EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
I chose to call this book The Mystery of Predestination for an obvious reason: to alert readers that I would most likely not be able to explain this doctrine to their complete satisfaction and contentment, for predestination is indeed one of the greatest mysteries of the Faith.
One always takes a risk when attempting to explain the inexplicable. I certainly recognize my own limitations in addressing this most difficult topic, and can say only that I have done my best to explain the topic using hundreds of quotes from Scripture, the teachings of the Church, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Although I believe this book faithfully presents the Thomist position, Catholics are free to disagree with my conclusions and still remain good Catholics. For although predestination is a truth of the Faith, the Church has not dogmatized any of the underlying particulars and, hence, we are free to discuss and debate them. We may never know how God’s grace and man’s free will work together, even in eternity.
In the book, I noted that the concepts of sufficient grace and reprobation may be the most provocative elements of the mystery. Agreeably, the average reader may have logical objections to my conclusion that sufficient grace is more than sufficient to save man, even though man must be moved by an efficacious grace to do God’s will and be saved. This seems like a contradiction, and I understand and appreciate the objection. But the conclusion that God permits man to resist sufficient grace, which is truly sufficient (just as God wills man to cooperate with efficacious grace which is truly efficacious) is the logical sum of its component parts, all of which are based on divine revelation.
For example, Scripture says all good comes from God1 and without God man can do nothing.2 This means if man cooperates with grace, God willed to give him the grace of cooperation, for man can do nothing without God. However, Scripture also says that God gives sufficient grace to all men,3 and man is responsible for rejecting it.4 This means if man rejects grace, God willed to permit him to reject it, for God is not the cause of sin, but nothing escapes His universal causality.
Similarly, Scripture says that God wills all men to be saved5 and no one resists God’s will,6 but not all men are saved. Although we can understand these scriptural truths in isolation, we don’t understand how they can be logically connected. But accepting these truths is no different from believing God is one in three persons, each of whom is God. How can three be one when three is more than one? How can sufficient grace be sufficient when efficacious grace is required? Eventually, we run out of logic and resign ourselves to letting the mystery be a mystery.
Therefore, I have resisted the temptation to abandon or compromise these divine principles, even though I don’t know how they all fit together. To my finite intellect, it seems like there must be “something more to the picture.” But whatever that “something” might be, it would surely surpass my understanding and ability to articulate it without appearing to desert the truths of revelation. I also know there is no injustice in God (Rom 9:14) and that our heavenly Father will judge us according to our works. To be sure, God’s infinite mercy, justice, and sovereign liberty are intimately reconciled in the secret life of the Blessed Trinity, notwithstanding our inability to grasp or explain how. Nevertheless, no matter what school of thought we follow on predestination, let us recognize and boldly profess that we are incapable of any good without God, and owe all our good gifts to God, not ourselves. Then we will be light in a world darkened by secularism, where most men live as if there is no God.
1. See John 3:27; Jas. 1:17
2. See John 15:5; 1 Cor. 4:7
3. See Titus 2:11; Eph. 4:7; 1 Pet. 4:10; 2 Cor. 3:5; 9:8; 12:9.
4. See Osee 13:9
5. See Matt. 18:14; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9; Ez. 18:23, 32; 33:11; Wis. 13:1
6. See Rom. 9:19; Esth. 13:9, 11; Prov. 21:1.