Tentative Response: Predestination in Calvin

Predestination is a common theme throughout Calvin's "The Institutes of Christian Religion". When discussed, it often comes paired with the topic of "providence". In Chapter 16, discussing the ways God builds the world and further protects it, Calvin describes non-believers as believing in "decrees or presages" (175) rather than in God's plan for them. He argues that, rather than the happening of events being up to random chance or "motion in the creatures", they are all "governed by the secret counsel of God" (175). However, dissatisfied with what he calls "bare prescience", the knowledge that God would have foreknowledge of human events, Calvin further describes this providence as "[consisting] in action" (176) rather than simply being. He refers back to the Old Testament, using Abraham's statement that "'God will provide'" (175) as evidence that God not only has an awareness of future events but seeks to act on that awareness to the benefit of particular humans. Those particular humans, who Calvin almost describes as a chosen group of people, are those who "attribute due praise to the omnipotence of God" (175), rather than by seeking secular, heretical explanations for the courses of their lives. These humans do not simply submit to a predestined future -- Calvin believes they "derive a double benefit" (175) and gain the protection of God from future ills and hardships. In order to address those who believe, from their own perspectives, that human happenings are fortuitous, especially when misfortunes occur to those who are undeserving, Calvin interrogates our human perspectives, and argues that because we are not God the plans that he creates and uses us for would naturally appear to be guided by fortune, and not by providence -- in other words, because future events are unknown to us and known to God, it will always seem as if all potentialities are possible, whereas to God's knowing perspective their is only one potential future. Thus, while at first Calvin's theories of predestination seem to lend themselves to the reduction of free will, and suggest that people need not act morally in order to receive benefits in life, I think he's actually suggesting that the only true choice people can make is to trust and have faith in the providence of God, even in the face of seemingly-unfair misfortunes, and to continue to follow the moralities outlined in the Bible -- in this way, he believes, people can receive protection and benefits from God.