On what basis does God predestine people to salvation, and is anyone predestined to condemnation?
Earliest statement of each found so far: Predestination according to foreseen free choice, Didymus the Blind, c. 398.
What the early Church said, in their own words →
a passage teaches it a passage rejects it authorship uncertain defined after this timeline ends
Election to life onlyLutheran2 reject it · Confession 1577 →
Election and reprobation (double predestination)Reformed7 reject it · Confession 1619 →
Predestination according to foreseen free choiceOrthodoxPentecostal3 teach it · 2 reject it · Local council 1672 →
The positions
Election to life only Lutheran
What it holds: God's election by grace is the cause of the salvation of the elect; there is no corresponding decree of reprobation, and the lost perish by their own fault.
The predestination or eternal election of God, however, extends only over the godly, beloved children of God, being a cause of their salvationFormula of Concord, Epitome, XI.4 (1577)
Formally defined: Formula of Concord, Article XI (1577)
No early passage in the works searched so far states it yet.
Election and reprobation (double predestination) Reformed
What it holds: By an unconditional decree God chose some for life and passed by the rest, leaving them to just condemnation for their sins.
By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.Westminster Confession of Faith, 3.3 (1646)
not all people have been chosen but that some have not been chosen or have been passed by in God's eternal electionCanons of Dort, First Head, Article 15 (1619)
Formally defined: Synod of Dort (1619); Westminster Confession (1646)
No early passage in the works searched so far states it yet.
Predestination according to foreseen free choice OrthodoxPentecostal
What it holds: God predestines to glory those he foreknows will freely cooperate with his grace, and condemns those he foreknows will refuse it.
But since He foreknew the one would make a right use of their free-will, and the other a wrong, He predestinated the one, or condemned the other.Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem), Decree 3 (1672)
believers are chosen in Christ on the basis of His foreknowledge (Romans 8:29; Ephesians 1:4).Assemblies of God position paper, The Assurance of Salvation (General Presbytery, 2017)
Formally defined: Synod of Jerusalem, Decree 3 (1672)
Earliest statement: Didymus the Blind, c. 398
Common ground
These are affirmed by more than one position, so a passage saying only this counts for none of them.
- God foreknows all things
- Salvation is by God's grace, not earned
- God is not the author of sin
- Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1 quoted on predestination without stating its basis
- Some are saved and some are lost
Every deciding passage, earliest first
Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 180
Indeed, the very words He speaks reveal the ancient law of human freedom: "How often I wanted to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing?" (Matt 23:37). God made humanity free from the beginning, possessing a power of its own, just as it possesses its own soul, so that it might use God's judgment voluntarily and not be forced by God. For coercion does not come from God; rather, a good judgment is always present to us. And for this reason He gives good counsel to all. He placed the power of choice in man, just as He did in angels — for angels …
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
Translation in progress
Tertullian, c. 208
But if you also want him understood as light around persons, when he sometimes rejects those approved, or as improvident, when he sometimes approves those to be rejected—as if he either condemns his past judgments or is ignorant of future ones—yet nothing so suits both a good person and a judge as both to reject and to elect according to present merits. Saul is elected, but not yet a despiser of the prophet Samuel. Solomon is rejected, but already possessed by foreign women and made over to the idols of Moabites and Sidonians. What should the Creator have done, lest he be blamed by Marcionites…
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
- Rejects: Predestination according to foreseen free choice
Translation in progress
Arnobius, c. 300
Does Christ not free all with equal munificence? Does he not free equally when he calls all equally? He opens the fountain of life to all; no one is forbidden to drink. If you scorn the gift, why does the one who invites wait? His only part is to set the fruit of his kindness under the decision of your own right (sub tui iuris arbitrio). Plato said the lot of choosing a life is not God’s doing as a cause forced on another; free decision (voluntatis libertas) sits in the power of the one who willed. God lays necessity on no one; he terrifies no one with bullying fear. Our salvation is not so ne…
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
Translation in progress
Diodorus of Tarsus, c. 390
Catena fragment, author uncertain: A catena fragment: the ascription rests on the catena heading and is not secure.
