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S i d e b a r
Theological Determinism
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This Rock
Volume 19, Number 4
 April 2008 
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Another form of determinism is theological determinism, which holds that God, as the supreme sovereign being, is the only agent or cause in the universe, making secondary causes or sources of action other than him impossible.
Theological determinism has taken many and varied shapes over the centuries, most notoriously in the theory of double predestination characteristic of John Calvin and other Reformers, but also in the opinion of the singular causality of God (the divine being is the only real cause of anything) that is defended in some Islamic schools.
The orthodox Christian position, on the other hand, stresses the compatibility of the rational creature’s God-given causality and freedom with the universal causality and providential governance exercised by God as the source and goal of all being. Indeed, Catholic theology has always understood God’s own creative activity to be the wellspring of creaturely being, goodness, and freedom. We are most free when God is most at work within us; we are most un-free when his action has been repudiated or obstructed by our own selfish actions.
It is interesting to note that theological determinism—which flies in the face of our undeniable experience of freedom and evacuates human behavior of meaning—has never survived long in the sphere of Christianity. It tends to be replaced over time either by orthodox belief or by a practical atheism (with its ethical counterpart of nihilism, which in practice equals narcissism). In other words, either one has to mature to the point of seeing that God and man are not competing on the same playing field, or else one will end up rejecting God as a rival who threatens human self-realization.
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