This book discusses Thomistic commentary on the topics of physical premotion, grace, and the permission of sin, especially as these relate to the mysteries of predestination and reprobation. The author examines the fundamental tenets of the classical Thomistic account, and on this basis critiques the 20th century revisionist theories of Domingo Banez, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Francisco Marin-Sola, Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, and Jean-Herve Nicolas. In conclusion, the implications of the traditional view are considered in light of the spiritual life.

The paper reconsiders the Weber Thesis of a linkage between Calvinism and capitalism. It first restates this sociological Thesis in terms of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination as its theological core and premise in virtue of being treated as the crucial religious factor of the spirit of modern capitalism. Consequently, it proposes that the Weber Thesis’ validity and consistency depends on that doctrine, succeeding or failing as a sociological theory with the latter depending on whether or not it is (...) unique in theological terms, as well as economic-social consequences. For that purpose, it reexamines and compares the Calvinist doctrine of predestination with the pre-Calvinist versions and infers that it is basically identical to or compatible with these. It then draws the implications for the Weber Thesis in respect of the degree of its validity or consistence. It concludes that the Weber Thesis likely is fail as a sociological-economic theory with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination to the extent that the latter is its theological ground and revealed not to be unique and new theologically and probably in terms of its societal effects. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION OCKHAM'S LIFE AND THE DATE OF THE TREATISE William Ockham, a highly influential philosopher of the fourteenth century and one of the most ...

The subject of "human free will" versus "divine predestination" is one of the most contentious topics in classical Islamic thought. By focusing on a theme of central importance to any philosophy of religion, and to Islam in particular, this book offers a critical study of the intellectual imports offered to this discourse by three key medieval Islamic scholars: Avicenna, Ghāzālī and Ibn Arabī.

David Basinger and Randall Basinger present four different answers to the question "If God is in control, are people really free?" Contributors include John Feinberg, Norman Geisler, Bruce Reichenbach and Clark Pinnock.

The Puṣṭipravāhamaryādābheda (PPM) by Vallabhācārya (1479–1531?) is a brief work (25 verses) written in Sanskrit in about the year 1500, which is accompanied by four Sanskrit commentaries and one Hindi (Brajbhāṣạ) commentary. The most important and authoritative commentary is by Puruṣottama, written about two centuries after the original text. The article contains a translation of the PPM with long extracts from the commentaries, particularly the one composed by Puruṣottama. After an introduction placing the PPM’s doctrine of the hierarchy of embodied (...) souls (jīvas) and their eligibility to obtain states of devotion (bhakti) in a wider context of Vaiṣṇava sectarian and philosophical schools, the text is presented along with the translation and notes to the text (including extracts from the commentaries). The article concludes with reflections on the PPM’s doctrine of predestination, comparing it with those of other Indian religious sects and within the wider context of predestination in Western religions, where these discussions have been ongoing for more than 1500 years. An extensive bibliography is included at the end. (shrink)

Early modernity is characterized by intensified and in-depth Christianization processes and the development of various models for religious subjectivity. Experiences of anxiety, despair and abandonment often play a central role in the religious literature and practices, notably in a protestant context in which there are intense debates on the place and value of such experiences in religious life. What is the relation between faith and despair? Can one distinguish spiritual despair from melancholia? What is the role played by the doctrine (...) of predestination in faith practices that include despair and desire? This book explores such questions through a reading of a variety of sources with the use of philosophical and psychoanalytical theories and perspectives: the life of Francis Spira, Luther, Calvin, Willem Teellinck, Gisbertus Voetius and Jean de Labadie. (shrink)

As Augustine himself testifies, he did not know Origen’s work so well. However, this does not mean that he was not acquainted with his key soteriological hypotheses, especially his teachings on apocatastasis. Although Augustine’s doctrine of predestination has completely opposite consequences in comparison to Origen’s teaching about apocatastasis, we believe that these teachings share the common ontological basis, which is the subject of this study. While Origen’s Christology is often called into question, Augustine’s Christology is considered correct. However, with (...) both authors we find a certain marginalisation of Christology in the field of ontologically understood soteriology. Theological insights of these two authors influenced to a significant extent the development of theology of both the East and West, making their works significant up until today, both from the aspect of Christian self-understanding and from the aspect of ecumenical dialogue. (shrink)

