I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life.

So the free being, as self-determined and taken in his whole contents, is definite in both senses of the word: he defines himself, and thus has the definiteness of unpredestination; he defines his empirically real world of things, and thus adds to himself a field of action having the definiteness of predestination, — in a manner arms himself with it, inasmuch as he transcends and controls it.

That is the nature of free will. We have the full ability to make a selection; we can press any button we please. However, when we press a button we have to take responsibility for what happens. The reaction is predestined, but is activated by our choice.

All this is doubtless pre-ordained. Our destinies have been linked from the first."
"Such philosophies can lead to unhealthy fatalism," said Terndrik of Hasghan. "Best believe our fates are our own, even if the evidence denies it.

Sometimes I do believe in predestination. I feel helpless to do anything but what I am compelled to do.

You must, therefore you can. A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same thing.

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates.

Since time immemorial, questions regarding the relationship between free will and destiny have plagued the minds of great philosophers. How do we reconcile these two apparently contradictory concepts: free will and destiny? In the higher realms of understanding, any deep philosophical or spiritual subject matter will present seemingly paradoxical perspectives at first. However, the more we genuinely explore and analyze these questions, we see that their resolutions lie less in the realm of ‘either/or,’ and more in an interplay between both concepts. Some contemporary philosophers call such an idea ‘diunital,’ as it encapsulates seemingly opposing terms. Often, when we study different polarities, we notice that taken together, they give us a greater understanding of the whole. This is particularly applicable to the nature of the soul and of God. For example, sometimes it may seem that God’s laws for governing the universe are at odds with those prescribed by humankind, but if we explore the situation in a prayerful mood, we will often be able to appreciate the congruency that emerges between them.

Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.

[T]he proof of the Free will theorem... It's ...plausible ...from the start. ...Let's see ...the axioms SPIN, FIN and TWIN.

Yes I have free will; I have no choice but to have it.

To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.