Predestination in Catholicism

Predestination in Catholicism is the Catholic Church's teachings on predestination and Catholic saints' views on it. The church believes that predestination is not based on anything external to God - for example, the grace of baptism is not merited but given freely to those who receive baptism - since predestination was formulated before the foundation of the world. Predestination to eternal life, deification, divine filiation, and heaven encompasses all of mankind, for God has assumed man to his divinity by becoming man. Since man is a microcosm of creation, all of creation shares in man's predestination: it belongs to everyone, it is destined for renewal on Judgment Day, and it is being guided to its destiny by Divine Providence.

Official teaching

Nature of predestination

"Predestination" is God's plan to give each person eternal life through divine filiation in Jesus through the Holy Spirit; in other words. The whole Trinity formulated this plan from eternity. Predestination unfolds through the creation of the world, sacred history, the life of Jesus Christ, his sacrifice on the Cross, the work of the Holy Spirit, and through the Catholic Church and its Sacraments. Because God is love, he predestines out of love and predestination is a grace. The two most prominent explanations of the Catholic concept of predestination are termed Molinism and Thomism; both fall within the scope of Catholic orthodoxy.

Predestination and divine providence

The purpose of life is deification and eternal life. As such, Divine Providence leads each person to his or her destiny. This destiny will be fully realized at the universal resurrection when one will get back one's own body - only glorified like Jesus' resurrected body.

Predestination and free will

Because God is omniscient, predestination takes into account each person's response to his grace (whether to accept it by virtue or reject it by sin). For the sake of accomplishing predestination, God permits sin. Examples of this include God permitting original sin in light of Jesus redeeming man, and Jesus being rejected by his people Israel in order to fulfill the prophecy of the Servant Songs. However it is important to recognise that that is the view of Molinism, which is held by majority of the Church fathers before Augustine, especially in the east, but got articulated more precisely by Molina. The view of Thomism which gained dominance in the Middle Ages and is promoted by Pope Leo XIII in Aeterni Patris is that when God physically premoves the will to a certain good the will still remains free despite being certainly moved as efficacious grace is, in the divided sense resistible meaning if God had willed things to be different it could have be resisted but it never will be resisted as it is in the composite sense irresistible. The Thomistic school would interpret CCC 600 in this way while still maintaining physical premotion as the thomistic school can be called followers of compatiblism which teaches that while everything is determined the will is still free, as freedom isn’t merely the ability to do what you want but the ability to do good. The thomistic school also teaches that God permits sin for a greater good and to manifest his Justice. The permission of sin is called “Negative antecedent reprobation” and happens before the damnation to hell which is called “positive consequent reprobation”, the molinists also believe in “positive consequent reprobation” but deny negative antecedent reprobation as they deny that it is required for man to sin.

Predestination and death

Because God is omniscient, predestination takes into account the fact that man would become mortal due to sin, and includes, not only the limited amount of time that each person has to fulfill his or her life by receiving divine filiation, but also every grace that God gives to each person.

Predestination and worship

Each person is predestined to take part in God the Son's divine relationship to God the Father, because - though one is not a god - one becomes like God by divine filiation through baptism. By divine filiation, one has the right to worship God, even to call him one's own Father just like Jesus did.

Predestination and prayer

As God wills each person to go to Heaven, the petition "Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven" in the Our Father means one is praying for predestination to be fully realized on Earth just as it is already fully realized in Heaven, e.g., in the saints that live forever in Heaven.

Predestination is not eternal security

No one can know for certain—except by special revelation—who will be saved or not saved, as the Council of Trent condemned belief in eternal security. For example, neither the Bible nor the church teaches that Judas Iscariot can be known with certainty to be in hell.

Predestination is not equal ultimacy

No one is predestined to evil but the dammed are predestined to damnation on account of sin. Man was not created or predestined to die, as his death - unlike other organisms - was a consequence of sin. That being said the school of Thomism would say that while nobody is predestined to evil, as per the malice of sin, since man can do nothing without God, man is moved to the act of sin, but only in so far as it is an act, it is blasphemy to say God moves men to the malice of sin.

Relation to Calvinism

All Catholics, following Catholic doctrine on predestination, agree with this statement by John Calvin - “God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.” And all followers of Molinism would agree with that statement in all too, because Molinism teaches election to grace before foreseen merits; to say otherwise would be to contradict the Church’s teachings at the Council of Quierzy, the Third Council of Valence, and the Second Council of Orange. It would also be to deny sound philosophy, because grace is the principle of merit; no one, therefore, can merit grace, as the Catholic Church has consistently taught.

Double Predestination

The Catholic doctrine is that predestination is at least twofold or double, as the Councils of Orange 2, Quierzy, and Valence 3 teach: one predestination, of the elect to eternal reward and of the reprobate to eternal punishment, both being positive (active) and after consideration of whether the person died in mortal sin; that is, God has decreed that He will send each elect to heaven and each reprobate to hell, positively. More commonly, among the Fathers and Scholastics, this predestination was threefold or triple: including not just consequent predestination, where God sends the person to his final destination after judgement, but also antecedent predestination, of the elect to persevere in a state of grace and of the reprobate to fall into mortal sin. This antecedent reprobation is negative or passive; that is, it consists of God refusing His grace to someone. It must also be noted that God is just in refusing His grace, because His grace is not deserved by anyone; hence the etymology, gratia, from gratis, meaning freely.

Now, it is commonly objected by some that the Catechism, among other loci, reject that God predestines anyone “to hell”, since “for this, a willful turning away from God (mortal sin) is necessary”; therefore it would seem that Catholicism rejects double predestination, whereby God predestines the impious to hell. This objection arises from not distinguishing between consequent and antecedent reprobation. The mentioned passage from the Catechism condemns any notion of an antecedent and positive reprobation; that is, any idea that God infuses some sort of anti-grace into the reprobate in order to make them sin, as if God were the author of sin. That it refers to this and not to any idea of predestination to hell, is evident 1) from the mentioned Third Council of Valence, where the reason this is objected to is that God would be the author of sin; therefore it refers to the predestination whereby one falls into sin, namely, antecedent reprobation; 2) since the Catechism passage says that a mortal sin is necessary for this, saying that, in order for one to be antecedently reprobated, God does not actively or positively do this, but rather the person, by privation of God’s grace, willfully turns away from God in mortal sin.

Examples of predestination

Besides the aforesaid broad understanding of predestination, the church believes in specific examples of predestination. Some of these include: the universal destination of goods, the new Heaven and new Earth coming to be on Judgment Day, Divine Providence leading creation toward the new Heaven and new Earth, the election of Israel as God's chosen people, the Virgin Mary being the mother of Jesus, Jesus fulfilling the Scriptures, and the permanence of apostolic succession.