69. Eternal security?
69. ETERNAL SECURITY?
Protestant fundamentalists usually insist that we can and should be certain of our salvation; and Calvinists usually say that we have “eternal security”: “once saved, always saved.” Are they right?
(1) Now it is impossible for anyone seeing the divine essence to wish not to see it. . . . It is thus evident that (once he attains this Heavenly vision) the happy man cannot forsake happiness of his own accord. (2) Moreover, neither can he lose happiness through God taking it away from him. Because, since the withdrawal of happiness is a punishment, it cannot be enforced by God, the just Judge, except for some fault; and he that sees God cannot fall into a fault, since rectitude of the will of necessity results from that vision. (3) Nor again can it be withdrawn by any other agent, because the mind that is united to God is raised above all other things, and consequently no other agent can sever the mind from that union. . . . (4) (And) it seems unreasonable that as time goes on man should pass from (this) happiness to misery. . . (because perfect) happiness is consummate perfection, which excludes every defect from the happy. And therefore whoever has happiness has it altogether unchangeably. This is done by the divine power, which raises man to the participation of eternity. . . (I-II,5,4).
The fundamentalists and Calvinists are profoundly right in a sense: they’re right about Heaven though not about earth. Our faith here can only be in God, not in our faith (that’s presumption). He will never abandon us, but we can abandon Him. That’s why we must be vigilant.
St. Thomas gives us the reason both for “eternal security” in Heaven and the lack of it on earth. What gives us this security, what makes it impossible for us to abandon God, is the Beatific Vision. When we see God as He really is, it will be psychologically impossible for us not to love Him, or to love anything else more than Him. But without that vision, it is possible for us to be as insane as we are, and to prefer something else to God, to succumb to the Devil’s advertisements. We are suckers.
Everyone always wants happiness, whether they’re good or evil, whether they’re on the road to Heaven or to Hell, whether they’re on earth or already in Heaven. But on earth our will can be selfish and stubborn, and our reason can be blinded by our passions, or by its own choice to be guided by blind passions rather than by true reason. In Heaven, not.
In other words, here our minds are not so filled with light that they move our wills infallibly. Here, our wills can move our minds. Here, we are still at sea and not in our home port, and here the captain of our soul, the will, can be willful and say to the navigator, who is reason, when the navigator presents to the captain the charts that tell the ship where to go and where not to go, “Shut up. Go below. I don’t want to look at your charts.” But in Heaven, the captain will see where the ship is: in the dock, in Heaven, in Paradise. He won’t need faith. It won’t be a choice. In other words, in Heaven the captain (the will) and the navigator (the reason) will be one, with no room for opposition between them.
When you’re in a burning building looking out of the twentieth story window down to the street and all you see is clouds of billowing smoke, you have to choose to believe the firemen below who tell you they have a safety net and it’s safe to jump. When the clouds of smoke disappear, you don’t have to believe any more: you see it. In this world, it’s a leap in the dark; in the next world, it’s a leap in the light.
That’s why it’s so important to get our reason and will in order here: because of the smoke. Many leaps are needed. Virtue doesn’t always look like joy and vice doesn’t always look like misery, so we have to choose to listen to God, not Satan. We have to keep doing the opposite of what Eve did.
We can do that because that’s what Mary did, because her doing that (“fiat!”) brought to us our Savior, and we can do that only because He is in us, He is the one Who does it in us. But we have to let Him. He won’t force us, as He didn’t force her: He’s big on freedom, He’s a gentleman, He says “Please.”