Predestination and the Protestant ethic

This paper shows an equivalence result between the utility functions of secularagents who abide by a moral obligation to accumulate wealth and those of religiousagents who believe that salvation is immutable and preordained by God. Thisresult formalizes Weber's renowned thesis on the connection between the worldlyasceticism of Protestants and the religious premises of Calvinism. Furthermore,ongoing economies are often modeled with preference relations such as "Keeping upwith the Joneses" which are not associated with religion. Our results relate thesesecular economies of today and economies of the past shaped by religious ideas.

Le disciple pacifique de Saint Augustin sur la liberté, la grace et la predestination : avec une dissertation preliminaire de l'autorité de Saint Augustin ... dans les matières de la Liberté, de la Grace, & de la Prédestination ...

Mode of access: Internet.

Le Predestinatianisme ou, les Heresies sur la predestination et la reprobation : traité historique et theologique, o l'on expose la naissance, le progres,? les rev?olutions, les dogmes, et les sectes diverses des Pred?estinatiens avec des Dissertations sur des points importans et un Sommaire de la doctrine que l'Eglise oppose a ces sectes /

Mode of access: Internet.

Exposition de la foi catholique touchant la grace et la predestination : avec un recueil des passages les plus precis et les plus forts de l'Ecriture Sainte sur lesquels est fondee cette doctrine.

Contiene: "Recueil des passages les plus precis de lecriture sainte. Sur lesquels sont fondees les plus fortes veritez de la doctrine"

The doctrine of predestination, truly and fairly stated : confirmed from clear Scripture evidence, and defended against all the material arguments and objections advanced against it, to which is prefixed, a short and faithful narrative of a remarkable revival of religion, in the congregation of New-Londonderry, and other parts of Pennsylvania, as the same was sent in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Prince of Boston /

Mode of access: Internet.

An enquiry into the doctrines of necessity and predestination : in four discourses preached before the University of Oxford, with notes and an appendix on the seventeenth article of the Church of England /

Mode of access: Internet.

The original, and present state of man, briefly considered; : wherein is shewn, the nature of his fall, and the necessity, means, and manner of his restoration, through the sacrifice of Christ, and the sensible operation of the divine principle of grace and truth, held forth to the world by the people called Quakers. : To which are added, some remarks on the doctrine of predestination, the scriptures, worship, and the kingdom of heaven. /

Smith, J. Friends' books

Remarks upon the objections made to certain passages in the Enquiry concerning necessity and predestination /

Mode of access: Internet.

La doctrine de la predestination dans l'Eglise reformee des Pays-Bas depuis l'origine jusqu'au synode national de Dordrecht en 1618 et 1619 : etude historique.

Thesis (doctoral)--Louvain.

Predestination and freedom in Milton's 'Paradise lost'

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) offers a highly creative seventeenth-century reconstruction of the doctrine of predestination, a reconstruction which both anticipates modern theological developments and sheds important light on the history of predestinarian thought. Moving beyond the framework of post-Reformation controversies, the poem emphasises both the freedom and the universality of electing grace, and the eternally decisive role of human freedom in salvation. The poem erases the distinction between an eternal election of some human beings and an eternal rejection of others, portraying reprobation instead as the temporal self-condemnation of those who wilfully reject their own election and so exclude themselves from salvation. While election is grounded in the gracious will of God, reprobation is thus grounded in the fluid sphere of human decision. Highlighting this sphere of human decision, the poem depicts the freedom of human beings to actualise the future as itself the object of divine predestination. While presenting its own unique vision of predestination, Paradise Lost thus moves towards the influential and distinctively modern formulations of later thinkers like Schleiermacher and Barth.

Historical Inevitability

What interests me more here is the so-called Historical Inevitability. It is a concept intimately linked with Human Choice and Freedom. There is a long history of debate around it among the western thinkers. The protestant thinkers, and particularly its Calvinist brand laid much emphasis upon predestination. The modern thinkers, freed from the theological trappings, questioned the Church imposed limitations to the capacity of human reasoning. The progress of science and technologies supported by it through the Industrial Revolution and thereafter seemed to endorse this new self-confidence. However, the miseries brought upon mankind by regional and world wars fuelled by the same technologies have made mankind wary of its faith upon scientific progress. The promises of modernization have left the greater part of mankind without its benefits, and even the rest of mankind is unsure of living in a safe and uncontaminated environment.

Theology and politics in Richard Hooker's thought

Although Richard Hooker’s private attitudes were clericalist and authoritarian, his constitutional theory subordinated clergymen to laymen and monarchy to parliamentary statute. This article explains why his political ideas were nonetheless appropriate to his presumed religious purposes. It notes a very intimate connection between his teleological conception of a law and his hostility towards conventional high Calvinist ideas about predestination. The most significant anomaly within his broadly Aristotelian world-view was his belief that politics is nothing but a means to cope with sin. This too can be linked to his religious ends, but it creates an ambiguity that made his doctrines usable by Locke.

Calvin's Calvinism ... /

[2] A defense of the secret providence of God: Introduction by John Calvin to his defence of the secret providence of God [i.e. conclusion to A treatise on the eternal predestination of God, etc., etc.]. Calumniator's preface to certain articles (that is, calumnies) purporting to be extracted from the writings of John Calvin [with] Reply of John Calvin to the Calumniator's preface [with] Articles extracted from the Latin, as well as the French, books of John Calvin on predestination [with] Calumniator's statements and observations [with] Reply [i.e. Replies] of John Calvin.

Nodus praedestinationis ex sacris litteris, doctinâq; SS. Augustini, & Thomae, quantùm Homini licet, dissolutus.

Mode of access: Internet.

An essay on the origin of evil.

"A sermon on the fall of man ... 2d ed." (with special t.-p.): p. [49]-82.