Struggling with the difference between single and double predestination

[EasternCelt]

In my desire to further understand Latin theology (I’m Ruthenian and former Orthodox), I’ve come across a lot of discussion of predestination. I know a more traditional Augustinian-Thomist belief is that God just selects and decrees some to salvation and passes over the rest of the mass of the damned; they contrast this with the classical Reformed doctrine of a double predestination where God doesn’t just eternally decree those who are saved, but also eternally decrees who will be damned as well. My problem is that I don’t really see a difference between the two positions. I know Thomists say that the difference is that they just don’t accept the decree of damnation, but wouldn’t a passing over of souls essentially be the same? The result is the same, true?

If anything, this reading has made me appreciate and love the “Eastern” theological tradition even more.

 

[littlebird]

Why is the single vs double predestination a concern ?

 

[EasternCelt]

My concern is that there’s no real difference between the two.

 

[Gorgias]

The Augustinian “massa damnata” isn’t Church teaching.

Looking at Romans 8 as a guide, I think we can say it’s important that the ‘order’ is foreknew → predestined, and not predestined → foreknew.

In other words, predestination doesn’t create ‘saved’ and ‘damned’, such that predestination might be seen as the cause of salvation or damnation. Rather, having foreknown, He predestines. So, it’s foreknowledge ‘first’.

 

[EasternCelt]

That makes sense. The only type of predestination taught to me in the eastern theological tradition is one of corporate predestination versus what I’ve found in the western tradition (outside of Reformed Federal Vision theology) to be very individualistic.

 

[Wesrock]

There’s more to it, but…

Single: Man cannot be saved without God’s grace. Man’s natural demerits through his own agency (rejecting cooperation with God’s grace) lead to damnation.

Double: Man does not merit salvation or damnation and man has no agency at all in the matter either way. There’s nothing man is capable of doing in either case.

The key issue is what level of agency is left to man in the matter.

 

[Wesrock]

That makes sense. The only type of predestination taught to me in the eastern theological tradition is one of corporate predestination versus what I’ve found in the western tradition (outside of Reformed Federal Vision theology) to be very individualistic.

What’s thought of Pelagianism in the East? The notion that a person can merit heaven entirely by himself without needing God’s grace?

 

[EasternCelt]

Corporate predestination is not pelagianism, so I’m not sure how to answer your question. Grace proceeds from the Church and to access that grace one has to be a member.

 

[EasternCelt]

I know that St. Thomas and St. Augustine seem to say different things at different times on this subject, but my understanding is that the single predestination is an eternal decree, so the rejection mentioned in your comment wouldn’t be important.

 

[Wesrock]

I know that St. Thomas and St. Augustine seem to say different things at different times on this subject, but my understanding is that the single predestination is an eternal decree, so the rejection mentioned in your comment wouldn’t be important.

It should be thought of as Gorgias wrote. God knows and creates the world as such anyway.

Are any of these statements incorrect?

• Man requires God’s grace to be saved.
• God knows who will be saved and who is damned.
• God knows who will accept his grace and who will reject it.
• God gives grace (via the Church) and creates the world and persons as they are.

 

[porthos11]

Can you share your Eastern expression on predestination?

 

[Wesrock]

…so the rejection mentioned in your comment wouldn’t be important.

And I would disagree with that. It makes all the difference whether we can say someone actually has the agency to merit damnation vs not having any agency in that whatsoever.

 

[EasternCelt]

I can agree with all of that, but my point is that that is not what St. Augustine especially is saying.

 

[EasternCelt]

Foreknowledge - God offers grace to all as He wills all to be saved, He fully knows who will cooperate with said grace, and His predestination is based off of his foreknowledge.

 

[porthos11]

Ah. Somewhat similar to Molinism.

I shy away from Thomism for the same concerns you mention a d tend towards Molinism although I do so cautiously.

 

[Latin]

Foreknowledge - God offers grace to all as He wills all to be saved, He fully knows who will cooperate with said grace, and His predestination is based off of his foreknowledge.

That is Molinst’s view of predestination and not even all Molinist theologians agree with it.

The conditions that we would be responsible for our decisions:

1.God would had to be provide us Libertarian free wills.

Libertarian free will is basically the concept that, metaphysically and morally, man is an autonomous being, one who operates independently,not controlled by others or by outside forces.

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2. For us to use our Libertarian free wills, God would had to provide us our ability to use our libertarian free will correctly.

The truth is, God neither provides us Libertarian free wills, nor He provides us the ability to use our wills independently from Him.

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3. Without our act Designed, Decreed, and Preordained by God from all eternity,
and without His cooperation in our act,
and without His provision of the powers of operation which enables us to act,
and without He causes, orders our act we can do nothing.
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Only God has Libertarian Free will no one else, God has provided us AIDED FREE WILLS.

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4. CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains;

Life everlasting promised to us, (Romans 5:21); but unaided we can do nothing to gain it (Rom.7:18-24).

