Predestination and Grace in Catholic Theology

Over at Pontifications, Alvin Kimel has written a lengthy post on the subject of predestination in Catholic theology. I won't spend the time to summarize all of it, nor will I comment on all the interesting things he brings up. What I find fascinating in this post is the way it reveals the contradictions among the various positions on grace and predestination in Catholic doctrine (though this critique applies to Protestants as well, who are usually much worse than this):

Exhibit A: God's "universal salvific will" in Jesus Christ

The Second Vatican Council asserted: “The Word of God, through whom all things were made, was made flesh, so that as perfect man he could save all men and sum up all things in himself” (Gaudium et spes 45). The universal salvific will of the merciful God who has become incarnate in Jesus Christ underlies the documents of Vatican II, the encyclicals of John Paul II, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is true that some Catholic theologians, notably St Augustine, have restricted God’s salvific will to the elect; but the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has achieved dogmatic clarity on this matter and has rejected this thesis.

Exhibit B: God's grace is for all people

In his infinite, comprehensive love, God provides sufficient grace to every human being to turn to him and be saved. The love of God pushes out beyond the bounds of the Church to all of humanity. “For, since Christ died for all men,’ Vatican II declared, “and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery” (Gaudium et spes 22). The universal salvific intent of God is sincere. All sinners are provided the opportunity and power to turn to God in repentance and be incorporated into the divine life of God.

Exhibit C: God's grace is not efficacious, but requires human acceptance to be effectual

Joined to the assertion of God’s provision of sufficient grace to all is the rejection of the thesis of the Jansenists that all grace is divinely efficacious. In 1713 Pope Clement XI condemned the proposition that “Grace is the working of the omnipotent hand of God which nothing can hinder or retard” (Unigenitus Dei Filius). There is an authentic grace that is truly sufficient for salvation but does not necessarily and irresistably realize its salvific end. There is a grace that man may mysteriously and inexplicably reject. Even those who have been born again by water and Holy Spirit may fail to persevere in faith and good works. Or as the Synod of Quiercy taught: “God wishes all men without exception to be saved, although not all will be saved.”

Exhibit D: God alone saves; salvation is solely the work of God

The salvation of particular individuals is the work of God and by grace alone. In my earlier articles on Semi-Pelagianism, we have seen that the Catholic Church, grounding her witness in the dogmatic canons of the Second Council of Orange, insists upon the necessity of grace even for the first step toward faith. ... These canons, which the Catholic Church wholeheartedly affirms, dogmatically commit the Church to the sola gratia: the work of salvation, from beginning to end, is the work of God. ... "Catholic doctrine itself, as defined at Trent, does not admit salvation by faith and works" (Bouyer).

Exhibit E: God does not predestine anyone to hell

Fourth, God does not predestine anyone to evil or Hell; he does not reprobate independently of demerits and sins. The Synod of Orange is clear: “We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema.”

These five exhibits are sufficient for us to examine the problem at hand. The problem begins with the definition of divine grace. According to the statements in this post, Catholic doctrine believes that grace is (1) necessary for salvation at every step (rejection of semi-Pelagianism) and (2) given to all people unconditionally, yet (3) divine grace is not "divinely efficacious" because it relies upon the acceptance of human persons.

If that is the case, then there two available options. Either (4) the human acceptance of grace is a gift of grace from God — which would follow from Exhibit D — or (5) the acceptance of grace is the one human work necessary for salvation, in which the house of cards collapses and we return to semi-Pelagianism. Now if we accept (4), that the acceptance of grace is a divine gift, we then must conclude that in some fashion, God does in fact predestine people to hell (contra Exhibit E) and God does not give sufficient grace to all people (contra Exhibit B).

I believe the root of this problem rests in the fact that Catholic doctrine has abstracted grace from the incarnation of divine grace in Jesus Christ. In Exhibit C we read, "There is an authentic grace that is truly sufficient for salvation but does not necessarily and irresistably realize its salvific end." Contra this statement, we must define "authentic grace" as that which was revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, who came freely for the express purpose of bringing salvation to the world (John 12:47) and reconciling the world to God (2 Cor. 5:19). When we understand grace out of this divine economy we cannot say that grace lacks efficacy or that divine grace is merely a potentiality awaiting the actualizing in each individual human person.

In other words, any definition of grace that makes the actualization of grace dependent upon human persons either (6) believes in a kind of double predestination in which God determines who, by God's grace, will actualize the salvific grace made available in Christ, or (7) affirms semi-Pelagianism, in which human persons must fulfill the necessary human work of accepting grace, by which means the grace is then actualized and salvation effected for that person. Exhibit E would lead me to believe that Catholic doctrine rejects (6), and Exhibit D leads me to assume Catholic doctrine rejects (7). However, Exhibit D is qualified by Exhibit C, in which the best that the Synod of Quiercy can muster is, “God wishes all men without exception to be saved, although not all will be saved.” One is left wondering: Is wishing the best God can do? Is not God capable of willing and effecting something? Is God like the child who wishes for something on Christmas but ends up disappointed? Or does God truly have a "universal salvific will," and not just potentially salvific (leaving salvation up to us again), but actually and effectively salvific?

To answer the aporia in Catholic doctrine, I argue that we must reject (3) and affirm that divine grace is indeed efficacious. God truly actualizes the "universal salvific will" (Exhibit A) which was made incarnate in Jesus Christ. By locating divine grace in the person of Jesus, we are able to affirm the efficacy of grace without running into the problem of denying humans their rightful and divinely granted freedom vis-à-vis God. Human persons are free to accept or reject God, but all such finite decisions have their proper place within the sphere of God's covenantal relations with humankind. That is, human decisions cannot be projected upon the sphere of God's eternal will, whose scope is cosmic and whose telos is determined by God and God alone. Human decisions are circumscribed within the finite realm of creaturely relations, that is, within the grander, overarching will to reconcile all things to Godself—a will that was actualized proleptically in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus Christ, we are given a foretaste of what God will do in the eschatological future of all creation. It is the hubris of humans to think that our decisions for or against God are capable of determining God's ultimate, eschatological will for us and for the world. Our decisions have their place, but it is a place circumscribed by the greater reality of God's grace.

Finally, Jesus came as the Judge judged in our place, as the one human in the place of all others, and in his substitutionary role, Jesus bore all of our sins on the cross—including the sin of rejecting God's grace. The grace of God not only means that God pursues us despite our rejection of divine grace, but even more so, that God assumed in the incarnation our rejection and bore the punishment of this rejection to its bitterest end—death, Sheol, the descent into hell. God's love is such that our rejection is never ultimate, nor is our acceptance salvific. God alone saves, and God alone rejects. But the one God rejected was God's only Son, and the ones God saves are us wretched sinners. Salvation, lest we forget, is by grace alone.