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Course 10 · Lesson 4.4

Eastern and Catholic views on election and foreknowledge

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 10 outline

Module 1: Sin and Human Nature

  1. Human beings in the image of God
  2. The fall in Scripture: Genesis 3 and Romans 5
  3. Original sin in Augustine and the Western tradition
  4. Ancestral sin and mortality in the Eastern tradition

Module 2: Grace and Free Will

  1. Pelagius and Augustine
  2. The church responds: semi-Pelagianism and the Council of Orange
  3. Luther and Erasmus on the bondage of the will
  4. Monergism and synergism across the traditions

Module 3: Justification and Sanctification

  1. Justification in Paul and James
  2. Justification by faith alone in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions
  3. The Catholic teaching and the Council of Trent
  4. Sanctification, holiness and theosis
  5. Recent ecumenical discussion of justification

Module 4: Predestination and Election

  1. Election and predestination in Scripture
  2. Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin on predestination
  3. Arminius, Wesley and conditional election
  4. Eastern and Catholic views on election and foreknowledge

Module 5: Atonement, Redemption and Adoption

  1. Atonement and its extent: for whom did Christ die?
  2. Redemption: the images of ransom, freedom and return
  3. Adoption: sons and daughters of God
  4. The order of salvation across the traditions

Module 6: Death, Resurrection and Judgment

  1. Death and the intermediate state
  2. The resurrection of the dead in Scripture and the creeds
  3. The final judgment: Christ the judge
  4. Purgatory, the Orthodox practice of praying for the dead, and the Protestant objection

Module 7: Heaven, Hell and the New Creation

  1. Heaven and the vision of God
  2. Hell: eternal torment, annihilationism and universal hope
  3. The fate of those who have not heard the gospel
  4. The new heavens and the new earth

Module 8: The Millennium and Christian Eschatological Traditions

  1. Revelation and apocalyptic literature
  2. Premillennial views, historic and dispensational
  3. Amillennial and postmillennial views
  4. Preterist, historicist and futurist approaches
  5. What the traditions hold in common about the end

All courses

Program / Course 10: Salvation and Eschatology / Lesson 4.4

What you will learn

  • Describe the Eastern patristic view of predestination as grounded in foreknowledge without compulsion.
  • Explain John of Damascus’s distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent will.
  • Summarize the Catholic position and the Dominican and Jesuit schools.
  • Say where these views overlap with, and differ from, Calvinist and Arminian teaching.

The big idea

Neither the Orthodox nor the Catholic Church teaches that God decrees some people to damnation. The Eastern fathers held that God knows all that will happen and wills the salvation of all, and that his knowledge does not force anyone’s choice. The Catholic Church teaches predestination to glory as a free act of God and holds that no one is predestined to hell, while allowing different schools of theology to explain how grace and freedom fit together. Both traditions stand outside the Calvinist and Arminian terms of debate and offer their own accounts.

Key terms

Foreknowledge
God’s knowledge of what will happen before it happens. Eastern writers insist that foreknowing a choice does not cause it.
Antecedent and consequent will
John of Damascus’s distinction between what God wills first, namely the salvation of all, and what he wills as a result of what creatures do.
Synergy
The Eastern teaching that salvation involves the cooperation of divine grace and human freedom, with grace always first.
Thomism
The school that follows Thomas Aquinas. In the debate on grace, Dominican Thomists stressed God’s prior decree and the efficacy of grace.
Molinism
The view of the Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535 to 1600) that God knows what any free creature would do in any circumstance, and arranges grace accordingly. It is called middle knowledge.
Congregatio de auxiliis
A commission convened in Rome from 1597 to 1607 to settle the dispute between Dominicans and Jesuits over grace and free will. It did not issue a verdict, and the pope allowed both views.
Presumption
A false confidence that one is saved, or that one is among the elect, against which Trent warned.

Background

The Calvinist and Arminian positions grew within Western Protestantism, but most Christians in history have belonged to churches that do not use their terms. Eastern Christians never had an Augustinian controversy of the Western kind. Catholics, while honoring Augustine, saw the sixteenth-century Protestant form of the teaching as mistaken on some points. Both churches have clear teachings on predestination, though these look different from Protestant ones.

