The Problem
Predestination is the reconciliation of God’s sovereignty with man’s free will. The Bible and the Church are clear that God creates all men for beatitude. St. Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:3-4). St. Peter says, “the Lord [does not wish] that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Ezekiel says that God has “no pleasure in the death of anyone” and asks us to “turn to Him and live” (Ezekiel 18:30-32). But the Bible and the Church are also clear that God is the source of all goodness. Therefore, while human love responds to goodness in things, God’s love causes goodness in things. As St. Paul profoundly asks, “what have you that you have not received?” (1 Corinth. 4:7).
While each of these concepts are coherent and sensible in a vacuum, the marriage of the two raises a confusing problem. If God’s love is the cause of all goodness, then God’s love is the means of salvation. God is infinite and omnipotent, so there is no limit to His love. If, then, God created all men for salvation, why aren’t all men saved? Where does sin come from? How is damnation even possible?
Actual Grace
The question of predestination concerns how God and man each relate to man’s destiny. First, we must acknowledge that man has free will. St. James says “let no one say, ‘I am tempted by God;’ for God cannot be tempted with evil and He Himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:13-15). James’ argument stems from a simple logical deduction: sin is definitionally a departure from God’s will. Therefore, the fact of sin proves that humans can depart from God’s will. But for any will to depart from God’s will, it must be free. It is incoherent to imagine sin without free will. So man is free, and thus, we must avoid extinguishing the role free will plays in attempting to explain predestination.
However, we must also acknowledge that the human will is limited, and cannot achieve union with God by its innate power. Pelagius, a 5th century monk, taught that a man could, by use of his free will unaided by supernatural grace, remain sinless his entire life. St. Augustine rebuked this idea – Pelagianism – in strongest terms. First, Pelagianism makes human will the author of salvation and grace an environmental effect, relegating God to a cheerleader. Second, it empties the sacrifice of Christ by implying that the grace of His atonement is not necessary for the salvation of all. Third, it makes the Old Covenant nothing more than a moral guidepost and deprives the New Covenant of any meaningful differentiation from it. Pelagianism was condemned by the Council of Carthage (418).
So two truths are evident: man is free, but without God’s supernatural help, he cannot achieve beatitude. Actual grace is the gift from God which excites man’s will and brings it to complete a salutary act. This grace is manifest both in the repentance of the hardened sinner and the millionth prayer of the saint. So through actual grace, God moves the free will to seek Him. Remember that, contra Pelagius, actual grace is more than God making the good attractive to us; it is God moving us to the good without violating our freedom. Of actual grace, there are two kinds: efficient, and sufficient.
Efficient and Sufficient
Efficient grace is grace which is met with a positive and willing response, thus resulting in the completion of a salutary act. It is a grace which effectively accomplishes its intended result in the human soul. It is of this grace that we would say, “It is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish according to His good will” (Phil. 2:13), or “I will cause you to walk in My commandments, and to keep My judgments, and do them” (Ezek. 36:27).
Sufficient grace, on the other hand, comes in two varieties – external, and immanent. External sufficient graces are graces sufficient to make salvation really possible that remain external to the will. For example, being conceived as a human being (as opposed to a beast or a vegetable) is a sufficient grace. Hearing the Gospel is a sufficient grace. This grace, which potentially offers salvation, God gives to all men. But what we commonly (and will from here forward) refer to as sufficient grace is immanent sufficient grace – an interior, resistible motion which virtually, or immediately – not potentially – offers salvation. This would be an interior desire to respond to the Gospel’s call for repentance, for example. So, an external sufficient grace offers the possibility of salvation; an immanent sufficient grace offers salvation in itself.
What distinguishes this sufficient grace from efficient grace is that it results in incompletion. That is, a sufficient grace is always resisted. The common inclination here is to say that we should instead call it insufficient grace, since it never works! But causes can remain sufficient while failing to produce their effect. St. Thomas invokes the example of the sun casting light on the earth. The sun is sufficient in itself to illuminate man’s sight, and, indeed is ultimately required for all sight. But someone can frustrate and cease to participate in the sun’s ability to illuminate by closing their eyes. And just as man requires the sun to see but is sufficient to cause his own darkness, so man requires grace to perform salutary acts, but is sufficient to cause his own sin (Summa, Q79 A3).
