 |
| 
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/11/2002 12:49 PM (GMT -6) |   | "In non-Orthodox commentaries on Romans 8:29, predestination is conditioned by God's prescience or foreknowledge. . . .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 term."
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.
Edited by - fred on 12/11/2002 6:01:15 PM | | Back to Top | | |
 |
Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 7/19/2003 6:02 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Perhaps a few new eyes will be surprised to read the above.
Freddie, I have a short attention span. Could you just post a sound bite version of this for me?
Thanx
Oh look! Fireflies....
 | | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/20/2003 1:34 PM (GMT -6) | | Laika, I'll gladly do that. But first, print the thing off in MS Word format, and have at it with a pencil. I sometimes resemble my ADD studentts, and have to give text a visual structure. Try something like that yourself.
I did the HARD part. That little bit of text came as the mose salient portion of about ten pages. Work with this a bit. | | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/19/2004 2:06 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by John Earp
quote:
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.
Really?!?! I knew that EOy in fact believed in an Open Future! 
#1 -- John, please don't trust me for anything, 'cause I don't wanna speak for nobody. 'Kay?
#2 -- Second, PLEASE notice what was said about the TASK AND CALLING of mankind in the Creation. The "Open" part you mention was not some stray go'en off and doing its own thing. In Genesis we see God putting man into a role. Evdokimov says some interesting things. (Read again.)
#3 -- But NOTICE that God is not in time in what was said there. (That's where "Openness" and Calvinism are cut from the same cloth, and both are wrong. Read Evdokimov there again on that too.)
#4 -- God does not violate our free will. But he does know all. But lots of the seeming-quantries raised here all presuppose various ideas of salvation-from-guilt. But slavation from sin requires a process of repentance and discipline. | | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/19/2004 3:42 PM (GMT -6) | | Evdokimov's balanced remarks:
quote:
...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....
| | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/20/2004 3:49 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by John Earp
Evdokimov does not seem to me to be speaking of God's relationship to time, but rather to divine-human relationships.
Agreed.
You said earlier, though: "If the future can be changed, then it is by definition open." That "change" seems to fucus on the divine-human relationship. Even our sin,which compelled God through his unbounded love to the Cross, does not mvoe God. God moves in Love.
Seems that for God the future does not "change." It just changes for us and the world. God's "purposes" don't change. (Even the Canons of Dort get that right.) | | Back to Top | | |
|
johnmd
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 154
| Posted 3/24/2004 4:08 PM (GMT -6) | | POW said
Agreed.
You said earlier, though: "If the future can be changed, then it is by definition open." That "change" seems to fucus on the divine-human relationship. Even our sin,which compelled God through his unbounded love to the Cross, does not mvoe God. God moves in Love.
Seems that for God the future does not "change." It just changes for us and the world. God's "purposes" don't change. (Even the Canons of Dort get that right.)
John said
Looks like the future changed for God in Genesis and Exodus--Recall what God said about the flood and what God said to Moses. "Move over, I am going to destroy them." It appears to me that God's clearly had destruction in His (imeediate) future plans but in deference to His faithful servant Moses He changed His mind and His future.
I agree His purpose do not change (i.e., redemption).
Blessings
John | | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/25/2004 6:03 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by johnmd
John said
Looks like the future changed for God in Genesis and Exodus--Recall what God said about the flood and what God said to Moses. "Move over, I am going to destroy them." It appears to me that God's clearly had destruction in His (imeediate) future plans but in deference to His faithful servant Moses He changed His mind and His future.
I agree His purpose do not change (i.e., redemption).
Blessings
John
1. Start with this: "I agree His purpose (i.e., redemption) do not change."
AGREED. AND I LIKE THE EXPRESSION.
2. For the fun of being analytical, something can be done with: "It appears to me that God's clearly had destruction in His (imeediate) future plans but in deference to His faithful servant Moses He changed His mind and His future."
TRY: "God's clearly had His. . .plans for destruction in the immediate future." But "in deference to His faithful servant Moses He changed (his plans).
3. WE change the "plans" and the "future." Our sin hurts God's heart. And God (go back and read Evdokimov--f-h doesn't want me to repost the quote!) RESPONDS in his unchanging Love.
REPEAT: The change is in OUR plans and OUR future. And God watches over us like a mother bird.
PoW | | Back to Top | | |
|
Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 3/26/2004 8:40 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by fred
"In non-Orthodox commentaries on Romans 8:29, predestination is conditioned by God's prescience or foreknowledge. . . .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 term."
