The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination

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Plot

One of the 20th-century's most reasoned explanations of the sovereignty of God and the Reformed interpretation of salvation. "Whoever really wants to know what Calvinism teaches cannot do better than to read this book from cover to cover".--United Presbyterian magazine.

This is an excellent book and Loraine Boettner has done the Reformed Faith proud as he always does. I do not believe in election the way Calvinists do, but that did not stop me from reading and liking his book. I think all Presbyterians and Lutherans and some Calvinistic Baptists would be reinforced in their faith by reading this book. It didn't change my view in the slightest, of course.

Quotes from this entry include:

"Furthermore, we do not deny that the Arminians hold many and important truths. But we do hold that a full and complete exposition of the Christian system can be given only on the basis of the truth as set forth in the Calvinistic system."

"If a distinction be desired the word 'foreordination' can perhaps better be used where the thing spoken of is an event in history or in nature, while 'predestination' can refer mainly to the final destiny of persons."

"Regardless of how some people may oppose Predestination in theory, all of us in our every-day lives are practical predestinarians....The Pelagian denies that God has a plan; the Arminian says that God has a general but not a specific plan; but the Calvinist says that God has a specific plan which embraces all events in all ages."

"Who would not prefer to have his affairs in the hands of a God of infinite power, wisdom, holiness and love, rather than to have them left to fate, or chance, or irrevocable natural law, or to short-sighted and perverted self? Those who reject God's sovereignty should consider what alternatives they have left."

"...God so presents the outside inducements that man acts in accordance with his own nature, yet does exactly what God has planned for him to do....Foreordination renders the events certain, while foreknowledge presupposes that they are certain....Hence the events which we see coming to pass in time are only the events which He appointed and set before Him from eternity....When we realize that the complete process of history is before Him as an eternal 'now,' and that He is the Creator of all finite existence, the doctrine of Predestination at least becomes an easier doctrine."

"In fact, the ancestry of Arminianism can be traced back to Pelagianism as definitely as can that of Calvinism be traced back to Augustinianism."