Chapter XXIII. Conclusion

THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE MYSTERY OF PREDESTINATION

IT remains for us to say a few words about the transcendence of this supernatural mystery and abont the mode of knowledge by which in this life we are better able to reach it in the obscurity of faith. It is one of the most striking examples of what may be termed light and shade in theology.

In the study of God’s mysteries, especially the reconciliation of the mystery of predestination with God’s universal will to save, we are struck by the ever increasing evidence of certain principles which, however, can be intimately reconciled only in the impenetrable obscurity of the Deity. There we have one of the most striking illustrations of light and shade. The principles to be reconciled are like the two quadrants of an intensely luminous semicircle enveloping a deeper and inaccessible obscurity. The more luminous the two quadrants of the semicircle become, the more this increases in a way the obscurity of the mystery that dominates them. On the one hand, we see, indeed, the more clearly that God cannot command what is impossible, and that He wills consequently the salvation of all men; on the other hand, we realize that no one thing is better than another unless it is loved more by God, and the more, too, we see that these two principles, so certain when viewed separately, although they appear to be contrary, can be reconciled only in the eminence of the Deity that is supremely obscure for us.

This mystery is far more obscure than is the reconcilia- tion of God's foreknowledge, decrees, and grace with our 221 freedom of will. If God is God, it follows that He is omnipotent and must be able to move our free will suavely and strongly, especially to the performance of salutary and meritorious acts. Otherwise, how can we explain the free and meritorious acts which our Lord Jesus Christ’s human will had infallibly to accomplish here below for our salvation; or again how can we account for Mary’s “fiat” which she had freely and infallibly to give on the day of the Annunciation, so that the Savior might be given to us?

Certainly there is a mystery in the reconciliation of the freedom of our meritorious acts with God’s infallibly efficacious decrees. Yet far more obscure is the mystery of evil permitted by God. Whereas the mysteries of grace, which for us are obscure, are as clear as can be in themselves, the mysteries of iniquity are obscure in themselves, evil being a privation of light and goodness. From this it follows that the solution of the great mystery with which we are confronted, that of the reconciliation of predestination, connected as it is with God's universal will to save, is to be found, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas viewed it, in the incomprehensible and ineffable union of infinite mercy, justice, and supreme liberty. This was often formulated by these two great doctors who said that, if God grants the grace of final perseverance to this particular person, He does so because of His mercy; if He does not grant it to a certain other, as to Judas, it is through just punishment for previous sins and for having finally resisted the last call of grace.

It is a profound mystery which is the result of the intimate union of the three infinite perfections of mercy, justice, and sovereign liberty. The obscurity is great, but we sce that it is not the outcome of absurdity or incoherence. Two absolutely certain principles lead us to it, the first being that “God never commands what is impossible,” and the other that “no one thing would be better than another, unless it were loved more by God.”

In this case, particularly, we grasp the truth of what St. Thomas said about faith, that “it is of things not seen.” The object of faith is essentially obscure; it is neither seen nor known. But living faith that is united with charity is, as a rule, accompanied by the gift of understanding which in the literal sense of Holy Scripture penetrates the meaning or spirit of the mysteries. It is also accompanied by the gift of wisdom, which gives one a relish for them. Then the great believers realize that in the mysteries of faith, what is more obscure about this translucid obscurity is what is more divine, the Deity itself, in the inaccessible eminence of which are reconciled mercy, justice, and liberty. What is more obscure in the mysteries then appears as supremely good, and whereas the intellect is incapable of assenting to them as evident by the light of reason, the will, actuated by the very pure love of charity, gives its supernatural and immediate adherence to them.”

This explains, then, why interior souls who have to undergo the passive purifications of the spirit,* are generally very much tempted against hope when they think of predestination. These temptations are permitted by God so as to make these souls feel the necessity of rising above human arguments by prayer, a purer faith, and a most loving confidence and abandonment. This is then infused contemplation, the fruit of the gifts of understanding and wisdom, by means of which one begins to reach in a truly higher way, in the obscurity of faith, the culminating point of the mystery which we are discussing. Then it is that we begin to have a foretaste of the fruits of this exalted doctrine and, to quote the words of the Vatican Council, that we attain “a certain very fruitful understanding of the mystery.” *

The spiritual fruits of this mystery which concerns us here

could not be better expressed than by quoting in conclusion two of Bossuet’s letters on this subject. In his reply to a certain person who was tormented in mind, how to reconcile the fact of God’s willing the salvation of all men with the mystery of predestination, he said: “There are many called and few chosen, said Jesus Christ. All of those who are called can come if they wish to; free will is given to them for this reason, and the purpose of grace is to conquer their resistance and help them in their weakness. If they do not come, they have only themselves to blame; but if they come, that is because they received a certain divine touch urging them to make good use of their free will. They owe their fidelity, therefore, to God's special goodness, for which they must be extremely grateful, and this teaches them to humble themselves and say: ‘What hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory?’ 5

“All that God does in time, He foresees and predestines from all eternity. He foresaw and predestined in detail all the means by which He had to inspire His followers with fidelity, obedience, and perseverance. That is what predestination means.

