1. The act of decreeing or foreordaining events; the decree of God by which he hath, from eternity, unchangeably appointed or determined whatever comes to pass. It is used particularly in theology to denote the preordination of men to everlasting happiness or misery.
2. Predestination is a part of the unchangeable plan of the divine government; or in other words, the unchangeable purpose of an unchangeable God.
PREDESTINATION is a theological term, sometimes used with greater latitude to denote the decree or purpose of God by which He has from eternityimmutably determined whatever comes to pass; sometimes more strictly to denote the decree by which men are destined to everlasting happiness or misery; and sometimes with excessive strictness to denote only predestination to life or election.
The question to which the theory of predestination supplies an answer, although it has a special interest to Christian thought, yet arises in all minds which are occupied with the problems of human existence. That question is, To what cause can we refer the diversities in human character, fortunes, and destiny? The Greek tragedians made it their business to exhibit the helplessness of man in his strife against fate. Sometimes indeed they explicitly distinguish fate from a mere pitiless and non-moral sovereignty and identify it with the Nemesis which pursues hereditary or individual guilt; and sometimes—as in the case of CEdipus—they follow the history of the sufferer for the sake of showing how the predestined and inevitable transgression and punishment educate the character. But the idea which fascinates and pursues them is that man cannot escape his destiny, that his life is woven with a “shuttle of adamant,” and that when God means to destroy a man He makes evil seem good to him (Soph., Antig., 622-24). The Greek philosophy tended in the same direction; and the Stoic doctrine of necessity or providence, though based on a broad and thoroughly philosophical view of nature and of man’s place in it, was entangled in the very difficulties which attach to Calvinism.
Among the Jews the Sadducees carried their defence of free will so far as to deny predestination; while the...
Pharisees and Essenes ran to the other extreme and left no place for human freedom (Josephus, Λntig., xviii. 1, 3, 4: xiii. 5, 9).
In Islam the subject of predestination has produced endless controversy. The orthodox doctrine is thus stated by Al-Berkevi. “It is necessary to confess that good and evil take place by the predestination and predetermination of God, that all that has been and all that will be was decreed in eternity and written on the preserved table,·, that the faith of the believer, the piety of the pious, and their good actions are foreseen, willed, predestinated, decreed by the writing on the preserved table produced and approved by God: that the unbelief of the unbeliever, the impiety of the impious, and bad actions come to pass with the foreknowledge, will, predestination, and decree of God, but not with His satisfaction and approval. Should any ask why God willeth and produceth evil, we can only reply that He may have wise ends in view which we cannot comprehend.” Some Mohammedan teachers (disciples of Al-Ash'ari) endeavour to maintain the consistency of this doctrine with man’s freedom and responsibility; but practically the Sunnite or orthodox Mohammedans believe that by the force of God’s eternal decree man is constrained to act thus or thus. From this there has resulted, on the one hand, the Epicureanpessimism of Omar Khayyâm—
“’ Tis all a chequer-board of nights and days Where destiny with men for pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the closet lays ”—
or the weak recklessness of the poet Faizi: “Before thou and I were thought of, our freewill was taken from us; be without cares for the Maker of both worlds settled our affairs long before we were made.” On the other hand, there has resulted the freethinking (Mo'tazilite) reaction, to which the Shiahs incline and which rehabilitates freewill at the expense of the divine sovereignty.
