“Do you believe in fate, Paul?”

Not as such, no. If by fate you mean this idea that certain things are destined to happen no matter what we do, then I do not believe in it. For instance, perhaps it was fated that I would always study philosophy or convert to Catholicism, or that I would order noodles rather than spaghetti, and I had no choice in the matter. But this does not seem to be the case because what seems clear is that I—as we all do—make choices that have consequences. I myself take part in the causality of my life and the world at large. In this way, I would say that I have free will: I can deliberate and I can act.

Of course, it’s not completely true that “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” (Invictus by William E. Henley) There are certain things that are placed in my view that influence my deliberations, which can affect my own decisions. I have the dignity of causality, but I am not causality itself. In this way, things are fated to happen, or as I would prefer to say, things are brought about by God’s providence.

God, who is all knowing, knows you and everyone else better than you do. Like some kind of grand manipulator, he knows that if I am exposed to X, then I will do Y. This is not to say that he makes the choice for me, but rather that in the same way a friend knows another friend—although God knows us all in an exceptional and unerring way—God knows what I will do.

God is also omnipotent. As God, though it’s not proper to speak of the creator as belonging to time, he set all that we experience in motion. But he does not exercise such power all willy-nilly. He is ultimately wise, and has an end in mind. This is the contentious point: that God has a goal in mind. Not only that, but he has acted throughout history to bring that goal about.

What do we make of this conflict, this duel of the fates? The fate I choose and the fate chosen by God. There’s obviously nothing I could do to evade God’s action, but God’s action is not limited to the realm of the miraculous. What I propose is that God—in his omniscience, omnipotence, and ultimate wisdom—doesn’t even need to act through miracles, but through the decisions made by human beings of their own free wills. God, knowing how people will act under certain circumstances, has the power to arrange things such that his desired ends are brought about not despite of the actions of human beings, with their own wills and desire, but through them.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good

Genesis 50:20

“You meant X, but God meant it for Y.” We may interpret any action in this way, although it should be noted that sometimes this is not so much a duel but a greater gift. In fact, it almost always is. We might hope for the good, as is often the case, but God will give us the greater good. Sometimes it just takes us a while to see it. Sometimes we never do. But it’s there.

Consider the decisions of your ancestors that have led you here. Had any one of them chosen differently—say, whether to move somewhere new—you would not have the goods that you do, if you would even be born, nor would any of the people you have done good things for received those. It’s a pretty incredible tapestry when you think about how easily it would have been for things to be different, but they aren’t!

It’s true that I am the “master of my fate” to some extent. But it is a matter of faith to believe that someone will catch me when I fall, and it is a matter of hope to believe that I will get more than I bargained for in the best of ways. This is what I call providence, and it is far better than fate.