The psychological significance of the doctrine of predestination is a twofold one. It expresses and enhances the feeling of individual powerlessness and insignificance. No doctrine could express more strongly than this the worthlessness of human will and effort. The decision over man’s fate is taken completely out of his own hands and there is nothing man can do to change this decision. He is a powerless tool in God’s hands. The other meaning of this doctrine, like that of Luther’s, consists in its function to silence the irrational doubt which was the same in Calvin and his followers as in
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