This leads us to the third argument, disputing the pessimists’ one-sided arguments with “free will.” Again, the pessimists argue that, because of free will, there will always be some evil. In a similar vein, the pessimists respond to the OT typology argument we made in a previous essay with, “Granted, God was able to convert the Jews in the Old Covenant from an intermediate apostasy, but, it is ultimately up to man’s free will whether this will occur with the Gentiles in the New Covenant.” Again, this ignores the fact that free will is just one side of the same coin, the other side of which is predestination. I could elaborate on this with a discussion I had with a priest in the local area who put on a Q&A session with a Catholic youth group. In the course of the discussion, somehow the subject of God’s Plan came up, and the priest simply said something to the effect of, “I don’t really think there’s a ‘Plan.’ You simply have free will. God has given you gifts and talents, and so He just puts you in the world and says, ‘Here, do something with your gifts. It’s completely up to you.’ There really is no Plan.” Many of the students were surprised. At the conclusion, as everyone was leaving, I commented to Glen, the other leader, “You know, Glen, regarding what Father said about ‘free will and the Plan,’ I think it’s a little bit of both, not either/or.” Glen agreed and passed this on to everyone as they left. Similarly, there is perhaps the humorous wisdom of Forest Gump. There was that touching scene where Forest stood at the grave of his mother and was perusing about “fate” and “free will,” and, towards the end, he finally chokes out through his tears, “You know, Mama, I think it’s a little bit of both.” Authentically, I think that is the Catholic position: there is both free will *and *predestination, or, associatedly, a “Plan.”
Allow me to elaborate. As you should know, Catholicism teaches dogmatically that man is free, but also that there is predestination. The full reconciliation of these principles is, to some extent, unsettled in Catholic theology. Hence, we have the competing factions of Thomists and Molinists. The Thomists, in their analysis, emphasize God’s Sovereignty, whereas the Molinists emphasize man’s free will. I learned from an expert at EWTN that in somewhere around the sixteenth or seventeenth century, there was a debate in the Church regarding these issues, and the pope of the time told the factions not to disturb the peace of the Church. I personally am convinced that it is probably again a “both/and” situation, as opposed to an “either/or.” That is, the reconciliation of Thomism and Molinism is probably a mystery that we will never fully understand.
At any rate, orthodox Catholic theologians must admit, with regards to predestination, both a predestination to Heaven and Hell, however, the types differ. Specifically, predestination to Heaven is by God’s Ordained Will, whereas predestination to Hell is by God’s Permissive Will. That is, God has positively ordained that the elect will inherit eternal life, whereas, as we saw in the introductory essay of this series, God has merely foreseen and permitted, not ordained, that the damned will end in eternal ruin. Further, if it is true that the elects’ salvation is predestined and ordained, then it must also be true, by way of implication, that every cooperation of the individual with God’s grace is ordained. This is ultimately because it is only by cooperation with the grace of God that the person is saved to begin with. But, then, this would also have to imply that the historical cooperations with grace are also predestined, referring especially to the major Redemptive episodes of Salvation History. That is, the reversion of the Jews to the Old Covenant after the Babylonian Exile was not an accident but ordained by God, just as the conversion of Europe to Catholicism was not an accident but was a part of God’s Plan. In a similar vein, so also are the major episodes of sinful resistance predestined, again, by God’s Permissive Will, in order that, as we have seen, He might draw a greater good from them through Redemption. Hence, in a sense, the whole of Salvation History is part of God’s Plan: the bad stages by God’s permission, and the good stages by God’s ordination. That is, we are still free, but God has foreseen what we will do with our freedom and has a Plan to counteract and redeem the times when we fall and make a mess of things.
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(continued next post)
