There are any number of theological ideas that raise the ire of people, religious and non-religious alike and put them on the defensive, but perhaps none more than the volatile subject of predestination. A basic working definition of the term implies that God has in some way foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, “the good, the bad, and the ugly,” from the microscopic scale to the gargantuan, over all space and time. The reasons why we immediately object to the notion are probably obvious. On the surface it appears to threaten our independence and stomp on our egos. Worse yet, it menaces with our sense of purpose and meaning in life endangering motivation and generating feels like, “It doesn’t matter what I do.” So our instinct is often to ignore the subject, explain it away, or redefine it in a more palatable way, but like it or not, we have little choice but to confront it when we read ancient literature and we need to address it if we are going to take an honest approach to the scriptures, the myths, the poets, and the philosophers.
In a prescientific age, the will of the gods explained the blind forces of nature and the unexpected twists and turns of human affairs. It seems that every primitive culture had conceived of powers that govern the course of our lives believing that the events that happen to us are not random but follow some divine law. Within the European tradition, the destiny of each soul was determined by a small group of goddesses. They were three women known within the Hellensitic tales as the Fates and within the Scandinavian sagas as the Norns. According to the Greeks these three women were known by the names of Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Their job was to spin the thread of human destiny, but they were also equipped with shears to cut it off whenever they pleased. Appropriately, they were the daughers of the goddess Themis (Law) who was the counselor to Jupiter (Zeus.) The Norns on the other hand were named Urd (past,) Verdani (present,) and Skuld (future.) They were the Norse equivalent of the fates who lived underneath one of the roots of the world tree Ygdrasill and spun the threads of life for every creature. The fate of every human, animal, and god was in their hands, and whenever a child was born, these three women spun its fate in their threads.
There are many stories which illustrate the work of the Fates in Greek mythology and one such story involved a man named Meleager. When he was born his mother Althea saw these masters of destiny spinning the threads of fate for her son, and they informed her that his life would last no longer than a brand then burning on the hearth. At hearing this Althea immediately collected this brand, quenched it, and kept it safe for years to safeguard her son’s life.
As it happened, the goddess Diana in ill favor toward a mortal sent an enormous wild boar into the countryside that proceeded to lay waste the region. Many gathered together to hunt the beast down and kill it including Meleager. Working with the heroes of old, the Argonauts, Meleager would deal a deathblow to the boar with his spear. His triumph over the beast was met with a roar of praise from his comrades. In celebrating his success, he chose to give the head of the boar and its hide to a woman named Atalanta who was his love interest and also on the hunt with the others. But at this gesture, Meleager’s uncles were envious and snatched these trophies away from Atalanta. The audacity of these relatives incensed Meleager and despite family bonds he ran his sword through their hearts in his rage.
Then after not too long, Althea heard the news and was torn between grief for her brothers and the thought of vengeance for her son. She took out the firebrand that she had so carefully guarded for many years and held it over the fire while an emotional wrestling match was taking place within her between these opposing feelings. She went back and forth between her allegiance as a sister and her devotion as a mother. Finally after attempting four times to throw the brand back into the fire, she decided to take the side of vengeance. Casting the brand back into the flames from which she rescued it so many years earlier, she turned her son over to death in accordance with what the Fates had predicted at Meleager’s birth. The message of the story is that try as we must, we will simply be unable to circumvent destiny and thwart the divine plan. It might occur to us to devise a way to temporarily stop something unpleasant or undesirable from happening. However ultimately something which we had not calculated will ensure that the determined events which we have attempted to frustrate will in the end come to pass.
Of course the Greeks were not alone with their stories of unexpected outcomes driven by a divine hand; there are enough of them in the Hebrew scriptures as well. Perhaps one good example is the story of the twins Jacob and Esau which had a conclusion that would have been completely unforeseen in that day and age. When their mother Rebekah became pregnant, she was unsettled by the jostling within her womb and inquired what was happening to her. She was told by God, “Two nations are within your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”
This must have astonished her as in the ancient world the law of primogeniture was the fully accepted norm. The firstborn would always be the preeminent one, inheriting a double portion over the other siblings from the estate of the father. Additionally the firstborn would assume the role of the successor and new patriarch with all of the spiritual rights and privileges that go along with that.
