THEME 3A – RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS OF PREDESTINATION WITH REFERENCE TO THE TEACHINGS OF
ST AUGUSTINE AND JOHN CALVIN
A01 - Examine concepts of predestination with reference to the teachings of St Augustine and John
Calvin [30]
Predestination refers to the doctrine that God has pre-determined all that will happen and is a
normative ethic developed by St Augustine and later John Calvin in the 16th century. The doctrine is
adopted by certain strands of Christianity and resulted from opposition to concepts of free will
which many believed undermined the belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God.
St Augustine in 354 AD first established his Doctrine of Original sin to contest Pelagius’ view that we
are able to freely choose whether to accept God’s salvation, basing his argument on the genesis
story and arguing that Adam and Eve’s decision to disobey God in Eden lead to humanity’s
corruption and that this causes us to be pre-destined to sin. Augustine uses the Latin term
‘Concupiscence’ to describe our sinful nature and desire to ignore our God-given reason and sin and,
from this, he maintains concupiscence is inherited by all humans from Adam and Eve as their
descendants conceived by sex (which Augustine also saw as corrupt, perhaps stemming from the
belief in the holy conception of Jesus)
Augustine expands on this and argues that because of concupiscence we are “so hopelessly
corrupted that we are absolutely incapable of doing anything good by our own forces”, describing
humans as ‘Massa Pecatti’ or a ‘lump of sin’. For Augustine, concupiscence always leads to humanity
being tempted by earthly materialism and rejecting God and therefore argues humanity’s ability to
freely choose is lost as moral agents are predestined to sin.
Building on this however, Augustine develops his theology to acknowledge the beliefs expressed in
the bible such as God’s omnibenevolence and humanity’s essentially free nature or Liberium
Arbitrium. Whilst Augustine recognises that humans have free will and ‘Libertas’ to freely choose, he
argues that it has been ‘utterly wasted’ by sin and we lose our Libertas to our dominant
concupiscence that makes us sin.
He also argues that, even though humans are sinful and undeserving of God’s love and grace, God as
the omnibenevolent creator of the universe chooses for some people to be saved before they are
born which Augustine called “the elect”. Through this, Augustine believed the elect were pre-
ST AUGUSTINE AND JOHN CALVIN
A01 - Examine concepts of predestination with reference to the teachings of St Augustine and John
Calvin [30]
Predestination refers to the doctrine that God has pre-determined all that will happen and is a
normative ethic developed by St Augustine and later John Calvin in the 16th century. The doctrine is
adopted by certain strands of Christianity and resulted from opposition to concepts of free will
which many believed undermined the belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God.
St Augustine in 354 AD first established his Doctrine of Original sin to contest Pelagius’ view that we
are able to freely choose whether to accept God’s salvation, basing his argument on the genesis
story and arguing that Adam and Eve’s decision to disobey God in Eden lead to humanity’s
corruption and that this causes us to be pre-destined to sin. Augustine uses the Latin term
‘Concupiscence’ to describe our sinful nature and desire to ignore our God-given reason and sin and,
from this, he maintains concupiscence is inherited by all humans from Adam and Eve as their
descendants conceived by sex (which Augustine also saw as corrupt, perhaps stemming from the
belief in the holy conception of Jesus)
Augustine expands on this and argues that because of concupiscence we are “so hopelessly
corrupted that we are absolutely incapable of doing anything good by our own forces”, describing
humans as ‘Massa Pecatti’ or a ‘lump of sin’. For Augustine, concupiscence always leads to humanity
being tempted by earthly materialism and rejecting God and therefore argues humanity’s ability to
freely choose is lost as moral agents are predestined to sin.
Building on this however, Augustine develops his theology to acknowledge the beliefs expressed in
the bible such as God’s omnibenevolence and humanity’s essentially free nature or Liberium
Arbitrium. Whilst Augustine recognises that humans have free will and ‘Libertas’ to freely choose, he
argues that it has been ‘utterly wasted’ by sin and we lose our Libertas to our dominant
concupiscence that makes us sin.
He also argues that, even though humans are sinful and undeserving of God’s love and grace, God as
the omnibenevolent creator of the universe chooses for some people to be saved before they are
born which Augustine called “the elect”. Through this, Augustine believed the elect were pre-