In his great poemThe Wreck of the DeutschlandGerard Manley Hopkins evokes the conversions of Paul and Augustine as two contrasting examples of the way in which God may intervene in human affairs:With an anvil-dingAnd with fire in him forge thy willOr rather, rather then, stealing as SpringThrough him, melt him but master him still:Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill….

A debate over whether God predestines some to reprobation broke out in the ninth century. No one actually taught this view, but both John Scotus Eriugena and Hincmar of Rheims, among other churchmen at the time, presumed it to be the view of those who referred to themselves as “double predestinarians.” In part, this was because the double predestinarians had made much of Augustine’s phrase “predestined to punishment,” a phrase that can in fact be found in several of his writings. (...) This article, which is the second of two parts, argues that Eriugena and Hincmar had difficulty avoiding the appearance of disagreeing entirely with Augustine’s use of that phrase. Eriugena said the phrase is to be understood a contrario to the divine nature; Hincmar said it is to be understood in a generic sense about God’s judgment on sin. Of the two, Hincmar came the closest to acknowledging that Augustine might have erred in using the phrase as he did. (shrink)

A debate over whether God predestines to make some people reprobate broke out in the ninth century. No one taught this view, but it was presumed by several churchmen at the time to be the position of those who called themselves double predestinarians. In part, this article explains why two double predestinarians, Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie, were mistaken for proponents of this view. They had been trying to explain Augustine’s phrase, “those predestined to punishment”, which they found (...) in no fewer than ten of Augustine’s texts. Gottschalk points out Augustine used the phrase interchangeably with the term reprobate. Thus, to Gottschalk, it is not a statement about what God predestines; rather, it is a statement about the effect of predestination on certain people. Likewise, to Ratramnus, the phrase referred to the effect of God’s ordering of both the good and evil acts of persons. That Gottschalk and Ratramnus identified Augustine’s use of the phrase with a belief in double predestination was due to their reading Augustine through the lens of Isidore of Seville’s Sententiae II.6. (shrink)

In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philosophy (...) and theology. Leibniz addresses such topics as free will, moral responsibility, divine causation, justice, punishment, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom, revealing crucial aspects of the genesis of his mature metaphysics and the theological motivations behind it. (shrink)

In traditional Chinese cosmology, this pattern could be very well explained in terms of the fluctuation of yin and yang, or as the natural order of Heaven. This cosmological explanation fits natural history well. There are natural phenomena such as floods, draughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc., that are beyond human control. These events have their determining factors. Once those factors are present, a natural disaster, however unfavorably viewed by humans, is doomed to take place. The view that natural history is (...) determined by factors outside the human world can be accepted without much controversy. However, when applied to human history, the role of man in human history becomes problematic under this kind of cosmology. How much of our success or failure is due to our larger cosmological environment -- the ongoing development of the chi'? Can a single individual reverse the flow of yin and yang or the emergence of good times and bad times? On a larger scale, is human history predestined? If there is a necessary rotation of prosperity and chaos, then it can be argued that.. (shrink)

W. Matthews Grant's "Dual Sources Account" aims at explaining how God causes all creaturely actions while leaving them free in a robust libertarian sense. It includes an account of predestination that is supposed to allow for the possibility that some created persons ultimately spend eternity in hell. I argue here that the resources Grant provides for understanding why God might permit created persons to end up in hell are, for two different reasons, insufficient. I then provide possible solutions to (...) these two problems, compatible with Grant's account overall, that help show why God might allow hell. (shrink)