The boys grew up, and as so often happens the parents showed a preference for one child over the other. The mother Rebekah was partial to the younger Jacob while the patriarch Isaac loved the older Esau who was a hunter and satisfied his taste for wild game. As it turned out one day Esau who had been in the field came home famished and asked his brother for some stew which was cooking on the fire to assuage his hunger. Jacob who had a secret aspiration for the coveted birthright which did not rightfully belong to him cunningly convinced Esau to sell it to him in exchange for the bowl of stew. The older brother who was perhaps delirious with hunger gave into this demand probably not thinking of it too seriously. He probably knew that his father Isaac would never recognize such a deal as legitimate anyway.
However, as time went on, Isaac who was well advanced in years became blind and sensing that he was nearing the time of his departure from this life sought to lay his hands upon the head of Esau to bestow the blessing of the firstborn. So he sent his eldest son into the field to catch him some game and prepare him a savory meal before the benediction. Meanwhile Rebekah took advantage of the situation by quickly preparing a goat from the herd and got Jacob to bring it to him while donning the rough clothes of Esau pretending to be the older brother. As Isaac could not see, she must have thought she could pull it off, and the unsuspecting father played into the ruse. With his full partriarchal authority, Isaac unwittingly pronounced the sacred words of blessing over Jacob investing him with the full rights of the firstborn and making him lord over his older brother. Needless to say, when Esau came back from the field he was incensed to find out what had happened and fell at the feet of his father who was perhaps more distraught than he at what had transpired.
The apostle Paul comments on this well known story in his writings about predestination which appear here and there in the New Testament. For him, the story illustrated very well the idea of the Divine Plan which brings things to pass in ways that are unpredictable and often counterintuitive. He wrote, “Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad – in order that God’s purpose in choosing might stand ... she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’”
A belief in destiny was not limited to the peoples of the Mediterranean but stretched far to the east even to India. Hindu folklore and mythology depict stories of fate in its sacred texts, particularly the two epic sagas of India, the Mahabharata (Big India) and the Ramayana (Rama’s Journey.) The former has as its central figure, Krishna the eighth incarnation of Vishnu. The latter as its name implies focuses on Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, the second person of the Hindu Trinity.
From these texts we not only find anecdotes supporting the idea of predeterminism but we catch a glimpse of a bigger picture that sheds some light on this divine mystery. Within the Mahabharata is a great poem known as the Bhagavad Gita (The Song of God) which features the wise words of Krishna. In one particular dialogue he reveals, “Those who understand the cosmic laws know that the Day of Brahma ends after a thousand Yugas and the Night of Brahma ends after a thousand Yugas. When the day of Brahma dawns, forms are brought forth from the Unmanifest; when the night of Brahma comes, these forms merge in the Formless again. This multitude of beings is created and destroyed again and again in the succeeding days and nights of Brahma.”
Though a bit cryptic to our Western ears, the passage communicates a very fundamental aspect of Hindu theology about the nature of the physical universe. Not just a one shot deal, the idea is that God creates and dissolves it in a continuous cycle over and over again. There is a period of time that God manifests himself forth into a physical existence which is followed by a time when he withdraws from material being into the unmanifest state. The reference to Brahma in the text is to the first person of the Hindu Trinity, who initiates the creation cycle. The second person , Vishnu functions as the preserver of that manifestation, and the third person, Shiva has the role of destroyer when it is time for the creation to be concluded.
The Hindus have a complex system of time, and the equivalent timeframe of a “thousand yugas” is 4.32 billion years, a very lofty number in the mind of ancient people. In a prescientific age, it is a remarkable figure that is clearly the same order of magnitude as the age of the universe and perhaps right on target for the age of our own solar system.
The beginning of the universe is generally thought to have been initiated by the explosion of a singularity (the Big Bang) when all matter and energy began to expand rapidly outward. It is unclear how the universe will end but there are two likely scenarios. Some scientists envision the expansion continuing until all the stars dim to darkness and everything thins out to the point of complete dissipation (the Big Freeze.) Others expect that the expansion will eventually stop and reverse course signaling the great contraction whereby the universe will be compressed again into a singularity (the Big Crunch.)
