The doctrine that some people are born already selected for salvation or damnation, which they cannot avoid even by good deeds in this life. For Augustine it is a divine mystery that God in His perfect justice makes the apparently gratuitous selection of the elect, while Calvinism is the form of Christian belief that celebrates the parallel thought that He has made a similar selection of the damned: ‘others he did appoint for eternal condemnation, according to the counsel of his most free, most just, and holy will’ (The Westminster Confession, 1648). See also causal/evidential decision theory.