Whom then did God glorify here? Those whom he justified. And whom did he predestine? Those whom he foreknew, those being called according to purpose, that is, those being worthy to be called and to be conformed to Christ through their own purpose. He brings forward the great proof of the love of God, having shown through his deeds that all things work together for our good through the love of God toward us, namely, those whom he found to be called according to purpose, which he demonstrated in not sparing the only-begotten (Rom 8:31–32); for what, if even death did not overpower the Savior, si…
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
- Teaches: Predestination according to foreseen free choice
Didymus the Blind, c. 398
Again, concerning Esau and Jacob, the apostle, as if speaking in a dilemma, says: 'What then shall we say to this? Is there injustice with God? May it never be!' (Romans 9:14). Because he had refuted injustice, he forced us to seek how there is not injustice with God. If it were so, as those who speak of foreknowledge say, we would rather find injustice in Him. 'I loved Jacob,' He says, 'but I hated Esau' (Romans 9:13). But one is hated or loved according to things done and according to things thought. How then does foreknowledge have room? Is injustice found with God? But he, refuting this, s…
- Rejects: Predestination according to foreseen free choice
Didymus the Blind, c. 398
9 From Origen's interpretation of 'according to the foreknowledge of God.' For God, having foreseen the faith and the works of men having been perfected in them through the evangelical teaching, foreknowingly chose them in Christ before the foundation of the world, having then predestined them to be sons through the participation of the spirit of sonship; for foreknowledge is to be regarded as nothing other than a vision of things to come, which is no longer foreknowledge, but is knowledge toward the existence of those having been foreseen; even so, according to foreknowledge, they were chosen…
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
- Teaches: Predestination according to foreseen free choice
Didymus the Blind, c. 398
He might pass from one state to another. If he had not become one in the truth, not standing in it would not have brought him reproach. And behold the doctrine: how 'God wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth' (1 Tim 2:4)? If no one opposes His will, how is it that some are lagging behind, despite His wanting all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth—so that I may not say, the majority? If He wants it, and if we also want it, and a convergence of the two wills occurs, salvation happens; for no one is good against his will, no one who does not want i…
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
Didymus the Blind, c. 398
But did Paul speak according to foreknowledge? Foreknowledge is a theoretical viewing of what is coming to be. But according to kind, foreknowledge and knowledge are the same. They differ in time. For example, suppose I foreknow that tomorrow there will be thunder. When the thunder comes to be in the middle of the day, it is knowledge, no longer foreknowledge. And the knowledge of the thunder does not make it such, but what it is, that becomes the knowledge. Thus the known thing makes the knowledge, which does not receive the knowing from us. I use an image for the sake of the manner of forekn…
- Rejects: Election to life only
- Teaches: Predestination according to foreseen free choice
Asterius of Amasea, c. 405
For even if you do not believe, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham, that is, to gather to Christ a remnant people from among the nations and the uncircumcised, upon which Abraham received the promise when God said to him, 'All the nations will be blessed in you' (Genesis 12:3). For, seeing the future by his secret foreknowledge, God allotted to the founder of the faith all who would later believe, to rank as his children.
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
- Teaches: Predestination according to foreseen free choice
Julian of Eclanum, c. 418
But this did not suffice for the issue. Such a teacher could not commend God's authority while leaving his justice undefended. Most consistently, then, Paul adds that vessels made for dishonor and those made for honor receive this as the wages of their own will: “If God, wishing to show his wrath and make his power known with great patience in vessels of wrath completed for destruction, and to make known the riches of his glory in vessels of mercy which he prepared for glory, whom he also called, namely us, not only from Jews but also from the nations” (Romans 9:22–24). Here he certainly clear…
- Rejects: Election to life only
- Rejects: Election and reprobation (double predestination)
Translation in progress
Julian of Eclanum, c. 418
Consequently, it strongly opposed you too by saying that not everyone is formed for the condemnation into which you declare everyone goes. You habitually make the utterly absurd argument: “But those who are afterward freed are not formed for condemnation.” Yet not even the surface of the apostle's words can agree with you in that way. When you say, “Everyone is created for condemnation by the law of birth, but some, though very few, are freed from it through the mysteries”, you do not assert what he does. He proclaims not only that people are freed from among the condemned, but that not everyo…
- Rejects: Election to life only
Translation in progress
How this was made
Every whole work in the library on 21 October 2026 was searched for this question. Works added since then are not searched yet. The short excerpts on the topic pages (many from Tertullian, Justin, Irenaeus and Ignatius) join the search once their English has been checked against the Greek or Latin original: 94% of them (1,814 of 1,925) have passed that check, and the rest are still held out, so an early witness may occasionally be missing from these lanes. Two AI models from different labs judged each passage against all the positions at once, seeing them only as letters, without names or churches. A third model settled disagreements, and Claude reviewers then checked every deciding verdict against the passage and, for the earliest dates, against the Greek or Latin. A writer's silence is never counted.
The evidence is only as deep as the works searched: 1st century: 5 writers, 2nd century: 23 writers, 3rd century: 22 writers, 4th century: 18 writers, 5th century: 11 writers, 6th century: 5 writers, 8th century: 1 writer. The lanes are redrawn when the search is run again.