Whatever the case may be, the eastern mystics envisioned many such cycles of creation and dissolution, perhaps not without parallel in other traditions. Solomon might have had a glimpse of that idea in his adage, “Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before.” But even more profound yet are the words of Paul. In one passage he speaks of God the Son as “the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created ... all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” In Pauline theology it is the Divine Son who brings forth the manifestation of God in the creation of the universe, and it is also the Son who withdraws the entire creation back into himself and ultimately back into the Unmanifested God when the cycle is completed. The apostle lays out the culmination of creation where he says, “Then the end will come when [the Son] hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For he must reign until he has put the last enemy under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death ... When he has done this, then the Son will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.” In the final state, God who had been dispersed through a vast creation of space and time consolidates back into the One so that it can be said he is once again “all in all.”
Of course this grand picture of reality begs a more fundamental question yet. Why would God who is infinitely happy and deeply content within himself have a need to pour himself out into a manifest form over and over again? It is probably dangerous to anthropomorphize God, projecting onto him our own human thoughts and feelings, and yet to some degree it might be justified. Maybe the old saying, “the apple does not fall far from the tree” could apply in our understanding of God to some extent. By way of example, it might be fair to say that humans have a sense of humor only because that quality first existed within God.
When a child asks the reason for his existence and for that matter the reason for the creation itself, his parent appeases him with the trite response, “God was lonely.” That answer naturally appeases the child, and the parent chuckles to himself at the banality of the idea, perhaps imagining the real motivation behind the creation as much more complicated than that and probably beyond our comprehension. But sometimes the simple answer is often the best answer. Maybe God in his singular, solitary, and unmanifest self does feel some degree of loneliness. Maybe when he is completely withdrawn into himself there arises a sense of boredom or stagnation which needs a remedy. What do people do when they feel bored? Much of the time they will want to play a game to relieve the monotony and rekindle a spark of interest in the moment.
Conceivably, God’s work of creation is just that – a game that he is playing with himself, because there is no one else to play it with. There may be a variety of games that he is playing, but certainly it is one of hide and seek which is of course a childhood favorite. When God manifests forth, he conceals himself within the fabric of the physical order, voluntarily taking on the severe limitations of material existence and forgetting his own lofty identity. It’s like he plunges himself into a realm of amnesia getting lost in the natural world so that he can have the fun of rediscovering himself again through the experiences of the creation. So then God is on a pilgrimage toward finding himself, an idea appreciated by mystics like St. Teresa of Avila who said, “It appears that even God is on the journey.”
Though it is a game, it is far from an easy one and there are strict rules involved. Contemplative pioneer Fr. Thomas Keating did in fact see the created world as the field of the game God is playing, and he has been quoted as saying that God likes to “play rough” sometimes. The struggle of life certainly supports that idea, for there are ample tears on the journey that more than offset the laughter and frivolity along the way.
Along that line of thinking, the creation might also be like a play God is putting on for himself, one like those of antiquity with their share of tragedy and comedy rounding out the story of life. God has written a script and choreographed the scenes in an intricate drama in which he is both the actor and the audience. The Dutch philosopher and priest Erasmus seemed to perceive this idea in one of his works where he asks, “For what else is the life of man but a kind of play in which men in various costumes perform until the director motions them off the stage.” But the notion of life as a play was probably best celebrated by Shakespeare who in one of his comedies wrote, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts ...”
God’s theatrical performance has as its main goal what would bring him the most satisfaction. Sentiments to this effect are found in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms where it is written: “But our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.” “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and in the earth, in the seas and in all deeps.”
From the humble origin of the universe until now, we can observe a cosmos which has been evolving into more and more complexity. From the simple and short-lived stars that existed at the start have come the heavy elements which permitted the formation of planetary systems and ultimately to life itself which becomes more and more intricate over time. An invisible hand is guiding the universe along to some lofty goal hidden in the mind of God, one that was appreciated by Solomon who understood, “The Lord works out everything to its proper end.”