Within the Christian church there have in like manner always existed two opposed beliefs regarding predestination, which have received their ultimate development and expression in the Calvinistic and Arminian systems respectively. The Calvinistic doctrine of predestination is that “from all eternity God chose or elected some men—certain definite persons of the human race—to everlasting life; that He decreed or determined certainly and infallibly, and not conditionally and mutably, to bring those persons to salvation by a Redeemer; that in making this selection of some men, and in decreeing to save them, He was not influenced or determined by anything existing in them or foreseen in them—such as faith or good works—by which they were distinguished from other men, or by anything out of Himself, or by any reason known to us or comprehensible by us; and that this eternal purpose or decree He certainly and infallibly executes, in regard to each and every one included under it; while all the rest of men not thus elected He decreed to pass by,—to leave in their natural state of sin and misery, and finally to punish eternally for their sin.” The Arminian doctrine of predestination (see Arminius) is that God has from eternity decreed to give eternal life to as many as repent and believe, and foreseeing who shall repent and believe He has determined to give life to these. The “peremptory” election of individuals to life eternal proceeds only on the foreknowledge of their faith and obedience, so that, as the Remonstrantsexplicitlyaffirmed, the decree proper in predestination is that decree by which it is determined on what grounds or conditions God assigns sinners to salvation. The difference between these two views of predestination is wide, and, when logically carried out, radical. The Calvinist maintains that God absolutely decrees the salvation of a certain fixed number of definite persons, and in pursuance of this decree infallibly secures their salvation; the Arminian maintains that God’s decree, so far as it concerns the salvation of individuals, is conditional upon their use of the means of grace. That which constitutes Arminianism is the denial that God absolutely elects individuals to eternal life; and that which lies at the root of Calvinism, and out of which all that is characteristic of the system springs, is the affirmation that God does absolutely elect certain individuals to life eternal, and in pursuance of this decree works in them all that constitutes life eternal. According to Calvinism, salvation is the work of God. Seeing men to be all alike helplessly involved in sin and misery, God determined to save some, not on account of any good in them but for some inscrutable but necessarily wise and just reasons, and because of this determination He gives to those whom He wills to save, and enables them to receive and retain, all that is involved in salvation,—renewal of will, union to Christ, holiness of life, the indwelling Spirit.
The doctrine of predestination was first formulated in the church by Augustine. The Pelagian idea that man is competent to determine his own character, conduct, and destiny was repugnant to him, and he strove to show that the initial and determining element in the salvation of the individual is not the human but the divine will. He based his position upon the doctrine of original sin and the consequent depravity of the will. This doctrine represents the whole human race as involved in moral ruin, guilty and sinful, incapable of self-regeneration or of willing what is good. By God alone, therefore, can regeneration and deliverance be accomplished. The salvation designed by God must not be allowed to depend for its efficacy on the depraved and incapable will of man; it must be an absolute act of power on God’s part. Provision must be made not only for the offer but for the acceptance of grace. In a word, grace must be effectual or irresistible. Hence Augustine distinguished between “assistance without which a thing cannot be done” and “assistance by which a thing is done” (the Jansenist adjutorium sine quo non, and adjutorium quo, assisting and efficacious or irresistible grace). By every device of language he throws the whole work of salvation upon God (“facit credentes,” “data sunt et ipsa merita quibus datur,” “non solum mentes bonas adjuvat, verum etiam bonas eas facit ”). This is the distinctive characteristic of the dispensation of redemption, that it depends not on man’s will but on God’s. “A dispensation which left the salvation of man dependent on his will was highly suitable as a first one, suitable alike to the justice of the Creator and the powers of the untried creature, and such as we should naturally expect at the beginning of things; but such having been the nature of the first, the second must, for that very reason, be a dispensation of a different kind, effecting its design not by a conditional but by an absolute saving act.” This absolute saving act being an act of God, and it being maintained by all theologians that whatever God Himself does in time He has from eternity decreed to do, we have the doctrine of predestination. As Aquinastersely puts the kernel of the Augustinian doctrine: “It is manifest that whatever is of grace is the effect of predestination.” With Augustine grace is nothing else than predestination realized. Grace is irresistible because it is God’s instrument in fulfilling His decree. This carries with it a refutation of the three modified forms of predestinarian doctrine which continually seek to make good for themselves a position within the church. It maintains (1) that men are elected not to means of grace only but to grace itself. Salvation is infallibly secured to the elect (De Dono Persev., passim).
It maintains (2) that not nations or the church but individuals are the object of predestination,—a certain fixed number, “so certain that no one can be added to it or taken from it” (De Corr, et Gratia, 13). And (3) this predestination must be founded, not on foreseen good in man, but on the inscrutable but necessarily just will of God (De Praed. Sanct., 17).
