The last post touched on the hazards of systematizing scriptural truth. Calvinist predestination theories get criticized by some when this subject comes up. Catholics need to be careful here. We have in our tradition the beloved St. Augustine who was comfortable with predestination ideas. And while I am not a predestinationist I have read portions of Calvin's Institutes, and I have always enjoyed his writing on the sovereignty of God, which is full of joy and gratitude. G.K. Chesterton's experiences with Calvinists were not so positive. Consider this famous quote from chapter 2 (titled "The Maniac") of Chesterton's book, Orthodoxy, commenting on the English Calvinist poet, William Cowper:
“And he [Cowper] was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. ... The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton, at 26-27 (London, William Clowes & Sons Limited, 1908)
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