The apostle Paul also built upon this to say that “all things work together for good,” suggesting that the unfolding of the creation saga has been optimized to be the best that it can be. The very talented 17th century philosopher, mathematician, and scientist Gottfried Leibniz probably summarized it well in one of his writings. Perhaps in a moment of mystical insight he penned, “This world is the best of all conceivable worlds.” Everything is as it should be as the Divine plan is unfurled and all is being arranged toward some ultimate good, an idea that was always in the mind of the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich with her famous words, “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”
In antiquity, it was the Stoics in particular who promoted the Divine Plan working itself out toward a good end. They believed that the world was in the only state it could possibly be in. “How could God being perfectly good make anything but a good world?” In the modern age, it is probably the Reformed Protestants who have best championed the message of the “Great Architect of History” in the West. Erudite theologians have written extensively on the subject including Dutch scholar Loraine Boettner who wrote, “We cannot conceive of God bringing into existence a universe without a plan which would extend to all that would be done in that universe. As the Scriptures teach that God's providential control extends to all events, even the most minute, they thereby teach that His plan is equally comprehensive. It is one of His perfections that He has the best possible plan, and that He conducts the course of history to its appointed end. And to admit that He has a plan which He carries out is to admit Predestination.”
Determinism naturally has a theological overtone to it, but it can also be a purely scientific subject as well. Probably it is the likes of Johann Kepler and Isaac Newton who set that ball in motion a few hundred years ago as the scientific age was dawning. Through the work of such pioneer scientists, it became clear that the physical matter of the universe is governed by fixed laws. The universal law of gravitation for example could predict with certainty the behavior of objects on earth and within the solar system. This led to a widespread belief in an idea known as the “clockwork universe” which compared the cosmos to a mechanical clock ticking along like a machine. Governed by the laws of physics, the machine’s behavior could be completely predictable should full knowledge of those laws be discovered.
In particular this led to the theory of causal determinism which perhaps existed in seed form with the Stoics of old. It is the belief that everything that happens is a link in an unbroken chain of events going back to the very beginning of the universe. In this way, there is nothing that happens that is uncaused or self-caused, but all events are determined by the conditions that precede them. It is a proposition that seems consonant once again with the ideas of Indian mythology and the “Legend of Shiva’s Dance.” At one point in the story, Shiva in an incarnate form shares his words of wisdom, “As an earthen pot has for its first cause the potter, for material cause the clay, and instrumental cause the potter’s staff and wheel, so the universe has illusion for its material cause, the Shakti or Shiva – that is Parvati – for its instrumental cause, and Shiva himself for its first cause.” In this respect everything in creation can be thought of as a secondary cause, but it is only God himself, the originator of the creation who is rightly deemed the “first cause” or as is also used to describe him, the “uncaused cause.”
In the 20th century, the new study of Quantum Mechanics seemed to challenge the standing scientific paradigm of determinism with its laws of probability that were in sharp contrast to the concrete principles of Newton. At a subatomic level where the model of hard spherical particles breaks down and gives way to nebulous wave forms, quantum theory has done much better to describe the physical behavior at that scale. With its postulates that include chance, it has unsettled those who embraced the more traditional paradigm like Einstein who is known for his famous objection, “God does not play dice.” He maintained that it was simply our ignorance of a concrete understanding of the way things work at a subatomic level that gives rise to the models of probability and chance. Ultimately though, whatever might be ambiguous on the small scale gives way to definitive behavior and converges to the more familiar fixed laws we are familiar with on the large scale. Einstein who was perhaps a philosopher as much as a scientist is also known for his deterministic quote reflecting the view of the universe from God’s perspective: “Events do not happen. They already exist and are seen on the Time Machine.”
What is most objectionable to many on the subject of predestination is its implications to the idea of free will which as fiercely independent beings we covet greatly. Predestination immediately elicits the notion of a robotic existence devoid of choice. A harmony between the concepts of determinism and free will would appear to be an irreconcilable paradox and one which philosophers have debated for centuries. There are four main lines of thinking related to the tension between these seemingly diametrically opposed ideas. There is a group of thinkers who believe that the ideas can be successfully reconciled and they are appropriately known as the compatibilists. Then there are those who assert that determinism and free will are completely incompatible and there are three incompatibilist positions to mention including the hard incompatibilists who believe that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism, the libertarianists who do not believe in determinism but think that free will may exist, and the hard determinists who uphold determinism and deny free will altogether.