This lesson presents the Eastern and Catholic positions in their own words and notes some modern discussion. It is important to avoid two mistakes. One is to assume that they are the same as Arminianism. The other is to assume that they avoid the subject. Each has a full tradition of reflection, with real internal differences.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Foreknowledge in the Eastern fathers

Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria and others read Romans 8:29 as saying that God predestines those he foreknows will respond. Chrysostom’s homilies on Romans stress that God’s calling does not override human will. A person who is called may refuse, as Jesus’ parables show. Foreknowledge does not make a thing happen. A person who sees an event from a high place does not cause it.

At the same time, the Greek fathers affirm that every good thing in a person is given by grace. Salvation is not earned. Their emphasis is that God does not will evil, does not save by compulsion and does not condemn by decree.

Step 2: John of Damascus

John of Damascus, in the eighth century, gathered the Greek fathers’ teaching in his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. He taught that God foreknows all things but does not predetermine everything. God foreknows human choices, but he does not decree them. He distinguished between God’s antecedent will, that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4), and his consequent will, which is his just judgment in response to what each does.

This distinction was later used in the West too, by Aquinas among others. In the East it supports the view that the damned are damned by their own refusal, and that God’s will for them was life.

Step 3: The Orthodox view today

Orthodox theology today describes election as God’s universal call and his preparation, in Christ, of a people to share in his life. It rejects the idea of an eternal decree dividing humanity. It also treats Augustine’s late doctrine as a one-sided development. At the same time, Orthodox writers insist that the initiative lies always with God. The fathers’ emphasis on synergy does not mean that humans take a first step by themselves. Grace precedes and accompanies every movement of the will.

Step 4: The Catholic teaching

The Catechism teaches that God predestines no one to go to hell. For that, a willful turning away from God, a mortal sin, is required, and persistence in it until the end. It also teaches that predestination to glory is the free initiative of God, who calls all to share in his life. The Council of Trent, in its decree on justification, warns against two errors: the presumption of predestination, in which a person assumes that he is among the elect, and the despair that arises from fear of one’s rejection. It teaches that no one can know with certainty that he is among the elect, unless by special revelation.

Catholic theologians have not agreed on how to explain the harmony of grace and freedom. The Dominican Domingo Báñez argued that God’s grace moves the will efficaciously by a prior decree, in a way that still leaves the will free. The Jesuit Luis de Molina argued that God knows what free creatures would do in any circumstance and arranges grace accordingly. The dispute became heated, and Pope Paul V in 1607 closed the commission without a verdict, forbidding each side to condemn the other.

Step 5: Comparison and caution

The Eastern and Catholic views resemble Arminian teaching in rejecting predestination to damnation and affirming God’s desire for all. They differ from many Arminians in teaching baptism and the sacraments as the normal means of grace, in the Eastern case in rejecting forensic categories, and in the Catholic case in the doctrine of merit. They resemble Calvinist teaching in affirming that God’s grace has the priority in every good act. Anyone who wishes to place them on a map of the Protestant debate should do so with care, as they do not accept the terms.

  1. Does knowing an event beforehand cause it? What picture helps make the answer clear?
  2. What does it mean to say that God wills all to be saved and yet that not all are saved?
  3. Why might the Catholic Church have declined to settle the Dominican and Jesuit dispute?
  4. What is the danger of presuming that one is elect? What is the danger of despair?
  5. How does the Eastern emphasis on synergy differ from the Arminian emphasis on free response?
  6. Which part of these views would a Calvinist question most?

Examples

The watchtower

A teacher says: a man on a high tower sees two travelers on different roads who will meet at a crossing. His seeing does not make them meet. Greek fathers used similar images to show that God’s foreknowledge is not compulsion. A student asks whether God is like the man on the tower or more like the one who built the roads. The teacher says that traditions answer differently. (A constructed illustration.)

The commission in Rome

Between 1597 and 1607 popes listened to theologians argue over grace and free will. Dominicans and Jesuits each feared that the other was giving too much to the creature or too little. At the end, Pope Paul V ordered neither side to call the other heretical. The episode shows a church choosing to allow disagreement on a question it had not fully defined.

