'The reason that all the Reformers foregrounded predestination in the way that they do is because they're arguing against the idea, prevalent then, that the church had the means of salvation - that if you do thus and so, you will be saved. The Reformers believed that the church had put a certain ritualized idea of salvation in the place of God. And to move people back toward the idea of omnipotence, divine omnipotence, the Reformers sought to end what they saw as perhaps a corrupt cycle of spending money, doing things that were intended as acts which would insure your salvation. And so, the doctrine of predestination really is a way of making the argument that it is God that determines these issues and not any human institution.'
Marilynne Robinson in Timothy Larsen and Keith L Johnson, Balm in Gilead: A Theological Dialogue with Marilynne Robinson, p.210.
