PREFACE
PREFACE
Predestination is a doctrine clearly revealed in Scripture and taught by the Catholic Church for 2,000 years. However, the doctrine is rarely explained in modern catechisms and almost never addressed in the Sunday sermon.1 This is in part because predestination is one of the most sublime of all the doctrines of the Catholic faith. But its omission in sermons and catechism classes is seemingly not due to its sublimity alone. After all, the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is equally mysterious. We don’t understand how God can be three Persons and still be one God. Yet it is the subject of many sermons and catechisms.
Unlike the doctrine of the Trinity, which reveals who God is, the doctrine of predestination reveals how God chooses. Specifically, it states how God chooses to infallibly direct certain people (whom Scripture calls the “elect”)2 to salvation, and how God chooses to allow certain other people (the “reprobate”) to fall way from salvation. Many people would rather talk about our freedom to choose God rather than God’s freedom to choose us. Sermons and catechesis seem more pleasant when they focus on God’s love and goodness for humanity rather than His complete sovereignty over His creatures. Nevertheless, God’s plan of predestination exists precisely because of His love and goodness.
As this book demonstrates, God loves all men and grants all sufficient grace to be saved in Jesus Christ. Even though God predestines His elect to heaven, God makes it really possible for all men to follow His precepts and never commands the impossible. Those who are saved are saved by God’s special grace, and those who are condemned are condemned by their own choosing. Thus, God communicates His goodness by saving the elect in His mercy, and by condemning the reprobate in His justice. This means the elect must give all the glory to God for their salvation, and the reprobate must blame only themselves for their condemnation. God has implemented His plan of predestination so that the elect have nothing to boast about, and the reprobate have nothing to complain about.
The doctrine of predestination—which seeks to reconcile God’s sovereign liberty with human free will—is an incomprehensible mystery. We cannot understand how God wills all men to be saved and yet chooses His elect for salvation. Although we can comprehend these truths in isolation, they appear contradictory when we attempt to reconcile them. It seems impossible that they could coexist. This is because both of these truths proceed from the inscrutable and unfathomable God, in whom infinite mercy, infinite justice, and infinite sovereignty reside. As St. Paul says, “How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33).
Because the reconciliation of these truths surpasses our understanding, we must be careful not to emphasize one of the truths—God’s sovereignty or man’s free will—at the expense or exclusion of the other. For example, when Scripture emphasizes God’s sovereign action over man, one cannot exclude human free will, which is moved by that action. Likewise, when Scripture emphasizes the human capacity to repent and come to God, one cannot dismiss that the act of repentance is brought about by God’s grace. Excluding or minimizing one of these truths is the cardinal error of bad exegesis, particularly when addressing predestination. This book attempts to hold both truths in balance while concluding in no uncertain terms that “Salvation is of the Lord” (Ps. 3:9) and “Destruction is thy own, O Israel” (Hos. 13:9).
God has not revealed the doctrine of predestination to scare us (although a holy fear of God is good)3 but to move us to completely abandon ourselves to His providence and holy will. As we say in the Our Father, “Thy will be done.” This self-abandonment to God should not only humble us but should also give us comfort as we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). We should be comforted in knowing that whenever we do any good that is beneficial to our salvation (prayer, good works), it is God who is working in us “both to will and to accomplish” that good (Phil. 2:13). Thus, our salutary acts are a great sign from God that He is predestining us to the glory of His heaven, where we will gaze in wonder on the Blessed Trinity for all eternity.
“All the works of the Lord are exceedingly good. There is no saying:What is this, or what is that? For all things shall be sought in their time” (Ecclus. 39:21, 26).
John Salza, J.D.
7 March 2009, Anno Domini
Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas
1. The current Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) mentions “predestination” only once in paragraph 600: “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination,’ he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace.”
2. The scriptures use the term “elect” (Greek, eklektos) in 2 Kg. 22:27; Tob. 13:10; Ps. 17:27;88:4; Wis. 3:9; Eccles. 11:33; 24:4, 13; 46:2; 47:24; Isa. 42:1; 45:4; 65:9, 15, 23; Zach. 9:17; Matt. 24:22, 24, 31; Mark 13:20; Luke 18:7; 23:35; Rom. 8:33; 16:13; Col. 3:12; 1 Tim. 5:21; 2 Tim. 2:10; Titus 1:1; 1 Pet. 1:1; 2:6; 2 John 1:1, 13; Apoc. 17:14.
3. In fact, Scripture says “fear of the Lord” is the beginning of wisdom (Ps. 110:10; Prov. 1:7;9:10) and one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost (Isa. 11:3). This means that a holy fear of God is one of the effects of predestination.