Author: Msgr. Charles Pope

Today, let’s wade into the waters of a difficult, mysterious subject. Predestination, and in a wider sense, God’s providence, raises a lot of conundrums in our mind, bound as we are by time and the limits of human language.

Many people ask questions about God’s providence that are rooted in faulty premises, either about time or causality. For example, the following questions are often asked:

If God predestines someone for Heaven or Hell, doesn’t this merely reduce us to a fate we cannot control?

Why exhort people to make good choices or to pray if we are all simply acting out a script for our life, written by God long before we were ever made?

There are three important distinctions to make.

Distinction 1: God does not predestine anyone for Hell.

The stated desire or purpose of God is that all come to know Him through faith and thus are saved: God our Savior … desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). While it is true that Scripture speaks of predestining us for Heaven (e.g., Eph 1:5; Rom 8:29), this is not the same as saying that we are locked into a fate. St. Thomas Aquinas said, “Thus, as men are ordained to eternal life through the providence of God, it likewise is part of that providence to permit some to fall away from that end” (Summa Theologica I, 23, art. 3). And thus while we are ordained or ordered for Heaven, God, who made us free, permits that those who freely reject Him and His Kingdom will be lost.

Distinction 2: Knowing is not the same as willing.

The second question above fails to distinguish between God knowing something and God willing it (and thereby causing it). Even we mortals can know something before it happens, but our knowing it does not cause it. Suppose you were on a hillside and saw two trains on opposite sides of a blind curve, heading for each other on the same track. You know what will happen, but your knowing it does not cause it to happen.

God can know things that will happen without willing or forcing them to happen. God knowing “ahead of time” that some will go to Hell and others will go to Heaven does not mean that He wills it. For God says,

Say to them, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?” (Ez 33:11)

God wants all to be saved but foresees that some will be lost. Why does God exhort Ezekiel to tell the Israelites to turn from their sinful ways? What good will it do? After all, God already knows who will and will not be saved.

Distinction 3: Primary causes do not eliminate secondary causes.

God wants all to be saved but foresees that some will be lost. In the previous passage, why does God exhort Ezekiel to tell the Israelites to turn from their sinful ways? What good will it do? After all, God already knows who will and will not be saved.

The answer leads us to a distinction between primary and secondary causes.

God is the primary cause of all things, of all reality. Whatever effect things like people, animals, and trees have on one another, God is still the primary cause of those effects, because God is creating and sustaining them all. Thus for them to act and to cause other effects, God must first create, equip, and empower them to exist at all. Because God must “first” do this, He is the primary cause of every effect.

But, as St. Thomas explains, that God is the primary cause of everything does not eliminate secondary causes:

Concerning this question, there were different errors. Some, regarding the certainty of divine predestination, said that prayers were superfluous (unnecessary), as also anything else done to attain salvation; because whether these things were done or not, the predestined would attain, and the reprobate would not attain, eternal salvation. But against this opinion are all the warnings of Holy Scripture, exhorting us to prayer and other good works. 

Others declared that the divine predestination was altered through prayer. …Against this also is the authority of Scripture. For it is said… that “the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance (unalterable)” (Romans 11:29).

Wherefore we must say … it is not due to their prayers that anyone is predestined by God. [But it is also true that] … predestination is said to be helped by the prayers of the saints, and by other good works; because providence, of which predestination is a part, does not do away with secondary causes but so provides effects, that the order of secondary causes falls also under providence … [T]he salvation of a person is predestined by God in such a way, that whatever helps that person towards salvation falls under the order of predestination; whether it be one’s own prayers or those of another; or other good works … without which one would not attain to salvation. Whence, the predestined must strive after good works and prayer; because through these means predestination is most certainly fulfilled. For this reason it is said: “Labor more that by good works you may make sure your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10) (Summa Theologica I, 23, art 8).

In other words, God in His providence knows not only the end of a person but also all the things he will freely contribute to that end. Why bother praying? Because God has always known what prayers you would utter and what difference they would make. We should pray to fulfill the role and supply the help that God has always known we would. The same holds for good works and other forms of cooperating with God’s grace. In one of his sermons, St. Augustine said, “God, who made you without you, will not save you without you.”

