The C&MA holds a modified Arminian understanding of predestination, influenced by both evangelical theology and Keswick teaching. The denomination affirms that God is sovereign and omniscient, knowing all future events including human responses to the gospel. However, this foreknowledge is distinguished from foreordination: God knows who will believe, but individuals retain genuine agency and freedom to respond to the gospel or reject it.

Central to C&MA soteriology is the doctrine of prevenient grace — the grace that precedes and enables human choice. This grace works within all people, drawing them toward Christ and making possible a genuine faith response. The C&MA rejects both fatalism and Pelagianism, instead affirming that humans are morally responsible and that God's election operates in light of his knowledge of free choices made in response to prevenient grace.

The C&MA explicitly rejects double predestination (the doctrine that God predestines some to damnation). God's will is for the salvation of all, and damnation results from human rejection of Christ, not from divine foreordination to perdition. This theological stance emphasizes both God's sovereignty and human responsibility, a balance reflected in the denomination's strong emphasis on evangelism and missions: if salvation depended solely on divine predestination, missionary urgency would be compromised.