Predestination‏

In theology, predestination is the doctrine that God has foreordained all things, especially that God has elected certain souls to eternal salvation. In crude simple terms, the concept of predestination is synonymous to the term ‘fixed destiny’.

The concept of predestination is a problem with respect to the theological idea of theodicy – the branch of theology that concerns itself with the question: ‘If a superior entity is both omnipotent and “good”, how can evil exist in the world?’ Presuming all events are predestined, all evil must be unavoidable as well. Therefore, the doctrine of predestination makes it virtually impossible to call an omnipotent entity “good”.

Also, predestination causes a paradox when combined with the philosophical concept of free will; man can hardly have free will when everything is ‘meant to be’. The philosophical case against predestination is argued quite persuasively by Christopher Hitchens:

“People say, “Well, how do you have free will? Do you think you do have it?” Well, it’s a very, very difficult subject indeed. Some religions say you don’t in effect have it, that all is determined by heaven, you’re really only a play thing in a larger game. I take that to be that some of the point of Calvinism. There are some schools of Islam also that say, “It is only as Allah wills.” There’s no will of yours really involved as long as you’re willing to make the prostration and the obedience. So the connection between religion and free will isn’t as simple and easy as some people think it is.

But I would say, yes, I think we have free will. When asked why I think so, I would have to take refuge in philosophical irony and say, “Because I don’t think we have any choice but to have free will.” Well at least I know at this point that I’m being ironic and that some of the irony is at my own expense and it’s a risk I have to be willing to run. But the Christian answer is, “Of course you have free will, the boss insists upon it.”

This somewhat degrades the freedom and redefines the idea of will and it seems to me also that there’s something degrading in the idea that saying that morality is derived in the same way; that it comes from on high; that we, ourselves, are not good enough; that we don’t have the dignity; we don’t have the self respect; we don’t have the character to know a right action or a right statement when we see it or when we want to perform it.

It’s this servile element in religion—it’s not strictly speaking the subject of our debate this evening, I know, but I’m damned if I completely forgo it—it’s the idea that, buried in the religious impulse, is actually the wish to be unfree, is the wish for an immovable, unchangeable, celestial authority, a kind of heavenly North Korea that will take our decisions away from us and commit us only to worship and praise and thank a Great Leader and his son, the Dear Leader, forever and ever and ever. I’m so glad that there’s no evidence that this is true.”

– Christopher Hitchens

Lapsarianism

Lapsarianism is the set of Calvinist doctrines describing the theoretical order of God’s decree – in his mind, before Creation – in particular concerning the order of his decree for the fall of man and reprobation. The name of the doctrine comes from the Latin lapsus meaning fall.

Supralapsarianism – also antelapsarianism – is the view that God’s decrees of election and reprobation logically preceded the decree of the fall while infralapsarianism – also called postlapsarianism and sublapsarianism – asserts that God’s decrees of election and reprobation logically succeeded the decree of the fall.

Many Calvinists reject both Lapsarian Views for various reasons. Herman Bavinck rejected both because he sees God’s decrees as eternal. Other Calvinists reject the lapsarian views because they perceive any particular ordering of the decrees as unnecessary and presumptive speculation. Critics of lapsarianism often argue that it is impossible to conceive of a temporal process by which God, in eternity, issued decrees, and it is impossible to know the mind of God without direct, scriptural evidence.

These are the main variety of Lapsarian Views:

– Supralapsarianism
Decree to: Save some and condemn others

– Antelapsarianism
Decree to: Create the elect and the reprobate

– Infralapsarianism
Decree to: Permit the Fall

– Sublapsarianism
Decree to: Provide salvation only for the elect

– Postlapsarianism
Decree to: Provide salvation only for the elect

Historically, part of the appeal of the infralapsarian position is that it can, at least in part, be viewed as a possible theodicy for the logical consequence of predestination that God is the author of sin.

Supralapsarians are often termed hypercalvinists, although, to some, this is a misnomer. To these individuals, all hypercalvinists are indeed supralapsarian, but not all supralapsarians are hypercalvinists.