ITS NOT YOUR FATHER AUGUSTINE’S PREDESTINATION
POW, thanks for all of your Orthodox postings and links that you’ve shared lately. I especially enjoyed the Paul Evdokimov stuff.
In an effort to keep balance in the teachings of St. Augustine, I’m posting the following link: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02091a.htm
St. Augustine: HIS SYSTEM OF GRACE
It is unquestionably in the great Doctor's (Augustine)solution of the eternal problem of freedom and grace -- of the part taken by God and by man, in the affair of salvation -- that his thought stands forth as most personal, most powerful, and most disputed. Most personal, for he was the first of all to synthesize the great theories of the Fall, grace, and free will; and moreover it is he who, to reconcile them all, has furnished us with a profound explanation which is in very truth his, and of which we can find no trace in his predecessors. Hence, the term Augustinism is often exclusively used to designate his system of grace. Most powerful, for, as all admit, it was he above all others who won the triumph of liberty against the Manichæans, and of grace against the Pelagians. His doctrine has, in the main, been solemnly accepted by the Church, and we know that the canons of the Council of Orange are borrowed from his works. Most disputed, also. like St. Paul, whose teachings he develops, he has often been quoted, often not understood. Friends and enemies have exploited his teaching in the most diverse senses. It has not been grasped, not only by the opponents of liberty, and hence by the Reformers of the sixteenth century, but even today, by Protestant critics the most opposed to the cruel predestinationism of Calvin and Luther who father that doctrine on St. Augustine. A technical study would be out of place here; it will be sufficient to enunciate the most salient thoughts, to enable the reader to find his bearings.
(1) It is regarded as incontestable today that the system of Augustine was complete in his mind from the year 397 -- that is, from the beginning of his episcopate, when he wrote his answers to the "quæstiones Diversæ" of Simplician. It is to this book that Augustine, in his last years, refers the Semipelagians for the explanation of his real thought. This important fact, to which for a long time no attention was paid, has been recognized by Neander and established by Gangaut, and also by recent critics, such as Loofs, Reuter, Turmel, Jules Martin (see also Cunningham, St. Austin, 1886, pp. 80 and 175). It will not, therefore, be possible to deny the authority of these texts on the pretext that Augustine in his old age adopted a system more antagonistic to liberty.
(2) The system of Pelagius can today be better understood than heretofore. Pelagius doubtless denied original sin, and the immortality and integrity of Adam; in a word, the whole supernatural order. But the parent idea of his system, which was of stoic origin, was nothing else than the complete "emancipation" of human liberty with regard to God, and its limitless power for good and for evil. It depended on man to attain by himself, without the grace of God, a stoic impeccability and even insensibility, or the absolute control of his passions. It was scarcely suspected, even up to our time, what frightful rigorism resulted from this exaggeration of the powers of liberty. Since perfection was possible, it was of obligation. There was no longer any distinction between precepts and counsels. Whatever was good was a duty. There was no longer any distinction between mortal and venial sin. Every useless word merited hell, and even excluded from the Church the children of God. All this has been established by hitherto unedited documents which Caspari has published (Briefe, Abhandlungen, und Predigten, Christiania, 1890).
(3) The system of St. Augustine in opposition to this rests on three fundamental principles:
• God is absolute Master, by His grace, of all the determinations of the will;
• man remains free, even under the action of grace;
• the reconciliation of these two truths rests on the manner of the Divine government.
Absolute sovereignty of God over the will
This principle, in opposition to the emancipation of Pelagius, has not always been understood in its entire significance. We think that numberless texts of the holy Doctor signify that not only does every meritorious act require supernatural grace, but also that every act of virtue, even of infidels, should be ascribed to a Gift of God, not indeed to a supernatural grace (as Baius and the Jansenists pretend), but to a specially efficacious providence which has prepared this good movement of the will (Retractations, I, ix, n. 6). It is not, as theologians very wisely remark, that the will cannot accomplish that act of natural virtue, but it is a fact that without this providential benefit it would not. Many misunderstandings have arisen because this principle has not been comprehended, and in particular the great medieval theology, which adopted it and made it the basis of its system of liberty, has not been justly appreciated. But many have been afraid of these affirmations which are so sweeping, because they have not grasped the nature of God's gift, which leaves freedom intact. The fact has been too much lost sight of that Augustine distinguishes very explicitly two orders of grace: the grace of natural virtues (the simple gift of Providence, which prepares efficacious motives for the will); and grace for salutary and supernatural acts, given with the first preludes of faith. The latter is the grace of the sons, gratia fliorum; the former is the grace of all men, a grace which even strangers and infidels (filii concubinarum, as St. Augustine says) can receive (De Patientiâ, xxvii, n. 28).
