Concept

Predestination

Intro

Predestination is the teaching that God decides ahead of time who will be saved. It is in the Bible. The Greek verb proorizō (literally to mark out beforehand) shows up in Romans 8:29-30, Ephesians 1:4-5, and a few other places. Christians have argued for centuries not about whether God predestines, but about how.

Two main pictures sit on the table.

The first comes from Augustine and runs through John Calvin. God chooses to save certain people purely out of His own good pleasure, before they have done anything good or bad. Their salvation is not based on God peeking ahead and seeing who would believe. It is based on His sovereign choice alone. Those He does not choose are passed over and left to the just judgment their sins deserve. This is sometimes called unconditional election.

The second runs through the early Greek Fathers and Jacob Arminius. God knows ahead of time who will, by His grace, freely respond to the gospel, and those are the ones He chooses. The election is real, but it tracks foreseen free response. People who reject grace to the end are passed by.

A third option, Molinism, says God uses something called middle knowledge: He knows what every possible person would freely do in every possible situation, and He creates a world in which the people He intends to save are the ones who freely choose to come.

Each view is trying to hold two things together: God is fully in charge, and people really choose. The disagreement is about which of those gets the steering wheel and which sits in the passenger seat. This page lays out all three, plus where each runs into trouble.

In full

The doctrine that God determines beforehand the eternal destiny of persons, that the salvation of the saved is, in some sense, the outworking of an eternal divine decree rather than a purely contingent post-hoc result of creaturely choice. The doctrine is biblically explicit (the verb proorizō in Rom 8:29-30 and Eph 1:4-5); the contested question is its mechanism, whether it is unconditional (resting on God's sovereign decree alone, the Augustinian / Calvinist reading) or conditional (resting on God's foreknowledge of free creaturely response, the Arminian / Molinist reading), and whether it covers only election to salvation (single predestination) or also reprobation to damnation (double predestination). Predestination is the theological hinge of the entire Free Will / Sovereignty cluster.

Definition

The biblical word proorizō (to mark out beforehand) appears six times in the New Testament:

Acts 4:27-28, the actors at the cross "did whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined (proōrisen) to take place."
Rom 8:29-30, "whom He foreknew, He also predestined (proōrisen) to be conformed to the image of His Son... whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; whom He justified, these He also glorified."
1 Cor 2:7, God's wisdom predestined before the ages for our glory.
Eph 1:5, "predestined us to adoption as sons."
Eph 1:11, "predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will."

The cognate noun prognōsis and verb proginōskō (foreknowledge, to foreknow) likewise appear in Rom 8:29, Rom 11:2, 1 Pet 1:2, 1 Pet 1:20, Acts 2:23. The relation between foreknowing and predestining is the exegetical pivot: does foreknowledge ground predestination (Arminian) or merely accompany it (Calvinist)?

The classical positions

Augustinian / Calvinist (unconditional, double-decree)

God's choice of the elect rests on His sovereign good pleasure, not on any foreseen merit, faith, or response in the creature (Rom 9:11, "before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad..."; Eph 1:4, "before the foundation of the world").
Reprobation is the symmetric (or sometimes asymmetric) decree: God passes by some and ordains them to just condemnation for their sins. Double predestination in its strong form (Calvin, Beza, the Westminster Confession III); some Reformed theologians prefer single predestination (election positively decreed, reprobation only permitted).
Strongly Augustinian roots: Augustine's De Praedestinatione Sanctorum and De Dono Perseverantiae against semi-Pelagianism.

Arminian / Wesleyan (conditional, in view of foreknowledge)

God elects to salvation those whom He foreknows will, by prevenient grace, freely believe and persevere (Rom 8:29, "whom He foreknew, He also predestined").
Reprobation is symmetrically conditional: those who freely and finally reject the grace offered are passed by.
Strong continuity with the pre-Augustinian Fathers (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Chrysostom), who routinely glossed predestination as God's foreknowledge of free human response.

Molinist (conditional, via middle knowledge)

God elects by surveying which feasible world (a world whose counterfactuals of creaturely freedom He can actualize) best realizes His saving purposes, and creating that world. The elect are those whom God knew, via middle knowledge, would freely respond to grace in the actualized world.
Combines exhaustive sovereignty (God chose this world) with libertarian freedom (the creatures' choices in it are free). See Molinism for the metaphysical mechanism.

Catholic / Thomistic (mediating)

The Council of Trent (1547) and subsequent magisterial teaching affirm predestination but condemn both Pelagianism (denying the necessity of grace) and a strong reprobationist double-decree.
Within Catholicism, two licit schools after the De Auxiliis controversy (1582-1607): Bañezian Thomism (closer to Augustinian unconditional election with physical premotion) and Molinism (middle knowledge). Pope Paul V suspended the dispute without verdict; both remain orthodox.