As Augustine thus constructed the doctrine of predestination as an integral part of the evangelical system, he necessarily spoke much more of election than of reprobation; but he did not shrink from acknowledging, with all intelligent predestinarians, that the election of some involved the passing by (praeteritio) of the rest: “for the rest, where are they but in that mass of perdition where the Divine justice most justly leaves them 1” (De Dono Persev., 14). “If God from eternity absolutely elected some unto the infallible attainment of grace and glory, we cannot but grant that those who are not comprised within this absolute decree are as absolutely passed by as the others are chosen” (Bishop Davenant’s Animadversions, p. 4). All men being naturally under condemnation, it seemed to Augustine no injustice that in some that condemnation should take effect; and, if it is suggested that it would at all events have been better had all been saved, he is content to reply, “Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God ?” He has no hesitation, therefore, in using the expressions “praedestinati ad interitum,” or “ad aeternam mortem,” or “damnationi praedestinati”; and in using these expressions he indicates that there are some to whom God has decreed not to give saving grace, and that He foresaw that these persons would sin and be damned. He does not bring the decree of reprobation into direct, and of course not into causal, connexion with the sins of the reprobate, holding that, while the decree of God is the efficient cause of all good in the elect, the cause of sin in the reprobate is the evil will of man. He denies that God’s foreknowledge of man’s sin makes that sin necessary, but he nowhere exhaustively discusses the distinction between foreknowledge and decree. When pushed to defend God’s justice in creating those whose damnation He foreknew, he responds to the challenge sometimes by showing that, so far as the Creator’s responsibility is concerned, the creature which sins with free will is of a higher kind than that which cannot sin because it has no free will; sometimes on the ground that it contributes to God’s glory that His retributive justice should be manifested; and sometimes on the ground that in the destruction of sinners the elect will see what God’s goodness has saved them from.
About the middle of the 9th century Gottschalk attempted to revive Augustinianism (see Gottschalk). His teaching regarding predestination was precisely that of his master, and as such it was maintained by Remigius of Lyons in opposition to the blundering and intolerantHincmar of Rheims. Hincmar admitted predestination to life and also the consequent abandonment of the rest of men to their sinful state, and yet he mercilesslypersecutedGottschalk for maintaining a predestination to punishment, and sought to establish a distinction between leaving men in a state which involves punishment and ordaining them to punishment. Remigius exposed the futility of such a distinction, and showed that “the abandonment of a certain portion of mankind to the state of sin in which they are born is predestinarianreprobation, whether we express it as abandonment to sin or as ordaining to punishment.” The discussion, however, extensive and heated as it was, did not go deeply into the substance of the controversy. The incident which gave a distinctive character to this period of the development of the doctrine was the appeal for aid which Hincmar made to John Scotus F.rigena; for in the tract on predestination which Erigena wrote in response to this appeal he introduced the terms and methods of philosophy and sought a solution for the problem in the nature of God. He argued that, God being eternal, foreknowledge and predestination, which are temporal relations, could only improperly be predicated of Him. He argued also that sin and its consequences in death and misery are nonentities, the mere corruption, defect, or privation of their opposite realities, and that therefore they can neither be caused by God nor be known by Him. Reprobation is therefore impossible. Still further, he argued that evil is only a stage in the development of good, and that the ultimate issue of the development is universal return to God. This orthodoxy was considered more dangerous than the heresy it was called in to resist. Prudentius, Ratramnus, Lupus, and Florusdenounced the introduction of this style of discussion, for which indeed the mind of the church was not at that time prepared. Not only did interested individuals resist the teaching of Erigena, but two councils condemned his treatise as containing “haereses plurimas, ineptas quaes-tiunculas, et aniles paene fabellas, pluribus syllogismis conclusas, Scotorumque pultes puritati fidei nauseam inferentes.” Accordingly no additional light on the problem was received by the church at this time.
This controversy, however, was merely the prelude to a discussion which was maintained throughout the scholastic period, and in which the Thomists adopted the more rigid Augustinian view, while the Scotists leaned to Semipelagianism. Anselm and Peter Lombard were moderately and guardedlyAugustinian. Thomas Bradwardine (archbishop of Canterbury, d. 1349) complained that almost the whole world had fallen into Pelagianism, and strenuously opposed this tendency. But it is in Aquinas (Sιimma, 1, Q. xxiii.) that we find the clearest and most compact treatment of the subject. His doctrine is substantially that of Augustine. In express terms he teaches that predestination is an essential part of the divine providence, and that, as some, and these a fixed number, are ordained to life eternal, so by the same divine providence others are allowed to fail of this end (“et hoc dicitur reprobare ”). He teaches further that this predestination does not depend upon any foreseen difference of character (“praescientia meritorum non est causa vel ratio praedestinationis ”). Aquinas derives his doctrine of predestination directly from his doctrine of God (not from his anthropology, as Augustine had done). His idea of God was the Aristotelian “first mover, itself unmoved.” That God is in all things by His power, presence, and essence he explicitly maintains against three forms of error regarding the connexion of God and the world. The divine will is the cause of all things past, present, and to come.
