Lexicon Philosophicum: International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas

Gli esordi dell'idea di predestinazione

Aldo Magris — 2025-11-19

The idea of predestination, although the word is not used in Biblical Hebrew, is rooted in Old Testament episodes in which God is said to ‘choose’ or to ‘call’ specific human beings He knew in advance (before they were born) for prophetic missions. The leading concepts are therefore the Creator’s foreknowledge and absolute sovereignty, so that the unfolding of all events on earth cannot but fulfil his eternally outlined plan. This idea is emphasized in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In a similar way, Paul (Rom 8, 29), employing the Greek verb for ‘predefine’, explains the link between divine Foreknowledge and Predestination of those who are saved. Yet the predestinarian doctrine inevitably conflicts with the equally important requirement of free will and moral responsibility, performing the precepts of the Covenant; so, the prevailing tendency of pharisaic-rabbinical Judaism, and also of the Christian Church, has been an ambivalent coexistence of both God’s predestination and human freedom of choice. Gnosticism also embodies the ambivalence. In any case, the Gnostic predestination is very different from the Biblical one: it is not a divine absolute decision regarding single individuals, but the logical outcome of the kind of ‘nature’ to which they belong.

English title: The Beginnings of the Idea of Predestination

L’apocalisse della predestinazione. Il mistero dell’elezione gratuita in Agostino tra Paolo e Giovanni

Gaetano Lettieri — 2025-11-19

This study puts forward the thesis that John’s Revelation should be interpreted as a violently anti-Pauline text. While for Paul revelation is the gift of universal salvation, and it seems that God wants to save everyone apocatastatically, John interprets merciful election in a radically dualistic and divisive perspective, as a gift separating the pure community of the elect from the darkness of the damned. Augustine’s doctrine of predestination depends, creatively, on both perspectives. On the one hand, Augustine bases his thesis of the absolute gratuitousness of grace – an undue gift that saves through pure mercy – on Pauline texts. On the other hand, he deduces the idea of non-universal, but divisive election from Johannine texts, making predestination a Revelation of the unconditional.

English title: The Apocalypse of Predestination. The Mystery of Augustine’s Divine Election between Paul and John

Il dibattito sulla predestinazione in età carolingia: uno scavo dei paradigmi e delle trame genealogiche

Ernesto Mainoldi — 2025-11-19

This study offers a reinterpretation of the Carolingian controversy on predestination. The doctrinal positions advanced by the authors involved are categorized into three distinct and opposing theological paradigms: gemino-predestinarianism, grace predestinarianism (or moderate predestinarianism), and the soteriological anti-predestinarianism of John Scottus Eriugena. The analysis further identifies a conflict over authorial genealogies, aimed, on the one hand, at claiming for one’s own side the principal authority – namely Augustine and his theology of grace and free will – and, on the other, at discrediting the opposing genealogies as conduits of heresy.

English title: The Carolingian Debate on Predestination. An Excavation of Paradigms and Genealogical Threads

Dalla parte di Giacobbe. Predestinazione, prescienza e provvidenza in Tommaso d’Aquino

Pasquale Porro — 2025-11-19

In Thomas Aquinas, the notion of predestination is structurally and inescapably linked, on the one hand, to that of foreknowledge (or divine science), and on the other, to that of providence. What I set out to do here is: first (§2), to outline in broad terms the way in which Aquinas defines the meaning of these terms in their reciprocal relation – with particular reference to the account provided in De veritate, q. VI; then (§§3-4), to show how, at least with regard to predestination and foreknowledge, Aquinas appeals to different models which – to put it in deliberately simplified terms – may be traced respectively to Augustine and to Boethius. It should be borne in mind, however, that Aquinas does not appear to have always maintained exactly the same position, especially with regard to the relation between predestination and merit. As for providence, Aquinas’s perhaps most significant move is his attempt to mitigate Aristotle’s general anti-determinism (§5). The thread that binds these notions together is an overarching orientation in which the margin of indeterminacy in the created order is virtually nil, and in which even human agency may ultimately be traced back, from a strictly compatibilist standpoint, to the immutable decisions of the divine will.

English title: On Jacob’s Side. Predestination, Foreknowledge, and Providence in Thomas Aquinas

Grace and Predestination in the Early Wyclif

Luigi Campi — 2025-11-19

Wyclif’s doctrine of predestination has often been examined primarily for its political implications. This article aligns with studies that treat Wyclif’s soteriology as subject in its own right, focusing on his earlier theological writings. It concentrates in particular on the De scientia Dei, where Wyclif addresses predestination, grace and merit, free will, and divine reward or punishment from a distinctive theoretical perspective, asking whether an object of divine knowledge can cause that knowledge by existing in time. This enquiry gives rise to a set of characteristic positions, including the claim that rational agents can gain merit before God only de congruo, and a concurrentist model according to which meritum de congruo is the undivided effect of two total causes: divine grace and human free will. The article concludes by tracing the development of these ideas in the slightly later De dominio divino. Overall, Wyclif’s doctrine proves more nuanced than is commonly assumed.

