Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. We’re going through our look at the doctrine of God in Christian thought. Right now, we’re talking about the topic of predestination. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas. This can be read for free at newadvent.org. For now, let us get to the question.
One point I’ve stated already in looking at this yesterday is that we need to look to see what we can learn more about God than other aspects of predestination. Right now, Aquinas is not interested in seeing how free-will fits in with this or with points related to a Calvinism and Arminianism debate. Instead, he’s interested in learning about the doctrine of God. Hence, in discussing that doctrine, he includes it in the doctrine of God section while most of us today would include it in salvation. Of course, it relates to salvation, but for Aquinas, it principally relates to God.
Aquinas states upfront that predestination should be seen more along the lines of foreknowledge. It is the foreknowledge of the benefits of God. Foreknowledge exists in the mind of the knower and thus it is the case that predestination is in the one who predestines and not in the predestined.
One objection is that actions cause passion. Predestination is an action of God. However, passion does not dwell in God as he is immutable. Therefore, passion must dwell in something else and that would be in the ones who are predestined. Therefore, predestination places something in the predestined.
However, Aquinas points out that actions that go out to external matter do produce passions. These would be things like cutting and warming. On the other hand, actions like understanding and willing are in the intellect and these do not produce passions as these remain solely in the agent. Predestination is in the intellect and is an act of willing and therefore it does not produce passion.
Doesn’t predestination however refer to one who exists? Augustine is quoted as saying that predestination is the destination of one who exists. Aquinas answers however that predestination can be of something that does not actually exist at that point in time even though its destination is known. This gets us back to exemplar causes in the mind of God, which is something after which something else is made.
Predestination does have an aspect of something in the thing prepared, in the sense that the patient is prepared in respect to the passion, however, the main area of predestination again lies in the agent as the agent prepares its intellect in order to act. Of course, God does not have to prepare, but that is analogical thinking for Aquinas. What we do is like what God does, but we are temporal.
As for grace, grace bears a relation to predestination. Grace is temporal and predestination being foreknowledge in the mind of God is not temporal. Predestination is meant to imply a relation to something that will be temporal, but the predestination itself is not temporal.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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