But the contribution made by Aquinas consists in his theory of the divine concurrence, by which he seeks to provide a philosophical basis for Augustinianism. The divine providence governs all things by means of two great classes of secondary causes, the necessary or natural and the contingent or voluntary. The mediate or proximate causes of all that takes place in the natural world are necessary · the proximate causes of human action are the voluntary motions of the will. But both are set in motion by God, the First Cause: as the actings of natural causes remain natural, though they are moved by God, so do the actings of voluntary causes remain voluntary though moved by God. But obviously this theory leaves only an appearance of freewill. “Free will is here reconciled and made consistent with the divine power, brought into the same scheme and theory. But it is of itself a sufficient test that a system is necessitarian, that it maintains the divine power in harmony with free will. The will as air original spring of action is irreconcilable with the divine power ”—at least with the scholastic idea of the divine power—“a second first cause in nature being inconsistent with there being only one First Cause.” Besides, every theory of predestination which bases itself on the idea that God is the sole originating and true cause must give an account of the origin of evil. Aquinas recognizes this and endeavours to meet the requirement by showing (1) that to a complete universe all kinds of creatures are requisite, not only the highest but the lowest; (2) that there cannot be a perfect universe without the existence of free will, but that this involves the risk of evil; and (3) that evil is a negation. Of these arguments there are hints in the writings of Augustine and Erigena, and none of them is satisfactory, although they certainly point in the right direction.
At the Reformation the discussion was drawn back from the endeavour initiated by the schoolmen to find for the doctrine of predestination a scientific basis in the nature of God and His connexion with the world. The more circumscribed method of Augustine was reverted to, and it was deemed sufficient to show that predestination was indispensable to the ideas of grace which found a response in the devout Christian consciousness, and that it was in harmony with Scripture. Not only Calvin, but much more unguardedly Luther, and even Melanchthon in the earliest (1521) edition of his Loci Communes, taught the most rigid Augustinian doctrine. In the later editions (1535, 1543) Melanchthon greatly modified his opinions and inclined more to the synergistic view, though even in this he was not thoroughgoing. But the attempt to terminate the synergistic controversy saddled the Lutherans with a symbol—the formula concordiae — which, awkwardly enough, rejected both the Semipelagian theory of co-operation and the Augustinian doctrine of predestination. The consequence has been that later Lutheran theologians, in their efforts to purge their church of this inconsistency, have devised the theory that man, unable as he is to will any good thing, can yet use the means of grace, and that these means of grace, carrying in themselves a divine power, produce a saving effect on all who do not voluntarilyoppose their influence. Baptism, e.g., confers grace which, if not resisted, is saving. And God, foreseeing who will and who will not resist the grace offered, predestinates to life all who are foreseen as believers.
The theory of Calvin (Inst., i. 15-18; iii. 21-24) need not be detailed, because it is Augustinian not only in its substance but in the methods and grounds by which it is sustained. Hagenbach (Hist, of Doctrines, iii. 103) and others have indeed asserted that Calvin held the supralapsarian theory, and in so far differed from Augustine. But in order to prove Calvin or any one else a supralapsarian it is not enough to show that he believed that the fall was decreed, for this is admitted by Augustine and all sublapsarians; it must be shown that the fall was decreed as a means towards carrying out a previous decree to save some and leave others to perish,— a view which Calvin turns from as an otiosa curiositas. The supralapsarian view was, however, adopted by Beza and other Calvinists, as it had been held by some of the Augustinianschoolmen; and indirectly this led to the reopening of the controversy in the beginning of the 17th century. For it is said to have been the extreme supralapsarianism of Perkins which repelledArminius from Calvinism and led him to promulgate the opinions which are known as Arminianism, and which led to the summoning of the synod of Dort (see Arminius and Dort). The canons of Dort, while not definitively exclusive of supralapsarianism, are favourable to the sublapsarian view; and the Westminster divines followed the lead of Dort in constructing their Confession so as...
