Peter J. Thuesen . Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine . New York : Oxford University Press . 2009 . Pp. xiv, 309. $29.95.

Abstract

Throughout the sixteenth century, the doctrine of predestination provoked flights of speculation and barbed polemics across Europe. Both Catholic and Protestant scholars, including the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina as well as the reformed Protestants John Calvin and Jacob Arminius, argued variations on the idea that God had foreordained each person's eternal destiny. In more thoroughgoing versions of predestination, God had elected some for eternal salvation as a sheer act of grace, unconditionally and apart from any merit on their part. More moderate concepts often depended on the idea that God foreknew human conduct in electing some to salvation and thereby made space for human cooperation in divine purposes. In short, the way a person or church understood predestination had a direct bearing on how and to what extent the conduct of one's life could offer assurance of salvation. From the Council of Trent in the 1540s to the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s, European churches laid down specific teachings on predestination in confessions, catechisms, and theological systems. In the book under review, Peter J. Thuesen summarizes the longer history of predestination, beginning with Saints Paul and Augustine, and focuses the book's central chapters on the transit of the doctrine to North America. He argues that in the American context contending theories of predestination have been among “the most important but unacknowledged sources of discord in churches across the denominational spectrum” (p. 4).