God is said to be omniscient, knowing everything. Most believers and theologians accept that this includes knowing everything that is going to happen in our lives. He knows every decision we are going to make; how it will affect our lives and what the outcome will be. Some have taken this to mean that God has already predetermined everything that is going to happen in our lives. But is that true?
The idea of predetermination was first proposed by John Calvin, one of the Reformers who was responsible for the Reformation, along with Martin Luther. While Calvin and Luther agreed on many things, they didn’t see eye to eye on everything. Each had their own interpretation of scripture and the principles that God created therein.
Leading up to the Reformation
To understand this, we must first understand the times that Luther and Calvin lived in. The Reformation they were part of was part of a time of intellectual, economic, and artistic revival known as the Renaissance. The Dark Ages was a thing of the past and great thinkers had arisen, many of which opposed the Church. It was the time of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and other great artists. Europe was coming alive, intellectually speaking, and the Roman Catholic Church was standing against it.
If we look at church history, we see some sad things that happened through the centuries. According to official Catholic doctrine, the Catholic Church began with the Apostle Peter, or “Saint Peter” as they call him. But there is no biblical basis for this doctrinal stance. Up until the time of the Nicean Council in 325 AD, the more than 100 Christian churches that existed in the Roman Empire were scattered and separated, with little communication and various disputes about doctrine. Each city had a “bishop” who was the chief pastor of that city, but there was no real coordination between them or official church organization.
The main purpose of the Roman Catholic Church, from the beginning, was to maintain orthodoxy. Put another way, it has been to maintain the foundational teachings of the gospel. But just who decides what those foundational teachings are and how they are to be interpreted? According to the Roman Catholic church, they do; but other churches disagree.
It wasn’t until Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, convened the Nicean Council that church leaders from those 100 cities came together to discuss important issues such as the canon of New Testament scripture, what all Christians should believe, as expressed through the Nicean Creed and how the church and government should relate to one another.
One of the many things that came out of the Nicean Council was the decision that five bishops, those of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem would each take charge over the churches in their region, becoming a spiritual “head” over the bishops for the individual cities. No true leader for the church was named, other than Emperor Constantine himself, who used his authority as emperor to not only convene the Council of Nicea, but also to take charge of the church.
As a result of not having a spiritual head of the church, a lengthy political battle for supremacy broke out in the church, which ultimately led to the bishop of Rome becoming the Pope. This remains in effect until today. Much of the energy of the various popes and other bishops was derailed to this political fight, as well as real political fighting, as they tried to maintain authority over the reigning royalty, rather than caring for the spiritual needs of their flock.
This was not the only thing that hurt the Catholic Church during these centuries. When Emperor Constantine moved the capital of Rome to Constantinople, it left the western part of Europe largely without any governing authority. This job then fell to the church, who sought to meet the needs of the people,
Another important thing that led up to the Reformation was the general lack of education, including spiritual education, of the people of Europe. Even priests, who were often the most educated people in their parishes, were poorly educated, with few ever having read the New Testament. This was not any fault of their own, as Bibles were hand-copied at the time, making them extremely rare and expensive. It wasn’t until 1454 that Gutenberg put his first movable-type press into operation. That press helped fuel the Reformation.
The Reformation
It is in this church environment that the reformers, Martin Luther, Jan Huss, John Calvin and their contemporaries took on the church hierarchy, coming against false doctrines, such as the selling of indulgences to get out of purgatory. These luminaries recognized problems with the teachings of the church and struggled to seek out and then teach the true message of the gospel.
The Reformation is widely understood to have been kicked off by Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31st, 1517. But that might not have been enough, had it not been for the printing press. His theses could not have been as widely read and discussed by the people of Germany, had it not been for industrious printers seeing the value of copying his work for general distribution. They likely did that for commercial gain; but in the process, fanned the flame of the Reformation and made Martin Luther a household name.
Luther, Calvin and these other giants in the faith didn’t agree on everything, especially Luther and Calvin. Yet it was the teachings of these two, more than any other, which formed the theology of the Protestant Church that grew out of the Reformation. These were the key teachings of that Reformation stood strongly upon, in contrast to those of the Catholic Church.
- Sola Gratia (saved by grace alone) – we are saved by the grace of God alone, not by the church.
- Sola Fide (through faith alone) – it is faith in Christ and His atoning work on the cross that we are saved; no ritual or sacrament saves us, nor can any human give us salvation
- Solus Cristus (saved by the work of Christ alone) – Jesus Christ is the one and only Savior; He needs help from no other
- Sola Scriptura (with the Holy Scriptures as the only authority) – the only spiritual authority is the Bible; no man, not even the Pope, can add to or change what it says
- Soli Deo Gloria (for the glory of God alone) – all glory belongs to God and no other
While these five statements don’t cover the entirety of scripture, they do establish the basis for salvation being in Christ, by faith alone, without the church. That was a radical enough idea for the time, that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church wanted their heads on a stake or their bodies burned on one. These doctrinal statements totally changed the understanding of salvation on that day.
For the rest of his life, Martin Luther fought to understand the full message of the Bible, writing extensively of what he learned. It was his teachings, more than any others, which drove the Reformation along, as well as giving the emerging Protestant church an idea of what they believed. Others played their part as well; but Luther and his writing was and is the most widely known.
So, Where Did Predestination Come From?
It was one of Martin Luther’s intellectual rivals who came up with the teaching of predestination, John Calvin. According to his understanding of Scripture, God pre-determined who would be saved and who would be damned, as well as everything that would happen in our lives. This doctrine is still held as true by some denominations, including Catholics, Presbyterians, and a few others. Denominations which believe the doctrine of predestination are referred to as “Calvinistic” in their doctrine.
But the majority of the church does not hold with Calvin’s teaching, having adopted instead that of Luther. That is, it is the individual’s free will that determines whether they accept the salvation which God so freely offers us. Therefore, it is the individual, rather than God, who determines whether they will be saved. This doctrine is commonly referred to as “Arminianism.” We can see the basic difference between these two in the chart below.
| Arminianism | Calvinism | |
| Sinners can do good by responding to God’s tug on their hearts. | Man is unable by himself to respond to God. | |
| God elects on basis of the demonstrated faith of the individual. | God elects those to be saved based only on His own pleasure. | |
| Christ died for all. | Christ died only for the elect. | |
| Man can resist God. | Those who are chosen, cannot resist God. | |
| Believers can turn their back on God and lose their salvation. | The elect can never lose their salvation, regardless of their actions. |
The big problem with the doctrine of predestination is that it requires that God created some people for the sole purpose of their destruction in the flames of hell. In other words, God plays favorites. But there is much in the Bible that comes against this idea; teaching that God gives each of us the same opportunity to accept salvation.
God’s omnipotence doesn’t equal God predetermining who will and who won’t be saved, creating some for destruction. Rather, it is Him knowing what we will decide, when we are given the opportunity to receive the salvation He so freely offers us. That is the most important decision in our lives and the one He is most concerned about.
If we accept the understanding that God is not deciding who will be saved and who will not be, then the idea of believing that He makes all the other decisions in our lives falls away. Why would God even consider making the smaller decisions in our lives for us, while ignoring what He considers to be the biggest?
This is not to say that God doesn’t have a perfect plan for each of our lives, nor that He doesn’t call certain people to do certain things. He does. But He always leaves the final decision up to the individual. He may push us in a certain direction, trying to convince us to do His divine will for our lives; but He will never force us to do so. That would be like making us robots, rather than those called to become Children of God.