A final observation is that predestination is caught up in the mystery of time. God does not live in time as we do; He lives in the eternal now. God’s name is, “I AM.” Past, present, and future are all equally present to Him. And though we can grasp in a small way what this means, we cannot really know what it is like. Deliberating, discerning, and considering—which occur over time for us—are not the same for God. We might ponder why at time ‘A’ God would consider creating a person at time ‘B,’ even knowing that at time ‘C’ that person would be lost. But this is simplistic; it tries to put God within our framework of time, which He is not.

Great humility is necessary when pondering the mystery of predestination and providence. We know for certain that God is in control, but His control mysteriously interacts with and considers human freedom in a way that harms neither truth. He tells us to pray and to cooperate with and earnestly work for our salvation and that of others. God knows everything, including our cooperation (or lack thereof). His knowing is sovereign, complete, and absolute—but it does not cancel our freedom.

So remember that all things depend on God and are known by Him. Nothing surprises God. But remember, too, that He Himself has ordained that we should freely cooperate with Him as His providence unfolds in our life. His knowing what we will do does not cancel our freedom, but rather interacts with it in a mysterious way.

Today’s Gospel (Mat 12:1-8), in which Jesus is rebuked for violating the Sabbath, reminded me of the video below. It illustrates how we sometimes follow smaller rules while overlooking bigger ones in the process.

The Lord Jesus was often scorned by the people of His day, who claimed that He overlooked certain details of the law (often Sabbath observances). But those who rebuked him for this were guilty of far greater violations. For example,

1. [Jesus] went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus (Mk 3:1-6).
2. Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone (Luke 11:42).
3. Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Lk 13:14-16)
4. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean (Matt 23:24-25).

Yes, they are straining out gnats but swallowing camels, maximizing the minimum but minimizing the maximum. Note that in the first passage above they are actually planning to kill Jesus for healing on the Sabbath!

Perhaps my all-time favorite illustration of this awful human tendency is in the Gospel of John: 

Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out … (John 18:28-29).

They are plotting to kill a just and innocent man, indeed they are plotting to kill God. They are acting out of wickedness, envy, jealousy, hatred, and murderous anger, but their primary concern is avoiding ritual uncleanliness! Yes, they are straining out gnats but swallowing camels.

We who are pious and observant need to be wary of this tendency. Sometimes in congratulating ourselves over adherence in lesser matters, we can either offend or neglect in weightier ones. Perhaps I attend Mass each Sunday (a grave obligation); perhaps I pray the rosary (a highly commendable practice); perhaps I tithe (a commendable precept). These are all things that ought to be done (one is commanded, one is commended, and one is a precept). But what if at the same time I am hateful toward someone at the office, unforgiving to a family member, and/or insensitive to the poor?

The danger could be that I let my observance of certain things allow me to think that I can “check off the God box” and figure that because I went to Mass, prayed the rosary, and gave an offering, I’ve “got this righteousness thing down.” Too often, very significant and serious things like love, mercy, forgiveness, and charity are set aside or neglected as I am busy congratulating myself over my adherence to other, sometimes lesser, things. 

This oversight can happen in the other direction as well. Someone may congratulate himself for spending the day working in a soup kitchen, and think that he therefore has no need to look at the fact that he is living unchastely (shacked up, for example) or not attending Mass.

We cannot “buy God off,” doing certain things (usually things that we like) while ignoring others we’d rather not. In the end, the whole counsel of God is important.

We must avoid the sinful tendency to try to substitute or swap, to observe a few things while overlooking others.

We see a lot of examples of this in our culture as well. We obsess over people smoking because it might be bad for their health while ignoring the health consequences of promiscuous behavior, which spreads AIDS and countless venereal diseases and leads to abortion. We campaign to save the baby seals while over a thousand baby humans are killed each day in the United States. We deplore (rightfully) the death of thousands each year in gun homicides while calling the murder of hundreds of thousands of babies each year a constitutional right. The school nurse is required to obtain parental permission to dispense aspirin to students but not to provide the dangerous abortifacient “morning after pill.” We talk about the dignity of women and yet pornography flourishes. We fret endlessly about our weight and the physical appearance of our bodies, which will die, and care little for our souls, which will live. We obsess over carbon footprints while flying on jets to global warming conferences at luxurious convention center complexes.

Yes, we are straining gnats but swallowing camels. As the Lord says, we ought not to neglect smaller things wholly, but simply observing lesser things doesn’t give us the right to ignore greater ones.

