Posted on 01/02/2016 8:32:06 AM PST by Salvation
Q. I know that St. Augustine wrote about predestination, and that John Calvin wrote about double predestination. Can you explain what they both taught and what the Church says about it? What are some things to think about as we reconcile free will with God’s omniscience?
Graham, via e-mail
A. Predestination is a proper biblical concept which indicates that God chose us and called us before we were ever made to be His own. It does not deny that we freely chose Him, but it does insist that He first chose us, and thereby enabled us to choose Him.
Scripture says: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will” (Eph 1:4-5; see also Rom 8:29-30).
Predestination, understood in a way that does not cancel human freedom, is thus biblical and proper. Double predestination, however, as articulated by Calvin and others that follow him is not biblical. Double predestination teaches in effect that some are destined by God from before their birth to go to heaven or hell and have no real choice. In other words, God sovereignly ordains the eternal destiny of every human being — the lost as well as the saved. Thus the damned are fated and destined to hell from before their birth.
But this is contrary to Scripture, wherein God says, for example, “I find no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies” (Ez 18:32; see also 1 Tm 2:4). So, double predestination is wrong: God does not desire, will or force anyone into hell. Only by freely choosing against heaven and the values of the kingdom of heaven does a person depart to hell — it is really their choice, God merely affirms it at the judgment.
An analogy that is sometimes used regarding predestination and double predestination is in reference to sports. In the NFL draft, certain players are chosen by certain teams. And in this sense they are predestined to play for a certain team. However, they are not doubly predestined in that they are not absolutely forced to play for this team. Though they might have to pay some financial penalties, etc., they are free simply to refuse to play for that team and insist on being available for another team. If they were legally forced to play for whatever team chose them, no matter what they thought or wished, this would be an example of double predestination. It would be akin to the Calvinist notion that people are chosen to go to heaven or hell no matter what they think or do.
All of this cancels human freedom, which the Scriptures clearly attest that we do have. Otherwise, any moral exhortation makes no sense at all.
What Calvin’s double predestination is trying to do is to preserve the sovereignty of God. But it does so at the expense of another truth, the freedom of the human person. And this is the essence of all heresy: it takes two truths that are sometimes in tension and, in order to resolve the tension, discards one truth and embraces the other. The word “heresy” is rooted in a Greek term meaning “to choose.”
Orthodoxy however holds the balance and accepts the tension. The tension is embraced in humility that accepts the fact that the tension between God’s sovereignty and our freedom is created by our own human limits in understanding.
Part of the mystery of predestination is that God lives outside of time and sees it comprehensively. God knows and sees the future and the past along with the present as one moment. But the fact that He knows something does not mean He causes or forces it. Even humanly, I might be able to see two trains moving toward each other on a track and know they are going to crash. But my knowing this does not mean I cause this.
I don't really know Msgr. Pope, so I don't know how deep his theological thought is. Certainly a major point like “double-predestination” is going to, so to speak, exercise force on all the other issues that a systematic theology will have to cover. And, at least for me, it takes a lot of just plain skull time to begin to see that.
It's funny. It's not just Xtians who deal with the issues of “ripples” in theology. A college friend has become an orthodox rabbi, and I have looked at some of his conversations. I discovered to my surprise that Maimonides is sometimes viewed with suspicion for his debt to Aristotle. Tertullian’s complaint about Athens and Jerusalem is not confined to Xtians!
As far as I know, every decent Catholic theologian, whatever he says about free will, will always agree that every single, itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny good thing, thought, impulse, intention, desire, or act starts with God and is directed by God throughout. I certainly adamantly refuse to take credit for anything that might be considered good. That was so when I was a Protestant minister, and it remains to, by God's active grace, now that I'm a Catholic layman.
The stuff kind-of gives me a headache. I don't think about if I can avoid it, just go natural, simpler, try to let the Word work as is, try to avoid second guessing and attempting to figure out how to iron out what seems like different sides of the equation.
Those two, seemingly vastly different instructions (the price is paid for all sins /// Don't Sin!) are there because of the ways of man, and the wicked heart of man. *I think* (and right now, I too tired after hours of chess).
So on best days, I just give up, trusting God knows all there is from the beginning to the end, and He is always good -- just have to acknowledge Him in the day-to-day. When I can get away with it, without somebody hassling me. Not that you were, at all...
When all is said, and resaid, and picked over, taken apart, re-assembled, cleaned and lubed, Praise God and rest in the Love, rejoicing that he is way smarter’n us.
Blessings on you year. May we know, feel, and show his Love in the coming days.
Thanks.
You may be (likely are?) one of the few around here who could understand what I was saying, yourself apparently able to see the ramifications, how those would apply, how far those things could go...
Yes. He (God) has His own way of looking at things. Like -- every thing -- all at once?
We simply can't. At least I can not. I'm persuaded you are not one who thinks that you do, either.
Yet we can have wisdom from on high, condescend to men of low estate, the spirit informing us (opening our understanding) to that which we need to know.
At risk of confusing some people around here perhaps, in not going to (and citing) the various scripture passages which are source origins of the last preceding sentence, citing & providing link to yet another instead; James 3:17
I will say now;
We can thank God for Him being like that, towards us, and I thank YOU for being like that, towards myself.
That is a HUGELY on target verse for (nearly) all apologetics and interdenominational conversation.
Thank you for your kind words, which I offer back. God is merciful.
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