Predestination
Cards (19)
- Epistle- Book at the very end of the bible composed of letters
- God's will
- God's people want to get to heaven
- Faith or actions
- Predestination is the idea that God has already decided if someone will go to heaven or not
- Predestination implies
- If a person has faith its because God wills it
- Good work is because of God
- If a person has neither, its because God wills it
- Issues with predestination
- Free will
- God being omnibenevolent
- Old Testament ideas
- Yahweh was the God of history and decided Israel was the chosen nation
- "The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples"
- Interpretations of St Paul
- All Christians are justified
- All humans are justified
- Those who are not predestined to eternal life simply die
- Free will
- we can only be good by choosing it
- if people are only acting good for fear of punishment, that is not free will
- as moral beings, we can choose
- to be good and follow God
- to be bad and reject God's commandments
- Pelagius was an irish theologian and moralist
- Pelagius believed that a human's ability to act morally was a gift from God
- Pelagius was declared a heretic because he rejected the doctrine of predestination and replaced it with the doctrine of free will
- Pelagius believed God created everything good and could not have created humanity in a state of original sin
- Pelagius believed humans needed no help from God to choose between good and evil
- Augustine believed in double predestination
- "Holiness is the result of election, not its source and is decided by the inscrutable will of God"- Augustine
- Doctrine of double predestination
- Predestines some of God's kingdom through his grace, but
- leaves others immersed in their sin to be condemned to hell through both their choice and works
- "Some are eternally ordained to glory, through the sheer will of God, and the rest are ordained to eternal torment"- John Calvin
- "I am the way to truth and life. No one comes to the Father except through me" - John 14:6