Man remains free, even under the action of grace
The second principle, the affirmation of liberty even under the action of efficacious grace, has always been safeguarded, and there is not one of his anti-Pelagian works even of the latest, which does not positively proclaim a complete power of choice in man; "not but what it does not depend on the free choice of the will to embrace the faith or reject it, but in the elect this will is prepared by God" (De Prædest. SS., n. 10). The great Doctor did not reproach the Pelagians with requiring a power to choose between good and evil; in fact he proclaims with them that without that power there is no responsibility, no merit, no demerit; but he reproaches them with exaggerating this power. Julian of Eclanum, denying the sway of concupiscence, conceives free will as a balance in perfect equilibrium. Augustine protests: this absolute equilibrium existed in Adam; it was destroyed after original sin; the will has to struggle and react against an inclination to evil, but it remains mistress of its choice (Opus imperfectum contra Julianum, III, cxvii). Thus, when he says that we have lost freedom in consequence of the sin of Adam, he is careful to explain that this lost freedom is not the liberty of choosing between good and evil, because without it we could not help sinning, but the perfect liberty which was calm and without struggle, and which was enjoyed by Adam in virtue of his original integrity.
The reconciliation of these two truths
But is there not between these two principles an irremediable antinomy? On the one hand, there is affirmed an absolute and unreserved power in God of directing the choice of our will, of converting every hardened sinner, or of letting every created will harden itself; and on the other hand, it is affirmed that the rejection or acceptance of grace or of temptation depends on our free will. Is not this a contradiction? Very many modern critics, among whom are Loofs and Harnack, have considered these two affirmations as irreconcilable. But it is because, according to them, Augustinian grace is an irresistible impulse given by God, just as in the absence of it every temptation inevitably overcomes the will. But in reality all antinomy disappears if we have the key of the system; and this key is found in the third principle: the Augustinian explanation of the Divine government of wills, a theory so original, so profound, and yet absolutely unknown to the most perspicacious critics, Harnack, Loofs, and the rest.
Here are the main lines of this theory: The will never decides without a motive, without the attraction of some good which it perceives in the object. Now, although the will may be free in presence of every motive, still, as a matter of fact it takes different resolutions according to the different motives presented to it. In that is the whole secret of the influence exercised, for instance, by eloquence (the orator can do no more than present motives), by meditation, or by good reading. What a power over the will would not a man possess who could, at his own pleasure, at any moment, and in the most striking manner, present this or the other motive of action? -- But such is God's privilege. St. Augustine has remarked that man is not the master of his first thoughts; he can exert an influence on the course of his reflections, but he himself cannot determine the objects, the images, and, consequently, the motives which present themselves to his mind. Now, as chance is only a word, it is God who determines at His pleasure these first perceptions of men, either by the prepared providential action of exterior causes, or interiorly by a Divine illumination given to the soul. -- let us take one last step with Augustine: Not only does God send at His pleasure those attractive motives which inspire the will with its determinations, but, before choosing between these illuminations of the natural and the supernatural order, God knows the response which the soul, with all freedom, will make to each of them. Thus, in the Divine knowledge, there is for each created will an indefinite series of motives which de facto (but very freely) win the consent to what is good. God, therefore, can, at His pleasure, obtain the salvation of Judas, if He wishes, or let Peter go down to perdition. No freedom, as a matter of fact, will resist what He has planned, although it always keeps the power of going to perdition. Consequently, it is God alone, in His perfect independence, who determines, by the choice of such a motive or such an inspiration (of which he knows the future influence), whether the will is going to decide for good or for evil. Hence, the man who has acted well must thank God for having sent him an inspiration which was foreseen to be efficacious, while that favour has been denied to another. A fortiori, every one of the elect owes it to the Divine goodness alone that he has received a series of graces which God saw to be infallibly, though freely, bound up with final perseverance.
Assuredly we may reject this theory, for the Church, which always maintains the two principles of the absolute dependence of the will and of freedom, has not yet adopted as its own this reconciliation of the two extremes. We may ask where and how God knows the effect of these graces. Augustine has always affirmed the fact; he has never inquired about the mode; and it is here that Molinism has added to and developed his thoughts, in attempting to answer this question. But can the thinker, who created and until his dying day maintained this system which is so logically concatenated, be accused of fatalism and Manichæism?
