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ITS NOT YOUR FATHER AUGUSTINE’S PREDESTINATION

quote:
(From: “IN THE WORLD, OP THE CHURCH”, by Paul Evdokimov, SVSP)

Predestination

Eschatology sheds light on the destiny of man, on our participation in being saved or lost. Grace makes us feel the "breath of the Spirit." Grace "provokes attention" and thus, according to the Fathers, protects free will not only in action but also in choice (Acts 16:14). "If anyone listens and opens the door, I enter" (Rev 3:20). Rendered attentive by the Spirit, man is able therefore to decisively formulate his yes or no.

We can define the relations between God and his creature in the categories of causality. In this case, God is the first cause who puts all things in motion, shows the way and returns all to this path. Human freedom is only the secondary instrumental cause drawing its origin from the primary, and determined by it. If the secondary cause sins, it is only because the primary tolerates it. Causal determinism is fatally situated in time, the primary movement finds itself inevitably there. That which establishes the primary cause is the universal pre-cause of all, and the prefix "pre" introduces time into the eternity of God. Humankind does not appear except inevitably, as the object of divine action. In such a causal scheme, the dubious Augustinian idea is led, through the iron logic of Calvin, to its conclusion: predestination to glory, condemnation to hell. The circle is buckled in upon itself without any possible exit: "Therefore according to the end for which humankind is created, we say that it is predestined to death or to life." (Instututions, VIII, p. 62.)

For the Eastern Church, God is never the primary cause, but the Creator. It is creation "in the image" of the Creator which places the "second freedom" outside any causal determinism, and the patristic conception of humankind as autexousia, self authoritative, rightly defines its mysterious capacity to transcend every necessity and the very condition of the creature over against divine freedom: to see oneself as microtheos, as God-in-miniature. One can even say that God, the Lover of humankind, is much more determined himself by his creation and his covenants than the creature by his Creator: "The Lord has sworn and he will not change his mind" (Ps 110:4). The Incarnation appears as God's reply to his own promise: the divinizing of his creature. The fall of man reveals the titanic fullness of our freedom, which in turn, determines our own destiny. Satan did not lie in saying: "You will be as gods." Man has created something which never existed before. We created evil and introduced it into our innocent nature. What is more, our salvation determines the shape of the Incarnation as Love crucified. Divine blood has been shed to safeguard our freedom in grace, for, according to the Fathers' saying, "God is not able to force anyone to
love him."

But all autonomy pushed to the breaking point is against nature, for it encloses man in his lower nature, hardens our "selfhood," destroys our ontology, our very being in the form of God. On the contrary, when man ceases to see himself in his pure subjectivity and rather in relationship to the divine Other, there we discover our "identity by grace," our being "eternally accepted." (These are frequent expressions in the writing ofSt Maximus the Confessor.) Then hell's isolation is destroyed and man is lifted toward the joy of the friend of the Bridegroom, St John the Baptist, and the Servant of the Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

"I knock at the door," says the Lord, and he knocks at the door of his own image in man, at the image of divine freedom in us. God empties himself. He "waits," determining nothing. God's decrees and even the predictions of the Apocalypse reveal a conditional character (Jer 18:7-10;26:2-3,13). Human freedom has the power to change even these.

The miracles of faith, the absolute newness of holiness, the charism of prophecy, all lead to the marriage-like relation between God and man, where love reigns, love which transforms all submission and subordination into the "complete otherness" of the Kingdom. The mystery of the Deisis or "Supplication" icon of Christ the King, seated between John the Baptist and the Virgin, discloses this. This icon is placed at the very heart of the icon screen which stretches across the front of the sanctuary, before the altar. Its aim is to present the image of judgment and at the same time its own transcendence through the image of the marriage feast of the Lamb.

God persuades, "not by power, nor by might, but by his Spirit."13 Now, "where the Spirit is, there is freedom." The error of ^^destination and of prescience is to introduce into God the Creator the temporal "before." The primary cause placed in time foresees and predestines, determines all. They're- deforms the "eternal" character of God and the capacity of faith to surpass the framework of time. Freedom bears the only interior necessity: to express oneself in choosing. Its fullness contains the most fearful choice; that of a revolt and a determination of oneself against God. Its archetype, the first choice of Lucifer before any concrete existence of evil, reveals that even in the initial state of innocence, freedom is safeguarded intact, and it is God who protects against his own omnipotence.

In non-Orthodox commentaries on Romans 8:29, predestination is conditioned by God's prescience or foreknowledge and the "we" of Ephesians 1:8-12 is taken in the limited and arbitrary sense of only "the elect." Now, according to St Paul, those thus called "elect" are the Christians, the two being synonymous. Despite terminology often confusing and inadequate to his vision, his theology is strongly volun-tarisric. The principal theme of the letter to the Romans is salvation by faith and by the grace-filled life conformed to faith. The Pauline opposition is not at all between faith and works but between the works of faith and the works of the law. Deeper than any doctrinal prejudice, predestination is for St Paul nothing but a conventional form for designating the mystery of God's love, and this love determines or predestines God and not humanity, if one wants to use the concept. It is rather yrnptomatic that in Romans 5:19 "For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous," the Greek terms pa.ra.ko6 (disobedience) and hypakoe, (obedience) are extremely rare even in classical Greek. Their rarity points to a meaning of something most unusual. To the abyss of disobedience corresponds the abyss of obedience. The transgression of limits here is not juridical but ontological. Christ's obedience is that of the Son to his Father, of the life within God. His indescribable fullness and "the image of the Son" leads us towards "another humanity," the mysterious humanity of the age to come according to the phrase ofSt Gregory ofNyssa.14

In Romans i and 9, St Paul speaks of the "historiosophic" mystery of Israel, that is, the action of divine Wisdom in human history and, as in the case of Jacob and Esau, this has mostly to do with the paradoxes of Providence, the historical theme, of the metahistorical meaning of the history of salvation. Even here, the image of the potter only reveals but one of the multiple aspects of divine Wisdom, but does not describe exhaustively the totality of the infinite, the completely inexhaustible range of the relationships between God and humankind. St Paul has a sufficient enough sense of true mystery not to slip toward such a simplification. Certainly it is God who brings to birth and will and action, but there is also the reverse of this: Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.

God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all (Rom 11:32). To every limiting rationalization Paul responds by the confession of the true mystery: how inscrutable are his ways. It is fitting for us to honor these in silence. The docta ignorantia ("learned ignorance") is opposed to every "asylum of Ignorance." The Savior's plan, that all be saved (i Tim 2:4; Rom 8:32) is infinitely more mysterious and impenetrable than predestination which is so human and so impoverished in its rectilinear logic. The "complex of the elect" is a morbid state, symptomatic of an unhappy conscience, and anxiety about hell.

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