Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine

by Peter J. Thuesen

Hardcover, 2009

Call number

234.9

Genres

Religion & Spirituality

All Topics

Nonfiction

History

Collection

Theology

Publication

Oxford University Press (2009), Edition: 1, 309 pages

Description

Winner of the Christianity Today 2010 Book Award for History/Biography, and praised in Christian Century as "witty...erudite...masterful," this groundbreaking history, the first of its kind, shows that far from being only about the age-old riddle of divine sovereignty versus human free will, the debate over predestination is inseparable from other central Christian beliefs and practices--the efficacy of the sacraments, the existence of purgatory and hell, the extent of God's providential involvement in human affairs--and has fueled theological conflicts across denominations for centuries. Peter Thuesen reexamines not only familiar predestinarians such as the New England Puritans and many later Baptists and Presbyterians, but also non-Calvinists such as Catholics and Lutherans, and shows how even contemporary megachurches preach a "purpose-driven" outlook that owes much to the doctrine of predestination. For anyone wanting a fuller understanding of religion in America, Predestination offers both historical context on a doctrine that reaches back 1,600 years and a fresh perspective on today's denominational landscape.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member atdCross

Excellent an enlightening narrative of the "contentious doctrine" of predestination in America from the puritans until now, and he briefly covers it's history before then beginning with Paul and Augustine, Medievalism to the Reformation, Arminianism to the English Reformation, and finally, to

American Puritanism. In subsequent chapters, he deals with the contention in America covering it's impact or influence even in Catholicism, Mormonism, unitarianism and other religious bodies or groups. He even mentions to my surprise, how the some parts of the African American community had their adherents to Calvinism, even hyper-Calvinism. Personally, I never realized how contentious predestination was, especially, to the point of having a mental illness on record from it. For some reason, my only disappointment was that the author did not state, at the end of the book, his position; I am interested to know.

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