Some branches of Christianity (I think Calvinism) believe in predestination: long before you are born, God decides whether you ultimately end up in Heaven or Hell, and nothing you do can have any impact on it.
How to make this compatible with the idea that generally people doing good/right things end up in Heaven, and people doing bad/wrong things end up in Hell? You turn the causality the other way round, and say that doing good/right things is a consequence of being predestined for Heaven. Your predestined fate pushes you irresistibly towards some kinds of behavior; the saints just cannot resist doing good, and the damned cannot resist doing bad.
So in practice you end up doing some kind of “acausal trade”, where you try doing the good/right things, despite believing that there is absolutely no reward for doing so, because the fact that you are doing so is evidence that you were predestined for Heaven.
(I wonder whether Calvinists do better than other Christians at Newcomb’s problem...)
Some branches of Christianity (I think Calvinism) believe in predestination: long before you are born, God decides whether you ultimately end up in Heaven or Hell, and nothing you do can have any impact on it.
How to make this compatible with the idea that generally people doing good/right things end up in Heaven, and people doing bad/wrong things end up in Hell? You turn the causality the other way round, and say that doing good/right things is a consequence of being predestined for Heaven. Your predestined fate pushes you irresistibly towards some kinds of behavior; the saints just cannot resist doing good, and the damned cannot resist doing bad.
So in practice you end up doing some kind of “acausal trade”, where you try doing the good/right things, despite believing that there is absolutely no reward for doing so, because the fact that you are doing so is evidence that you were predestined for Heaven.
(I wonder whether Calvinists do better than other Christians at Newcomb’s problem...)