predestination

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act of predestining or the condition of being predestined.
• noun The doctrine that God has foreordained all things, especially that God has elected certain souls to eternal salvation.
• noun The divine decree foreordaining all souls to either salvation or damnation.
• noun The act of God foreordaining all things gone before and to come.
• noun Destiny; fate.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of predestinating, or the state of being predestinated; fate; specifically, in theology, the decree or purpose of God, by which he has from eternity immutably determined whatever comes to pass; in a more restricted sense, the decree by which men are destined to everlasting happiness or misery; in the most restricted sense, predestination to eternal life, or election (the correlative doctrine that God has predestined some to everlasting death is termed reprobation). See predestinate, v. t.
• noun Synonyms Foreordination, predetermination.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of predestinating.
• noun (Theol.) The purpose of Good from eternity respecting all events; especially, the preordination of men to everlasting happiness or misery. See Calvinism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun theology The doctrine that everything has been foreordained by a God, especially that certain people have been elected for salvation, and sometimes also that others are destined for reprobation.
• noun Destiny or fate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun (theology) being determined in advance; especially the doctrine (usually associated with Calvin) that God has foreordained every event throughout eternity (including the final salvation of mankind)
• noun previous determination as if by destiny or fate