ABSTRACT
The personalized gods had powers greater than human and lived lives of the sort people would wish to live, but their powers were exercised much the way human beings would exercise such power – fitfully, whimsically, even sometimes unsuccessfully, by direct personal action. Homer's Fates were not the equivalent of the modern conception of an omnipotent, omniscient God, knowledgeable of and controlling every detail in the universe. The conception allowed the early Augustine to resolve to his own satisfaction the conflict between God's foreknowledge and human free will. Martin Luther was convinced that his view was based in St Paul and confirmed in Augustine and constituted the true meaning of the Gospels and, by comparison with the legalism of the Mosaic tradition, of Christianity as well. Like Luther, John Calvin "firmly upheld theological determinism". For most American philosophers, Jonathan Edwards is the best-known exponent of theological determinism.