Salus animarum suprema lex. (The salvation of souls is the highest Law.) While little things mean a lot, we must always remember not to allow them to eclipse greater things. 

The ideal for which to aim is an integrated state in which the lesser serves the greater and is subsumed into it. St. Augustine rightly observed,

Quod Minimum, minimum est, Sed in minimo fidelem esse, magnum est (De Doctrina Christiana, IV,35).

(What is a little thing, is (just) a little thing. But to be faithful in a little thing is a great thing.)

Notice that the lesser things are in service of the greater thing—in this case fidelity. And thus we should rightly ask whether some of the lesser things we do are really in service of the greater things like justice, love, mercy, fidelity, kindness, and generosity. Otherwise we run the risk of straining out gnats but swallowing camels.

Enjoy this commercial, which illustrates how one rule (no loud voices in the library) is observed while violating nearly every other.

This week I have been writing about the problems of our culture. Today I continue in that vein with a short reflection on the Church’s role, based on the animated short below. For indeed, the darkness and dysfunction of our times cannot be simply blamed on the world, the Church, too, bears a large share of the responsibility.

The video features a woman in a clock tower; it is she who keeps the clock running. As the video progresses, we see that the clock itself plays a pivotal role in keeping the world around it alive and colorful. Consider the woman as an image for the Church, and the clock as an image for our culture (note that “culture” also refers to the times in which we live).

The woman grows bored with sustaining the clock, longing to go out and see the world outside—and so she leaves the clock tower. But because she is the central cog of the entire clock, it grinds to a halt without her. As she emerges into the world, suddenly all goes gray and comes to a stop. Through her attempt to become part of the world she so desires, that very world loses its beauty and is no longer desirable.

This is the tale of the Church these past hundred years. The Church is a central part of the functioning of our times, our culture. But her role is not to become the same as the culture, but to inspire and to be a conduit of blessing that lights up the culture and helps it to move in productive directions. Instead, too many in the Church have joined the culture, becoming indistinguishable from it. In so doing we stop being a conduit of God’s grace; things grind to a halt and become bland, colorless, and dysfunctional.

For the culture to be truly what it is called to be, the Church must be what she is called to be. She is called to love the people of the world, to love the culture (but not be enamored of it). The Church must in a sense be above the culture and beneath the authority of God; she must be the conduit of God’s graces and act as a bridge between God and man.

When the Church leaves her place and shirks her role, the culture winds down and loses its color and life. When the Church is the Church, through her preaching and sacramental life, the culture is so much more alive with goodness, beauty, and truth.

Enjoy this beautiful video and consider its message for us.

It is critical for us who would preach the Gospel to ponder what sorts of presuppositions our listeners bring to the conversation. Today, sadly, there are many trends that have poisoned the culture and thus make our task much more difficult.

Yesterday we explored six problem areas. Today we’ll look at four more. It helps to describe modern mindsets, not to despair of them, but rather to look at them with some insight rather than being only vaguely aware of them. If we are more clear on the presuppositions that people bring to the table, we can better direct our message to them and ask them to consider whether or not these notions are helpful or even right. For indeed, most people carry their preconceptions subconsciously. Bringing them to light can act as a kind of medicine or solvent, which will assist us in clearing the thorns so that the seeds of truth can be sown.

So, here are four more problematic presuppositions.

I. Reductionism – This is a philosophical position that holds that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of its individual constituents. Today, reductionism is most commonly found in the explanation of complex human phenomena in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry.

Reductionism tends, therefore, to reduce the human person to the merely biological. Thus every thought, emotion, passion, desire, memory, or wish is just a bunch of chemicals in the brain, the firing of synapses, etc. Even clearly metaphysical concepts such as justice, mercy, beauty, infinity, and so forth must somehow be explained in terms of brain cells and physical processes. The human person is thus reduced to a sort of brain on a stick or a collection of chemicals and atoms.

Yet from the standpoint of causation (in particular formal and final causality), it is hard to say how something merely physical can generate that which is metaphysical. The term metaphysical means, literally, “that which is beyond the physical.” Hence things such as beauty, goodness, justice, moral uprightness, the infinite, etc. are not “physical” things that can be weighed on a scale or spotted out for a walk together. One does not expect to walk into a restaurant and see justice sitting down to dinner with morality. These things are real—in fact so real that many of them have inspired marriages and launched wars; but they are not physical. But since nothing can give what it does not have, one may reasonably wonder how a merely physical entity such as the brain can “produce” metaphysical concepts. How can we, who (physically) only know closed and limited time, “imagine” infinity?

