Augustine’s Heirs

The debate regarding predestination and free will surfaced regularly during the Middle Ages, and it came to a head during the Reformation. Luther saw individual predestination as a free choice on God’s part, without His foreseeing the future merits or good works of the chosen ones. Calvin came to a more radical conclusion with his concept of twofold predestination: Some are predestined to eternal salvation, and others to eternal condemnation. However, Calvin too considered God’s choice to be arbitrary, even incomprehensible.

Within the Protestant Reformed churches, the discussion was far from closed. Along with others, the Remonstrants, who followed Jacobus Arminius, believed that man has a role to play in his own salvation. The Protestant Synod of Dordrecht (1618-19) temporarily settled the question when it adopted a strict form of Calvinist orthodoxy. According to the book L’Aventure de la Réforme​—Le monde de Jean Calvin, in Germany this quarrel on predestination and free will gave birth to a long period of “unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation, as well as abuses, imprisonments, and banishments of theologians.”