Predestination The concept of salvation for Augustine was an idea in which human free will had practically no place. He believed that a predestined eventual return to the Lord was a gift that He extends to all since we are compulsive sinners from which we have no control unless He rescues us from it. Here Augustine, again, refers back to the Fall for this concept, believing that because of this, all humans are inherently evil and God alone, by His grace saves from eternal death. Augustine’s theology then goes on with the concept that God choses those that He will extend His grace to; an elected, foreordained group of people for whom He will make an irresistible urge but to follow Him. The rest of the populace will succumb to their fallen nature and will be condemned to Hell, which he also concludes is predestined. Humans, therefore don’t get to choose salvation for themselves, it has already been determined for them. The question is, how did Augustine come to these conclusions? The answer lies, not in the Bible, but in his life’s experiences. First, he found that he could not control his sexual desire and even though he made an intellectual conversion, he discovered that he still was unable to do what he knew he should not. Being prechosen by God took care of these things in his mind – no repentance required. Calvin’s theology closely follows this stream of thought and in his doctrine of God one will find that his is thoroughly Augustinian.
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He expounded upon Augustine’s principle of predestination when he stated his views on the concept of God’s complete sovereignty in which he declared “that God as the all-determining reality and taught God’s meticulous providence over nature and history.” Calvin developed a philosophy around the Augustinian premise and surmised that God was the ultimate cause of everything and nothing happens apart from His determination or by accident and by default, individual salvation is also predetermined. When pushed in a debate as to whether God caused the downfall of man, he merely resorted to his reasoning that humans cannot fully grasp the purposes of God as to why anything happens - an argument that could be applied to just about anything in theology. The fact of the matter is that the Bible states clearly that salvation is a matter of choice, between choosing a path that leads to life or death, good or evil. Predestination denies the fact that there is a Satan that draws people to evil, which is sin. Jesus, Himself, verifies that there is such an entity when He states that if you are unable to hear what He says then “you belong to your father the devil” and “he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44, NIV). From this one can deduce that since it is “impossible for God to lie” as Romans 6:18 verifies and that “God cannot be tempted by evil” (Jas 1:13), there must be something other than God with which we can ally ourselves, which means there is a choice. The very definition of salvation means to be “saved from” and that theme runs throughout Scripture, but predestination negates that we need to be saved from anything because we cannot choose our destiny- God has instead preordained our lives. The whole premise of Calvinistic predestination is faulty because in has no foundation in Scripture. It is instead based on the tweaking of the philosophical ideas of Augustine by
He expounded upon Augustine’s principle of predestination when he stated his views on the concept of God’s complete sovereignty in which he declared “that God as the all-determining reality and taught God’s meticulous providence over nature and history.” Calvin developed a philosophy around the Augustinian premise and surmised that God was the ultimate cause of everything and nothing happens apart from His determination or by accident and by default, individual salvation is also predetermined. When pushed in a debate as to whether God caused the downfall of man, he merely resorted to his reasoning that humans cannot fully grasp the purposes of God as to why anything happens - an argument that could be applied to just about anything in theology. The fact of the matter is that the Bible states clearly that salvation is a matter of choice, between choosing a path that leads to life or death, good or evil. Predestination denies the fact that there is a Satan that draws people to evil, which is sin. Jesus, Himself, verifies that there is such an entity when He states that if you are unable to hear what He says then “you belong to your father the devil” and “he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44, NIV). From this one can deduce that since it is “impossible for God to lie” as Romans 6:18 verifies and that “God cannot be tempted by evil” (Jas 1:13), there must be something other than God with which we can ally ourselves, which means there is a choice. The very definition of salvation means to be “saved from” and that theme runs throughout Scripture, but predestination negates that we need to be saved from anything because we cannot choose our destiny- God has instead preordained our lives. The whole premise of Calvinistic predestination is faulty because in has no foundation in Scripture. It is instead based on the tweaking of the philosophical ideas of Augustine by