PREDESTINATION is the doctrine of God's will and counsel as revealed in the de creed redemption of mankind. It includes in its scope two significant facts, namely, his be neficent and allwise purpose and plan in refer ence to those who are fore-known and fore chosen to the enjoyment of eternal salvation; and his fixed, determinate attitude toward those who are permitted .to perish in their sins. This doctrine, as thus defined, has been the subject of intense theological controversy, because of the many essential and apparently contradictory personal features involved in it. And yet its history, as it appears in the rise and develop ment of Calvinism over against Pelagianism, gives evidence of the logical connection which it has with biblical and metaphysical truth.
The sources of this tenet are set forth in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. From the earliest times of the human race, the God who °upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all crea tures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least"' is manifestly a potent per sonal factor in the world. His wisdom and might, his love and grace, are wondrously and sublimely illustrated in the lives and movements of his chosen people. Every stage of their his tory, in the genesis and growth of their civil and religious institutions, to the closing tragedy of the life of Jesus Christ, furnishes a series of pictures of the divine method of government, as they are painted by his artist hand. Indeed, so evident is his own mind and purpose through out the execution of his salvatory plan, that his nature, life and love at once and forever become inseparable elements within the domain of the human universe. And this is fully indicated (1) by the perfection of his nature; (2) in the marks of his infinite wisdom, power, holiness, etc.; (3) in the operations of his will, thought and counsel ; (4) in prophetic utterances and their fulfilment; (5) in the coming of Jesus Christ, the true representative of God; (6) in the unchangeable provisions of the redemption wrought out through him; (7) in the actual salvation of men from their sins; (8) in the establishment, upon a sure foundation, of the Fact of eternal life! The historic birth of this doctrine can be traced to the fertile brain of Origen, who pos sibly was its first supporter, although he did not fully accept the second portion of it, which consigns the unsaved to conditions of everlast ing reprobation. From his time to the Augus
tinian Age there was little controversy over the sovereignty of God in its relation to man's free dom and salvation. But during Augustine's sway, in the Western Church, the doctrine of man's inability to save himself and his absolute dependence upon God's eternal decree to be saved, was so strongly and vigorously taught that Pelagius, who represented opposite theolog ical tendencies, declared that the true funda mental conception of sin involved man's capac it of choke to be good or evil, apart from God's plan and grace. This controversy was waged with great earnestness — especially in the Greek Church — for half a century, till it was modified under the form of Semipelagian ism.
Later theologians divided themselves into two groups, the Infralapsarians and the Supra lapsarians. The former taught that the decree of predestination had no effectiveness until after man's fall, while the latter class held that the ultimate end which God had in mind was his own glorification in the salvation of some and in the reprobation of others.
During the Reformation the strongest ex ponents of the true predestination idea were the Calvinistic thinkers under the leadership of John Calvin (1509), though the Lutherans and Ar minian( also accepted the doctrine in a less rigid form. Calvin's doctrinal ideas were incorpo rated in his greatest masterpiece,