Foreordination — Called Before You Were Born

This is not predestination — it is calling without compulsion

When Christians hear the word "predestination," most immediately think of Calvinism: the doctrine that God, before the foundation of the world, selected certain individuals for salvation and others for damnation, and that this selection cannot be altered by human choice. It is a serious, scripturally grounded theological position with a long intellectual pedigree. It is also, in the LDS view, a misreading of what Paul actually wrote.

LDS doctrine teaches foreordination. The two concepts are related but fundamentally different in one essential way: Calvinist predestination is about outcome, foreordination is about calling. The destination is not locked. The assignment is.

Understanding this distinction changes how you read Jeremiah, how you read Paul, and how you understand your own life.

What Foreordination Is

Foreordination is the doctrine that God, who knows all things, assigned roles and responsibilities to His spirit children before they were born into mortality. This assignment was based on the character, capacity, and faithfulness they demonstrated in the pre-mortal life. Those who were particularly capable, particularly faithful, or particularly suited for specific missions were designated for those missions before birth.

The assignment is real. It carries weight. But it does not override agency. A person who was foreordained to a specific calling must still choose to accept and fulfill it. Foreordination is a call, not a guarantee. The called can decline. The ordained can fail to fulfill. The mission assigned before birth must still be embraced in mortality.

This is why the scriptures speak both of calling and of making that calling sure. The calling came before birth. Making it sure requires the choices of mortality.

Jeremiah Was Called Before Birth

The clearest statement of foreordination in the entire Bible is in the first chapter of Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 1:5

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

God says three things to Jeremiah. First: I knew you before you were born. This implies a prior existence — a state in which Jeremiah existed and was known by God before his mortal formation. Second: I sanctified you before birth. Third: I ordained you a prophet before birth. The prophetic calling preceded mortality entirely.

Non-LDS readers typically handle this verse in one of two ways: they read "knew" as divine foreknowledge of a future event (Calvinist reading), or they read it as poetic expression of divine purpose (evangelical reading). Both readings struggle with the specificity of "ordained thee" — not merely knew about, but actually ordained before birth.

The LDS reading is the most natural: God knew Jeremiah in the pre-mortal existence, where Jeremiah already existed as a spirit, and ordained him then to his prophetic mission. The ordination came first. Mortality was the field in which the ordained mission was to be fulfilled.

Abraham Was Among the Noble and Great

The Book of Abraham provides the most detailed LDS scripture on foreordination. In Abraham 3, the Lord shows Abraham the pre-mortal council and explains what was observed there:

Abraham 3:22–23

“Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.”

The language is unmistakable. God observed the spirits and identified those He would make His rulers — leaders, prophets, teachers. The selection was based on what He saw: "he saw that they were good." These were not arbitrary selections. They were based on actual pre-mortal character.

Abraham is explicitly told: "thou wast chosen before thou wast born." This is not a metaphor. It is a declaration about the timing of his calling. And the same applies to every prophet, every holder of special stewardship, and — in the broader sense — to every person who comes to earth with a mission they accepted before birth.

How Foreordination Differs from Calvinist Predestination

Calvinism teaches that God's sovereign election determines the eternal outcome of each soul, irrespective of their choices. The elect are saved because God chose them. The reprobate are damned because God passed them by. No human action can alter this divine decree. The human will is, in this framework, entirely subordinate to divine sovereignty.

LDS foreordination is different at its foundation. The calling precedes birth. But the calling is not the outcome — it is the assignment. A person called to prophesy must still choose to prophesy. A person ordained to leadership in the pre-mortal life must still accept that leadership in mortality. The pre-mortal character that earned the assignment must be continued and developed in the mortal test.

Alma 13:3–5

“And this is the manner after which they were ordained — being called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works; in the first place being left to choose good or evil; therefore they having chosen good, and exercising exceedingly great faith, are called with a holy calling.”

Alma is specific: the foreordained were called "on account of their exceeding faith and good works" in the pre-mortal life. They were "left to choose good or evil" — their agency was not overridden. They chose good. God then recognized that choice with a calling. Foreordination honors agency at every step. Calvinist predestination bypasses it.

Foreordination Does Not Override Agency

The clearest demonstration that foreordination does not override agency is the existence of people who were foreordained to callings and failed to fulfill them. Every person who was called in the pre-mortal life and then comes to earth in wickedness, or dies before fulfilling their mission, or turns away from God — demonstrates that the calling was genuine but the fulfillment was conditional.

Paul's statement in Romans 8 — "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son" — is understood in the LDS framework as describing God's purposeful foreordination of those who would receive the gospel, not an irresistible decree. God foreknew because He knows all things, not because He determined all things.

Key Scriptures on Foreordination

• Jeremiah 1:5 — Before birth, known, sanctified, and ordained a prophet
• Abraham 3:22–23 — The noble and great ones chosen before birth
• Alma 13:3–5 — Called according to foreknowledge, on account of faith and good works
• Romans 8:29–30 — Foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, glorified
• Ephesians 1:4–5 — Chosen in him before the foundation of the world

Your Calling Before This Life

The doctrine of foreordination is not only for prophets and apostles. It applies broadly — perhaps universally. Every person who comes to earth came with a purpose, accepted in the pre-mortal council. The specific stewardships differ enormously. Some are foreordained to prophetic offices. Some to parenthood that changes one child. Some to a single act of compassion that alters a stranger's trajectory.

The implications are not trivial. Your circumstances — the family you were born into, the time and place of your birth, the particular gifts and challenges you carry — are not random. They are part of an assignment accepted before you can remember. The mission was real before this life. The choice to fulfill it is real now.

Foreordination does not make you deterministically fixed in your destiny. It means your destiny was worth assigning. It means that someone who knows you completely looked at who you were and said: this person is capable of this mission; let them go and do it. What you do with that assessment is the work of this life.