Augustine and Double Predestination

[malvaradosr]

“Many hear the word of truth; but some believe, while others contradict. Therefore, the former will to believe; the latter do not will.” Who does not know this? Who can deny this? But since in some the will is prepared by the Lord, in others it is not prepared, we must assuredly be able to distinguish what comes from God’s mercy, and what from His judgment.” -Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf105.xxi.ii.xi.html

I am Presbyterian and currently reading the Church Fathers. I’m honestly trying to guard against reading my own theological bias into such statements. But I understand Augustine to be saying that the Lord prepares the will of some and not others and that’s the ultimate reason some come to faith and others do not.

Would someone please explain to me the Catholic position on predestination?

 

[TigerLily-1]

Welcome to CAF!

I’m Catholic and don’t believe in predestination but am not sure exactly what the Catholic Church officially teaches about it. However, there are many well-informed Catholics here who can answer your question.

@BlackFriar
@Genesis315
@guanophore

Can you help?

 

[Dan_Defender]

We have free will so God does not compel us to a predestined fate. At the same time, God knows exactly what we will do with our free will. So it is a ‘predestination’ in the sense of knowledge but not in the sense of cause.

 

[porthos11]

…

I am Presbyterian and currently reading the Church Fathers. I’m honestly trying to guard against reading my own theological bias into such statements. But I understand Augustine to be saying that the Lord prepares the will of some and not others and that’s the ultimate reason some come to faith and others do not.

Would someone please explain to me the Catholic position on predestination?

Augustine’s expressions are the primitive basis for the Catholic stance on predestination. First off, @Dan_Defender’s statement does not reflect Catholic teaching and belief. This is a very common error Catholics make when trying to explain predestination, but it is an error, usually as an extreme reaction to Calvinism.

Predestination in Catholicism does include both God’s foreknowledge and cause. Catholic teaching affirms that God does ordain the elect to heaven.

Augustine is stating the Catholic teaching that God grants various graces to different people, and that he sees how people use their free will to respond do that grace. Catholicism requires us to believe both the action of grace and man’s free response to that grace. That alone is compatible with Catholic teaching.

The difficulty is that because Catholicism requires us to affirm these two (as well as the universal desire for salvation), it’s very difficult to reconcile, and so the Catholic Church has not defined how this happens, only that it does. In Catholicism, multiple schools of thought are permitted. Two of the most well known are the Thomist school, held by the Dominicans, and the Molinist school, taught by the Jesuits. Both affirm both God’s grace and man’s free will, albeit with different emphases (Thomism on God’s sovereignty, Molinism on man’s free will). The Church permits both, and possibly others, but does not dogmatically define it, precisely because of the difficulty. The Church does, however, condemn double-predestination because it denies man’s free will and the universal desire for salvation.

 

[fhansen]

Here’s the catechism teaching on a couple of aspects where it’s recognized that man’s will is involved, even as God’s initiative is essential:
1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom. On man’s part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:

When God touches man’s heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit,
man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God’s grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God’s sight. 42

Augustine produced a huge amount of writings, a great deal of which was the result of his battle against Pelagianism where he understandingly emphasized the role of grace. But here’s a very famous quote from His later years, from Sermo 169:
"But he who made you without your consent does not justify you without your consent. He made you without your knowledge, but He does not justify you without you willing it.”

And the catechism again, this time on predestination:
600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: "In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place."395 For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.396
"He died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures"

1037 God predestines no one to go to hell;618 for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:619

 

[guanophore]

Would someone please explain to me the Catholic position on predestination?

May I commend you on your efforts to read objectively! This is a gnarly subject and to be honest, I find the Catholic teaching somewhat more fluid and vague than the Calvanist. There is a certainty about the Calvanistic approach that resolves all the “possibilities” that are left open in the Catholic view. This articles may help you:

Predestined for Freedom | Catholic Answers Magazine

St. Mary's Catholic Center

http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/tulip.htm

Catholics do not believe that God predestines any to hell, but otherwise, there is much more in common with Calvin on predestination to heaven than many Catholics would like to believe!

