Predestination — Free Will from God's Point of View

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Samuel Clemens may have taken God seriously: but not his era's version of Christianity.

His "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" include Huck's reactions to well-intentioned religious instruction by the Widow Douglas — and "pretty ornery preaching."
"It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet."
("Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Chapter XVIII, Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens (1885))

Called by God


If I thought predestination meant that God had decided ahead of time whether I was heading for Heaven or Hell, I might feel hopeless or self-righteous. Robert Burns' Holy Willie dramatizes what can happen when someone thinks he's Heaven-bound: no matter what. (January 4, 2012)

I'm a Catholic, so I believe that free will exists: and predestination. It's not as crazy a combination as it might seem.

More at A Catholic Citizen in America.

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