These modern positions had their equivalents in antiquity as well particularly among the Jewish religious authorities. Around the time of Christ there existed three main sects including the mystical and ascetic Essenes, the Pharisees who were the teachers of the Law, and the Sadducees who were mainly Jewish priests. The Sadducees who were generally more worldly and materially oriented and denied many supernatural aspects of religion (e.g. the resurrection) believed in free will and rejected the notion of predestination. The Essenes on the other hand were on the opposite end of the spectrum and upheld God’s providence in human affairs and denied free will. The Pharisees in contrast to the other sects took a more middle of the road position believing that both predestination and free will were both true and could somehow coexist in the divine scheme, though they did not offer an explanation of how.
Hard Determinism which paints a grotesque image of God as the”Great Puppet Master” of history doesn’t seem like a nice explanation of reality, but neither does Indeterminism which allows for a chaotic and uncontrolled universe that changes willy-nilly from moment to moment. Like many things in life, an intermediate solution is often the best answer and the one that has found the best support in the creeds and confessions of religion.
Before we can even attempt to resolve the tension between predestination and free will, it is necessary to define terms. We have already sketched out to some degree the idea of predestination, but what is meant by free will? Are we talking about something absolute and autonomous, a will that is completely free of any encumbrances? If so, then we are going to have a problem right out of the starting gate! The reality is that none of us makes decisions in a vacuum. None of us lives in a bubble that is insulated from forces that have the potential to steer our will in one direction or another. So many things affect us not only consciously but unconsciously. There are environmental influences that work on us as well as biological factors that have the power to affect our thoughts and our mood and inevitably drive our decisions in one way or another whether we are aware of it or not. Consequently we can suggest that the will may be free but it is certainly not independent; the will may be uncoerced but it definitely cannot be unconstrained.
So how does that qualification of free will help us in our effort to resolve the mystery? What if the Divine Plan simply takes into account the free responses of sentient beings driven by a multitude of factors and influences toward some particular end? What if the Divine Plan simply integrates the choices of intelligent creatures through the faculty of perfect foreknowledge and the comprehensive understanding of all contingencies in the chain of causation? In this respect, is it conceivable that there is no violation of human free will while at the same time the Divine Will is seamlessly effected? We can imagine the possibility of the uncoerced will of man following its own inclinations and desires and responding naturally to internal and external stimuli while fitting exactly into the script of history. This is perhaps how the “Invisible Hand” steers the ship to its designated port, how Divine Providence is guiding the universe to its appointed end.
A large assembly of Protestant theologians gathered in England in the 17th century to compose the historic Westminster Confession of Faith which addresses quite a few topics and serves as the standard of belief for Presbyterian and Reformed Churches. There are a couple sections devoted to the subject of Divine Providence which affirm the compatibility of predestination and free will. The language is a bit dated and the text perhaps a bit verbose, but the chapters communicate a harmony between God’s will and the will of man. One clause asserts, “God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” A similar article expresses the same kind of consonance: “Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, he orders them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church also maintains the friendly coexistence of God’s Plan and man’s free will citing a few poignant biblical texts on the matter. Particularly in the early chapters of the Book of Acts, the intersection of the human and divine wills is seen in sharp juxtaposition, and while the passages offer no explanation to reconcile the two, it is clear that the writer believed their compatibility was self-evident. The catechism observes, “Jesus violent death was not the result of chance in an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances, but is part of the mystery of God’s plan, as St. Peter explains to the Jews of Jerusalem in his first sermon on Pentecost: [‘This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross’ (Acts 2:23)] This biblical knowledge does not mean that those who handed him over were merely passive players in a scenario written in advance by God.”