according to some, is a judgment, or decree of God, by which he has resolved, from all eternity, to save a certain number of persons, hence named elect. Others define it, a decree to give faith in Jesus Christ to a certain number of men, and to leave the rest to their own malice and hardness of heart. A third, more Scripturally, God’s eternal purpose to save all that truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel,”--according to the Apostle Paul, Whom he did foreknow” as believers them he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son;” to his moral image here, and to the image of his glorified humanity in heaven. According to the Calvinistical scheme, the reason of God’s predestinating some to everlasting life is not founded in a foresight of their faith and obedience; nevertheless, it is also maintained on this scheme, that the means are decreed as well as the end, and that God purposes to save none but such as by his grace he shall prepare for salvation by sanctification. The Remonstrantsdefine predestination to be God’s decree to save believers, and condemn unbelievers. Some represent the election and predestination spoken of in Scripture, as belonging only to nations, or, at least, bodies of men, and not to particular persons. The greatest difficulties with which the modern theology is clogged turn on predestination; both the Romish and Reformed churches are divided about it; the Lutherans speak of it with horror; the Calvinists contend for it with the greatest zeal; the Molinists and Jesuits preach it down as a most dangerous doctrine; the Jansenists assert it as an article of faith; the Arminians, Remonstrants, and many others, are all avowed enemies of absolute predestination. Those strenuous patrons of Jansenism, the ...Port-royalists, taught, that God predestinates those whom he foresees will coöperate with his grace to the end. Dupin adds, that men do not fall into sin because not predestinated to life, but they are not predestinated because God foresaw their sins. See CALVINISM.
This doctrine has been already treated of. We shall here therefore merely subjoin a sketch of its history previous to the Reformation. The apostolic fathers, men little accustomed to the intricacy of metaphysical disquisition, deeply impressed with the truth of the Gospel, powerfully influenced by its spirit, and from their particular situation naturally dwelling much upon it as a system of direction and consolation, do not, in their writings, at all advert to the origin of evil, or to predestination, so closely allied to it. They press, with much earnestness, upon those in whom they were interested the vast importance of practical holiness, exhibit the motives which appeared to them calculated to secure it, and represent the blessedness which awaits good men, and the condemnation reserved for the wicked; but they do not once attempt to determine whether the sin which they were solicitous to remove could be accounted for, in consistency with the essential holiness and the unbounded mercy of the Deity. In short, they just took that view of this subject which every man takes when he is not seeking to enter into philosophical disquisition; never for one moment doubting that whatever is wrong was ultimately to be referred to man, and that the economy of grace proceeding from God was the most convincing proof of the tenderness of his compassion for mankind.
When, however, the church received within its communion those who had been educated in the schools of philosophy, and to whom the question as to the origin of evil must, while they frequented these schools, have become familiar, it was not to be supposed that, even although they were convinced that we should be chiefly solicitous about the formation of the Christian character, there would be no allusion to what had formerly interested them, or that they would refrain from delivering their sentiments upon it. Agreeably to this, we find, in the works of JustinMartyr, Tatian, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Origen, sufficient intimations that they had directed their attention to the difficulty now under review; and that, whether upon adequate grounds or not, they had come to a decision as to the way in which it should be explained consistently with the divine perfections. It is evident that they did not investigate the subject to the depth to which it is requisite for the full discussion of it to go; and that various questions which must be put before it can be brought completely before us, they either did not put, or hastily regarded as of very little moment: but it is enough to dwell upon the fact, that they did employ their thoughts upon it, and have so expressed themselves as to leave no doubt of the light in which it was contemplated by them. Justin, in his dialogue with Trypho, remarks that “they who were foreknown as to become wicked, whether angels or men, did so not from any fault of God, ἀιτίᾳ τοῦ Θεοῦ, but from their own blame;” by which observation he shows it to have been his opinion that God foresaw in what manner his intelligent creatures would act; but that this did not affect their liberty, and did not diminish their guilt. A little after he says more fully, that God created angels and men free to the practice of righteousness, having planted in them reason, through which they knew by whom they were created and through whom they existed, when before they were not, and who prescribed to them a law by which they were to be judged, if they acted contrary to right reason. Wherefore, we, angels and men, are through ourselves convicted as being wicked, if we do not lay hold of repentance. But if the Logos of God foretels that some angels and men would go to be punished, he does so because he foreknew that they would certainly become wicked by no means, however, because God made them such.” Justin thus admits that man is wholly dependent upon God, deriving existence and every thing which he has from the Almighty; but he is persuaded that we were perfectly able to retain our integrity, and that, although it was foreseen that we should not do so, this did not abridge our moral power, or fix any imputation on the Deity in consequence of our transgression. Tatian, in his oration against the Greeks, an excellent work which, although composed after the death of Justin, was written, in all probability, before its author had adopted the wild opinions which he defended toward the conclusion of his life, expresses very much the same sentiments avowed by Justin. He says, Both men and angels were created free, so that man becoming wicked through his own fault may be deservedly punished, while a good man, who, from the right exercise of his free will, does not transgress the law of God, is entitled to praise; that the power of the divine Logos having in himself the knowledge of what was to happen, not through fate or unavoidable necessity, but from free choice, predicted future things, condemning the wicked and praising the righteous.”