But let us discuss this further; sometimes the academic use of the word “sufficient” or the example of closing one’s eyes can make the rejection of grace sound benign or blameless. It is anything but benign and blameless. First, we must more explicitly orient ourselves to what sufficient grace is: it is not some “lesser form” of grace. It is grace which, of itself, is sufficient to bridge the infinite gap between fallen man and God. It is grace which, of itself, has the power to transform man into an image of Christ, capable and worthy of the perpetual, infinitely intimate, glorious, beatific vision of God’s face. God is not lacking in His gifts, and God does not command what is not really, truly possible. On the contrary, the infinite value of grace should make us shudder to think of our malice and depravity in rejecting it.
To elucidate this even further: sufficient grace is not like commanding a man chained to the radiator to leave a burning building and then condemning him when he fails. Rather, imagine a man who chained himself to the radiator setting his own building on fire, hopeless to escape. Then imagine that – purely out of compassion – God incarnates as a man, bursts into the room, and breaks the man’s chain off the radiator, dying from smoke inhalation in the process. Then imagine that this man totally ignores this sacrifice and starts playing a board game instead of evacuating. If he should die in the fire, would there be anyone to blame but himself? Does the enormity of the act of sacrifice to save him not make his careless disregard utterly deplorable? This is analogous to sufficient grace and the rejection thereof.
Premotion and Congruism
This raises an important question: what makes one grace efficient, and another sufficient? Why does one man cooperate, and another resist? This question was the source of ferocious debate in the 16th and 17th centuries. Though many diverse solutions exist, the Dominican Thomists and the Jesuit Congruists presented the two general orthodox frameworks for answering the question. We will briefly examine these frameworks, not for the sake of reviving the controversy nor nitpicking minutiae, but for the sake of exposing the general principles they shared, without which we simply cannot have a proper understanding of predestination.
Thomistic Premotion
The Thomistic answer to the problem, advanced primarily by Domingo Báñez, has an almost pedestrian simplicity. God is the giver of all good things; therefore, a will which cooperates with Him is itself His gift. God sustains your will in existence and provides it power, including the power to cooperate. Báñez calls this relationship premotion. An excellent analogy for premotion is the relationship between the author and the character. When Romeo waves to Juliet, the action is coming from him and from Shakespeare simultaneously, but in two different orders of causality. Shakespeare’s freedom does not compete with Romeo’s freedom; they are two sides of the same coin. Shakespeare in no way “overrides” Romeo’s free will; he causes it! But where Shakespeare actualizes fictional scenarios in which characters with fictional free will make fictional choices, God actualizes real scenarios in which real people with real free will make real choices.
Some will argue that premotion actualizing human choice makes the choice unfree. But this is not so, as the will clearly maintains its freedom in the midst of action. For example, my choice to sit is incompatible with the choice to stand. But no one would say that my choice to sit has makes me unfree to stand. It is really, truly possible for me to stand, despite my choosing against it. To say the divine will actualizing our choices destroys our freedom would be to say that any choice whatsoever destroys our freedom; but this is absurd – will we say that choice destroys freedom when the ability to choose is the very essence of freedom? Again, premotion does not “override” free will, it causes it. Without premotion, there would be no such thing as choice!
Others will point out that this seems to make God the author of sin. But again, this is false. God’s premotive power is always perfect, though the secondary cause may not be. For example, consider a man moving his leg with perfect motive power, but a limp in the leg nonetheless frustrating the act of running. Likewise, God can provide the perfect motive power of grace, while a defect in the human will may overcome it and frustrate it. If the man with a limp wishes to run, he must provide the leg motive power and fix its ailment. If God wishes for a sinner to cooperate with grace, God must provide the premotive power and provide it in such a way that it infallibly overcomes resistance. Of course, God’s power is infinite, so God could make all grace efficient, but sometimes He allows resistance.
Finally, some will claim that this cannot be, since God would be unjust to permit resistance when He could overcome it. But God is under no obligation to bestow any gratuitous perfection on anything. Is God unjust when He does not give the zebra the power to escape the lion? Conversely, is God unjust when He does not give the lion the power to catch the zebra? Neither creature would even exist without God, so there is no basis upon which they could demand more from Him. Likewise, there’s no basis upon which we can demand efficient grace from God. This is unintuitive, since we, as humans, are obligated to help each other as much as possible. But God is not human. He is not bound by human morality any more than He is bound by the laws of thermodynamics, which He violated when He created them out of nothing.
