What Is Predestination? Meaning, Bible Verses, and Where the Doctrine Came From

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

At the heart of predestination is a deceptively simple question: Does God determine who will be saved before they are born, or does each person have a genuine choice in responding to God? The answer may seem straightforward until we ask what the Bible says about predestination. Biblical passages about God's foreknowledge and election appear alongside equally strong calls for human beings to repent, believe, obey, and choose.

What is predestination? In this article, I’ll give a predestination definition and examine the notion of it from several perspectives, beginning with the biblical passages that appear to support it. I’ll then turn to other angles, spanning Jewish writings from the intertestamental period to Christian ideas about predestination in various Christian traditions. Understanding why Christians have answered these questions differently requires looking not only at individual Bible verses, but also at the larger theological and historical traditions in which those verses have been interpreted.

What Does Predestination Mean?

The predestination meaning, In the broadest and most general sense, is the theological idea that all occurrences have been decided in advance by God, and therefore cannot be changed. While this idea can be applied to all future events, it is most often applied to the destiny of individual souls and their salvation. As we’ll see later, though, the idea has a built-in dilemma: if God has planned everything out in advance, how can we say that human beings have free will, a major doctrinal emphasis in Christianity?

In his book Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine, Peter Thuesen defines the concept of predestination as the answer to a crucial question:

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Is predestination biblical? Let’s look specifically at passages which seem to indicate that predestination is the correct biblical doctrine.

What Does the Bible Say About Predestination?

Examining what is predestination in the Bible requires looking at both the Old and New Testaments for potential examples.

Old Testament

In Jeremiah 1:4–5, God calls Jeremiah to be his prophet:

Is this an example of predestination in the Bible? The wording of this passage certainly seems to indicate that Jeremiah had no choice in the matter of his vocation: God ordained, even before Jeremiah existed, that he would be a prophet. Other OT verses speak similarly of God’s predetermined destinies for individuals. The psalmist, for instance, has this to say:

To say that the entire life of the psalmist was written before the man existed could be interpreted as God planning his life with no room for the man’s free choice. As Patrick Miller writes of this passage in the HarperCollins Study Bible, “The beginning and the end of the psalmist are known and determined by God.”

We see this also in the call of Abram (later Abraham), in which God tells Abram his future:

Note that God does not ask whether Abram wants the future he has designed for him. Rather, God tells Abram how it will be.

While these passages may appear to designate a positive biblical stance toward predestination, many later believers in the concept found their inspiration in New Testament verses, which often include salvation history.

New Testament

One of the key verses on predestination comes from Romans 8, a vital chapter for Christians because it speaks encouraging words about the nature of life in Christ:

The Greek word Paul uses proōrisen, which, indeed, means “to determine beforehand, to predetermine, pre-ordain.” That makes this passage seem to be a clear indication of Paul’s belief in predestination. But is it?

While believers in predestination view these verses as referring to God’s preordained salvation for a limited number of individuals, others believe the passage merely describes the collective group of believers chosen to carry out God's historical and spiritual mission on Earth, similar to the way God chose Israel to be his people in the Old Testament.

However, there is another passage in Romans where Paul mentions God choosing who will be saved ahead of time:

While some have interpreted this passage as God choosing Christians over Jews, scholar Mark Nanos writes in the Jewish Annotated New Testament that this almost certainly is not the case:

It's difficult to imagine, though, that anyone could find comfort in a doctrine that says that God saves whomever he wants to save and that the decision, at least from a human perspective, is arbitrary.

Further NT verses on predestination come from the book of Ephesians:

The anonymous author of Ephesians, writing in Paul’s name, clearly says that God selected “us,” that is, those who believe in salvation through Christ, before the universe was created, to be God’s children. But here, we should note that none of the verses I’ve cited thus far have spoken about God preordaining some to eternal damnation. We’ll get back to that later.

Meanwhile, in 2 Timothy, a different anonymous author writing in Paul’s name says much the same thing:

Again, we see a reference to a pre-made selection of people chosen by God, not because they were holy or righteous, but merely because God chose them.

So is predestination—the notion that God chose who would be saved and who wouldn’t before he created the world—biblical? Well, yes and no. It depends a bit on your interpretation of these passages. There are certainly references to God foreknowing us and predestining us, but opinions differ as to whether these concepts meant the same to ancient biblical authors as they do to us.

Fate and Free Will in Judaism Between the OT and the NT

The book of 1 Enoch, written between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE by multiple anonymous authors, is a Jewish apocalyptic text in which Enoch, a minor character from Genesis, narrates his travels and divine revelations. We have already seen signs that at least some authors of Old Testament texts believed in a kind of predestination, so what about the author(s) of 1 Enoch?

