Defn: The act of previous determination; a purpose formed beforehand; as, the predetermination of God's will.
He makes this difference to arise from the forecast and predeterminationof the gods themselves.
We may illustrate the principles of this predetermination by a simple example.
The practical application of this principle to the predetermination of the field windings of dynamo magnets was first made by Drs J.
By predestination, we understand an efficient predetermination to bring about or accomplish any future event.
That God hath a predetermination of this kind, there can be no doubt; and therefore, on this fact, there can be no dispute.
Hence the predetermination of God, in this instance, probably refers to the work of atonement, without including therein any special decree in respect to the means of the suffering.
A further difficulty still meets the designer in the correct predetermination of the total loss of watts in an armature before the machine has been tested.
A characteristic predetermination restricts the development to comparatively narrow limits.
Necessity and predetermination are characteristic of the relation between means and purpose.
As the predetermination of the will to justification can take no other form than the gratia per se efficax, so sin, considered as an act, necessarily postulates the predetermining influence of the motor primus.
Viewed in its relation to rational creatures, this eternal predetermination is nothing but a temporal premotion of the free will to determine itself.
Self-determination and physical predetermination by an extraneous will are mutually exclusive.
They will therefore never extricate themselves without acknowledging that there is a predetermination in the preceding state of the free creature, which inclines it to be determined.
Furthermore I show that the predetermination I admit is such as always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that God will not refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use of that which they had.
And if I am for the Molinists in the first point, I am for the predeterminators in the second, provided always that predetermination be taken as not necessitating.
Therefore all must of necessity be traced back to the predetermination of God's decrees, and this mediate knowledge (so it will be said) will offer no remedy.
Thus we see that, in order to account for the foreknowledge of God, one may dispense with both the mediate knowledge of the Molinists and the predetermination which a Bañez or an Alvarez (writers otherwise of great profundity) have taught.
But the predetermination of the new Thomists is not perhaps exactly that which one needs.
The Thomists as a general rule follow their master, and do not admit that the soul makes its resolve without the existence of some predetermination which contributes thereto.
Thus their prevision andpredetermination is not absolute, but it presupposes will: if it is certain that one will do them, it is no less certain that one will will to do them.
So the predetermination of events by their causes is precisely what contributes to morality instead of destroying it, and the causes incline the will without necessitating it.
Thus neither futurition in itself, certain as it is, nor the infallible prevision of God, nor the predetermination either of causes or of God's decrees destroys this contingency and this freedom.
Lady Audley said this with the predetermination of dressing at four, and thus dispensing with the services of her attendant.
Helen Talboys deserted her infant son--she went away from Wildernsea with the predetermination of sinking her identity.