In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philosophy (...) and theology. Leibniz addresses such topics as free will, moral responsibility, divine causation, justice, punishment, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom, revealing crucial aspects of the genesis of his mature metaphysics and the theological motivations behind it. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper proposes a reading of Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of predestination as fundamentally oriented towards and realized in friendship with God. On this reading, the seemingly disparate questions, “What does it mean to be predestined?” and “What does it mean to grow in friendship with God?” are not only mutually illuminating but ultimately coterminous. In the first part of the paper, I contextualize this theological rapprochement by foregrounding Aquinas’ treatment in the Summa Theologiae of predestination as a Christocentric, (...) communal reality, and by considering friendship with God as the end of Aquinas’ doctrine of grace. In the second part, I attend to Aquinas’ scriptural commentaries on Romans and the Gospel of John, in order to conduct a reading of predestination in/as friendship with God. Ultimately, as invited in friendship and adopted in grace into the life of Christ, God’s ordering of the rational creature to eternal life is nothing other than God’s ordering of humanity as viator to friendship with Himself in the inner life of Trinitarian love itself. (shrink)

The doctrine of divine simplicity as developed by Patristic writers suggests that the divine essence is identical to actions of the undivided divine nature, such as knowing and willing. However, natures or essences, on the one hand, and actions, on the other, appear to be fundamentally different. The first belongs to what God is in and of Himself, while the second belongs to the category of the Godhead’s undivided action. Can operations of the divine essence, whether in se or ad (...) extra, be identical to the divine essence, to God’s very being? If so, how? And if not, how are they to be understood? This article examines the way in which four scholastic theologians from the second half of the twelfth century — Peter Lombard, Roland of Bologna, Alan of Lille, and Peter of Poitiers — answer these questions. In doing so, it illuminates the origins of theological techniques that persist and continue to play an important role in fourteenth- century discussions of predestination by theologians such as Peter Auriol, while also demonstrating the inadequacies of describing theologians from the second half of the twelfth century in terms of schools. (shrink)

This article considers Aquinas' doctrine of predestination as an eternal reality in God in light of its temporal realization in time by the incarnation of the eternal Son. In particular, Aquinas' repeated recourse to the ratio of the divine goodness as the motive of predestination is documented in conjunction with his teaching on the fittingness of the incarnation. In this light, the relation of the natural sonship of Christ to the grace of adoption is developed by Aquinas as (...) the temporal realization of the eternal reality of predestination in God. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior's early theological writings have been relatively neglected for many years. Moreover, to the extent that they have been discussed at all they have been treated mainly as youthful work quite separate from Prior's later work as a philosopher and logician. However, as interest in Prior's achievements has been growing significantly in recent years it has become more important to investigate the development with his overall work. In fact, Prior's putatively "youthful" theological work overlapped his work as a (...) philosopher and logician for many years, as is richly documented by examples discussed in this paper. A particularly important theme is the problem of predestination. This paper presents comprehensive evidence that this theme, which was Prior's most important single preoccupation as a theological writer, was a most important source of inspiration for his development of tense logic. Via questions regarding divine foreknowledge and human free will, predestination was to motivate Prior as a logician to focus on time and tense. Whilst investigating this development, the paper also traces Prior's parallel development from Calvinist Christian believer to a more agnostic position. (shrink)

This essay investigates how Leibniz and Daniel Ernst Jablonski handled the ironing out of intra-protestant religious differences, notably on predestination in the years ca. 1697-1702. I shall be focusing on the recently published union document between the Lutherans of Hanover and the Calvinists of Brandenburg, entitled the Unvorgreiffliches Bedencken (hereafter UB) and on the equally recently published and hitherto practically unknown Meditationes pacatae de praedestinatione et gratia, fato et libero arbitrio of 1701-ca. 1706 2. This is a series of (...) Leibniz’s annotations on Jablonski’s Latin translation of article 17 (predestination) of the bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet’s Exposition of the 39 Articles of the Church of England. I shall try to show how the issue of predestination is handled in the UB by Leibniz and how his notes on the Meditationes complement and modify Jablonski’s Latin edition of the 17th article of Burnet’s Exposition the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. This will enable us to isolate the set of theological problems faced by the Lutheran and Calvinist participants in the negotium irenicum of 1697 -1702 and to point to the specific nature of the solutions proposed by Leibniz which were philosophical rather than theological. The underlying issue here is that of coexistence of philosophy and theology in Leibniz’s system. Indeed, one of the persistent questions about this philosopher concerns the exact relationship between his metaphysics (including physics and mathematics) and his theological views: which determined which? I hope to take the debate further here by analysing Leibniz’s contribution to the specifically theological issue of predestination, which, it will emerge, has direct bearing on Leibniz’s Essais de théodicée of 1710. (shrink)