It remains to be shown that our interpretation exactly reproduces the thought of the great Doctor. The texts are too numerous and too long to be reproduced here. But there is one work of Augustine, dating from the year 397, in which he clearly explains his thought -- a work which he not only did not disavow later on, but to which in particular he referred, at the end of his career, those of his readers who were troubled by his constant affirmation of grace. For example, to the monks of Adrumetum who thought that liberty was irreconcilable with this affirmation, he addressed a copy of this book "De Diversis quæstionibus ad Simplicianum," feeling sure that their doubts would be dissipated. There, in fact, he formulates his thoughts with great clearness. Simplician had asked how he should understand the Epistle to the Romans 9, on the predestination of Jacob and Esau. Augustine first lays down the fundamental principle of St. Paul, that every good will comes from grace, so that no man can take glory to himself for his merits, and this grace is so sure of its results that human liberty will never in reality resist it, although it has the power to do so. Then he affirms that this efficacious grace is not necessary for us to be able to act well, but because, in fact, without it we would not wish to act well. From that arises the great difficulty: How does the power of resisting grace fit in with the certainty of the result? And it is here that Augustine replies: There are many ways of inviting faith. Souls being differently disposed, God knows what invitation will be accepted, what other will not be accepted. Only those are the elect for whom God chooses the invitation which is foreseen to be efficacious, but God could convert them all: "Cujus autem miseretur, sic cum vocat, quomodo scit ei congruere ut vocantem non respuat" (op. cit., I, q. ii, n. 2, 12, 13).
Is there in this a vestige of an irresistible grace or of that impulse against which it is impossible to fight, forcing some to good, and others to sin and hell? It cannot be too often repeated that this is not an idea flung off in passing, but a fundamental explanation which if not understood leaves us in the impossibility of grasping anything of his doctrine; but if it is seized Augustine entertains no feelings of uneasiness on the score of freedom. In fact he supposes freedom everywhere, and reverts incessantly to that knowledge on God's part which precedes predestination, directs it, and assures its infallible result. In the "De Done perseverantiæ" (xvii, n. 42), written at the end of his life, he explains the whole of predestination by the choice of the vocation which is foreseen as efficacious. Thus is explained the chief part attributed to that external providence which prepares, by ill health, by warnings, etc., the good thoughts which it knows will bring about good resolutions. Finally, this explanation alone harmonizes with the moral action which he attributes to victorious grace. Nowhere does Augustine represent it as an irresistible impulse impressed by the stronger on the weaker. It is always an appeal, an invitation which attracts and seeks to persuade. He describes this attraction, which is without violence, under the graceful image of dainties offered to a child, green leaves offered to a sheep (In Joannem, tract. xxvi, n. 5). And always the infallibility of the result is assured by the Divine knowledge which directs the choice of the invitation.
(4) The Augustinian predestination presents no new difficulty if one has understood the function of this Divine knowledge in the choice of graces. The problem is reduced to this: Does God in his creative decree and, before any act of human liberty, determine by an immutable choice the elect and the reprobate? -- Must the elect during eternity thank God only for having rewarded their merits, or must they also thank Him for having, prior to any merit on their part, chosen them to the meriting of this reward? One system, that of the Semipelagians, decides in favour of man: God predestines to salvation all alike, and gives to all an equal measure of grace; human liberty alone decides whether one is lost or saved; from which we must logically conclude (and they really insinuated it) that the number of the elect is not fixed or certain. The opposite system, that of the Predestinationists (the Semipelagians falsely ascribed this view to the Doctor of Hippo), affirms not only a privileged choice of the elect by God, but at the same time (a) the predestination of the reprobate to hell and (b) the absolute powerlessness of one or the other to escape from the irresistible impulse which drags them either to good or to evil. This is the system of Calvin.Between these two extreme opinions Augustine formulated (not invented) the Catholic dogma, which affirms these two truths at the same time:
• the eternal choice of the elect by God is very real, very gratuitous, and constitutes the grace of graces;
• but this decree does not destroy the Divine will to save all men, which, moreover, is not realized except by the human liberty that leaves to the elect full power to fall and to the non-elect full power to rise.
