Is Everything Predestined?

by Michael Shackleton · December 14, 2008

A good Protestant friend believes in predestination for every creature from the beginning of time, backing it up with relevant biblical texts. This belief suggests in essence that God decides, even before we are born, exactly what we are going to do and become in this life. For me, this takes away our ability to choose our own path in life. What is the Catholic viewpoint?

Fatalism is a kind of passive attitude to life. It accepts that whatever happens to us or the rest of creation is the result of unknown or mysterious forces that determine what we are now and what we will be in future. We have no choice but to go with the flow.

In this way we are all cogs or components in a huge grinding machine called creation that denies us free will and the courage to make something of our lives and the lives of others. Whether the force behind it all is God, other gods or the stars in the sky, this kind of determinism has been rejected by the Church because it makes no allowance for God’s infinite love and care for each of us and our own experience of free will (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2115-7).

Predestination in the theological sense was developed especially by Calvin. He emphasised God’s absolute sovereignty over us. Our redemption depends on God and not on us, and even our free will depends on God. He concluded from this that God, in spite of our free will, predetermines who will be saved and who will not.

Most modern Protestants, especially the Lutherans, take a far less rigid view and admit that God does not destroy our free will to choose good or evil.

Catholics do believe in Predestination – Just Not Double Predestination

Catholic teaching has invariably held that God is just. He does not predestine anyone to heaven or hell, and he wills that all individuals should be saved. He knows who will freely sin but he does not decree that sin. He does not programme anyone to live a life of virtue or wickedness. Vatican Council I (1870) declared that all things are naked and open to God’s eyes, even those which, by the free action of creatures, are in the future.

The Catechism adds: To God all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of predestination, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace (600).