This essay investigates how Leibniz and Daniel Ernst Jablonski handled the ironing out of intra-protestant religious differences, notably on predestination in the years ca. 1697-1702. I shall be focusing on the recently published union document between the Lutherans of Hanover and the Calvinists of Brandenburg, entitled the Unvorgreiffliches Bedencken (hereafter UB) and on the equally recently published and hitherto practically unknown Meditationes pacatae de praedestinatione et gratia, fato et libero arbitrio of 1701-ca. 1706 2. This is a series of (...) Leibniz’s annotations on Jablonski’s Latin translation of article 17 (predestination) of the bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet’s Exposition of the 39 Articles of the Church of England. I shall try to show how the issue of predestination is handled in the UB by Leibniz and how his notes on the Meditationes complement and modify Jablonski’s Latin edition of the 17th article of Burnet’s Exposition the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. This will enable us to isolate the set of theological problems faced by the Lutheran and Calvinist participants in the negotium irenicum of 1697 -1702 and to point to the specific nature of the solutions proposed by Leibniz which were philosophical rather than theological. The underlying issue here is that of coexistence of philosophy and theology in Leibniz’s system. Indeed, one of the persistent questions about this philosopher concerns the exact relationship between his metaphysics (including physics and mathematics) and his theological views: which determined which? I hope to take the debate further here by analysing Leibniz’s contribution to the specifically theological issue of predestination, which, it will emerge, has direct bearing on Leibniz’s Essais de théodicée of 1710. (shrink)

The book presents Fichte’s position on free will as a form of compatibilism that has not yet been explored in the literature. Due to early rationalist convictions, Fichte is as much concerned with reconciling freedom with a logical and a theological determinism as he is with a causal determinism. He sees in Kant’s novel concept of a pure practical reason a new form of rationalism, one consisting of a system of moral rather than natural necessitating grounds. At the same time, (...) he adopts a more radically libertarian stance on free will than Kant. Every member in a sequence of free actions is a “first and absolute member” and could be other than it is given the same antecedent natural events and natural laws. The interest of Fichte as a theorist of freedom lies in how he brings together freedom and predetermination in a way that challenges our assumption about their mutual exclusivity. The book provides an overview of Fichte’s philosophical system – the so-called “Doctrine of Science” – from 1793 to 1800 with the aim of contextualizing his theory of free agency and destiny. In doing so, it sheds light on how consideration of these issues in turn shapes the system. (shrink)

Early twelfth-century logicians invoked past-tensed statements with future-oriented contents to undermine the assumption that every proposition ‘about the past’ is determinate. In the second half of the century, the notion of future-dependence was used to restrict the scope of necessity per accidens. At some point, this idea began to be applied in theology to solve puzzles surrounding predestination, prescience, prophecy, and faith. In the mid-1160s, Magister Udo quotes some thinkers who insisted that the principle of the necessity of the (...) past should exclude dicta that ‘relate to the future’, such as that he has been predestined. Peter of Poitiers adopted this ‘Ockhamist’ strategy around 1170. We find similar accounts in Simon of Tournai and Alan of Lille, who invoked it in other contexts as well. By the time of Praepositinus of Cremona, Hubert of Pirovano, and Stephen Langton, the restricted principle became something of a common view at Paris. (shrink)