Catholic predestination?

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JamesTheJust

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I hope this is in the correct forum. Anyway, predestination is one of the doctrines of the Church that really gives me pause, because I really don’t know exactly what it is. I was reading the book of Wisdom, and 3:9 says, “[God’s] care is with the elect”. This sparked my interest, so I was wondering if any of you wise men of CAF could explain to me what the Church teaches on this. As I understand it, there is an elect, to whom God gives efficacious grace, so that they 100% will definitely be saved. But to all others, He gives sufficient grace, so that they might be saved, if they choose to accept this grace. I also understand that is a sin to believe that one knows whether or not one is an elect. So, to sum up my understanding:
Worst case scenario: only the elect are saved.
Best case scenario: all are saved.

Please tell me whether or not this soteriology is correct and, if it is contrary to Church teaching, please instruct me on what is correct. Thank you all in advance!
 
Opening up a can of worms here, that is for sure!

Predestination is a general truth of the faith, in the sense that it is mentioned in the Bible, but it is not a doctrine that has been defined very specifically. The only dogmatic things about this the Church has said is that 1. Nobody is Predestined to Hell. 2. Human Beings have a Free Will to choose or reject God.

Now, beyond that, it has generally been held by theologians that on the one hand, God predestines before he looks at our merits, that is, we cannot qualify or earn God’s electing Grace. But on the other hand, he refuses predestination by looking at our demerits, that is we can disqualify ourselves.

Now there have been various groups to frame this different ways.

There have been the Augustinian type’s, that follow after a lot of St. Augustine and some scholastic’s, that stress God’s predestination and put emphasis on things like sufficient and efficacious grace and all that. (Sometimes this is called Thomistic, but I don’t think that’s accurate).

There has been a broad middle group, people like St. Francis de Sales, who for the most part understand God’s predestination and our Free Will to work together in some mysterious way.

There has been a third way, commonly called Molinism, that stresses that God’s predestination is in response to our own merits.

My own view is, that both the third option and the first option, if not definitely ruled out, have been thoroughly discredited and are in the past. Both of them have large internal contradictions and come close to contradicting dogmatic teachings. The third option simply does not compute with Salvation by Grace. The first option, the Augustinian one, is massively incoherent and ends up simultaneously affirming and then denying things like free will, predestination to Hell, and above all, the universal salvific will of God.

So what is the real way forward? I think the way forward in this understanding is pointed out by Fr. Most in his book “Grace, Predestination, and The Salvific Will of God.” He maintains all the dogma’s of the Church in a coherent form and with the strictest faithfulness.
Basically he says: We cannot be predestined on the Basis of our positive assent and choice of God, because we can’t choose that without Grace. But we can forfeit God’s Grace. So basically, God’s actual Grace comes to all people, and is by nature inherently efficacious unless we strongly resist. Now, we cannot positively assent at this point, we can only omit resistance. Those who omit resistance will have Grace become efficacious for them, the rest will not.

So everyone is Predestined except for those who stubbornly refuse the Grace of God.

Hopefully that made sense…
 
I don’t believe “predestination” is a helpful term during discussions because that term doesn’t mean the same thing to most people. So, I can say that I believe that He is helping me to get to heaven… is that what you mean by predestination?

I look at it like this, if I think of my life like a sport/game… worrying about the score doesn’t really help me, so I’m just going to focus on praying to Jesus that whenever the ball is in my hand He will help me to make the right play. When it’s the end of the game, I’m still going to be “praying” hard… I’m praying that I’ve done enough praying in my life. When I’m walking off the field… I’m going to be happy because the whole time I was praying, He was by my side. He won’t let me lose - so I’m “predestined” to win, but I’m still praying that I make the right play.
 
JamesTheJust said:
I also understand that is a sin to believe that one knows whether or not one is an elect.
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Sounds like here you might be talking about “Presumption”… that’s explained in Paragraph 2092 of the CCC: “There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God’s almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).”
 
From the last source to ever be consulted (the applicable sections of the catechism):

257 "O blessed light, O Trinity and first Unity!"93 God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life. Such is the “plan of his loving kindness”, conceived by the Father before the foundation of the world, in his beloved Son: “He destined us in love to be his sons” and “to be conformed to the image of his Son”, through “the spirit of sonship”.94 This plan is a “grace [which] was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began”, stemming immediately from Trinitarian love.95 It unfolds in the work of creation, the whole history of salvation after the fall, and the missions of the Son and the Spirit, which are continued in the mission of the Church.

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.

