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Dispassionate and sober ethical humans like Pelagius might believe in the adequacy of their own good
works. But among the prophets and persons of faith, predestination forceful energized a drive for
rational and religious power, as in the case of Calvin and Muhammad, each of whom convinced that the
certainty of one's own mission in the world came not from any personal perfection but from his situation
in the world and from god's will. In other cases, for example, Augustine and also Muhammad, the faith
in predestination may arise as a result of the necessity for controlling tremendous passions and the
experience that this can be accomplished only, if at all, through an acting power from without and above
one's own self. Luther, too, reached the faith in predestination during the terribly shaken period after his
difficult struggle with sin, but it receded in importance for him after he increasingly accommodated to
the world.
(I.3.b) Power of Predestination
Predestination provides the individual of faith with the highest possible degree of certainty of salvation,
once s/he has convinced that s/he belongs to the aristocracy of the few who are the chosen. But the
individual must find certain symptom by which s/he may determine whether s/he possesses this
incomparable charisma, inasmuch as it is impossible for her/him to live on in absolute uncertainty of her/
his salvation. Since god has granted to reveal at least some positive commandments for the type of
conduct pleasing to him, the symptoms must reside, in this instance as in the case of every religiously
active charisma, in the decisive demonstration of the capacity to serve as one of god's instruments in
fulfilling his commandments in a persevering and methodical attitude, for one possesses predestined
grace either eternally or not at all. However, the predestined person falls repeatedly into an transgression
as all sinners do because s/he is a mere creature. Yet the conviction of predestination and preserved
grace come from the recognition that, in spite of individual transgressions, god's willed actions flow out
of one's inner relationship with God. The relationship with god is lifted up through mystical reception of
grace; it is the central and enduring quality of personality.
Hence, in contrast with the expected "logical" consequence of fatalism, the faith in predestination
produces in its most consistent followers the strongest possible motives for acting in accordance with
god's will. Of course this action takes different forms, depending upon the primary content of the
religious prophecy. In the case of the Muslim warriors of the first generation of Islam, the faith in
predestination often produced a complete indifference to self, in the cause of fulfillment of the religious
commandment of a holy war for the conquest of the world. In the case of the Puritans governed by the
Christian ethic, the same faith in predestination often produced ethical rigorism, legalism, and the
methodically rationalized conduct of life. Discipline in the faith during wars of religion was the source
of the unconquerableness of both the Islamic and Cromwellian cavalries. Similarly, inner-worldly
asceticism and the disciplined quest for salvation in a god's willed vocation were the sources of the
virtuosity of business characteristic of the Puritans. Every consistent teaching of predestined grace
inevitably brought a radical and ultimate devaluation of all magical, sacramental, and institutional
dispensations of grace, for the cause of god's sovereign will. The devaluation occurred wherever the
doctrine of predestination developed in its full purity and maintained its strength. By far the strongest
such devaluation of magical and institutional grace occurred in Puritanism.
(I.3.c) Islamic vs. Puritan Predestination
Islamic predestination knew nothing of the "double decree"; it did not dare attribute to Allah the
predestination of some people to hell, but only attributed to him the withdrawal of his grace from some
people, a belief which "admitted" human's inadequacy for the grace and inevitable transgression.
Moreover, as a warrior religion, Islam had some of the characteristics of the Greek "fate" (moira) in that
it developed far less the specifically rational elements of a "world order" and the specific determination
of the individual's destiny in the world beyond. The ruling conception was that predestination
determined, not the destiny of the individual in the world beyond, but rather the extraordinary events of
this world, and above all such questions as whether or not the warrior of the faith would fall in battle.
The religious destiny of the individual in the next world was held, at least according to the older view, to
be adequately secured by the individual's belief in Allah and the prophets, so that no demonstration of
salvation in the conduct of life is needed. Any rational system of ascetic control of everyday life was
alien to this warrior religion from the outset, so that in Islam the teaching of predestination manifested
its power especially during the wars of faith and the wars of the Mahdi. The teaching of predestination
tended to lose its importance whenever Islam became more "civilian," because the teaching has no drive
to methodical conduct of everyday life, in contrast to the Puritan doctrine of predestination.
In Puritanism, predestination definitely is concerned with the destiny of the individual in the world
beyond, and therefore his assurance of salvation was determined primarily by his ethical demonstration
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