Predestination, 1517-1543

Ueli Zahnd — 2025-11-19

This article examines discussions of predestination in the context of Wittenberg theology during the first three decades of the Protestant Reformation. It shows that from the earliest disputations involving Wittenberg theologians, predestination was part of the debate because of its significance for Luther’s reconsideration of the relation between human agency and divine grace. By following the discussions between Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin, and the implicit intertextuality of their debates, this study aims to consider what was left unsaid and explores what can be inferred about some of the known doctrinal shifts and precisions, especially in Melanchthon’s thought, when analyzed in light of the discussions of predestination.

Luis de Molina’s Doctrine of Predestination and the Controversy with the Dominicans of Salamanca in the Second Half of the 16th Century

João Rebalde — 2025-11-19

This article analyses the doctrine of predestination in the work Concordia liberii ar-bitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione (1588) by the Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600) and examines the criticism aimed at this doctrine by the Dominicans of Salamanca, contained in the work Apologia fratrum praedicatorum in provintia hispaniae professorum sacrae theologiae, adversus quasdam novas assertiones cuiusdam Doctoris Ludovici Molinae (1595), coordinated by Domingo Báñez (1528-1604). Within the analysis of Molina’s doctrine of predestination, we analyze the author’s positions on providence, foreknowledge, the efficacy of God’s assistance and predestination as a prediction of merits and as an act of divine will. We conclude our paper by discussing the main criticisms addressed to Molina’s doctrine by Báñez and the Dominicans of Salamanca.

La prédestination selon Jansénius

Simon Icard — 2025-11-19

Claiming to put an end to the debates between Molinist, Thomist and Congruist theologians, Jansenius developed his own doctrine of predestination, which cannot be identified with that of Augustine. It is the logical consequence of his conception of grace before and after original sin, a conception which is itself based on a causal system that he applies to the text of De Correptione et gratia, where Augustine describes the help without which Adam could not persevere and the help through which the saints are only persevering.

English title: Predestination according to Jansenius

In the Absence of God’s Plan

Pietro Restaneo — 2025-11-19

Between the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX centuries in Russia rose to prominence a most peculiar philosophical and religious trend, later identified as “Cosmism”, which sought, among other things, to reframe mankind’s purpose and goals on a higher scale – first the whole planet and then the whole cosmos. Any form of predestination is negated, and Mankind’s absolute freedom means that the fulfilment of its (cosmical) task is left to its own devices. This new reframing of mankind, reflected in much of our contemporary worldview, was seen by some of its contemporaries as revealing a fundamental issue of modernity – the abandonment of any eschatological dimension. We will explore this node through the analysis of the ideas on predestination of two authors: Nikolaj Fedorov, perhaps the most important representative of Cosmism, and one of its critics, Russian philosopher and theologian Sergej Bulgakov.

Predestinazione ed esistenza. Lev Šestov e Jacques Maritain a confronto

Ludovico Battista — 2025-11-19

This essay compares Lev Šestov and Jacques Maritain to explore the connection between the doctrine of predestination and existentialism. Šestov, through fideistic irrationalism, reveals how the anarchic freedom of existence is unveiled through the paradox of grace, aligning his thought with a trajectory rooted in the doctrine of predestination. Maritain, by contrast, develops a ‘metaphysical existentialism’ that integrates the mystery of existence with Christian onto-theological rationality, attributing modern nihilism to a rupture in the harmony between essence, existence, and grace due to irrationalist views of predestination and divine freedom. Both thinkers examine the tension between grace and autonomy, offering contrasting yet complementary insights into existentialism and theology. Predestination thus appears as a catalyst for revolutionary rethinking Western metaphysics, emphasizing the uniqueness of existence and the mystery of freedom.

English title: Predestination and Existence. A Comparison between Lev Šestov and Jacques Maritain

L’eterna autodeterminazione di Dio

Enrico Cerasi — 2025-11-19

This essay reconstructs the Barthian doctrine of God’s eternal predestination as expounded in the second volume of Kirchliche Dogmatik dedicated to the doctrine of God. Two things, above all, should be noted. On the one hand, Barth considers it necessary to preserve the profound intention of the traditional doctrine of predestination. Indeed, it was aimed at preserving God’s personality; in particular, the fact that the Christian God is an absolutely free Person. Unlike Hegel’s absolute spirit, the Christian God chooses freely. On the other hand, however, God’s choice, for Barth, should not be seen as an act performed by a hidden and mysterious God. Instead, for Scripture, God’s choice has the name of Jesus Christ. It is therefore Christ who is the subject and object of God's eternal election and rejection.

English title: The Eternal Self-determination of God. Notes on Karls Barth’s Doctrine of Election.

Praedestinatio. Presentazione

Massimiliano Lenzi — 2025-11-19