Predestination
The doctrine of predestination provides an explanation for the fact that people have different fortunes, moral endowments, are born into different circumstances, and respond differently to religion. It ascribes these differences to the hand of God—who is omnipotent and controls all, and who is omniscient and sees the future. Someone who degenerates into a sinner does so because God eases him into sin. Someone who becomes a hero of faith can be so because God strengthens him. Absolute predestination holds that a person’s eternal destiny—to salvation or damnation—is predetermined before his birth. It is already written down in God’s ledger— along with the span of the person’s life and the day of his death.
A believer who recognizes the hand of destiny never regards the occasions in life as accidental. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. An apparently chance meeting may have been decreed long ago. A sudden death or a stroke of good luck are not random events, but happen by God’s decree. Since all human plans and designs only bear fruit if they are within God’s will, Muslims commonly say, inshallah, “if it is the will of God.” Day by day we can examine every event to discern the hand of God, and make every effort to conform our lives to the flow of His destined Will.
How is predestination reconciled with human free will? One answer that is consistent with absolute predestination counsels us to accept human ignorance as the context within which we strive in freedom. The omniscient God who knows everything through eternity already knows the outcome of our life, however as we can never possess such foreknowledge, we should still make our best effort. Then there are qualified doctrines of predestination, for which human freedom enters into the calculation of destiny. Such doctrines describe God as apportioning blessings and hardships as He wills, and then permitting us limited freedom to make the best of our lot. Father Moon, who rejects absolute predestination, teaches such a form of qualified predestination: God predestines everyone to salvation, but requires human responsibility as a necessary condition to realize that destiny.