Here is how the theory of St. Augustine, already explained, forces us to conceive of the Divine decree: Before all decision to create the world, the infinite knowledge of God presents to Him all the graces, and different series of graces, which He can prepare for each soul, along with the consent or refusal which would follow in each circumstance, and that in millions and millions of possible combinations. Thus He sees that if Peter had received such another grace, he would not have been converted; and if on the contrary such another Divine appeal had been heard in the heart of Judas, he would have done penance and been saved. Thus, for each man in particular there are in the thought of God, limitless possible histories, some histories of virtue and salvation, others of crime and damnation; and God will be free in choosing such a world, such a series of graces, and in determining the future history and final destiny of each soul. And this is precisely what He does when, among all possible worlds, by an absolutely free act, He decides to realize the actual world with all the circumstances of its historic evolutions, with all the graces which in fact have been and will be distributed until the end of the world, and consequently with all the elect and all the reprobate who God foresaw would be in it if de facto He created it.
Now in the Divine decree, according to Augustine, and according to the Catholic Faith on this point, which has been formulated by him, the two elements pointed out above appear:
• The certain and gratuitous choice of the elect -- God decreeing, indeed, to create the world and to give it such a series of graces with such a concatenation of circumstances as should bring about freely, but infallibly, such and such results (for example, the despair of Judas and the repentance of Peter), decides, at the same time, the name, the place, the number of the citizens of the future heavenly Jerusalem. The choice is immutable; the list closed. It is evident, indeed, that only those of whom God knows beforehand that they will wish to co-operate with the grace decreed by Him will be saved. It is a gratuitous choice, the gift of gifts, in virtue of which even our merits are a gratuitous benefit, a gift which precedes all our merits. No one, in fact, is able to merit this election. God could, among other possible worlds, have chosen one in which other series of graces would have brought about other results. He saw combinations in which Peter would have been impenitent and Judas converted. It is therefore prior to any merit of Peter, or any fault of Judas, that God decided to give them the graces which saved Peter and not Judas. God does not wish to give paradise gratuitously to any one; but He gives very gratuitously to Peter the graces with which He knows Peter will be saved. -- Mysterious choice! Not that it interferes with liberty, but because to this question: Why did not God, seeing that another grace would have saved Judas, give it to him? Faith can only answer, with Augustine: O Mystery! O Altitudo! (De Spiritu et litterâ, xxxiv, n. 60).
• But this decree includes also the second element of the Catholic dogma: the very sincere will of God to give to all men the power of saving themselves and the power of damning themselves. According to Augustine, God, in his creative decree, has expressly excluded every order of things in which grace would deprive man of his liberty, every situation in which man would not have the power to resist sin, and thus Augustine brushes aside that predestinationism which has been attributed to him. Listen to him speaking to the Manichæans: "All can be saved if they wish"; and in his "Retractations" (I, x), far from correcting this assertion, he confirms it emphatically: "It is true, entirely true, that all men can, if they wish." But he always goes back to the providential preparation. In his sermons he says to all: "It depends on you to be elect" (In Ps. cxx, n. 11, etc.); "Who are the elect? You, if you wish it" (In Ps. Lxxiii, n. 5). But, you will say, according to Augustine, the lists of the elect and reprobate are closed. Now if the non-elect can gain heaven, if all the elect can be lost, why should not some pass from one list to the other? You forget the celebrated explanation of Augustine: When God made His plan, He knew infallibly, before His choice, what would be the response of the wills of men to His graces. If, then, the lists are definitive, if no one will pass from one series to the other, it is not because anyone cannot (on the contrary, all can), it is because God knew with infallible knowledge that no one would wish to. Thus I cannot effect that God should destine me to another series of graces than that which He has fixed, but, with this grace, if I do not save myself it will not be because I am not able, but because I do not wish to. Such are the two essential elements of Augustinian and Catholic predestination. This is the dogma common to all the schools, and formulated by all theologians: predestination in its entirety is absolutely gratuitous (ante merita). We have to insist on this, because many have seen in this immutable and gratuitous choice only a hard thesis peculiar to St. Augustine, whereas it is pure dogma (barring the mode of conciliation, which the Church still leaves free). With that established, the long debates of theologians on special predestination to glory ante or post merita are far from having the importance that some attach to them. (For a fuller treatment of this subtile problem see the "Dict. de théol. cath., I, coll. 2402 sqq.) I do not think St. Augustine entered that debate; in his time, only dogma was in question. But it does not seem historically permissible to maintain, as many writers have, that Augustine first taught the milder system (post merita), up to the year 416 (In Joan. evang., tract. xii, n. 12) and that afterwards, towards 418, he shifted his ground and went to the extreme of harsh assertion, amounting even to predestinationism. We repeat, the facts absolutely refute this view. The ancient texts, even of 397, are as affirmative and as categorical as those of his last years, as critics like Loofs and Reuter have shown. If, therefore, it is shown that at that time he inclined to the milder opinion, there is no reason to think that he did not persevere in that sentiment.