Jesuit Congruism
In the 16th century, the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina proposed a different theory of grace. Instead of premotion, Molina suggested that God acts through scientia media, or “middle knowledge.” All theologians agree that God has two kinds of knowledge – natural knowledge of all things He could do, and free knowledge of all things He has done and will do. Natural knowledge is necessary, like God’s knowledge of necessary truths, whereas free knowledge is freely chosen. Molina proposed a novel type of knowledge in God which lies “between” natural and free knowledge. Like natural knowledge, it is not “under God’s control.” Rather, it pertains to the free choices made by other agents. Here’s an example:
God has natural knowledge that there is a possible world in which I go to the grocery store next Tuesday morning and witness someone else drop a $100 bill on the ground. God has middle knowledge that if He creates this possible world, I would cooperate with the interior motivation of grace to return that $100 bill to the rightful owner. Seeing this, God chooses to create this world, making it free knowledge. Molina’s formulation thus clearly departs from premotion in two ways. First it means that we have a role in determining God’s action, whereas for Thomists, God’s sovereignty is absolute. Second, it posits (in the original formulation) that man’s cooperation causes grace to become efficient, as opposed to God’s efficient grace causing cooperation. Molina explicitly taught this, comparing predestination to God and man pulling a boat together, each doing half of the work.
The Jesuits harshly criticized and immediately rejected Molina’s “50/50” theory. St. Robert Bellarmine – often erroneously thought to hold Molina’s opinion because he holds middle knowledge – when he examined this opinion, wrote: “This theory is entirely alien to the opinion of St. Augustine and, in my judgment, even to the meaning of Holy Scripture.” Claude Acquaviva, General of the Jesuit order, wrote in 1613: “We ordain and command that in propounding the efficacy of divine grace . . . our fathers should in the future explicitly teach that… something more is always contained, morally, in efficient than in sufficient grace, both by reason of its benefit and with respect to first act; and thus God effects that we may act of ourselves, not so much because He gives grace by which we are able to act.”
Despite their vehement rejection of Molina’s teaching on the will, Jesuits like Bellarmine and Suarez were fond of middle knowledge. They borrowed it, but posited that through it God knows what man will do, not what he would do. Specifically, they taught that when disposition, circumstance, and grace are “congruous,” grace infallibly succeeds. For example, an extraordinary grace would be congruous to inspire a hardened killer to overcome his hardness of heart and refrain from stealing $100 at the grocery store, whereas a monk – already well-disposed by practicing the vow of poverty – would find an ordinary grace congruous. God could give the killer the extraordinary grace to infallibly secure his cooperation despite his disposition (like He did to St. Paul), but He is not bound to do so. Objections to this would merit the same response given in the section on premotion.
Agreement
These two schools debated each other ferociously for 25 years. The Thomists called the Congruists semi-pelagians, while the Congruists called them determinists. The Pope, unable to reach a solution, refused to issue a declaration, meaning Catholics can hold either opinion. As I said, I do not wish to revive the controversy, but to point out what is common to both. Both schools agree that the difference between efficient grace and sufficient grace is God’s gratuitous love. This gratuitous love gives us, one way or another, the extraordinary power to overcome our fallen tendency to resist. Our cooperation is real, and it is free, but its source is always God. Further, there is no injustice in God giving efficient grace to one but not another. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matt. 20:15).
God gives grace to all. To some, that they may not boast; to others, that they may have no excuse. But this leads us to another question: why does God sometimes make grace efficient, but other times permit resistance? Ultimately, why does God save some, but not others?
Salvation
Salvation is entirely the act of God working within us through efficient grace. “Whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son; that He might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. Whom He predestined, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-31). St. Paul is making the point that God predestines men as a gift, not according to man’s foreseen merits. That is, there is nothing you can do by your own power to “earn” salvation nor entice God to save you, because all of your good acts come from Him in the first place. God gives us the gift of grace, then rewards us for exercising that gift. As Augustine said: “They are not chosen because they have believed, but in order that they may believe.”