J.C. Malan analyzed this question and came to the conclusion that in 1 Enoch, “the God-men relationship in 1 Enoch seems to be doubly dualistic and rigidly deterministic.” The dualism he refers to here is the notion that the entire universe is divided into good and evil, a worldview that Gnostic sects would embrace later as well. 

But what concerns us in this article is the clear theological determinism, or predestination of the text, the belief that all events, including human actions and choices, are somehow completely caused by preceding events and conditions. In the case of 1 Enoch, the sole cause of those events and conditions is God.

Another intertestamental book, though, the book of Jubilees, seems to involve both human free will and predestination. In his book Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, R.H. Charles writes that the book of Jubilees maintains a kind of tension between the two. The text states that human paths and final judgments are preordained and recorded in heaven. On the other hand, despite this cosmic blueprint, humanity somehow also retains the active freedom to choose between righteousness and wickedness. This begins to sound more like the books of the NT, which apparently hold the same tension.

Furthermore, we have writings from the 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus, who writes about the differing views on predestination of three Jewish sects: the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Sadducees, in the 1st century CE. In his Antiquities of the Jews, he explains these differences, using the word “fate” to refer to God’s determination of human lives:

Josephus's account of the major Jewish sects illustrates the diversity of Second Temple Jewish views concerning divine providence, fate, and human agency.

Having now looked at biblical and extrabiblical views of predestination, let’s examine how the more modern view, still prevalent in some forms of Christianity, developed.

Augustine and the Doctrine of Predestination

Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) was a highly influential bishop and theologian living in Roman North Africa. Many concepts which now seem indispensable to Christianity—such as Original Sin and Just War Theory—while not invented by him, were certainly developed substantially in his writings. So, what was his view of predestination and why?

Augustine explored this topic in his treatise, appropriately titled On the Predestination of the Saints, where he argued a number of points that would become foundational for modern people who believed in predestination. First, he wrote that God is the ultimate cause of human salvation, viewing faith itself as a free gift from God rather than a human response merely foreseen by God. For Augustine, faith is enabled and given by divine grace rather than originating independently in human merit.

Second, he said that all human beings inherit sin from Adam through the physical act of sexual intercourse. This means that all humans are born in a helpless, depraved state where they cannot choose good without the aid of divine intervention. Third, he said that God literally predestined specific individuals, whom Augustine called “the elect,” for salvation before the foundation of the world. Finally, he introduced the concept that only those who are predestined by God will persevere in their faith to attain salvation.

In his book Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths, Matthew Levering notes that in response to another controversial theologian named Pelagius, Augustine wrote that the sin of pride meant assuming that we choose God, that faith is our choice, or that God chooses us because we are uniquely worthy. As you might imagine, even in his own time, there were objections to Augustine’s view, with many decrying the fact that human free will seems to play no role in Augustine’s conception of salvation.

In fact, at the Council of Arles in the late fifth century, the position that some are, by human standards, arbitrarily assigned to heaven or hell, was condemned. Later, 8th-century Christian author John of Damascus wrote what would become the official position of the Orthodox Church and others: that actions caused by human will were not caused by divine providence. Rather, people's good actions were done in cooperation with God, not caused by God: Free will was real and important.

Despite these objections, however, a controversial Swiss reformer would emphasize Augustine’s idea as a cornerstone of his theology in the 16th century Protestant Reformation.

Calvin and Double Predestination

I pointed out earlier that while several NT passages discuss predestination in some sense, they only seem to refer to the predestination of those who believe in Christ, not those, by implication, who would be condemned. So if God predestined Christians for heaven, did he also predestine non-Christians for hell?

In answer to this question, Swiss protestant reformer John Calvin systematized and gave a particularly influential Reformation-era formulation to the doctrine of double predestination, drawing heavily on Augustinian theology. His theological system came to be known as Calvinism (also called Reformed Christianity). One of the hallmarks of Calvin’s theology was its doctrine of predestination and God's absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from eternal damnation.

Calvin believed that if God had predestined some for eternal reward, he had also actively, not only by implication, predestined others for eternal punishment. To his credit, he didn’t claim to understand why this was the case, but simply said that since God was sovereign over the entire universe, his ways were a mystery beyond human comprehension. This idea became known as double predestination. What is double predestination? It’s the theological doctrine that God eternally assigns some people to salvation (the elect) and others to damnation (the non-elect).

In his magnum opus the Institutes of the Christian Religion, specifically in Book 3, Chapter 21, Section 5, Calvin wrote

What Denominations Believe in Predestination?

Although some believers follow traditions that give reasons why predestination is wrong, others treat it as part of their faith. Do Calvinists believe in predestination? It’s perhaps unsurprising that contemporary Calvinist churches and other Reformed traditions still believe in double predestination. This includes such widespread denominations as the Presbyterian churches, Reformed Churches, and some traditional Reformed Baptist churches, although modern views differ widely within individual churches.