Irenæus, in the third book of his work against heresies, has taken an opportunity to state his notions about the origin of evil. The seventy-first chapter of that book is entitled, A proof that man is free, and has power to this extent, that of himself he can choose what is good or the contrary.” In illustration of this he remarks, God gave to man the power of election as he did to the angels. They, therefore, who do not obey are justly not found with the good, and receive deserved punishment, because God having given them what was good, they did not keep it, but despised the riches of the divine mercy.” The next chapter is entitled, A proof that some men are not good by nature, and others wicked, and that what is good is within the choice of man.” In treating on this subject, Irenæus observes, that if the reverse were the case, the good would not merit praise nor the wicked blame, because being merely what, without any will of theirs, they had been made, they could not be considered as voluntary agents. But,” he adds, since all have the same nature, and are able to retain and to do what is good, and may, on the other hand, lose it and not do it, some are, even in the sight of men, and much more in that of God, deservedly praised and others blamed.” In support of this he introduces a great variety of passages from Scripture. It appears, however, that the real difficulty attending the subject had suggested itself to his mind; for he inquires in the seventy-third chapter, why God had not from the beginning made man perfect, all things being possible to him. He gives to this question a metaphysical and unsatisfactory answer, but which so far satisfied himself as to convince him that there could not, on this ground, be any imputation justly cast on the perfections of the Almighty, and that, consequently, a sufficient explanation of the origin of evil and of the justice of punishing it, was to be found in the nature of man as a free agent, or in the abuse of that liberty with which man had been endowed. Tertullian had also speculated upon the moral condition of man, and has recorded his sentiments with respect to it. He explicitly asserts the freedom of the will; lays down the position, that, if this be denied, there can be neither reward nor punishment; and, in answer to an objection, that since free will has been productive of such melancholy consequences, it would have been better that it had not been bestowed, he enters into a formal vindication of this part of our constitution. In reply to another suggestion, that God might have interposed to prevent the choice which was to be productive of sin and misery, he maintains that this could not have been done without destroying that admirable constitution by which alone the interests of virtue can be really promoted. He thus thought that sin was to be imputed wholly to man, and that it was perfectly consistent with the attributes of God, or rather illustrated these attributes, that there should be a system under which sin was possible, because without this possibility there could have been no accountable agents.
From what has been stated on this subject, it seems unquestionable that the apostolic fathers did not at all enter upon the subject of the origin of evil; that the writers by whom they were succeeded were satisfied that, in the sense in which the term is now most commonly used, there was no such thing as predestination; that they uniformly represented the destiny of man as regulated by the use or abuse of his free will; that, with the exception of Irenæus, they did not attempt to explain why such a creature as man, who was to fall into sin, was created by a Being of infinite goodness; that the sole objection to their doctrine seemed to them to be, that prescience was incompatible with liberty, and that, when they answered this, they considered that nothing more was requisite for receiving, without hesitation, the view of man upon which they often and fondly dwelt, as a free and accountable agent, who might have held fast his integrity, and whose fall from that integrity was to be ascribed solely to himself, as it did not at all result from any appointment of the supreme Being.