1007 Death is the end of earthly life. Our lives are measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and, as with all living beings on earth, death seems like the normal end of life. That aspect of death lends urgency to our lives: remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment:

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, . . . before the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

2012 “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him . . . For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

2782 We can adore the Father because he has caused us to be reborn to his life by adopting us as his children in his only Son: by Baptism, he incorporates us into the Body of his Christ; through the anointing of his Spirit who flows from the head to the members, he makes us other “Christs.”

God, indeed, who has predestined us to adoption as his sons, has conformed us to the glorious Body of Christ. So then you who have become sharers in Christ are appropriately called "Christs."34
The new man, reborn and restored to his God by grace, says first of all, “Father!” because he has now begun to be a son.

2823 "He has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ . . . to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will."98 We ask insistently for this loving plan to be fully realized on earth as it is already in heaven.
 
This is a huge, and hugely complex, topic. It can be debated, but not properly elucidated, in the context of short forum posts - it demands a book-length study at the very minimum, and, ideally, many book-length studies. In the end, our mortal minds can not comprehend the predestinating and fore-ordaining decree of God, except insofar as he has revealed it to us (“some are predestinated, some are not, and never the twain shall meet”) in his revelation, the Bible.

I recommend the book Predestination by Dominican Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP for the traditional Roman Thomistic view on predestination, and the book Iustitia Dei (it’s in English) by Alister McGrath for a good historical theological overview of the doctrine of justification, which is inextricably bound up with the question of predestination.

Thomas Aquinas also wrote some decent articles in the Summa theologiae on these matters (search newadvent.org which has an online copy of the ST), as does John of Damascus in his De fide orthodoxa (“On the Orthodox Faith”, more accurately, “An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith”, from the original Greek title), in the section where he speaks of the division between the antecedent and consequent wills of God. (To fully understand this difference, John of Damascus himself gives you the tools in his Philosophical Chapters, which, together with the Exact Exposition and his On Heresies, make up the work entitled Fount of Knowledge, available several places online in old translation, but ideally available in Vol. 37 of Fathers of the Church, a scan of which of which I am uploading to Scribd in .pdf, which is here: scribd.com/doc/179134666/St-John-of-Damascus-The-Fount-of-Knowledge-FoC-37
 
I personally find little value searching through esoteric tomes on theology to discern the meaning of snippets of different scriptures. I look at the scriptures as a whole and find a loving Father Who founded His Church to preach to all nations so that all may be saved. God loves me and I continually disobey for my own selfish needs in a hard world. I am childlike in my ignorance of His true glory and thus the enormity of my sin. However I repent in the moment and resolve not to sin, but almost in the next breath fall again. I cry to His Mercy, hoping I am forgiven, reassured in His sacraments and His promise .

Am I predestined or repudiated? Are the Thomist right or the dominicans? Does He predestine without consideration of merit or repudiate without consideration of demerit. Is there a logical sequence of Will outside of time? Don’t know, don’t care. He is my dad and He personally loves me. I will try and fail in my own acts to show Him I still wear His ring and cloak. I will continue to demand of Him what in my weakness I offer to my son, unconditional acceptance of him as my son, in spite of his failings. If I can cry out in this confidence, my Father will continue to hear my call in spite of my coming last in the race.
 
As long as you don’t believe anything you do can merit anything whatsoever in the sight of God apart from his grace (=freely-given gift, which can not be earned or prepared for in any sense whatsoever) which regenerates us, and resurrects us from the true death of sin to the life of Christ (the metaphor is precise: we have no more freedom of the will when it comes to spiritual things, than the corpse has within itself the free-will potential of lifting itself up out of the grave and dancing a jig; that is, we have free will with one choice, and that is, to continue laying dead until if and when the Physician of Souls decides to resurrect us, and restore in us the Divine Likeness), that’s an eminently practical view. It sounds like you’re on the right path when you realize that you come in last in the race - last except for myself, of course - but because Christ is with you, even though you come in last, you still receive the laurel crown. (I intend not the “pride of humility”, but to acknowledge that I am a great, obstinate sinner who can do nothing apart from Christ, because “the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak”, and “I find I have another law in my members”.)

I’m more of a theory man myself. A systematizer, if I may be permitted a neologism, to a fault. A rational fideist, which is the sentiment expressed (although rarely followed) by Anselm of Canterbury: fides quaerens intellectum*, “Faith precedes understanding, and I am given the grace of faith in order that I may begin to understand” (paraphrase). I could likely use a little more religion of the “Thus hath God sent his Spirit in to our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba!’” type, by the grace of God.

*Lit. “faith seeking intellection”.
 
TRH1292 said:
Opening up a can of worms here, that is for sure!