Lutheranism, another protestant church going back to the 16th century, believes officially in single predestination and rejects double predestination. In other words, they broadly teach that a person's eternal condemnation is solely the result of their own stubborn unbelief and resistance to God's grace, not an active decree from God. Lutheran denominations include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), and others.

Do Catholics believe in predestination? Roman Catholicism teaches that God predestines individuals to eternal life in harmony with human free response. Catholicism explicitly rejects double predestination, maintaining that God desires all to be saved (see 1 Tim 2:3–4) and thus gives sufficient grace to everyone.

The Eastern Orthodox Church emphasizes synergy, the cooperative working together of human free will and divine grace. Therefore, Orthodoxy generally rejects absolute predetermination of any individual's final salvation or damnation.

The Arminian and Wesleyan Traditions, including the United Methodist Church, Churches of the Nazarene, and Wesleyan Church take an official position of conditional election. That is, God chooses individuals for eternal salvation based on his foreknowledge that they will freely choose to place their faith in Christ. Do Baptists believe in predestination? The Free Will Baptists do, also taking the stance of conditional election.

I would emphasize that the above are merely the official positions of the various governing bodies of each church. Within contemporary individual churches, there is understandably a variety of individual agreement and disagreement with these official beliefs.

Can Predestination and Free Will Coexist?

This is the one question we haven’t entirely addressed yet. Don’t the notions of predestination and free will explicitly contradict each other? Over the centuries, various theories have arisen about how the two could plausibly coexist.

First, some argue that God exists outside of time and is all-knowing, seeing past, present, and future all at once. As limited humans, on the other hand, we can only think in terms of linear time —I do this action, which causes this effect, which results in that outcome. Perhaps God, though, in seeing past, present, and future all at once, isn’t limited to our sequence of time. Without linear time, perhaps predestination and free will both occur in a way we can’t understand.

A second point addresses the idea of God’s foreknowledge from a different angle. Just because God knows what a person will choose does not mean God has forced them to make that choice. In this sense, it could be like watching a football game you’ve already recorded. The fact that you know the score of the game doesn’t mean that you caused it.

A third point is known as compatibilism in both theology and philosophy. Some theologians argue that God’s ultimate control and human moral responsibility can work together without canceling each other out. By analogy, imagine a train traveling to a destination. It is predestined to arrive in a specific city, but the passengers still exercise free will by choosing whether or not to board the train.

Why the Doctrine of Predestination Still Divides Christians

The doctrine of predestination continues to cause controversy because it forces a fundamental disagreement over how God's sovereignty interacts with human free will in salvation. This disagreement is based on several sticking points.

Critics of strict predestination like Calvin’s argue that it portrays God as unjust and unloving, punishing individuals who were not given a choice or the grace to repent. Proponents, however, argue that because all humans are fallen (“depraved” in Augustine’s terminology), any salvation at all is an act of pure divine mercy, not an obligation of justice.

Another point of contention is whether people can be held genuinely accountable for their sins and final eternal destination if their choices are completely foreordained or if grace is irresistibly applied. On the other hand, if God foreordained my eternal condemnation, how can I be held responsible for my sinful actions?

Finally, opponents of predestination worry that the doctrine promotes a paralyzing fatalism ("if I'm saved, it doesn't matter what I do"). Supporters, by contrast, find profound comfort and assurance in the belief that salvation depends on God's unchanging promises rather than human weakness.

Conclusion

What is predestination? As we have seen here, it is ultimately not a doctrine with one simple biblical answer. It is rather a theological question that has challenged Christians for centuries: how can God be sovereign over salvation while human beings also remain genuinely responsible for their choices? The biblical passages we’ve examined provide substantial support for the idea that God foreknows, chooses, and predestines, but they do not settle precisely what that predestination means or how it relates to those who are not saved. The diversity of Jewish and early Christian perspectives show that the tension between divine determination and human freedom existed long before Augustine and Calvin gave it their distinctive theological formulations.

Perhaps the most important conclusion is that predestination cannot be separated from the broader Christian questions of grace, faith, human responsibility, and the character of God. For some Christians, predestination provides assurance that salvation ultimately rests in God rather than in human strength. For others, the idea raises serious questions about justice, freedom, and moral responsibility.

In the end, the biblical evidence leaves room for a tension that Christian theology has never completely resolved: God is portrayed as knowing and acting decisively in human history, while people are simultaneously called to choose, repent, believe, and live responsibly. Whether these realities are ultimately compatible may depend on one's understanding of divine foreknowledge, human freedom, and God's purposes. What is clear is that the question of predestination has never been merely about whether the future is predetermined. It is ultimately a question about who God is, what grace means, and what it means for human beings to respond to God. 

If you’re interested in the history of Christianity, check out our course Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years, hosted by Dr. Paula Fredriksen.