Influence of God upon man's will is postulated, for its right guidance and direction, but not in any coercive sense, as Augustinianism seems to Wesleyanism to imply. Luther and the Lutheran church at first shared the doctrine of predestination and election, Luther in his treatment of free will reproducing the Augustinian form of the doctrine in a strict manner.
In this way, Middle Knowledge is thought of by its proponents to be consistent with any theological doctrines that assert God as having divine providence and man having a libertarian freedom (e.g. Predestination is a religious concept, which is about the relationship between God and His creation.The religious character of predestination distinguishes it from other ideas about determinism and free will.Those who believe in predestination, such as John Calvin, believe that before the creation God determined the destiny of the universe throughout all of time and space. But Calvin also heightened men's ideas as to the certitude of personal salvation. It is generally overlooked, however, that theological advance registered by Calvin is to be seen by study of the views of the Middle Ages, and on to the Reformation, not by viewing Calvinism in our post-Reformation lights.
Grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his Sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit. In the Middle Ages, Anselm, Peter Lombard, and Aquinas, followed the Augustinian views only to a certain extent.
But God we now regard as the absolute and eternal reason, no less than the supreme will, and as both of these in the one indivisible and absolute personality. But it is, of course, freely to be granted that foreknowledge in God, simply as knowledge, does not carry any causal energy or efficiency with it. The theology of the Reformed church adopted the Calvinistic doctrine of the decree of predestination and election. II) "God, owing to His infallible prescience of the future, has appointed and ordained from eternity all events occurring in time, especially those that directly proceed from, or at least are influenced by, man's free will.
Calvin expressly taught that no cause or ground but God's unconditioned will was to be sought; but he feebly tried to save divine will from sheer omnipotence by saying that God is law to Himself; and the notion of sovereignty continued to be presented in ways quite absolute and irresponsible. He was blamed by strict Lutheranism for yielding too much to Pelagianism. The Arminian standpoint admits the foreknowledge of God, but denies foreordination, though it must seem difficult to reduce the foreknowledge of God to such a bare knowledge of the future. The theory seems to fail of giving satisfactory account of the divine activity in its relation to human activity, in the sphere of grace. Arminianism rejects the so-called common grace of the predestination theory, and its effectual grace for the elect, for, in the Arminian view, saving grace can in no case be missed save by resistance or neglect. We have passed from an abstract predestinationism to maintain God in living and ethical relations to the world and to man. It is with predestination as a Biblical question, however, that we are here mainly concerned. Thus, as men are ordained to eternal life through the providence of God, it likewise is part of that providence to permit some to fall away from that end; this is called reprobation. Jeremiah ( A final question that has concerned and divided Christian people down through the ages is whether some are predestined to life and salvation and others predestined to condemnation ("double predestination").
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren.
Or, to put the matter in another form, the "Formula of Concord" may be said to have held with Augustinianism, but to have differed by maintaining a Universal call along witha particular election, and it rejected the decree of reprobation. A non-election there may be, of course, but not in any sense that annuls full personal responsibility for coming short of life everlasting. Predestination is, to Aquinas, a part of Providence, and it presupposes election in the order of reason.