History
Perhaps the most prominent theologian to espouse hard theological determinism was John Calvin, with his formulation of predestination. Calvin was a late mediaeval French Christian, and was a main influence behind Calvinism, a form of Protestantism developed in the early Reformation.
Many other Christians have opposed this view. Saint Thomas Aquinas, the medieval Roman Catholic theologian, believed strongly that humanity had free will. The Jesuits were among the leading opponents of this view, because they held that divine grace was actual, in the sense that grace is among other things participative, and that humans could freely benefit from grace by a mediation between their own imperfect wills and the infinite mercy of God.
Read more about this topic: Theological Determinism
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)