Many evangelicals—including pastors—see the doctrine as best left alone, forbidden theological fruit, fraught with speculation. It’s just not practical, they argue. It’s a debate for seminary classes with no real bearing on the full-court press of everyday life.

In some churches, it is a word that conjures up images of an angry and capricious God who acts arbitrarily to save some, but consigns most sinners—including deceased infants—to eternal perdition. For many professing Christians, it is the mother of all swear words.

Let the pastor breathe it in the presence of the deacon board and he risks firing, fisticuffs or worse. A God who chooses is anti-American, anti-democracy. It bespeaks a long-faced, puritanical religion, a doctrinal novelty invented by a maniacal 16th-century minister whose progeny manufactured a theological “-ism” that has plunged countless souls into a godless eternity.

In other churches, it is a cherished word that describes a beloved doctrine, one that bestows comfort and unshakable confidence that not one maverick molecule, not one rebel subatomic particle exists outside of God’s loving providential control—even in the matter of salvation. Want to start a lively conversation? Then utter the word: predestination.

Biblical Doctrine

Few doctrines in the history of American religion have assembled such a pugilistic resume. And yet, there it stands, in the plainest and most unapologetic of terms, in Ephesians 1:5: “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.” And again six verses later: “In him (Christ) we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Those Ephesians texts, along with Romans 9, much of John 6, and Jesus’s high priestly prayer in John 17 toppled my commitment to free-will theology two decades ago. Acts 13:48 threw the knockout punch.

Disputed and disdained though it may be, predestination and its sibling, election, are plainly taught in Scripture, and every exegete must make peace with it.

Many evangelicals—including pastors—see the doctrine as best left alone, forbidden theological fruit, fraught with speculation. It’s just not practical, they argue. It’s a debate for seminary classes with no real bearing on the full-court press of everyday life.

But John Calvin, the pastor-theologian mistakenly credited with inventing predestination, argues to the contrary:

This great subject is not, as many imagine, a mere thorny and noisy disputation, nor speculation which wearies the minds of men without any profit; but a solid discussion eminently adapted to the service of the godly, because it builds us up in sound faith, trains us to humility, and lifts us up into an admiration of the unbounded goodness of God toward us, while it elevates to praise this goodness in our highest strains.

Lorraine Boettner, author of perhaps the most extensive single volume ever written on predestination, agrees:

This is not a cold, barren, speculative theory, not an unnatural system of strange doctrines as many people are inclined to believe, but a most warm and living, a most vital and important account of God’s relations with men. It is a system of towering but practical truths which are designed and adapted, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, to mold the affections of the heart and give right direction to conduct.

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