One of the first issues I need to clarify before I can address predestination head on, is creation itself. This may be an absurd idea to discuss, since most who read this already accept the fact that the story of Creation, as presented in Genesis, is a retelling of a theological truth, not of a physical, scientific creation. Allow me to explain that in more detail below.
"In the beginning there was God." A simple sentence that is potent in power and image. It states, through language what is a difficult idea to grasp, that God was present "In the beginning" of all things. God pre-exist time. I know we all know that, that God is eternal, but that is unique in the world in which Genesis was written. You see, at that time, about 4500 years ago (2500BC), most societies believed that the world was eternal and the gods arose from the earth.
In most creation stories of the time, the god creates from the earth, using elements already present. In Genesis we are presented with two forms of creation, one where God creates by word (in Greek, logos) and in another where he forms man from the clay of the earth BUT breaths into him the "breath of life, thus man became a living being". In both aspect of Genesis, God is the one who creates.
The second account is to me the most divinely inspired of the two. I do believe that Scripture is inspired, definitely not in the same way as a fundamentalist does, but I do believe that what was written expresses a divine truth. I believe that scripture is allegoric in many respects and as especially applied to the Old Testament, written as a religious history after the fact. Origin also believed in this allegoric approach to scripture. He saw the Old Testament solely as allegorical to what would come in the New Testament. As to why there are two accounts of creation in Genesis I will say but this, there are many ways to express a truth and when the Hebrew people were writing their history, they had two traditions with which to deal. In order not to offend or to say that one tradition was better than another, and since they both proclaim the same truth (God creates) what difference does it matter how you tell the story? Both were thus included in the written history from the oral histories.
Returning to my understanding of the second account of creation, if we look at the idea of man rising from the clay of the earth as evolution, then we have the animal man. At some point in that event, God intervened in the process and gave that animal man a "living breath", a rational soul, that made that animal man a human person. That "living breath", to me is the allegory of the infusion of the rational soul into the animal, that made the animal human.
It is not part of the "earthly" or "material" world but a thing from the divine that makes us different from the animals about us. Our ability to think, reason and to choose is what makes us different, and in a way more responsible than other animals. The animal man preexists the animal human. As such, the animal man which had preexisted lived and died as all animals do still today. The living breath did not change the nature of the animal man, for all animals have a soul, it changed the dynamics of the soul. That soul now could reason, and could tell the difference between right and wrong behavior. That is something a irrational soul cannot do.
So, my fist step is made, man as animal man, predates man as animal human. Animal man with an irrational soul is different from the animal human with a rational soul. The "living breath" of the book of Genesis is more than soul, it is a rational soul, in the image of the Giver, who too is rational and chooses. This gift of rational knowledge was not given to all animals, but to a special animal called man, now known as human.