(5) The part which Augustine had in the doctrine of Original Sin has been brought to light and determined only recently.
In the first place, It is no longer possible to maintain seriously, as was formerly the fashion (even among certain Catholics, like Richard Simon), that Augustine invented in the Church the hitherto unknown doctrine of original sin, or at least was the first to introduce the idea of punishment and sin. Dorner himself (Augustinus, p. 146) disposed of this assertion, which lacks verisimilitude. In this doctrine of the primal fall Augustine distinguished, with greater insistency and clearness than his predecessors, the punishment and the sin -- the chastisement which strips the children of Adam of all the original privileges -- and the fault, which consists in this, that the crime of Adam, the cause of the fall is, without having been committed personally by his children, nevertheless in a certain measure imputed to them, in virtue of the moral union established by God between the head of the human family and his descendants.
To pretend that in this matter Augustine was an innovator, and that before him the Fathers affirmed the punishment of the sin of Adam in his sons, but did not speak of the fault, is a historical error now proved to demonstration. We may discuss the thought of this or that pre Augustinian Father, but, taking them as a whole, there is no room for doubt. The Protestant R. Seeberg (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, I, p. 256), after the example of many others, proclaims it by referring to Tertullian, Commodian, St. Cyprian, and St. Ambrose. The expressions, fault, sin, stain (culpa, peccatum, macula) are repeated in a way to dispel all doubt. The truth is that original sin, while being sin, is of a nature essentially different from other faults, and does not exact a personal act of the will of the children of Adam in order to be responsible for the fault of their father, which is morally imputed to them. Consequently, the Fathers -- the Greeks especially -- have insisted on its penal and afflictive character, which is most in evidence, while Augustine was led by the polemics of the Pelagians (and only by them) to lay emphasis on the moral aspect of the fault of the human race in its first father.
With regard to Adam's state before the fall Augustine not only affirmed, against Pelagius, the gifts of immortality, impassibility, integrity, freedom from error, and, above all, the sanctifying grace of Divine adoption, but he emphasized its absolutely gratuitous and supernatural character. Doubtless, considering the matter historically and de facto, it was only the sin of Adam that inflicted death on us -- Augustine repeats it again and again -- because God had safeguarded us against the law of our nature. But de jure neither immortality nor the other graces were our due, and Augustine recognized this in affirming that God could have made the condition in which we were actually born the primitive condition of our first parents. That assertion alone is the very reverse of Jansenism. It is, moreover, formally confirmed in the "Retractations" (I, ix, n. 6).
(6) Does this mean that we must praise everything in St. Augustine's explanation of grace? Certainly not. And we shall note the improvements made by the Church, through her doctors, in the original Augustinism. Some exaggerations have been abandoned, as, for instance, the condemnation to hell of children dying without baptism. Obscure and ambiguous formulæ have been eliminated. We must say frankly that Augustine's literary method of emphasizing his thought by exaggerated expressions, issuing in troublesome paradoxes, has often obscured his doctrine, aroused opposition in many minds, or led them into error. Also, it is above all important, in order to comprehend his doctrine, to compile an Augustinian dictionary, not a priori, but after an objective study of his texts. The work would be long and laborious, but how many prejudices it would dispel!
The Protestant historian Ph. Schaff (St. Augustine, p. 102) writes: "The great genius of the African Church, from whom the Middle Ages and the Reformation have received an impulse alike powerful, though in different directions, has not yet fulfilled the work marked out for him in the counsels of Divine Wisdom. He serves as a bond of union between the two antagonistic sections of Western Christendom, and encourages the hope that a time may come when the injustice and bitterness of strife will be forgiven and forgotten, and the discords of the past be drowned forever in the sweet harmonies of perfect knowledge and perfect love." May this dream be realized!
| | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/26/2004 11:00 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by sparknheart
In an effort to keep balance in the teachings of St. Augustine...
"Let all those who will read this work imitate me not in my errors."
- Augustine of Hippo
Here are some more links, quickly snatched up, and not really read:
| | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2006 10:40 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 2/20/2010 10:57 AM (GMT -6) | | | Dedicated to Tom.
(whole thread)
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/20/2010 1:43:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 6:40 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|