Predestination is a general truth of the faith, in the sense that it is mentioned in the Bible, but it is not a doctrine that has been defined very specifically. The only dogmatic things about this the Church has said is that 1. Nobody is Predestined to Hell. 2. Human Beings have a Free Will to choose or reject God.

Now, beyond that, it has generally been held by theologians that on the one hand, God predestines before he looks at our merits, that is, we cannot qualify or earn God’s electing Grace. But on the other hand, he refuses predestination by looking at our demerits, that is we can disqualify ourselves.

Now there have been various groups to frame this different ways.

There have been the Augustinian type’s, that follow after a lot of St. Augustine and some scholastic’s, that stress God’s predestination and put emphasis on things like sufficient and efficacious grace and all that. (Sometimes this is called Thomistic, but I don’t think that’s accurate).

Why not? The post-Reformation “Thomists” indeed represent only one possible way of developing St. Thomas’ legacy, but I don’t think describing them as Augustinians is more accurate. They add technical distinctions that St. Thomas didn’t himself make.
There has been a third way, commonly called Molinism, that stresses that God’s predestination is in response to our own merits.
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Thank you all for your responses! I can tell this is a huge topic that requires more than just forum posts to fully discuss. It appears that I’ll need lengthy books and Scripture studies to get a good answer to this question. From what I have read from you guys, this seems to be a topic that’s been left to us by the Church to decide what we believe. So I have another question: is the view I expressed above a view allowed by the Church, or was it ever condemned or disallowed?

I thank you all for your great posts and book suggestions. It looks like I really did start something that could lead to some great discussions, so if you have an answer, please don’t hesitate to continue to post!
 
Insofar as I can tell (you paint in broad strokes, and nuances are needed), the view you call “Augustinian” (Bañezian-Thomist, insofar as I can tell) that you hold is allowed by the Roman church, as is the traditional Molinism that Contarini mentioned. (Salvation based on foreseen - instead of “predestined” - merits, modern Molinism-Arminianism, is heresy.)
 
Khalid said:
Insofar as I can tell (you paint in broad strokes, and nuances are needed), the view you call “Augustinian” (Bañezian-Thomist, insofar as I can tell) that you hold is allowed by the Roman church, as is the traditional Molinism that Contarini mentioned. (Salvation based on foreseen - instead of “predestined” - merits, modern Molinism-Arminianism, is heresy.)
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Where has this view been clearly and explicitly condemned? You’re not the first person I have heard describe it as unorthodox, but I haven’t seen any explicit, direct, magisterial condemnations of it.

Edwin
 
As far as I can tell, if my view was shared by great thinkers like St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, as some of you seem to have said, then I’m in good company. However, as some of you also have said, my view is rather broad and ill-defined. That’s my fault. If any of you would like to ask questions or request clarifications about my understanding, so that we can further narrow down whether it is acceptable or not, I would be very open and even grateful. Again, thank you all for your great responses! 🙂
 
JamesTheJust said:
As far as I can tell, if my view was shared by great thinkers like St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, as some of you seem to have said, then I’m in good company. However, as some of you also have said, my view is rather broad and ill-defined. That’s my fault. If any of you would like to ask questions or request clarifications about my understanding, so that we can further narrow down whether it is acceptable or not, I would be very open and even grateful. Again, thank you all for your great responses! 🙂
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Sorry–I started replying to the replies instead of to your OP.

No, your view isn’t traditional at all. The only person I have ever heard of who held something like it is John Milton, who was a heretic even by Protestant standards (he didn’t believe in the Trinity because of his strict understanding of sola scriptura–that’s not directly relevant here but it shows how little regard he had for tradition and orthodoxy).

If you can be saved without being among the elect, then essentially you are saving yourself, which is Pelagianism (or more likely semi-Pelagianism) and heresy.

In traditional Christian discourse, “the elect” is identical to “those who will be saved.” And the question is: on what basis does God elect people?

Khalid is, I think, going too far in saying that election on the basis of foreknowledge is heresy, but it certainly has a rather marginal and dubious status at best in the Western theological tradition, until very recently.

Augustine and Aquinas certainly did not believe that you can be saved without being among the elect. The “sufficient grace” language was, I believe, developed by Dominicans after the Reformation to explain Aquinas’ position. The confusing thing is that no one who receives only sufficient grace is saved (in the “Thomist” view). Sufficient grace is enough to save you if you respond to it. Efficient grace causes you to respond to it. At least that’s my understanding. It’s very complex–the Calvinist view is confusing enough, and the “Thomist” view is more so, because it tries harder to preserve free will and avoid direct unconditional reprobation (God chooses to damn people for no reason other than His own will).