What, then, is God’s motive for saving people? God’s only motivation is love, because the salvation of anyone is inherently a good thing. Heaven is not like some sort of amusement park where an evil person could slip in and escape their crimes. No one “gets away with it” and then goes to Heaven. Heaven is definitionally the result of learning your lesson, taking responsibility for what you’ve done, and repenting – which is inherently good. God’s mercy is not taking an evil person who does not deserve Heaven and putting them in Heaven as if they were a saint. This would be incoherent and unjust. Rather, God’s mercy is providing a sinner the grace to become a saint while they’re alive, such that they actually deserve to go to Heaven, being “conformed to the image of His Son.”
Can God’s saving power fail? No; God is omnipotent. Christ said, “[My sheep] shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand” (John 10:28). St. Paul adds a corollary to this fact in Romans, stating that “all things work unto good for those who love God (Romans 8:28).” The sins of others may cause some to falter, as in a friend encouraging another friend to tell a lie. But among the predestined, the sins of others only give them more strength, as in the example of the martyr courageously defying the persecutor. One’s own sins also typically cause them to falter, as the habit of vice makes it more difficult to return to virtue. But among the predestined, even one’s own sins are taken instead as opportunities to grow in humility and hope.
We see a very clear example of this reality in the Gospel. At the Last Supper, Jesus said to Peter, “Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” And Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me” (Luke 22:31-34). Peter then betrayed Jesus exactly as described. But as Jesus had prayed, he did not ultimately fail; he instead recognized his weakness and repented. After Pentecost, he led the Apostles faithfully and did not falter again, even bravely facing his own crucifixion.
Reprobation
But compare Peter to Judas. Again at the Last Supper, Jesus said “very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” John asked, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus said, “the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then he dipped the bread and gave it to Judas. Judas then made his mind up to turn Christ over to the authorities. Jesus said to him, “What you must do, do it quickly” (John 13:21-30). Of course, this story turns out much differently than Peter’s. Judas despaired, hanged himself, and Jesus declared “it would have been better for him not to have been born” (Matt 26:24).
As God chooses from the foundation of the world to save some, others He chooses to permit to sin unto damnation (Summa, Q23 A3). God “loved Jacob and hated Esau”; that is, God willed more good for Jacob than Esau (Malachi 1:3). The lack of willingness to save some is called reprobation. God’s decree of reprobation is final and unconditional, but in no way causes sin; sin comes entirely from man’s defective will. That is, salvation is a cooperative act in which “man plans his way, but God directs his steps” (Prov 16:9), reprobation is when man plans his way, and God lets him. We see this in Jesus’ response to Judas – permissive, but not encouraging. Return to the analogy of the sun. If a man closes his eyes, who would blame the sun for his blindness? Who would say blindness is anyone’s fault but his?
We have already discussed that it is always a good thing when God’s mercy molds someone into sainthood. But punishment is a different story. It is good to rehabilitate an evil man (salvation), but it is not good to imprison an innocent man. Consequently, it is only after one resists grace and freely sins that God desires vengeance. And how does God manifest vengeance? By denying the grace necessary for rehabilitation, as a parent wisely and justly denies an allowance to a child who uses it to buy drugs. God is not bound by justice to provide extraordinary grace to rehabilitate the degenerate sinner who resists Him. If He will not have mercy, God punishes the sinner by giving them up to their desires, permitting them to sin more, deadening their conscience and developing a disgusting “reprobate mind” which cares nothing for right and wrong (Rom. 1:28).
I give some concrete examples of this phenomenon on my page about sin. Consider a person telling their first lie. They know better, but they ignore the fact that they know better because they prefer the consequences of the lie to the innate goodness of truth. But God is truth, and so this is truly a personal betrayal of God. Now, the first lie causes some guilt, but the second is easier. And the third even easier. Eventually, after so many repeated betrayals God departs, and the liar’s conscience dies; they then lie without second thought. The Nazi gas chamber operators are particularly chilling examples. Though troubled at first, eventually the job became so mundane they would fall asleep at the controls. This is what St. Paul means when he says God “hardens sinners’ hearts” (Rom. 9:18).
So, God did not use His divine power to make Judas fail, nor was God like a negligent captain who failed to be at the helm when He should’ve been. Rather, “[God] called, and was refused” (Prov. 1:24). God, in His wisdom, has “arranged all things, by measure, and number and weight” (Wis. 11:20). He knows when a man has truly given himself to sin, and when this moment occurs, God lets him go. God, seeing that Judas’ heart truly belonged to sin, left him to “go to his own place” (Acts 1:25). God permitted this final betrayal as the natural consequence of many previous betrayals.