Although opinions respecting original sin, directly tending to a very different view of the subject than had been previously taken, had been stated by Cyprian, yet a thorough investigation of it, and the sentiments which afterward were widely received in the Christian church, took their rise from the discussions to which the Pelagian controversy gave occasion. Previous to the part which Augustine took in that controversy, he seems to have been very much of the same sentiments with Origen and the other early fathers. But, either from what he considered as a more deliberate and complete examination of Scripture, or from perceiving the necessity imposed on him, in consequence of some of the positions which he had laid down in his writings against Pelagius, he soon changed his opinion, and advanced a notion more in harmony with these positions. Having to show the absolute necessity of divine grace, he inculcated that, in consequence of original sin, man was infallibly determined to evil, and was therefore in a state of condemnation, and he thus took away the foundation upon which the prevailing tenets rested; because it was impossible that men could be predestined to life, or the reverse, from prescience of their actions, when, without the special grace of God, they were absolutely incapacitated for obedience to the divine law. To get rid of this difficulty, Augustine, in some degree, transferred the search for the origin of sin from the state of man to the purposes of God, asserting that from all eternity the Almighty had determined to choose from the mass of mankind, lost in guilt and corruption, a certain number to be transformed to holiness, and to be admitted after this life to eternal happiness; that he did this to promote his own glory; and that, by the operation of his Spirit, granted of his own free and undeserved mercy, he produced in the elect or chosen the fruits of righteousness, and qualified them for the enjoyment of heaven. The whole of the remainder of the human race were, according to this system, left in their condition by nature, or in other words, were given up to endless misery. There immediately arose out of this view of the subject, the formidable and heart-rending objection, that God was really the author of sin; that, having so created mankind that of themselves they could not be holy, there was on the part of those delivered no virtue, as there was on the other part no blame; the case being quite different from what it would have been had God interposed with respect to creatures who had not received from himself their physical and moral constitution. Accordingly, it has been asserted that a sect did arise, which, carrying out, as the members of it affirmed, the principles of Augustine, maintained that God not only predestinated the wicked to eternal punishment, but also to the guilt and transgression for which they were punished; that the human race was thus wholly passive, the good and bad actions of men, or what were commonly termed such, being determined from all eternity by a divine decree, or fixed by hopeless, irresistible necessity. These opinions it is said that the venerable and enlightened bishop of Hippozealously opposed, labouring to show that they were not fairly deduced from what he had taught, making a distinction probably between his account of free will and the necessity here confounded with it, and perhaps reluctant to push his tenets so far as apparently they might be carried. The fact is, that although the doctrine of absolute predestination is occasionally clearly taught by Augustine, and obviously follows from his other principles, yet he does not always write consistently with regard to it; or, at least, there is sometimes so much vagueness in his assertions and illustrations, that his authority has been claimed in support of their peculiar tenets both by the Jansenists and the Jesuits, opposite to each other as the sentiments of these two orders are upon the subject of which we are treating. Still it is beyond a question that this celebrated theologian did fix the attention of the church upon that subject much more closely than before his age had been the case, and gave rise to those discussions in relation to it which have so often agitated Christians, and tended much more to destroy the mild and tolerant spirit of the Gospel, than to throw light upon its momentous truths. The subject of predestination, however, was long regarded as one which it was not esteemed requisite absolutely to define, and which might be very much left open to speculation; for although in different countries decrees were passed, guarding against what were viewed as errors resulting from it, it is plain, from what took place upon the revival of the controversy in an after age, that there had not been formed any standard to which ecclesiastical authority required that all who were esteemed orthodox should strictly conform. See AUGUSTINE.
