Destiny, Predestination, Double Predestination....etc

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Ok, I am trying to explain this from a Catholic point of view and frankly I am a bit sketchy on how to do that so I could use everyone’s help:
  1. God is all-knowing
    –Does that mean that God knows whether or not a person will eventually be in Heaven or Hell? If he does know when is that determined about a person? At conception? Before…as in God knows the destiny of every person that will ever be born? Or is it a continual process in which God knows all possible outcomes to every possible choice that a person could make in his or her lifetime?
  2. Why would God allow someone to be born which he knows will go to Hell? If God knows someone is going to Heaven or Hell does this contridict Free will?
  3. If God knew someone was destined to go to Hell what would be the point of extending that person any Graces? God gives everyone sufficent Grace to find their way to Heaven, but if a person is destied to Hell aren’t those graces wasted?
Thanks…These questions came from a rather indepth theological discussion I was having with a friend…actually we are both trying to work through the questions together! Help is appreciated, my brain is apparently too small to comprehend some of this 😉

God Bless
 
Opps…as a side question…not as large as the other and not as pressing…could someone break down the difference between Predestination and Double Predestination?

I know we don’t believe in Double predestination. But I’m having a hard time differentiating it from predestination.

God Bless,
 
Sanctus said:
1. God is all-knowing
–Does that mean that God knows whether or not a person will eventually be in Heaven or Hell? If he does know when is that determined about a person? At conception? Before…as in God knows the destiny of every person that will ever be born? Or is it a continual process in which God knows all possible outcomes to every possible choice that a person could make in his or her lifetime?
  1. Why would God allow someone to be born which he knows will go to Hell? If God knows someone is going to Heaven or Hell does this contridict Free will?
  2. If God knew someone was destined to go to Hell what would be the point of extending that person any Graces? God gives everyone sufficent Grace to find their way to Heaven, but if a person is destied to Hell aren’t those graces wasted?
Thanks…These questions came from a rather indepth theological discussion I was having with a friend…actually we are both trying to work through the questions together! Help is appreciated, my brain is apparently too small to comprehend some of this 😉

God Bless
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think merely treating the first question will clear up the second two as well. Most people see a problem with the co-existence of Divine omniscience (God knowing everything) and free will. After all, if God knows your future actions, then they can’t have been free choices because the outcome was already decided (God can’t be wrong - for you to do other than what he “knew” you would do in the future would cause that to be the case).
One way of dealing with this is simply asserting that God does not exist within time, rather outside of it. God existed before the creation of the universe (and, with it, time), so he must not be bound within the structure of time, existing above it instead. Because of that, all of what we call time (past, present, and future) exists for God as one eternally present moment. For God, everything happens NOW. An imperfect yet still useful analogy is that of a film editor. He can roll out a lenght of film and see every moment of time represented there pretty much simultaneously. When he sees the later parts of the reel, he does so at the same time as the previous parts. Apply that to God. When He knows our future actions, He is not looking at events before we get a chance to use our free will to decide them. Rather, He has just already seen us decide them, even though we, bound within time as we are, haven’t gotten to that point yet.
Another way of dealing with the problem is thinking of God as existing within time, but limiting either free will or God’s knowledge. While there are many ways of doing this, the main rule of the game is that you cannot have both total omniscience and total free will. One must be restricted. Find a balance that makes sense to you. Since I don’t like limiting either one, I prefer placing God outside of time.
 
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Sanctus:
Is there an official Church stance on these issues?
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These canons from the Council of Trent seem to touch on the basic points at issue:

The Council of Trent
The Sixth Session

CANON XV.-If any one saith, that a man, who is born again and justified, is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate; let him be anathema.

CANON XVI.-If any one saith, that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end,-unless he have learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema.

CANON XVII.-If any one saith, that the grace of Justification is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
In your first question, about the kind of knowledge God has (be it perfect foreknowledge from all time of the exact events that are to occur, or perfect foreknowledge of all possible events, from which omniscience He decides how to exercise his sovereignty) the Catholic Church has never made any official doctrines. She has, as Gerry Hunter posted, limited the possibilities by excluding the Calvinist double-predestination or the once-saved-always-saved ideas.

