Fatalism

Taken from Primitive Baptist Online

Fatalism is the doctrine that all things, great and small, mental and material, were eternally and inexorably predetermined, by an external, arbitrary, irresistible fate, or destiny, or necessity, an endless and admantine chain of causes and effects, so that nothing, not even any thought, or feeling, or word, or action of any human being can, by any possibility, in the slightest respect, be different from what it is, and thus no man is really to blame for anything he does, because he cannot help it. The word fatalism is derived from fate, which is the Latin word fatum, meaning something spoken or declared by some intelligent being who has power to make his words good; and as the word fatum indicates, the doctrine at first implied the supreme and universal, yet un-moral government of God; but it afterwards came to mean a shadowy, undefined, mysterious, impersonal, unconscious, unintelligent power, even at times above the power of God. Fatalism annihilates the moral character and the moral government of God, and the moral nature of man, and the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, and reduces man to a mere involuntary, irresponsible machine or automation. No sane mind, whether heathen or Christian, has every fully believed it, or can believe it, in all its boldness and deformity; for by the very constitution of our moral nature, every man knows, as well as he knows his own existence, that he is a voluntary and accountable being; that he ought not to do many things that he does do, and that he ought to do many things that he does not do. All the laws, literatures, histories, and religious of mankind teem with demonstrations of this momentous and universal truth, which is inherent in the natural conscience of the human race (Rom. i-iii). The doctrine of fatalism is the rebellion of the carnal heart against this universal principle of our nature, seeking to excuse itself for its sinfulness by throwing the blame, the responsibility, upon the Creator (Gen. iii.12). But even nature teaches, and the Holy Spirit effectually impresses that teaching upon the inmost recesses of our being, that we alone are altogether accountable and blamable for our wrong-doings, and that our Holy Creator is not at all responsible for them, and that therefore we justly deserve condemnation and punishment at the hands of the Righteous Governor of the universe; and the Spirit of God further teaches us that it is only of His merest, His sovereign mercy, that we can be pardoned and saved from that everlasting ruin which our sins richly merit. Any doctrine that lessens the accountableness and blamelessness of man belittles and tarnishes the grace of God.