Home > Topic > predestination
1 " War between free-will and predestination makes the idea of time travel is still too difficult to digest. "
― Toba Beta , My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
2 " Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of meeAll he could have; I made him just and right,Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.Such I created all th’ Ethereal PowersAnd Spirits, both them who stood and them who fail’d;Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.Not free, what proof could they have giv’n sincereOf true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,Where only what they needs must do, appear’d,Not what they would? what praise could they receive?What pleasure I from such obedience paid,When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice)Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil’d,Made passive both, had served necessity,Not mee. They therefore as to right belong’d,So were created, nor can justly accuseThir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate;As if Predestination over-rul’dThir will, dispos’d by absolute DecreeOr high foreknowledge; they themselves decreedThir own revolt, not I; if I foreknewForeknowledge had no influence on their fault,Which had no less prov’d certain unforeknown.So without least impulse or shadow of Fate,Or aught by me immutable foreseen,They trespass, Authors to themselves in allBoth what they judge and what they choose; for soI form’d them free, and free they must remain,Till they enthrall themselves: I else must changeThir nature, and revoke the high DecreeUnchangeable, Eternal, which ordain’dThir freedom: they themselves ordain’d thir fall. "
― John Milton , The Complete Poems and Major Prose
3 " Believing in unknown future, destiny, predestination without working hard to see it through is a mere fantasy "
4 " The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. "
― Leo Tolstoy , War and Peace
5 " There's nothing more unattractive than a man who blames predestination for his own failures and a woman who blames men for her own vulnerability...Blame thyself "
― Sanhita Baruah
6 " Faith is not a meritorious cause of election, but it is constantly attested as the sole condition of salvation. Faith merely receives the merit of atoning grace, instead of asserting its own merit. God places the life-death option before each person, requiring each to choose. The ekletos are those who by grace freely believe. God does not compel or necessitate their choosing. Even after the initial choice of faith is made, they may grieve and quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19).Faith is the condition under which God primordially wills the reception of salvation by all. “He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe; lest we should say that we first chose Him” (Augustine). Faith receives the electing love of God not as if it had already become efficacious without faith, but aware that God’s prescience foreknows faith like all else.In accord with ancient ecumenical consent, predestination was carefully defined in centrist Protestant orthodoxy as:'The eternal, divine decree, by which God, from His immense mercy, determined to give His Son as Mediator, and through universal preaching , to offer Him for reception to all men who from eternity He foresaw would fall into sin; also through the Word and Sacraments to confer faith upon all who would not resist; to justify all believers, and besides to renew those using the means of grace; to preserve faith in them until the end of life, and in a word, to save those believing to the end' (Melanchthon). "
― Thomas C. Oden , The Transforming Power of Grace
7 " It was not the Fall of Adam, therefore, that set God’s agenda; it was the decision to share the great dance with us through Jesus. Adam’s plunge certainly threatened God’s dreams for us, but that threat had been anticipated and already strategically overcome in the predestination of the incarnation. Jesus Christ did not become human to fix the fall; he became human to accomplish the eternal purpose of our adoption, and in order to bring our adoption to pass, the Fall had to be called to a halt and undone….Jesus is not a footnote to Adam and his Fall; the Fall, and indeed creation itself, is a footnote to the purpose of God in Jesus Christ. "
― C. Baxter Kruger , Jesus and the Undoing of Adam
8 " If we are to be biblical, then, the issue is not whether we should have a doctrine of predestination or not, but what kind we should embrace. "
― R.C. Sproul
9 " The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged in unassailable freedom. Ransom could not for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heart on the subject. "
― C.S. Lewis , Perelandra (The Space Trilogy, #2)
10 " Women have a predestination to suffering. "