God’s Purposes
As we’ve discussed, both predestination and reprobation are God’s unconditional, eternal will (Summa, Q23 A3). That is, just as God creates some seeds which will be eaten by birds rather than grow into trees, God creates men who will be damned rather than achieve beatitude. God has a special love for the elect, by which He will gratuitously overcome any obstacle to ensure their salvation, but God “passes over” the reprobate, willing not to save them, but rather to let them sin unto damnation. Both of these decrees exist from all eternity. “It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:16). The elect will be saved, and the reprobate will not be saved. Now you may ask: “Why then does [God] still find fault? For who can resist His will?” (Rom. 9:19). St. Paul answers:
“Who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? [So] what if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and [so] what if He has done so in order to make known the riches of His glory for the objects of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory? (Rom. 9:17-23)” With this passage, St. Paul tells us everything. As a master artist uses shadow and light in proportion, God reprobates and predestines to manifest His glorious justice and mercy.
Obviously, the Holy Spirit wrote these verses with the intent to demonstrate God’s sovereignty and special purpose for the elect. But let us not think these verses teach that God makes pawns out of us in some divine game. Though God is absolutely sovereign, He is not a puppet master who contorts creation to His will. What God speaks simply is reality, and reality is nothing other than what God speaks. To say “God abandoned Judas” is completely and totally identical to saying “Judas chose damnation.” Let no man say “I am damned, and there is nothing I can do about it!”; if you are damned, it is because there was something you could do about it, and didn’t!
What is predestination? It is a sentient being freely choosing salvation. What is reprobation? It is sentient being freely choosing damnation. Contrary to being pawns, salvation and damnation occur precisely because our actions are so real and so free. Predestination is not an arbitrary, extraneous force; it is who we are. Again, Judas is said to have “gone to his own place” – that is, the place he truly belonged due to his own real, free choices. For one who chooses sanctity, God will provide abundant help, for God is good and gracious (Prov 16:9). For one who chooses malice, God will permit them all the blindness and hardness of heart they need, for God is just (Psalm 69).
So God’s motives and means are as clear as they can be. But why was, say, Peter predestined while Judas wasn’t? That is, why this man, or why that man, and not another? St. Thomas answers: “the divine wisdom” (Summa, Q23 A5). Whereas our minds receive from creation, God’s mind “receives” from nothing – His wisdom is uncreated and uncaused; it is the last link in the chain, there is nothing prior to it to appeal to. Therein lies the answer, and the mystery. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Fine Points
Some try to contradict the teachings above with various Catholic resources. I will not exhaust every such example, but will address the major ones:
1 Tim 2:3-4: “[God] desires everyone to be saved.” This supposedly contradicts unconditional antecedent reprobation. Now, this verse obviously cannot refer to God’s consequent, efficacious will, considering He easily could’ve made a world where everyone actually goes to Heaven, but didn’t. Even if you’re a total libertarian free will Molinist, it is undeniable that God could’ve just created everyone, given everyone sanctifying grace (whether by Baptism or decree), then painlessly killed everyone, ensuring universal salvation. Again, this obviously didn’t happen. What this verse really means is that God created all men ordered toward beatitude, not that He efficaciously desires universal salvation after considering all providential goals. We might likewise say that God desires all seeds to become trees by virtue of their being seeds, though He efficaciously wills that the majority fail and become food instead after considering the needs of animals (Summa Q19 A6).
CCC 1037: “God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.” This is congruent with all the teachings above. God reprobates, but reprobation in no way causes sin, it only permits it. On the other hand, sin, which comes from the sinner’s free will, does cause the sentence of damnation. God permits the reprobate to persist in sin to the end, exactly as the Catechism states. The heretical theory that God causes sin the same way He causes repentance is equal ultimacy, not unconditional antecedent reprobation.
Canon 17, Trent: “If any one saith, that the grace of Justification is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.” Some will say that this proves that God does not predestine and reprobate prior to foreseen cooperation or rejection. But this is condemning the Protestant doctrine that it is impossible for the reprobate to receive grace at all. Such Protestants would teach, for example, that a reprobate, baptized as an infant or willingly as an adult, would not actually receive any grace from it because they are reprobate. Catholics, on the other hand, teach that reprobation is not an obstacle to grace, whereby God frustrates His own actions. Reprobation is merely God refraining from giving certain graces.