The next paragraph of the catechism goes on to offer commentary on another nearby biblical passage: "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: ‘In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.’” (Acts 4:27-28)
The mystery of the convergence of the Divine Will and human will is also seen in the Old Testament, especially in the Book of Proverbs where Solomon notes, “The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps,” and “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” However it is in one of the well known narratives of Genesis that we see a prime example of the intersection of Providence and man’s free will with the story of Joseph. As the apple of his father Jacob’s eye and the son of the patriarch’s favorite wife Rachel, he provoked jealousy in the hearts of his elder brothers. As the story goes, his siblings conspired to get rid of him and sold him as a slave to a caravan going into Egypt and told their father that he was dead. After many years had passed, Joseph through a remarkable chain of events rose to become the second in power in Egypt unbeknownst to his brothers back in Canaan. Then when a severe famine hit the Near East, his brothers heard that there was food in Egypt and went there to purchase grain which had been fortuitously laid up in storehouses by the Egyptians before the crops had failed. As it turned out, the brothers came into the very presence of Joseph whom they had attempted to dispatch many years before in a scenario in which the table was completely turned. Joseph forgave them for what they had done to him and from his position of strength spoke of the confluence of God’s plans and his brothers’ plans in the sagacious words, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”
So what if the doctrine of predestination is in fact true, and determinism governs the course of life? What then is the point of making any effort in this existence or working toward some goal if it is ultimately inevitable? Why should we be motivated to do anything if we can just sit back on our laurels and let fate take over? Naturally these objections reflect valid concerns, and it is no wonder that such documents like the Westminster Confession of Faith contain a sentence warning that, “The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care ...”
Perhaps the short answer to the protests against this ancient concept is that while the future is being steered down a particular path, it is necessarily veiled from our eyes except for the crudest outline of events. In general, the prophecies of the bible are vague and cryptic and rarely understood until seen in hindsight, and this is of course deliberate because it would be very damaging to humanity to have the full weight of the future bearing down upon it. St. John Vianney, the 18th century French priest led a very difficult life and was under the constant thumb of the Evil One and was subjected to severe trials regularly. Toward the end of his life, he remarked that if he had known when he was just starting out of all of the hardships that were destined to come upon him, he “would have died on the spot.” So we as well would have our knees buckle underneath us and become paralyzed in fear to know only a fraction of what is our future lot. God’s Plan is concealed from mortal view lest it be too much for man to bear but also so that one does not become the victim of a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” If we know what should transpire in the future, we will be tempted to align ourselves with that prediction and focus our energy toward making that expectation become a reality. It would be a tremendous burden to the individual and one that robs him of the wonder and adventure of life to know how things should turn out. There would be no fun in it at all, and one of the basic purposes of life would be nullified. Consequently the Divine Plan is God’s business, and God’s business alone and is none of our affair to probe or speculate on. Rather it is for man to make every effort to be the best he can be in this life, playing his part and working hard,pursuing his dreams and leaving the outcome to God in whose hand it rests.
It is not for us to acknowledge the teaching of predestination that we should fall into a fatalistic apathy but rather that we should have the highest consolation in whatever befalls us in life. The doctrine ultimately assures us that there are no cruel accidents or mishaps occurring randomly in a chaotic universe. Everything that happens, whether it be good or bad, happens for a reason, and in the end, all that transpires works together for good. The best antidote to feelings of anger, depression, or despair when life deals us a hard blow is to know that whatever we are dealing with has been sent with the greatest love from God for our own good. Loraine Boettner echoed these sentiments in his great work on the subject of Divine Providence saying, “There is no such thing as chance, or fortune; nor is there a readier way to gain the fear of God, and to put our whole trust in Him, than to be throughly versed in the doctrine of Predestination.” He affirmed, “It is most necessary that we should have our hearts well established in the firm and unwavering belief of this truth, that whatever comes to pass, be it good or evil, we may look up to the hand and disposal of all, to God.”
The idea of predestination is a contentious subject to say the least particularly for the reason that it takes a blow at human pride and self-sufficiency, but it is a matter that we must grapple with if we are to digest the writing of philosophers and sages and mystics throughout the ages. If we are uncomfortable with the word itself and its gross overtones, we need not interpret the teaching to say any more than God has a plan and is steering the ship of history to some unknown port. We need not be intimidated by the doctrine which may tempt us to live a life of quiet resignation and apathy. Rather it is important that we recognize that this tenet of faith has been given to us for our own comfort and consolation along the bumpy road of life, to know that whatever comes our way was ultimately meant to be, destined by the hand of God for our highest good.