C.S. Lewis on Predestination

Predestination is a biblical term and concept that has received a lot of flack over the years. C.S. Lewis has some helpful thoughts about this controversial theme. With his characteristic wit, he brings a refreshing perspective.

“On Calvinism, both the statement that our final destination is already settled and the view that it still may be either Heaven or hell, seem to me to imply the ultimate reality of Time, which I don’t believe in. The controversy is one I can’t join on either side for I think that in the real (timeless) world it is meaningless…All that Calvinist question — Free-Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom and Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose and just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’ — there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God and Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary’, and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free’, what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone.”

(The quote is taken was written by C.S. Lewis to Dom Bede Griffiths on June 26, 1956. This correspondence is included in “The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950–1963,” edited by Walter Hooper and published by HarperSanFrancisco in 2007).