He forces no one, but he has always known what each person will do, and what persuasion will be needed to lead them, or not, to make a given choice. God was free to create these free creatures or not, knowing what would happen in every possible world. Human beings remain free to accept or refuse salvation. This approach is often called Molinism, after the Jesuit Luis de Molina.

Texts that emphasise God’s choice

Several passages clearly speak of a divine choice.

• Jesus speaks of “the elect, whom he has chosen”, for whose sake the days of distress will be shortened (Mark 13:20, 27).
• “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them” (John 6:44; see 6:37-39).
• “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).
• The enemies of Jesus did “whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:28).
• Saul of Tarsus is “my chosen instrument” (Acts 9:15).
• “All who were appointed for eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48).
• “Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29-30).
• Before their birth, God chooses Jacob rather than Esau, and Paul concludes: “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Romans 9:10-18).
• “He chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4-5).

Texts that emphasise the human response

Other passages stress the call addressed to all and human responsibility.

• “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezekiel 33:11).
• “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7).
• “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened” (Matthew 11:28).
• The parable of the sower shows people who receive the word with joy, then fall away in the time of testing (Luke 8:4-15).
• The guests invited to the great banquet make excuses and refuse the invitation (Luke 14:15-24).
• “You refuse to come to me to have life!” (John 5:40).
• “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
• Paul warns believers that they must continue in God’s kindness, “otherwise, you also will be cut off” (Romans 11:22; see 1 Timothy 4:16).

Texts read in two ways

Some verses are quoted by both camps. The most famous concludes the parable of the wedding banquet: “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). Read in isolation, it seems to speak of a choice made by God. But the author invites us to reread the whole parable from verse 1. The guests refuse to come, the hall fills with people found at the street corners, and one man is thrown out because he is not wearing wedding clothes. In this context, the “chosen” are those who accepted the invitation, and its conditions.

Likewise, in Acts 18:10, the Lord says to Paul in Corinth: “I have many people in this city”. Some translations understand that these people are already destined for him. Yet Paul stays there a year and a half to proclaim the word (Acts 18:11). God’s choice did not exempt Paul from preaching.

Holding both together

The Bible therefore contains both strong texts on God’s sovereign choice and urgent calls to respond, to believe and to persevere. Each position must account for all of these texts, and not only for those that suit it.

This debate runs through the history of the Church and divides sincere Christians. It calls for humility. It must not make us forget the essential point, which both sets of texts affirm together: salvation comes from God, and God calls everyone to come to him.