FREEDOM OF CHOICE IS NOT NATURAL

'When we go to be psychoanalysed we are told that we must stop hating ourselves so violently. But in order to free us from this hatred, free us from this guilt, this feeling of panic, this silence, we are told we must live according to nature, that we must indulge our instincts, that we must follow our desires: that we must make a free choice of our lives. But to make a free choice of your life is not to live according to nature; it is to live unnaturally, because man is not always given a free choice; he does not choose the hour of his birth, or his face, or his parents, or his childhood; he does not normally choose the hour of his death. A man has no choice but to accept his destiny: and the only choice he is permitted is the choice between good and evil, between justice and injustice, between truth and lies.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.115.

PREDESTINATION IS JUST GRACE BEGINNING EARLIER

'"Salvation by grace alone. It just begins earlier for us than other people. In the deep womb of time, in fact. By his secret will and purpose."'
Marilynne Robinson, Jack, p.39.

WHY THE REFORMERS STRESSED PREDESTINATION

'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.

THE LIMITATIONS OF LANGUAGE WHEN SPEAKING OF GOD

'We have got so beyond those things for which language was initially contrived, that, unless we use extreme caution, we cannot speak, unless we speak exceeding unintelligibly, without literally contradicting ourselves - Coroll. No wonder therefore, that the high and abstract mysteries of the Deity, the prime and most abstract of all beings, imply so many seeming contradictions.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things, p.89. 

FREE WILL

'Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.' 

Sam Harris in Krish Kandiah, Paradoxology, p.230. 

GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY

'I'm not going to force some theory on a mystery and make foolishness of it, just because that is what people who talk about it normally do.' 

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, p.173. 

PREDESTINATION

'I tell them there are certain attributes our faith assigns to God: omniscience, omnipotence, justice, and grace. We human beings have such a slight acquaintance with power and knowledge, so little conception of justice, and so slight a capacity for grace, that the workings of these great attributes together is a mystery we cannot hope to penetrate.'
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, p.171. 

PREDESTINATION

'Now, that is probably my least favorite topic of conversation in the entire world. I have spent a great part of my life hearing that doctrine talked up and down, and no-one's understanding ever advanced one iota. I've seen grown men, God-fearing men, come to blows over that doctrine.' 

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, p.170. 

PREDESTINATION

'"Being chosen" is, at the outset, the humblest doctrine in Scripture, yet the "idol factory" of the human heart most readily elevates such a gift to the highest pedestal of superiority.'

C FitzSimmons Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy, p.161.