I don’t remember the exact verse, but in Ephesians, Paul says something about how certain people are “predestined” for salvation. He also talks a lot about this sort of thing in Romans–I think Ch. 9. I’m confused about this; does anyone know what the Catholic Church says about this? (I’m not asking for personal opinions here!)
God Bless,
ACM
God is Good, all the time. Yes the Catholic Church does say something about this. “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma” by Dr. Ludwig Ott clarified this for me and is a good source for clarifying official church dogma.
Basically, there are two interpretations of predestination out there which are accepted by the church. One is the Augustinian approach and the other is the St. Francis De Sales. But whichever you go with, predestination is regarded as a great mystery by the Church.
St. Augustine wanted to defend what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:7, “And what have you which you have not received? Now, if you have received it, why do you glory as if you received it not?” St. Augustine says in “On Nature and Grace” that this means that our very act of accepting God’s grace is itself a grace from God. However, here there arises a serious issue because if indeed there are souls in hell (and the church teaches that we cannot know for certain that a soul is in hell, not even Judas, unless God has revealed this to us Himself) then how did they get there except because God refused to give them the graces necessary, since a man’s only hope is for God to move his will to accept His grace directly! This is a serious problem and, as I understand it, the Church teaches that if one is to hold that nothing good comes from our wills except what is directly caused by God, one must also at the same time hold to the fundamental Catholic dogma that God desires the salvation of ALL humankind! I personally think that if both these were true, not a soul could wind up in hell, and I am in favor of that possibility… but somehow I don’t think God would make it impossible for a soul to go to hell, and then there would be the problem of how Satan got there if God really loved him too. So this interpretation has serious flaws, which lie in its understanding of how man’s will cooperates in receiving God’s grace.
The other approach is that of St. Francis De Sales which stands solidly on the ground that God offers to EVERY human being sufficient grace to get to heaven. Not just the predestined, but everyone. This predestination is more of a foreknowledge of who will freely accept this grace and who will refuse it, than a direct causality. I found the following reference by Dr. Ludwig Ott very encouraging:
Code:
"If any one says that man's free will, moved and awakened by God, does in no manner co-operate when it assents to God, Who excites and calls it, thereby didsposing and preparing itself to receive the grace of justification; and (if any one says) that it cannot dissent if it wishes, but that, like some inanimate thing, it does nothing whatever, and only remains passive, let him be anathema." D 814, (See "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma" for more accurate reference)
This teaching, that man’s cooperation with God’s grace can claim some role of itself in its participation with its own salvation is solidly upheld by St. Francis De Sales. Now, the church does teach that if we hold to this position we must also be faithful to what St. Paul teaches, that we have NOTHING except that which we have received from God. However I think that St. Paul himself was granting some cooperation caused by our own wills when he used the word “received,” since any time you receive a gift it is up to you to make yourself open and receptive to that gift.
In defense of Saint Augustine, when he wrote “On Nature and Grace,” he was in fact battling Pelagian heresy which claimed that man could, by his own nature, attain salvation. You can see why he erred so far to the opposite extreme. But the former theory is “warmly recommended by St. Francis De Sales ‘as the truer and more attractive opinion,’” (
newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm thanks ElizabethPH) and I am with him on that one. Jesus, I trust in you.