Different perspectives

Orthodox

God foreknows all and wills the salvation of all. His foreknowledge does not cause human choices. Salvation is a gift, received in cooperation with grace. The Orthodox reject any eternal decree to damnation and teach that the lost have turned away from God’s love.

Catholic

Predestination to glory is a free act of God, and God predestines no one to hell. Trent warns against both presumption and despair. Dominican and Jesuit theologians explain the harmony of grace and freedom differently, and the Church permits both. Catholics are called to hope in God’s mercy and to work out their salvation.

Lutheran

Lutherans agree with Catholics and the Orthodox that God does not predestine to damnation, and with Calvinists that election to life is not based on foreseen merit. They teach that election is revealed in Christ and should not be pursued in speculation.

Reformed

Reformed writers argue that foreknowledge views do not take seriously the biblical texts that speak of God choosing unconditionally. They hold that grace must be effective, and that the Catholic and Eastern synergistic accounts leave room for human merit, which they reject.

Arminian and Wesleyan

Arminians feel at home with the Eastern emphasis on foreknowledge without compulsion and on God’s universal desire. They differ from the East in their forensic approach to justification and from Catholics on merit and the sacraments.

Why it matters

A student who knows only the Calvinist and Arminian debate may assume that the question is a Protestant matter. Most Christians, historically and today, belong to the Orthodox and Catholic churches, which offer their own answers. Knowing them corrects the idea that the Western Protestant argument is the only way to ask the question, and it shows how churches can hold that grace is first without adopting a doctrine of double predestination.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Catholics teach free will alone and Protestants grace alone.

Correction: The Catholic Church teaches that grace is first and necessary, and that the will, healed by grace, can respond. No Protestant tradition denies that faith involves the person.

Misunderstanding: The Orthodox teach that people save themselves.

Correction: Orthodox teaching holds that salvation is a gift, that grace goes before every good act, and that the human role is receiving and cooperating.

Misunderstanding: The Dominican and Jesuit dispute was about whether grace is necessary.

Correction: Both sides agreed that grace is necessary. The dispute was about how God’s grace and human freedom are coordinated.

Misunderstanding: Foreknowledge views make God passive.

Correction: Eastern and Catholic teachers hold that God is the cause of all good and acts in history. They deny only that his knowledge of a free act causes the act.

Knowledge check

How do Eastern fathers explain predestination?

They read it in light of foreknowledge: God knows beforehand who will respond to his call, and predestines accordingly, without forcing anyone’s choice. They affirm that all good is a gift of grace, that God wills the salvation of all, and that the lost are lost by their own refusal. They reject a decree to damnation.

What is the difference between God’s antecedent and consequent will in John of Damascus?

The antecedent will is what God first wills for all, that all be saved and come to know the truth. The consequent will is what God wills as a just response to what creatures actually do. The distinction helps explain how God can desire all to be saved while some are lost.

What does the Catholic Church teach about predestination?

It teaches that predestination to glory is a free act of God and that God predestines no one to hell. It requires, for damnation, a person’s own mortal sin persisted in to the end. Trent warns against presuming that one is elect and against despair, and denies that anyone has certainty of being chosen without special revelation.

Who were Báñez and Molina?

Báñez was a Spanish Dominican who taught that God’s grace efficaciously moves the will by a prior decree, while preserving freedom. Molina was a Spanish Jesuit who taught that God knows what free creatures would do in any circumstance, called middle knowledge. A papal commission could not settle the dispute, and both views have been permitted.

Think it through

  1. Is God’s knowing something different from God’s causing it? How might you test your answer against everyday examples?
  2. Why might a church be wise to leave a hard question partly open?
  3. What would a Reformed Christian most want to ask an Orthodox Christian about election?

Independent assignment

Reading John of Damascus

In your notebook, write 400 to 600 words. Read the chapters on foreknowledge and predestination in John of Damascus. Summarize his position in your own words. Then compare it, in a paragraph each, with the Catholic Catechism’s statement on predestination and with one Reformed confession. Finish by listing one point of agreement and one of difference for each pair.

Further study