In the ninth century, Godeschalchus, a man of illustrious birth, who had, contrary to his inclinations, been devoted by his parents to a monastic life, and who had, with unwearieddiligence, studied the science of theology, inflamed by an unhappy desire to unravel all the difficulties with which that science abounds, occupied his mind with the consideration of the question of predestination, and finally adopted, with regard to it, the doctrine of Augustine. Not satisfied with having convinced himself, he conceived it to be his duty to labour for the conviction of others; and he accordingly openly and zealouslyinculcated that the elect were predestinated to life, and the rest of mankind to everlasting misery. Rabanus, archbishop of Mentz, who had for some reason before this been inspired with enmity to Godeschalchus, having been informed of the tenets which he was publishing, and, as has too often been the case, veiling private antipathy under the cloak of anxiety for the purity of divine truth, opposed him with the utmost vehemence; and, having assembled a council in his own metropolitan city, procured the condemnation of the views which he reprobated. The matter was afterward taken up by Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, who was the zealous friend of Rabanus; and he also having procured the meeting of a council, confirmed the sentence that had been already passed. Not satisfied with this, he degraded Godeschalchus from the priesthood; and, with an inhumanity infinitely more detestable than heresy, he put the unfortunate monk to the torture. The fortitude of Godeschalchus was for a moment overpowered, and he consented to commit to the flames a justification of his opinions which he had presented to his execrable tormentors. It was not to be supposed that by atrocious violence like this sincere conviction could be produced in the person against whom it was directed, or that others would be disposed universally to submit to it. The controversy, accordingly, soon was renewed; writers on both sides of the question contended with the utmost warmth, and eagerly displayed the extent of their erudition. New councils were summoned, by which the decrees of former councils were reversed, and the tenets of Godeschalchus were confirmed; and the whole agitation terminated by leaving the subject in the same undefined state on the part of the church in which it had been before it was thus intemperately and cruelly discussed.
To the schoolmen, who delighted much more in losing themselves amidstinextricable difficulties and endless distinctions, than in opening the sources of knowledge and removing the difficulties with which these were surrounded, this subject, from its intricate or inexplicable nature, was admirably adapted; and they did not fail to exercise upon it their diligence and their ingenuity. Thomas Aquinas, who flourished during the thirteenth century, was a man who in more enlightened times would have really merited the high reputation which he enjoyed, and which procured for him from his contemporaries the appellation of the Angelic Doctor. He was capable of vast mental exertion, and, amidst all his avocations, produced works so voluminous that in modern days even students would shrink from the perusal of them as an overwhelming task. He wrote largely upon the nature of grace, and predestination, so intimately connected with it. His opinions upon these subjects were nearly the same with those of Augustine; and so much, indeed, was he conceived to resemble in genius and understanding that distinguished prelate, that it was asserted the soul of Augustine had been sent into the body of Aquinas. He taught that God had, from all eternity, and without any regard to their works, predestinated a certain number to life and happiness; but he found great delight in endeavouring to reconcile this position with the freedom of the human will. His celebrated antagonist, John Duns Scotus, an inhabitant of Britain, surnamed, from the acuteness and bent of his mind, the Subtile Doctor, also directed his attention, in the subsequent century, to the same thorny speculations, taking a different view of them from Aquinas; and we find in the works of these two brilliant lights of the schoolmen all that the most learned in the dark ages thought upon them.
It is unnecessary to trace the various shades of opinion which existed in the church as to predestination from this era till the Reformation: it is enough to remark, that,...
N.involuntariness, instinct, blind impulse, inborn proclivity, innate proclivity, native tendency, natural tendency, natural impulse, predetermination, necessity, necessitation, obligation, compulsion, subjection, stern necessity, hard necessity, dire necessity, imperious necessity, inexorable necessity, iron necessity, adverse necessity, fate, what must be, destiny, destination, fatality, fate, kismet, doom, foredoom, election, predestination, preordination, foreordination, lot fortune, fatalism, inevitableness, spell, star, stars, planet, planets, astral influence, sky, fates, parcae, sisters three, book of fate, god's will, will of heaven, wheel of fortune, ides of march, hobson's choice, last shift, last resort, dernier ressort, pis aller, necessaries, necessarian, necessitarian, fatalist, automaton
V. lie under a necessity, befated, be doomed, be destined &c. in for, under the necessity of, have no choice, have no alternative, be one's fate, to be pushed to the wall to be driven into a corner, to be unable to help, destine, doom, foredoom, devote, predestine, preordain, cast a spell, necessitate, compel
Adv. necessarily, of necessity, of course, ex necessitate rei, needs must, perforce, nolens volens, will he nil he, willy nilly, bon gre mal gre, willing or unwilling, coute que coute, faute de mieux, by stress of, if need be
Phr. it cannot be helped, there is no help for, there is no helping it, it will be, it must be, it needs to be, it must be so, it will have its way, the die is cast, jacta est alea, che sara sara, "it is written", one's days are numbered, one's fate is sealed, fata obstant, diis aliter visum, actum me invito factus, non est meus actus, aujord'hui roi demain rien, quisque suos patimur manes, "the moving finger writes and having writ moves on. nor all your piety and wit can bring it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it."
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