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
Sorry–I started replying to the replies instead of to your OP.

No, your view isn’t traditional at all. The only person I have ever heard of who held something like it is John Milton, who was a heretic even by Protestant standards (he didn’t believe in the Trinity because of his strict understanding of sola scriptura–that’s not directly relevant here but it shows how little regard he had for tradition and orthodoxy).

If you can be saved without being among the elect, then essentially you are saving yourself, which is Pelagianism (or more likely semi-Pelagianism) and heresy.

In traditional Christian discourse, “the elect” is identical to “those who will be saved.” And the question is: on what basis does God elect people?

Khalid is, I think, going too far in saying that election on the basis of foreknowledge is heresy, but it certainly has a rather marginal and dubious status at best in the Western theological tradition, until very recently.

Augustine and Aquinas certainly did not believe that you can be saved without being among the elect. The “sufficient grace” language was, I believe, developed by Dominicans after the Reformation to explain Aquinas’ position. The confusing thing is that no one who receives only sufficient grace is saved (in the “Thomist” view). Sufficient grace is enough to save you if you respond to it. Efficient grace causes you to respond to it. At least that’s my understanding. It’s very complex–the Calvinist view is confusing enough, and the “Thomist” view is more so, because it tries harder to preserve free will and avoid direct unconditional reprobation (God chooses to damn people for no reason other than His own will).

Edwin
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Oh my! I had no idea my beliefs were that bad! I think I understand the authorized position now, I will surrender my intellect accordingly. I can’t tell you how much that helped me! All the “efficient” and “sufficient” language had me very confused, but you explained it quite effectively. Again, I can’t thank you enough! :)👍😃

May the peace of Christ be with you,
James
 
JamesTheJust said:
Oh my! I had no idea my beliefs were that bad! I think I understand the authorized position now, I will surrender my intellect accordingly. I can’t tell you how much that helped me! All the “efficient” and “sufficient” language had me very confused, but you explained it quite effectively. Again, I can’t thank you enough! :)👍😃

May the peace of Christ be with you,
James
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Don’t surrender your intellect to me, for heaven’s sake!

I don’t think the position you describe has ever been condemned, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of the traditional discussion.

The efficient/sufficient language is confusing indeed, not just verbally but in substance (how is it sufficient if it doesn’t suffice for salvation? Isn’t it really just a way of evading the difficulty, like Calvin’s “revelation that suffices to make people responsible but not to save them”?). That’s one reason why Molina developed his view.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
Don’t surrender your intellect to me, for heaven’s sake!

I don’t think the position you describe has ever been condemned, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of the traditional discussion.

The efficient/sufficient language is confusing indeed, not just verbally but in substance (how is it sufficient if it doesn’t suffice for salvation? Isn’t it really just a way of evading the difficulty, like Calvin’s “revelation that suffices to make people responsible but not to save them”?). That’s one reason why Molina developed his view.

Edwin
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Oh! I’m sorry, I was unclear as to whom I was surrendering intellect. I was surrendering to the Church and orthodoxy in general, as it seemed that my view was unsubstantiated by any great theologians or saints and the like, and I pride myself on having orthodox beliefs.

I agree, soteriology can get extremely complicated and even arbitrary in its terminology. I have resolved to commit myself to deep study of the Fathers and Scripture on this matter, as I said in a previous post.
 
JamesTheJust said:
Oh! I’m sorry, I was unclear as to whom I was surrendering intellect. I was surrendering to the Church and orthodoxy in general, as it seemed that my view was unsubstantiated by any great theologians or saints and the like, and I pride myself on having orthodox beliefs.
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I knew that. I was being a bit facetious, and making the point that I’m just another dude on the Internet (well, a dude with a Ph.D., admittedly, but certainly not the Magisterium or even, as yet, in full communion with the Catholic Church).
I agree, soteriology can get extremely complicated and even arbitrary in its terminology. I have resolved to commit myself to deep study of the Fathers and Scripture on this matter, as I said in a previous post.
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Well, I need to read Levering’s book, which I mentioned earlier. He’s a Thomist theologian who is also steeped in Scripture and the Fathers, and very committed to orthodox Catholicism. You might find it helpful as well.

Edwin
 
Here’s classic article by Jimmy (then James) Akin on the subject. It explores the issue through the method of seeing how close to Calvinism a Catholic can get without heresy, which maybe isn’t the best overall approach but the information is pretty good. Also it does not even mention Fr. Most, which is refreshing for me personally.

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm

Personally I’m more and more convinced that the “Banezian” Thomist position is the correct one, inasmuch as the human intellect can even approach this mystery that is.
 
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