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5. We have Aided Free will as follows, which is De fide dogmas and Official teachings of the Catholic Church.
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AIDED FREE WILL

Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott;

For every salutary act internal supernatural grace of God (gratia elevans) is absolutely necessary, (De fide).
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Fallen man cannot redeem himself. (De fide.) – It is God’s responsibility to save ALL OF US.
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Without the special help of God the justified cannot persevere to the end in justification. (De fide.) – It is God’s responsibility TO KEEP US SAVED by His grace of Final Perseverance.
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There is a supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul, which precedes the free act of the will, (De fide).
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CCC 308 For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it.
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St. Thomas teaches that all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and not to any other cause, because Gad alone is the cause of our willing and choosing. CG, 3.91.
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CCC 2022; The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man.
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The above teachings of the Church explains our Aided Free wills.
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God Designed, Decreed, Foreordained from all eternity all our free actions and He orders all our free actions. – CCC 307, CCC 308, Ez.36:27, Eph.2:10, etc.
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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Free Will explains;
“God is the author of all causes and effects, God’s omnipotent providence exercises a complete and perfect control over all events that happen, or will happen, in the universe.”
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God bless

 

[Minks]

In my desire to further understand Latin theology (I’m Ruthenian and former Orthodox), I’ve come across a lot of discussion of predestination. I know a more traditional Augustinian-Thomist belief is that God just selects and decrees some to salvation and passes over the rest of the mass of the damned; they contrast this with the classical Reformed doctrine of a double predestination where God doesn’t just eternally decree those who are saved, but also eternally decrees who will be damned as well. My problem is that I don’t really see a difference between the two positions. I know Thomists say that the difference is that they just don’t accept the decree of damnation, but wouldn’t a passing over of souls essentially be the same? The result is the same, true?

If anything, this reading has made me appreciate and love the “Eastern” theological tradition even more.

Have you considered that there may be no predestination, at all?

 

[RaisedCatholic]

I know a more traditional Augustinian-Thomist belief is that God just selects and decrees some to salvation and passes over the rest of the mass of the damned; they contrast this with the classical Reformed doctrine of a double predestination where God doesn’t just eternally decree those who are saved, but also eternally decrees who will be damned as well.

This is a common misunderstanding of the Protestant understanding of predestination, which is not much different from the Augustinian-Thomist view. Contrary to popular belief, Protestantism doesn’t teach “double predestination” that God predestines the wicked to Hell. It teaches that everyone deserves Hell & is heading there the moment they are conceived. However, by God’s sovereign eternal will, God predestines only His elect to salvation, while the wicked simply end up where they deserve because God did not predestine them to salvation. The wicked are both unwilling, as well as unable, to repent & believe. We cannot reconcile this seeming paradox, since we don’t possess the eternal mind of God, Who can reconcile it. But that is what the Bible teaches about predestination, but it doesn’t teach “double predestination” nor do Protestants teach anything of the kind.

 

[Wesrock]

I just wanted to quote from St. Augustine on the matter.

“But God made you without you. You didn’t, after all, give any consent to God making you. How were you to consent, if you didn’t yet exist? So while he made you without you, he doesn’t justify you without you. So he made you without your knowing it, he justifies you with your willing consent to it.”

Augustine: Sermon 169.13

For both St. Augustine and St. Thomas, it’s important to understand that they did not see predestination as competitive with the will. God’s action is what allows us to have wills that make voluntary choices by intrinsic principles.

And the monergistic argument I’ve seen for Augustine is that we are monergistically moved to faith but that salvation is synergistic. I am not enough of a reader of Augustine to definitively state what I think his opinion is, I’m just presenting what I’ve seen.

 

[Latin]

… the wicked simply end up where they deserve because God did not predestine them to salvation.

That is not only paradox but absolute nonsense, the reconciliation of it is plain and simple.

God created this world and He created the human race.

If God would willed, He could create this world where sin would have no place.
If God would willed, He could create us that we never commit even a smallest act of sin.

The human race is exactly the way, God willed to create the human race for good reasons.

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Catholic Encyclopedia : Evil
“But we cannot say without denying the Divine omnipotence, that another equally perfect universe could not be created in which evil would have no place.”
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310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it?
With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection, 314 through the dramas of evil and sin. – God created the dramas of evil and sin.

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THE REASON GOD CREATED THE DRAMAS OF EVIL AND SIN

Life without suffering would produce spoiled brats, not joyful saints.

Our struggle and tribulation while journeying towards our ultimate perfection through the dramas of evil and sin is the cost which in-prints the virtue/ nobility into our souls – the cost of our road to nobility and perfection.

In this world man has to learn by experience and contrast, and to develop by the overcoming of obstacles (Lactantius, “De ira Dei”, xiii, xv in “P.L., VII, 115-24. St. Augustine “De ordine”, I, vii, n. 18 in “P.L.”, XXXII, 986).

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Free Will explains;

“God is the author of all causes and effects, but is not the author of sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen. Still God is the cause of sin.
God’s omnipotent providence exercises a complete and perfect control over all events that happen, or will happen, in the universe.”

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains;

“His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.

He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.

All events preordained by God in accordance with His all-embracing purpose.

Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design” (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in “P.L.”,

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God Designed, Decreed, Foreordained every event which happened, happening or will happen in the universe, includes all our salutary act and includes all our act of sins .
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Nothing that is outside of God’s creating, sustaining, and governing will.
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324 Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.
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As we see above, everyone deserves to be God’s elect, and God is love and He is Just and everyone is God’s elect.
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If God would throw even one person into hell, his blood would be on Hes hands.
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God bless