The idea of predestination has always seemed one of the most unpleasant ideas proposed by Christianity. There is so much unnecessary cruelty inherent in the belief. Bradwardine's writing only emphasizes the worst parts about the belief.
Bradwardine's theory of predestination reads a little like "Caliban on Setebos," a poem by Browning I just read for another class. They both depict a god that picks and chooses out of caprice, boredom, and spite, not from a supernatural supply of love. Some of the god's subjects can go unharmed and even blessed while others go broken and smashed, for absolutely no reason at all except that the deity can, and his might makes it useless (and dangerous) to question his actions. Why should a God who loves all his creation make it impossible for some of that creation to have a paradisiacal eternity?
Though the entire thing was fairly horrible, it continued to get worse until the last page read something like a nightmare, a few degrees worse than "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." The idea that God would irrevocably condemn so many of his own beings just to make the elect's time on earth more holy is appalling. The elect are already destined for heaven, and nothing, apparently, can change that - why on earth would God eternally doom their "reprobate" counterparts just to teach a few earthly lessons?
I feel a little nauseated. This idea is not the kind of Christianity I want to be a part of.
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