Human beings are under God's providence,
just like every other creature, but God provides for us in a special way, especially in so
far as we have intellect and will and so our free. Namely God provides us with grace that operates
within us so that we would turn from all that leads us away from God and would freely entrust
ourselves and our entire lives to God in faith, hope, and charity. The plan for this in God's mind is called
predestination. This word, predestination, frightens some people,
and they might think it's a dangerous doctrine, that it implies some kind of determinism that
destroys human freedom. In fact, the opposite is the case when it
comes to Aquinas's theory of this important idea. Predestination is a scriptural truth and it
shows up in a number of important places, especially in the New Testament. One of the best examples is in the letter
to the Ephesians in chapter one, Saint Paul writes, “He chose us in him before the foundation
of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. He predestined us in love to be his sons through
Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace,
which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.” This text expresses something very mysterious,
but also very beautiful about the Christian faith, and Saint Thomas studied it--and others
like it--deeply and with great insight. The point is not that our free choice is an
illusion or that we live in a deterministic world, but rather that God has a plan for
our salvation. A plan by which he sweetly and strongly provides
for us to follow him in freedom. To understand this, it will help us to begin
with two key principles that inform Aquinas's treatment of predestination: the primacy of
Christ, and the primacy of grace in the order of salvation. The primacy of Christ means that we're only
saved through Christ, through the blood of his cross. We find ourselves trapped by our own sin and
weakness and often enough, we know what is good and yet find it difficult to do it. In fact, this is an inheritance of original
sin. After the fall of our first parents, the human
race lost its original friendship with God and turned away from him. And as a result, we're born with a nature
wounded by sin, prone to disorder desires, and we have difficulty in doing what is right. To put it simply, we cannot save ourselves. We need a savior from this power of sin and
death at work in us, and Jesus Christ who was crucified, died, and rose again as the
victor over death is the only savior of the world. He is the one who opens for us the way of
salvation and draws us upward to dwell with him. From Christ then, and by the power of his saving
passion, grace flows out to the world. In order of salvation, the primacy of Christ
then leads us to recognize the primacy of grace. We're saved by Christ's grace, not by our
own power or our own efforts. Now to be sure it's important for us to cooperate
with this grace, but salvation is primarily and principally God's work in us, the work
of grace. This grace does two things; it heals us and
it elevates us. We should contrast this Catholic teaching
with one of the great Christian heresies--Pelagianism, named after its author, a man named Pelagius. Pelagius denied that grace heals and elevates
us. Rather, he would say that by your own hard
work and good choices, you can save yourself. In its modern form, we see this view operative
in many places. Everything is going to work out for me. I'm going to go to heaven if I do what I can
to be a good person. Saint Augustine in the fourth century already
recognized that this Pelagian way of thinking is profoundly contrary to the Gospel and is
in fact a dangerous heresy because it doesn't acknowledge the truth that we are in radical
need of help in order to do good, and that without the special aid of divine grace, we
cannot be saved. So in response to Pelagianism, the church
made it clear that we can only be saved by God's grace for two towering reasons. The first reason is that even if man had never
sinned, it simply is not possible for our nature to be friends with God, to have eternal
life with God or to share in the divine nature. These things are simply above us. They are supernatural, and we cannot attain
to them by our natural powers. Only God can give them to us. The second reason is that after we have sinned,
we're in an even worse position than our nature just considered by itself. After sin, we experience the wounds of sin
and the weakening of our nature so that even the natural good that we should be able to
do on our own becomes difficult for us. And what is more, we're alienated from God by our own choices,
having refused to live as his friends. Since this is true, Saint Thomas follows Saint
Augustine in holding that there is asymmetry in the order of salvation. If we're saved, our salvation comes entirely
from God while we freely cooperate. But if we sin and refuse salvation, this is
not caused by God, but is due entirely to the refusal of the creature. We'll talk more about this in the video dealing
with the problem of evil, but it's important to flag it here. God is in no way the cause of sin, even though
he permits it. He doesn't cause our refusal or move us to
refuse his grace, but he does let us do it. In other words, God does not predestined us
to evil. When Aquinas speaks of predestination, therefore,
he's referring to God's eternal plan to grant grace to a rational creature in order to send
it to its ultimate end, which is eternal life with God. God is the author of our very being and of
our human nature, and so as our creator, God can work within us, interiorly, in a way different
from every other creature. He can enlighten our minds to see what is
good and then act within our wills in order to move them freely to desire this good. We've now covered in brief what predestination
is. Some important questions remain though. For example, how can a human person turn away
from God and refuse God's grace? We'll treat that in a future video. For readings, podcasts, and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com. While you're there, be sure to sign up for one of our free video courses on Aquinas. And don't forget to like and share with your friends, because it matters what you think.
