IU School of Liberal Arts

Predestination Book Coincides with John Calvin’s 500th Birthday

News Categories: Books by Faculty | Religious Studies | Research

Is one’s eternal destiny foreordained by God?  The age-old idea of predestination is among the most controversial doctrines in Christianity and one that remains highly relevant in today’s denominations.

In a groundbreaking history, IUPUI author Peter Thuesen considers predestination and its inseparable links to other questions of Christian belief, including the existence of purgatory and hell and the extent of God’s providential involvement in human affairs.

Released this month, Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine (Oxford University Press) comes on the eve of the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth on July 10.  Though Calvin is the theologian most often associated with predestination, Thuesen explains, the doctrine originated more with St. Augustine and, before him, with the Apostle Paul.

Thuesen’s book examines American debates over predestination in the long context of discussions since St. Augustine, notes E. Brooks Holifield of Emory University.

"From battling medieval theologians to twenty-first century Southern Baptist pastors, clergy and laity have fought about this doctrine and its implications. Thuesen draws us into the battles with such skill that we can almost feel the heat," Holifield writes. "Digging deep into theological treatises, overwrought pamphlets, agonized diaries, and earnest letters, he shows how the doctrine has troubled and inspired Christian traditions for centuries."

Thuesen, Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies in the IU School of Liberal Arts, says that although battles over predestination occurred throughout Christianity’s long history, only in the American free marketplace of competing sects could the doctrine persist in so many contexts as a catalyst of religious change.

His book examines not only familiar predestinarians like the New England Puritans and many later Baptists and Presbyterians, but also non-Calvinists, from Catholics and Lutherans to Methodists and Mormons.  Even contemporary megachurches, he notes, preach a "purpose-driven" outlook that owes much to the doctrine of predestination.

"Predestination is the elephant in the living room of American denominationalism in the sense that almost all the major groups have engaged in controversies over the issue," Thuesen says.  "Some of these disputes are still very much alive today, as in the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention."

"Predestination also tends to elicit strong reactions from individuals," Thuesen adds.  "For some, it’s the most comforting of all doctrines.  For others, the whole idea is dangerous and downright offensive."

Christians even in Calvin’s time were sharply divided over the issue.  Thuesen and his IUPUI Religious Studies colleague Thomas J. Davis recently returned from Calvin’s adopted city of Geneva, Switzerland, where they participated in an international congress to mark the French-born reformer’s 500th birthday.  Other commemorations are planned worldwide, and the Swiss postal service recently issued a Calvin postage stamp.

Thuesen hopes the anniversary will inspire more people to learn about predestination’s history in the Christian tradition.

"These debates go far beyond Calvin and his orbit," Thuesen says.  "They get at the heart of how Christians think about salvation."

[Oxford University Press]

Published on: June 17, 2009