ARE YOU FREE OR

PREDESTINED?

HOW ABOUT BOTH?

All characters referenced in this presentation are fictitious. Any resemblance to the real persons, living, or dead, predestined, or

reprobate, is purely coincidental.

3 Problems with Predestination

1) If God both knows and causes everything that happens, is free will an illusion?

2) Why do some people go to Hell if God wants everyone to be saved?

3) If we are saved by God’s grace, how does grace produce its effects without violating human freedom or making God responsible for sin?

The Catholic Church’s Dogmatic Teaching on Grace + Free Will

God has eternally predestined some men to heaven.

God has eternally reprobated some men to hell on account of their sins.

Man needs actual grace to begin, perform, and complete meritorious actions, especially unto final perseverance.

God gives sufficient grace for all to be saved. Efficacious grace is not irresistible. Grace

does not destroy freedom.

What is Divine Providence? Divine Providence = God’s government

of all created things toward their ultimate perfection.

Eternal Universal Infallible Immutable

What is Predestination? Predestination = a mode of Divine

Providence whereby a man is infallibly guided by God towards his supernatural end in heaven through both God’s grace and man’s free will.

“For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

– Romans 8:29

What is reprobation?

Reprobation = A mode of Divine Providence whereby a man is permitted to infallibly sin and die in sin, and is damned on account of that sin."I have loved Jacob, but have hated

Esau." (Malachi 1:2-3) Reprobation differs in causality from

predestination."Destruction is thy own, O Israel; Thy

help is only in Me.“ (Hosea 13:9)

What is Free Will?

Free will is man's power to act or not to act, without compulsion from within or coercion from without.

“God left [man] in the hand of his own counsel.” – Sirach 15:14

BUT, how can God’s grace infallibly produce consent in man’s will without violating his

freedom?

GRACE WARS

Luis de MOLINA The Jesuit Side

Domingo BAÑEZThe Dominican Side

Grace is intrinsically efficacious. Read St. Thomas, you Pelagian

heretic!

You deny free will, Bañez, or should I call

you Calvin?

Congregatio de Auxiliis(1597-1607)

How does God infallibly foreknow our free acts?

1) By physically premoving our free acts. (Thomism)

2) By foreseeing what a man would freely choose under various circumstances/graces. (Molinism)

3) By foreseeing whether a man will resist or not resist divine motions. (Mostism)

Thomism God is the first cause of all creatures, sustaining and

operating within each creature according to its nature. God moves man’s free will from potency to act. Man

moves himself as a secondary cause. (physical premotion, ie. secondary freedom) “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both

to desire and to work.” (Phil 2:13) Man is free because he is rational. Man’s will is not free relative to God, but relative to the

inability of any finite good to compel the will to choose it. Nothing would be better than anything else if it were not

loved more by God.

Lady Macbeth Macbeth

William Shakespeare

Thomism (cont.) Two types of Graces:

Sufficient graces confer merely the power to perform a good act.

Efficacious graces confer both the power and the application of that power for a good act.

God predestines before prevision of merits. God negatively reprobates before prevision of

demerits by permitting man's resistance, and positively reprobates to hell after prevision of demerits.

Thomism (cont.)

Man’s non-consideration of the rule of reason, not God, is the cause of sin.

Human beings do not deserve to be preserved from rational defect. It is God’s free gift to give or take away.

Evil and defect are permitted for the sake of a greater good.

Thomism (cont.)

In God’s antecedent will, abstracted from concrete circumstances, God wills all men to be saved.

In God’s consequent will, taking into account the concrete circumstances, God wills that some men be punished for their permitted sins and others be rewarded for their predestined good works.

God abandons some men in order to manifest his justice, and saves others in order to manifest his mercy, as a potter makes some vessels for glory and others for destruction. (Romans 9)

Predestination is a MYSTERY.

Molinism

Starting Points: Libertarian freedom= Nothing and

no-one except the free agent determines whether or not the free agent acts.

Divine Sovereignty = God has complete control over what comes to pass, precisely because he has willed the current state of affairs.

Molinism (cont.)Logical Priority in God’s Knowledge

1) God knows all necessary truths and creative possibilities. (Natural Knowledge)○ 1+1=2 ; purple cows could exist

2) God knows what any free creature would choose in the context of any circumstances. (Middle Knowledge)○ If Al Gore were given a bribe, he would freely accept it.

-------------CREATIVE ACT OF THE WILL----------------3) God infallibly knows what he freely decides to

create in light of possibilities known to him by his natural and middle knowledge. (Free Knowledge)○ God knew that you would be freely be listening to this

presentation from eternity because he willed it.

It’s A Wonderful Life

Molinism (cont.)

“It is up to God whether we find ourselves in a world in which we are predestined, but it is up to us whether we are predestined in the world in which we find ourselves.” – William Lane Craig

Actual grace is extrinsically efficacious- it only produces its effect through the external cooperation of the will with power of grace.

Imagine grace and free will as two horses pulling a carriage.

Molinism - Predestination Strict Molinism

God predestines after the prevision of merits---because he foresees that this individual will respond to his graces.

CongruismGod predestines and negatively reprobates before prevision

of merits. God can tailor graces to save any person by making the graces congruent with a persons circumstances, habits, etc.

A grace is given because God foresees his elect will use it. Craigism

The circumstances necessary for obtaining the predestination of many include the damnation of some who suffer transworld damnation.

Mostism

Man can distinguish himself for heaven or hell by negative motions.

1) God sends a shatterable motion which inclines man toward good. The default is good.

2) Man can resist or not resist this motion. 3) God sends an unshatterable motion on the

condition of non-resistance to produce the good act in man.

Mostism (cont.)

1) God predestines all men to heaven before consideration of merits. God wisely arranges things so that all

who can be saved under any circumstances will be saved.

2) God reprobates to hell after forseeing grave and persistent resistance among some persons. (ie. transworld damnation)

Difficulties with each System

Most’s account fails because in a real being undergoing a real motion

Not resisting = not negating = consenting Molinism fails to metaphysically explain how the will can

move itself from potency to act without a prior activating Divine motion.

Thomism some difficulties, too.Do lovers do not abandon their beloved for higher goods. Does

God really love the reprobate for their own sake?Why would God create a bike without pedals, and then punish

people for falling when they ride it? What is the basis for hope in God when he can withdraw his

sustaining grace at any point, even without our fault.

My Position

Thomism is metaphysically defensible, yet seems implausible given God’s revealed will to save all men.

Molinism seems to introduce an uncaused effect, which is bad metaphysics.

Mostism seems to confuse logical and a metaphysical double negative.

Perhaps a solution will be discovered in the future.

2100 AD - Andrew never did resolve the predestination versus free will argument.

Thanks for listening!