Lutheran (asymmetric)

The Formula of Concord (1577) affirms unconditional election to salvation (Christians are saved wholly by grace, including the gift of faith) but denies a parallel decree of reprobation. Damnation is the consequence of human resistance to universally offered grace; election is wholly God's work. Single predestination.

Open Theist (no exhaustive decree of future free choices)

Predestination covers what God has decided to do (e.g., to glorify His Son, to redeem a people through Christ) but not the specific future free choices of every individual creature. Names in the Lamb's book of life are written as people freely respond, not in eternity past. (See Open Theism.)

Biblical foundation

Texts read as supporting unconditional election

Rom 9:11-13, Jacob and Esau, "before they were born or had done anything good or bad."
Rom 9:15-16, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy... it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs."
Rom 9:18, "He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires."
Rom 9:22-23, vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy, prepared beforehand.
Eph 1:4-5, Eph 1:11, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
2 Tim 1:9, saved according to God's purpose and grace given before times eternal.
John 6:37, John 6:44, "all that the Father gives Me will come... no one can come unless the Father draws him."
Acts 13:48, "as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed."

Texts read as supporting conditional election / universal will

1 Tim 2:4, God "desires all to be saved."
2 Pet 3:9, "not wishing for any to perish."
Ezek 18:23, Ezek 33:11, "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked."
John 3:16, "whoever believes in Him."
Matt 23:37, "how often I wanted to gather your children together... and you were unwilling."
Rom 8:29, "whom He foreknew, He also predestined" (the Arminian pivot).
1 Pet 1:2, "chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father."

Texts on the corporate / covenantal dimension

Rom 11, Israel's election as a corporate body, with conditions for grafting and pruning.
Deut 7:6-8, Israel chosen because God loved her, not because of greatness.
1 Pet 2:9, believers as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood."

The N. T. Wright / new perspective reading reframes much of Romans 9-11 as concerning corporate-covenantal election (Israel and the Gentiles in God's redemptive-historical purpose) rather than the eternal destinies of unrelated individuals.

Historical development

Pre-Augustinian Fathers (2nd-4th c.), predominant emphasis on free will and conditional election in view of foreknowledge.
Augustine (354-430), the watershed; in his late anti-Pelagian period (De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, c. 429) defends unconditional election and the gift of perseverance.
The Council of Orange (529), condemns semi-Pelagianism but stops short of endorsing double predestination.
Gottschalk of Orbais (9th c.), first to teach explicit double predestination; condemned at Quierzy (853) and Valence (855).
Aquinas (13th c.), predestination is a part of providence; God predestines positively to salvation, permits reprobation; the elect's faith is foreknown because predestined, not predestined because foreknown.
Reformation (16th c.), Luther (Bondage of the Will, 1525), Calvin (Institutes III), and the Reformed scholastics develop magisterial Protestant unconditional election. Synod of Dort (1618-19) codifies the Calvinist position against the Remonstrants.
Trent (1547), Catholic affirmation of predestination with rejection of strong reprobationism.
Modern era, Karl Barth's christological reframing of election (Church Dogmatics II/2): Christ is the elect and the reprobate; election is in Christ for all. Major 20th-c. revival of analytic engagement (Plantinga, Craig, Flint, Wolterstorff).

Spread of positions (a comparison)

Tradition	Conditional?	Double?	Mechanism
Calvinism	Unconditional	Double (or asymm.)	Sovereign decree
Arminianism	Conditional	Symmetric	Foreknowledge of free response
Molinism	Conditional	(varies)	Middle knowledge
Catholic / Thomist	Unconditional positively; conditional permission of reprobation	Asymmetric	Predestination as part of providence
Lutheran	Unconditional positively	Single	Election to salvation only
Eastern Orthodox	Conditional	Symmetric	Synergistic foreknowledge
Open Theism	Conditional	Not exhaustively determined	God adapts purposes responsively
Karl Barth	All election in Christ	(re-framed)	Christological universalization

Tensions

The Romans 9 vs. 1 Tim 2:4 problem is the central exegetical pressure. Each tradition reads one cluster as primary and the other as accommodated to it.
The Augustinian shift is itself contested: did Augustine recover Pauline teaching that the East had underdeveloped, or did he overlay a deterministic frame on the apostolic data?
Double predestination is the position most theological traditions (Catholic, Lutheran, Arminian, Orthodox) reject; even within Calvinism, infralapsarians moderate it and supralapsarians embrace it.
The relation of Foreknowledge vs Causation underlies every dispute: whether God's foreknowing the elect constitutes or follows His decree.
Pastorally, predestination cuts in opposite directions for opposite traditions: Calvinist comfort (God will not lose His own) vs. Arminian / Open dread (assurance must be grounded somewhere besides a hidden decree).