Some say that such things are merely emanations of the physical mind, conceptualizations of the bicameral intellect, or abstractions of the brain. But pardon me for pointing out that “conceptualizations” and “abstractions” are metaphysical concepts, and you’re not allowed to use metaphysics to say that there is no such thing as metaphysics!

“Never mind,” say the reductionists, “science will one day be able to explain it.” But again I object that such an answer is a kind of “God of the gaps” argument; I would like an answer today, please, since you are rejecting metaphysics today.

The traditional answer still makes the most sense: the human capacity to grasp the metaphysical—the spiritual, if you will—points to a metaphysical or spiritual dimension to the human person. Our spiritual capacity points to a spiritual cause that can give what it has: a spiritual sense, an openness to things beyond the physical. Clearly the brain is an essential avenue through which the soul exercises many of its faculties, but we are not simply to be reduced to a brain.

Reductionism is a common view today and produces a culture that is hostile to those of us who point to the importance of the soul. While faith surely regards our body, it most surely also summons us to attend to our soul. But in a reductionist world, concerns for the soul are set aside as irrelevant. The local gym is full; the Church is empty. Obsessions about physical health abound, but there is little concern for the soul. Stop smoking; it could kill you. But there is little similar concern for sinning, which could permanently land you in a “smoky” place.

Thus one form of reductionism reduces me to my body. But in a strange twist, many reductionists also play the other side of the fence simultaneously. And thus many also see their body as a mere appendage. My body is merely something I have, a kind of tool, if you will. In this reductionism, the “I” seems to be some soulful agent who can use my body without reference or effect on myself. And thus absurd statements can be made such as that “I” am really a female trapped in a male body. The self in this case is thus reduced to the “soul” and the body is a mere suit of sorts, a machine, or something akin to that.

“This is crazy,” you might say. “Which is it going to be? Am I reduced to my body or to my soul?” Well, your first mistake is to seek consistency in these dark days. But, to answer your question more directly, the form of reductionism you choose is whatever form benefits you in the moment to justify whatever you want to do. And don’t worry about maintaining consistency because too many people are just too dazed to notice anyway; you’ll likely get away with almost any crazy inconsistency you want to hold.

And while we’re on the reductionist kick, why don’t we reduce marriage—a lifelong loving union of a man and a woman bearing the sweet fruit of love in their children—to just two (or more) adults being happy together for as long as they feel like it? Yes, let’s just take the one thing and lose the rest. And how about sex? Let’s reduce it from being about love, pleasure, and procreation, to just being about pleasure. Yeah, let’s lose that necessary connection to procreation and pretend that the sperm and ovum aren’t ever there, or kill them and thwart their purpose. Who invited them anyway? And let’s also play the other side of the fence and reduce having children to an experiment in a petri dish and lose all that messy, unpredictable, marital embrace stuff, which is so unfair to “gay” people and to people who want children but can’t find a spouse or don’t want one.

Yeah, that’s it. Let’s just reduce everything down to its parts, take what we like, and leave the rest.

Pardon me, dear reader, for my tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the increasingly dark world of reductionism. But as evangelizers, we need to know some of the twists and turns of the reductionism that dominates our age. The Catholic and biblical world strives to speak to the rich tapestry and beauty of what God has done and the connections He has intended. Increasingly, we are living in a world that separates what God has joined. We are going to have to work long and hard to get people beyond the consumerist thinking that wants (some of) the parts without the whole. We must work hard to show that a reductionist approach is ultimately foolhardy and has many very bad consequences.

I will strive to be briefer with the next three presuppositions!

II. Scientism – This is itself a form of reductionism. Scientism is the position that emphatically states “The physical sciences explain all reality.” The only problem is that the statement itself is not a scientific statement; it is a (flawed) metaphysical statement. There is no way that the claim can be verified scientifically. Thus, while defending (boastfully) the physical sciences as being the only necessary explanation for everything, the boaster must step outside of science—set aside science, in fact—in order to make the claim. It’s usually not a good idea to break the very rule you are announcing in the very act of announcing it.