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Thanks, guanophore, for the good article.

But how does the article differ (if indeed it does) from what Dan_Defender said, which someone else said was incorrect?

I’m not seeing a difference.

 

[malvaradosr]

Thanks for your time and thoughtful reply. Thanks guanophore for the links,…interesting indeed to hear the language of Aquinas on this subject. Can’t say I’ve read this before today.

“God wills to manifest His goodness in men; in respect to those whom He predestines, by means of His mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom he reprobates, by means of His justice, in punishing them. This is the reason why God elects some and rejects others. To this the Apostle refers, saying (Rom. 9:22,23): ‘What if God, willing to show His wrath [that is, the vengeance of His justice], and to make His power known, endured [that is, permitted] with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction; that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory’” -Aquinas, Summa Theologica

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q23_A5.html

I see many similarities here in the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, and might I add…Calvin. The concept of giving grace to some and withholding it from others. The motivation of the former being to display his mercy and of the latter to display his justice. All the while affirming the free will of man as a moral agent and a sovereign God as a moral governor.

My preliminary judgement is that we hold many of the same premises in common but that some (Reformed) have drawn inferences from what they believe are necessary consequences of those premises while the Catholics, while affirming the premises, have not formally defined it and allow for different emphases of its teaching within its communion.

Would this be a fair assessment?

 

[TK421]

at OP:

By the 7th century, the Church had settled on what was known as “semi-Augustinian” teaching on the subject of free will and predestination and it has remained so to the present day, though the language has gradually changed over the centuries. Much of these teachings came out of the fruit of the debates between Augustine and Pelagius.

The semi-Augustinian teaching on salvation is:

1. Man is incapable of repenting or doing good without Divine assistance.
2. God works within the soul - while it is still in sin - and inspires man to seek grace to be reconciled. Conventionally, this grace is acquired through the sacraments. “Perfection contrition” will also put a creature into a state of sanctifying grace before physically receiving baptism.
3. However, these inspirations from God must be consented to by the creature through the faculty of their free will.
4. With God working upon the creature, and the creature consenting, the creature is reconciled.

---

St Augustine is still one of the most celebrated authors in the Catholic Church. His talent and charisma with the written word was quite remarkable. Not everything he wrote perfectly conforms to Magisterial teaching though as he was a fairly early saint. He came after the time of the Councils Nicaea & Constantinople when more formal terms such as “Trinity” started gradually being used, but there were still a lot of subject areas that weren’t established in the way they were by the High Middle Ages.

Peace.

 

[twoboys]

Good question and great answers. Thank you, all who have contributed to this chain.

 

[porthos11]

I see many similarities here in the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, and might I add…Calvin. The concept of giving grace to some and withholding it from others. The motivation of the former being to display his mercy and of the latter to display his justice. All the while affirming the free will of man as a moral agent and a sovereign God as a moral governor.

My preliminary judgement is that we hold many of the same premises in common but that some (Reformed) have drawn inferences from what they believe are necessary consequences of those premises while the Catholics, while affirming the premises, have not formally defined it and allow for different emphases of its teaching within its communion.

Would this be a fair assessment?

Yes. In fact the Thomist thought is half of Calvin. Thomists hold that God elects then ensures that the election is secured by providing the graces he knows the person will freely respond to. This is acceptable in Catholicism. Double predestinarians take it too far when they cross into unconditional positive reprobation because it denies the universal desire for salvation which Is also Scriptural and Catholics must affirm. When the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that God predestines no one to hell, this is what is referred to.

Catholicism does affirm reprobation as it is a necessary consequence of predestination and God’s immutability. But Catholicism holds that reprobation is only confitional and with consideration of foreseen rejection of grace. On this ground I prefer the Molinist explanation over the Thomist.