God"s omniscience

[dave_mcclatchy]

What is the Church’s description of God’s omniscience vis a vis St Augustine’ belief in predestination

 

[Richca]

It can be gathered from the writings of St Augustine that he had two theories of predestination more or less based on various seemingly irreconcilable texts of Holy Scripture which he didn’t understand how to reconcile and left it more or less as a mystery of God and of the catholic faith. One of these theories is not endorsed or taught by the official magisterium of the Church while the other is in conformity to the official teaching of the Church.

The first theory not endorsed and taught by the Church concerns Augustine’s theory of the massa damnata and his peculiar interpretation of Romans 9 among the fathers of the Church and which is not held by either all or the greater majority of modern biblical exegetes today. Speaking of God’s gratuitous election of Israel as the chosen people and particularly of Jacob over his twin brother Esau, St Paul says that this election of Jacob over Esau before either of them had been born and done either good or evil was due to the gratuitous call, grace, and mercy of God and not by any works or merits of theirs. Insofar as God’s gratuitous grace precedes our repentance and conversion and all our meritorious works, this is true and the Church dogmatically teaches this. But, Augustine interpreted this text of scripture to an extreme analogous to the protestant reformers doctrine of Sola Gratia, by grace alone, or irresistible grace and similar in a certain sense to John Calvin’s theory of double predestination. He also interpreted this scripture as referring to God’s gratuitous determination or choice of the eternal destiny of every individual human soul prior to the foreknowledge of either good or bad works except for maybe original sin in the reprobate. Most exegetes today disagree with this interpretation as great as an exegete and expositor of Holy Scripture St Augustine was and it was a peculiar interpretation of Augustine’s among the fathers of the Church. From original sin, Augustine held all of humanity to be justly condemned to eternal perdition and from this mass of perdition, God saves some by his gratuitous mercy and grace and predestines them to eternal life and leaves the rest, the majority of the human race Augustine thought, to eternal perdition.

St Augustine’s second theory of predestination is taken from other passages of scripture where man’s free will comes into play and his/her free response to God’s offer of salvation, mercy, and grace. Here, God offers all humanity salvation and grace and wills all to be saved (cf. 1 Timothy 2:4) but the salvation of individual humans is conditioned by their free will and their acceptance or rejection of God’s offer and grace. Those God has foreknown from all eternity as freely responding to and accepting his grace, God predestines to eternal life. Those God has foreknown from all eternity as freely resisting and rejecting his grace to the end, God reprobates to eternal punishment. This second theory of Augustine’s is what the Church officially teaches.

 

[dave_mcclatchy]

Richca: thanks for the reply. Is it fair to say that God knows everything at once? - i.e. for God there is no past or future just the present. And, if that is so, He knows from the beginning, who will be saved and who will not.(In your terms, who will ask for and accept God’s grace). I know it is incumbent upon human kind to search for the way - the direction one must take to achieve this goal with the help of God’s grace. To me this is predestination. This leads to several other considerations I have and would like to discuss but I want to get the starting point in the right place.

 

[Vico]

…

Saint Augustine’s latter belief in predestination is mentioned by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the S.T.

Summa Theologiae > First Part > Question 19. The will of God > Article 6. Whether the will of God is always fulfilled?​

Reply to Objection 1 . The words of the Apostle, “God will have all men to be saved,” etc. can be understood in three ways.

First, by a restricted application, in which case they would mean, as Augustine says (De praed. sanct. i, 8: Enchiridion 103), “God wills all men to be saved that are saved, not because there is no man whom He does not wish saved, but because there is no man saved whose salvation He does not will.”

 

[Richca]

Richca: thanks for the reply. Is it fair to say that God knows everything at once? - i.e. for God there is no past or future just the present. And, if that is so, He knows from the beginning, who will be saved and who will not.(In your terms, who will ask for and accept God’s grace). I know it is incumbent upon human kind to search for the way - the direction one must take to achieve this goal with the help of God’s grace. To me this is predestination. This leads to several other considerations I have and would like to discuss but I want to get the starting point in the right place.

Your welcome. Yes, God knows everything, omniscience, at once in one eternal act of his understanding. Yes, there is no past or future in God but an eternal present and he knows from eternity who will be saved and who will not be saved. We cannot ask for God’s grace without God’s grace for his supernatural grace always precedes us in anything that pertains to our salvation as well as God’s ‘general’ action in the natural order upon all creation as he is the first efficient cause of all the actions of his creatures. And yes, we can either resist or not resist, accept or refuse, with our free will God’s supernatural grace for we need to cooperate with his grace to attain salvation. The CCC says ‘God’s initiative demands man’s free response.’

