ConstantLearner:
joeybaggz:
Haven’t read the entire thread and I apologize if this has already been said, but whenever this question of predestination is raised my first question is, if predestination does exist, why was there any need for Jesus Christ??
Yes, of course. God revealed himself most fully in the person of Christ. That revelation was the most life-changing event the world has ever known.
Need rephrase my original post. If predestination exists, why was there any need for Christ’s sacrifice on the cross; his death and resurrection? Predestination means one’s future is set in concrete; this person will live eternally with God and that person will live eternally without God. Heaven and Hell. God’s revealing himself in Jesus would have no effect on predestination. Now if you are talking about the possibility of the damned being redeemed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is not predestination.
My original post was intended to make that point. Afraid I did it poorly. Oh well…
Predestination is intimately tied in with the mystery of Divine Providence, within which Christ’s redeeming action falls.
While in a manner of speaking, “one’s future is set in concrete”, proper Catholic understanding of predestination never omits man’s free will. Because predestination is part of God’s eternal decree, it cannot indeed change, because God is immutable. But God has seen it fit to make the created order include time, and in this order, while the divine order of grace is fixed for all time, God’s plan of predestination accounts for man’s free cooperation with his grace. Therefore, in the temporal plane, the future is not fixed; man still uses his free will to shape his destiny, although in eternity, which is but a single Now, all already is.
Now exactly how that happens, the Church has not defined. Thomists say God elects the predestined beforehand and knowing which graces they need, he bestows the graces he knows they will freely respond to in order to attain blessedness (predestination ante praevisa merita; before consideration of foreseen merits).
Molinists place it differently. Molinism has the concept of God’s middle knowledge (i.e. God knows all possible outcomes of all possible circumstances), and God uses his middle knowledge to see how every soul will respond to various orders of grace, and out of his sovereign decree, lays out one (this one in which we live). Then he predestines to heaven those he sees as freely responding to his grace, and reprobates those he foresees as freely rejecting it (post praevisa merita/post et propter praevisa demerita; after consideration of foreseen merits/after and because of foreseen demerits).
Regardless of whether you pick the Thomist or Molinist opinion, it must always be admitted that God’s plan of predestination always includes the redemptive act of Christ, i.e. for God to predestine anyone to blessedness, Christ’s Redemption was already part of God’s eternal decree.
