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An interesting dilemma that crops up in the belief in God is that of predestination. The dilemma revolves around two concepts. The first is God, who in the vast majority of beliefsis a perfect being. God in his perfection is omniscient – he knows everything. The second premise is the idea of free will. As humans, we like to imagine ourselves as free autonomous beings. We wake up, and perhaps choose what we eat for breakfast. We make choices in life because we are free… right?

However, if we look back at God’s omniscience, we can say “God knows the ethical decisions we make”. An all knowing being must surely know what we are going to choose – to be able to prove God wrong would be an insult to his power and knowledge! It is at this point the great ethical contradiction at the heart of any godly universe reveals itself, this problem being the problem of theological determinism. Acts suddenly seem to lose their morality, their freedom, when we realize that we didn’t even have a choice in the first place. Joshua 1:5 writes that before a person is born; all the days are “ordained” for them. This implicit argument here is that we cannot actually make ethical decisions, and that we are not free. Some philosophers have even gone as far as to state that we are not free even without the belief in god. John Locke puts forward the argument that without the freedom to choose everything, we are never free. The mere fact that we are contained to our own choices, which we may only choose of two cereals, means that we can never be free. Effectively, we are bound by time, by natural laws and by our own humanity.

More ideas stem from John Calvin, a sixteenth century protestant reformer. John Calvin is associated with what he called the doctrine of diving election, in which he states that some people are destined for a relationship with god, whilst some are not. What is noticeable about this doctrine however is whether one is saved or goes to hell is not a matter of human choice – which associates Calvin with predestination.Islamic hadith literature reflects a strikingly deterministic mood – “everyone is guided to that for which he is created” the Jabriyya state that a human being is in reality no different from an inanimate object when it comes to agency. He is absolutely powerless.

Should we be willing to settle with this? As humans, are we comfortable with the idea that we are not free, and none of our choices are actually our own? Of course, many question the justice of this concept, such as the Mu’tazilite theologians claiming that it is unfair to be punished for decisions that are not our own. Is the whole Christian belief in the fall not based upon free will? Calvin however would claim it arrogant to apply human concepts of justice to god in this way – should we simply just submit to the idea that we are not free?