 

[Richca]

According to Fr. William Most in his book ‘Grace, Predestination and the Salvific Will of God: New Answers to Old Questions’, St. Augustine held both of the beliefs I mentioned throughout his writing career. He tends to give a restricted meaning to 1 Timothy 2:4 which text of scripture I mentioned according to his second belief on predestination. So this text according to Augustine’s generally restricted meaning would probably be better placed according to his first theory of predestination. But, his commentary on other texts of scripture carry the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:4 so I placed for convenience as it were this text in his second belief. In his commentary on these other texts of scripture, Augustine is firm in that the cause of any man’s perdition is in his own will and refusing God’s offer of salvation and grace. He says, man deserts God and so God deserts him and not the other way around.

 

[Vico]

According to Fr. William Most in his book ‘Grace, Predestination and the Salvific Will of God: New Answers to Old Questions’, St. Augustine held both of the beliefs I mentioned throughout his writing career. He tends to give a restricted meaning to 1 Timothy 2:4 which text of scripture I mentioned according to his second belief on predestination. So this text according to Augustine’s generally restricted meaning would probably be better placed according to his first theory of predestination. But, his commentary on other texts of scripture carry the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:4 so I placed for convenience as it were this text in his second belief. In his commentary on these other texts of scripture, Augustine is firm in that the cause of any man’s perdition is in his own will and refusing God’s offer of salvation and grace. He says, man deserts God and so God deserts him and not the other way around.

For the first:

“He simply does not bestow his justifying mercy on some sinners…He decides who are not to be offered mercy by a standard of equity which is most secret and far removed from human powers of understanding.”

– God’s Decree and Man’s Destiny, “Augustine and Pelagianism in Light of Modern Research” by Bonner, 17.

In De Civitate Dei St. Augustine explains ante-predestination:

Let no one, therefore, look for an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, as the will itself is not an effecting of something, but a defect…Now, to seek to discover the causes of these defections—causes, as I have said, not efficient, but deficient—is as if some one sought to see darkness, or hear silence. Yet both of these are known by us…not by their positive actuality, but by their want of it.

– Augustine, De Civitate Dei , trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Random House, 1993), 12.7.

 

[Richca]

In De Civitate Dei St. Augustine explains ante-predestination:

Let no one, therefore, look for an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, as the will itself is not an effecting of something, but a defect…Now, to seek to discover the causes of these defections—causes, as I have said, not efficient, but deficient—is as if some one sought to see darkness, or hear silence. Yet both of these are known by us…not by their positive actuality, but by their want of it.

If anything, I think this quote from St Augustine in relation to predestination would concern God’s foreknowledge of sinful or evil human actions proceeding from the human will. Augustine here is not denying the reality of sinful actions that humans commit with their free will and which they are justly punished for. By their free will, humans are held accountable and are personally responsible for their actions. God’s gift of human freedom and the gift of intellect are great gifts God bestowed on us and by which we are principally made in the image and likeness of God and differ from the brute animals.

What Augustine is saying in this quote is that evil considered in itself does not have an efficient cause because an efficient cause produces being but evil is defined as the lack of being and goodness and so it proceeds from a deficient or defective cause. Evil is a kind of non-being but which can only exist in being and good because in itself, it does not exist nor is it a nature or actual being. An evil human action proceeds from the will and as an act of the will it is a being and the will is the efficient cause of it. But in so far as an evil or sinful act of the will is defective and lacks the being and goodness that ought to be there and this is the evil of the act, the evil act is said to have a deficient cause proceeding from a defective will act since evil as evil has no efficient cause and denotes lack of being and goodness.

 

[Richca]

I should mention that an excellent resource that I highly recommend concerning the subject of predestination and related doctrines from the official teaching of the Church, the fathers, doctors, and saints of the Church especially St Thomas Aquinas, is the book by Fr. William Most, which I mentioned in a previous post, titled ‘Grace, Predestination and the Salvific Will of God: New Answers to Old Questions’. It is online at the link below:

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/getwork.cfm?worknum=214

 

[Vico]

…

Yes. And the quote I gave is of his early writings.

 

[dave_mcclatchy]

Thank you both for the information and sources; but I have another question. It seems to me that we humans have a difficult enough time dealing with our natural predisposition towards pleasure to have another being interposed between ourselves and God. Yet as far as I know, the devil exists (or does he?). God’s omniscience means that God had foreknowledge of Lucifer’s rebellion yet it happened. Why. Or, is the devil a metaphor for our innate imperfection and the problems we have to overcome in our search for salvation?

 

[Vico]

Thank you both for the information and sources; but I have another question. It seems to me that we humans have a difficult enough time dealing with our natural predisposition towards pleasure to have another being interposed between ourselves and God. Yet as far as I know, the devil exists (or does he?). God’s omniscience means that God had foreknowledge of Lucifer’s rebellion yet it happened. Why. Or, is the devil a metaphor for our innate imperfection and the problems we have to overcome in our search for salvation?

Catchism

328 The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls “angels” is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition.

329 St. Augustine says: “… With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. …”

340 God wills the interdependence of creatures . …

392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels.269 This “fall” consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. …

395 The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God’s reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature- to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but "we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him."275