Clearly the physical sciences are a great boon to our modern age. But the physical sciences can only attend to the physical world. The physical sciences are good at addressing material and efficient causality but are not able to speak to formal and final causality. The physical sciences are good at explaining how things physically come about but are not equipped to answer the deeper questions related to “Why?” Why does anything exist at all? What is the final purpose to which all things tend? These are not questions science is equipped to answer.

Clearly we live in times in which many practically idolize the physical sciences and are dismissive of anything that cannot be weighed on a scale or seen under a microscope. Evangelization is now much more difficult. We must spend a lot of time showing how many very real things (justice, loyalty, etc.)—things that effect very real changes—are not physical but are nevertheless real. We must re-invite many to discover the necessity and the beauty of the metaphysical realities of art, ethics, philosophy, and theology.

III. “Designer” Religion – Even within the realm of believers are legions of Catholics and Protestants who feel utterly entitled to design their own religion and their own God. We used to call this heresy and idolatry.

In the past, the heretics and idolaters at least had the decency to commit formal schism and go off and found their own religion. But in lazy times like these, many prefer to stay within their religion—one they reject at fundamental levels—and live off the money, off the resources, and in the buildings of the very faith they disrespect so boldly. It’s just so much trouble to have to build your own buildings and find your own followers, you know. So the lazy, modern form of this is to say, “I am a faithful Catholic, but …” And then out comes the list of things picked and chosen from Catholicism or Christianity.

The word heresy comes from a Greek word meaning “choose.” Many of the truths of our faith are held in some tension. Are we free or is God sovereign? Orthodoxy says that both are true, and holds that the tension is acceptable because there are mysteries and limits to our knowledge that prevent us from simply resolving every tension. But heresy will not abide the tension and thus chooses one and discards the other. Is God loving and merciful? Yes! But then why is there judgment and Hell? Both must be held, says orthodoxy, and while there are mysteries, clearly God will not compel our yes. To this, heresy says, “No way!” and so rids itself of the tension by redesigning God or by discarding the clear revelation of judgment and Hell.

Many today feel utterly free to call themselves Christians, to call themselves Catholics, and then go on to pick and choose what they like. They see this as a kind of God-given right and are supported in this by new-age spirituality and the “God-within” movements of Oprah and company. Yes, “I gotta be me. I gotta be true to myself.” So the real Jesus has to go.

And because most of these moderns cannot abide the Jesus of Scripture, they rework Him and tame Him. They take some qualities they like—His love and His ministry of healing—and discard His less-than-pleasant warnings about judgment, or His summons to carry the cross, or His demand for a chastity so thorough that it even prohibits lustful thoughts.

Never mind quoting scripture to them. They are essentially “post-scriptural” and cannot be bothered with the details of the actual revelation. God has spoken to them personally. God is love and would never do or say anything that might upset anyone. One line trumps every other in Scripture: God is love.

This is heresy: picking one thing and discarding the rest. This is a “designer” Jesus, one who coincidentally agrees with everything the dissenters wish to do or think. And don’t even think about quoting St. Paul!

Here, too, we who would evangelize are going to have to keep chipping away at this. But have confidence! There are many who have come out of this fog; we need to keep working.

VI. Arrested Development – A final factor I would like to cover is not so much a presupposition or mindset as it is a simple lack of maturity.

We live in a culture here in the West that I would argue is best described as developmentally fixated on teenage issues. Collectively, we behave like the classic teenager: hating authority, demanding all the rights yet rejecting any responsibilities, titillated by and imprudent about sex, obsessed with “fairness” (but only in an egocentric way), constantly pushing boundaries just to assert ourselves, insisting we  know a few things and being  resistant to being taught (“too cool for school”), behaving recklessly (dismissing any consequences), obsessed with trends and fitting in, always asserting our independence but insisting others pay our way. I could go on, but you get the point. I have written more on this problem here: Stuck on Teenage.

But as evangelizers we must be sober and aware of our need to summon people to maturity and to get there ourselves. Someone has to be the adult in the room. We must be careful not to try to appeal to the world around us by asking “Mother Church” to don jeans and adopt teenage foolishness. The Church must be kind, but clear, in insisting that everyone come to full maturity in Christ.

Other trends surely exist, but I have sought in these past two posts to speak to those which fold into other issues such as sexual confusion and many aspects of the culture of death. Tomorrow I’ll have some more to say about the culture of death.