I believe that there have been some spectacular debates amongst Catholics between Thomists and Molinists who sorta typify the two kinds of foreknoweldge that that you sketched out. I know that we even had a pope at one point who wanted to settle the matter by calling together a series of such debates, from which he would pronounce what the faithful should believe, but didn’t find either case clearly to demonstrate its superiority over the other. So the bottom line is that the Catholic faithful are free to speculate as to what, exactly, predestination and God’s foreknowledge mean.

Personally, I lean toward the Molinist ‘middle knowledge’ idea that God functions with a perfect omniscience of all the world’s possible outcomes, and allows us to cooperate in determining whatever exact form it is that the future takes.
 
www.newadvent.org has a great article on this topic:

newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm

and here is an excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia on that website:

We may now briefly summarize the whole Catholic doctrine, which is in harmony with our reason as well as our moral sentiments. According to the doctrinal decisions of general and particular synods, God infallibly foresees and immutably preordains from eternity all future events (cf. Denzinger, n. 1784), all fatalistic necessity, however, being barred and human liberty remaining intact (Denz., n. 607). Consequently man is free whether he accepts grace and does good or whether he rejects it and does evil (Denz., n. 797). Just as it is God’s true and sincere will that all men, no one excepted, shall obtain eternal happiness, so, too, Christ has died for all (Denz., n. 794), not only for the predestined (Denz., n. 1096), or for the faithful (Denz., n. 1294), though it is true that in reality not all avail themselves of the benefits of redemption (Denz., n. 795). Though God preordained both eternal happiness and the good works of the elect (Denz., n. 322), yet, on the other hand, He predestined no one positively to hell, much less to sin (Denz., nn. 200, 816). Consequently, just as no one is saved against his will (Denz., n. 1363), so the reprobate perish solely on account of their wickedness (Denz., nn. 318, 321). God foresaw the everlasting pains of the impious from all eternity, and preordained this punishment on account of their sins (Denz., n. 322), though He does not fail therefore to hold out the grace of conversion to sinners (Denz., n. 807), or pass over those who are not predestined (Denz., n. 827). As long as the reprobate live on earth, they may be accounted true Christians and members of the Church, just as on the other hand the predestined may be outside the pale of Christianity and of the Church (Denz., nn. 628, 631). Without special revelation no one can know with certainty that he belongs to the number of the elect (Denz., nn. 805 sq., 825 sq.).
 
Mary was predestined by God to be sinless and to say yes.
 
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Hesychios:
Mary was predestined by God to be sinless and to say yes.
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Not quite… Catholic teaching is that she was conceived without *original *sin,and that she was sinless in the rest of her earthly life by choice. She had free will, the same as the rest of us, and could have chosen not to say “yes”.

Just because God prevented her from being born with original sin does not mean that she could not sin–after all, Adam and Eve didn’t have orignal sin either and look what happened! 🙂

+veritas+
 
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Hesychios:
Mary was predestined by God to be sinless and to say yes.
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Mary was not an automaton. Her “yes” was her free choice.

Catholic teaching clearly states that the sovereignty and the omniscience of God do not negate human free will.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1704 The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection “in seeking and loving what is true and good.”

1711 Endowed with a spiritual soul, with intellect and with free will, the human person is from his very conception ordered to God and destined for eternal beatitude. He pursues his perfection in “seeking and loving what is true and good”

It is God’s plan that we spend eternity with Him, but He does not force us.

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.

WIth specific reference to Mary:

968 Her role in relation to the Church and to all humanity goes still further. “In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior’s work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace.”

Note the terms “cooperated” and “obedience”.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
Sanctus,

If God the blessed one sees that one is going to hell, he tries to help that one by showing signs and doing miracles. Wether the dommed person sees it or not is up to that person. Plus, nobody is meant to go to hell. There is destiny, wich is the mission or task that God has for us, but it is up to us to step up to the challenge. But there is no fate, were asomething is going to happen no matter what, with the exception of prophecy or if God wants it to happen and he doesn’t care what we do to try and stop it.
 
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