Canon 23, Trent: “lf any one saith, that a man once justified can sin no more, nor lose grace… let him be anathema.” Some will say this proves that predestination is not certain, but conditional. But this canon is condemning the doctrine of “once saved always saved,” which teaches that, once justified, one cannot lose their salvation, contrary to the plain words of scripture (Heb. 6:4-6, Heb. 10 26-27, 2 Peter 2:20-22, Romans 11:20-22, 1 Tim 1:18-20, John 15:1-6, James 5:19-20, 2 Cor 6:1, and on and on and on). Catholic predestination does not teach that the predestined can never lose justification. The predestined may fall into mortal sin countless times, but God will infallibly ensure they choose to repent every time. Specifically, the Thomists and Jesuits teach that the elect will infallibly receive the grace of final perseverance.
Some will cite Molina’s original theory in an attempt to escape antecedent unconditional predestination and reprobation. Technically it is not heretical, but it was laughed out of court for good reason. First, it diminishes God’s sovereignty by placing creaturely wills outside of divine causality, and by making God’s choice contingent on creaturely choices. Second, it collapses into determinism; previous to any divine decree, God can only infallibly foresee what Peter’s choice would be if placed in certain circumstances, if these circumstances determine the choice. Third, it doesn’t even solve the problem of reprobation, since God could simply refrain from creating the damned, or save everyone as described in the first objection. So, Molinism leaves us with an impotent God, determinism, and the same problem of reprobation we started with! Molinism is an example of why we should not try to escape the Church’s manifest mind by appealing to fringe theories.
Fruits
A proper understanding of predestination is absolutely necessary for growth in the spiritual life, particularly passive purification. First, it remedies the false idea that we are the cause of our own salvation. As previously stated: salvation is entirely caused by God’s love, and sin is entirely caused by our own malice. “Destruction is thy own, O Israel; thy only help is in Me” (Hosea 13:9). This paradoxical reality ought to plant deep roots of humility. How can we hate our neighbor when they fail, knowing that we ourselves are completely dependent upon God’s grace to preserve us from evil? Who could hate sinners knowing that any one of them could become a living saint after one confession?
But it also should give us a horror of sin and a strong motivation to be holy. One who understands that they need to become a saint in this life will accept the help God gives them. Conversely, if one believes God’s mercy is a “get out of Hell free” card, they will act like it, and make certain their own damnation in doing so. “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Matt 7:21-23). It instills in us a healthy desire to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).
Third, it should destroy our modern notions of self-determination. Our salvation is in God alone; without Him, we are nothing. Less than nothing. The question of predestination should be jarring – it lays bare how utterly naked and poor we are before Almighty God. Without Him, our sole possessions are disorder, sin, and misery. Few things reveal how small we are with greater force than predestination. Few things reveal God’s inescapable power as viscerally as predestination. But it should also bring us peace to know our election is in God, not us. All that is within us in inconstant, weak, and temporary; but God’s will never changes and never fails. Understanding this, we may follow the Lord’s command: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
Fourth, it should bring us fervor to evangelize when we can, and peace when we cannot. To the former, our calling to find those who are seeking – that is, under the influence of grace – and expose them to the Gospel appropriately should be even more important to us, knowing God is calling them interiorly and expects us to provide for them exteriorly. On the other hand, it explains Christ’s command not to “feed pearls to swine” (Matt 7:6). For those who are not seeking, whose eyes are shut tightly to grace, we need not make ourselves anxious. Though we ought to earnestly pray for them, salvation is between them and God, not them and us.
Finally -and paradoxically – it should give us great confidence and fervor in securing our own election. It is with this confidence in God’s power that St. Paul spoke of the crown of glory awaiting him (2 Tim 4:7). The image at the top of this article is The Calling of St. Matthew. In it, we see Christ choosing Matthew while he is yet counting his ill-gotten gains. With what gall would we insult Christ by claiming He cannot make us saints, like He did Matthew? With what criminal sloth would we decline Christ’s great gift of salvation to stay in the darkness of sin, knowing that He has the power to overcome all of it?