“The benefit of this doctrine is to have us place our will and liberty in God’s hands, asking him to direct this will so that it may never stray from the right path, and thanking Him for all the good that it does and believing that He operates in it without weakening or destroying it, but, on the contrary, elevating, strengthening, and granting it to make good use of itself, which is the most desirable of all good things. . . . We must not, therefore, attribute the cause of salvation to him who wills or to him who runs, but to God who shows mercy. This means that neither their running nor their willing are the primary cause, and still less the only cause of their salvation; but this cause is the accompanying and preventing grace that gives them strength to continue until the end, and this grace does not act alone; for we must be faithful to it; and to accomplish this effect, it gives us the power to co-operate with it, so that we can say with St. Paul: ‘Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.’ ®

“God is the author of all the good we do. It is He who brings it to completion, just as it is He who begins it. His Holy Spirit forms in our hearts the petitions He wishes to grant. He foresaw and predestined all that; for predestination is nothing else. In all this we must believe that no one perishes, no one is cast off as a reprobate, except through his own fault. If human reasoning finds a difficulty in this, and cannot reconcile all phases of this holy and inviolable doctrine, faith must continue to reconcile all things, at the same time waiting until God causes us to see everything in Him, the fountain-head.

“The whole doctrine of predestination and grace may be summed up briefly in these words of the prophet: ‘Destruction is thy own, O Israel; thy help is only in Me.’ ? So it is. If we do not see the consistency in all this, it suffices for us that God knows, and we must humbly believe Him. God's secret is His own.”

In this the soul finds peace, not in descending by means of reasoning below faith, but, on the contrary, by aspiring to the contemplation of God's intimate life, a contemplation which, since it is above human reasoning, proceeds from faith enlightened by the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

It is fitting to recall here that the formal motive of Christian hope, like that of the other two theological virtues, must be the uncreated Being. It is, therefore, not our personal effort but God helping.® Moreover, the certainty of hope differs from that of faith in this, that it is a certainty in which the will participates; it is also a certainty of tendency, not exactly the certainty of salvation (for this would require a special revela-

tion), but it is the certainty of tending toward salvation, relying upon God's promises and help, so that “thus hope tends with certainty toward its end, sharing, as it were, in the certainty of faith.” 1° There is security in this.

This peace is established, if the soul trustfully abandons itself to God, not as the quietists do, but by doing its best every day to accomplish God's will as made known by the commandments, the spirit of the counsels, and daily occurrences, and in all else abandoning itself to the divine will of good pleasure; for we are certain beforehand that this Will can will and permit nothing except what is for the manifestation of divine goodness, for the glory of Christ the Redeemer, and for the spiritual and eternal welfare of those who love God and persevere in this love.™

To another person who wrote him, saving: “My reasonings on predestination, in spite of myself, disturbed me very much in mind,” Bossuet replied again as follows: “When these thoughts come to the mind, and only useless efforts are made to dispel them, they must end in causing us to abandon ourselves completely to God, assured that it is infinitely better to leave our salvation in His hands than to rely on our own strength. Only by thus doing shall we find peace. The whole doctrine of the divine Master’s secret is that we must adore Him and not claim to fathom Him. We must lose ourselves in this impenetrable height and depth of divine wisdom and plunge ourselves as if lost in His immense goodness, though expecting everything from Him, without however relaxing our efforts, which He demands from us for our salvation.” 12

It is Christian contemplation which, above the reasoning of theological arguments, penetrates beyond the literal meaning of the Gospel, so as to reach the spirit of the mysteries and

41 On this point consult St. Francis de Sales, Love of God, Bk. VIII, chaps. 5, 9; Bk. IX, chaps, 1-8; also Conference Il. (Eng. tr. by Dom Mackey, O.S.B.) 12 Loc. cit, P. 444.

taste their sweetness. It soars not only far above the errors that are contrary to Semipelagianism and predestinationism, but also above the conflict of theological systems. It finds its refuge in the Immutable, in the very spirit of God’s word. It is this by all means that makes us understand what a doctor of the Church, St. John of the Cross, wrote to show that, if the soul makes too much of what seems clear, this alone accounts for the far distant recoil from the abyss of faith.

“The understanding must remain in darkness, and must journey in darkness, by love and in faith, and not by much reasoning. You must be careful not to misunderstand me. . . . The Holy Spirit illumines the understanding which is recollected, and illumines it according to the manner of its recollection, The understanding cannot find any other and greater recollection than in faith. For the purer and more refined the soul is in faith, the more it has of the infused charity of God; and the more charity it has, the more it is illuminated and the more gifts of the Holy Spirit are communicated to it, for charity is the cause and the means whereby they are communicated to it. And although it is true that, in this illumination of truths, the Holy Spirit communicates a certain light to the soul, this is nevertheless as different in quality from that which is in faith, wherein is no clear understanding, as is the most precious gold from the basest metal; and, with regard to its quantity, the one is as much greater than the other as the sea is greater than a drop of water. For in the one manner there is communicated to the soul wisdom concerning one or two or three truths, etc., but in the other there is communicated to it the sum total of divine wisdom, which is the Son of God, who communicates Himself to the soul in faith.

“And if you tell me that this is all good, and that the one impedes not the other, I reply that this impedes it greatly if the soul sets store by it; for to do this is to busy itself with things which are quite clear and of little importance, yet which are quite sufficient to hinder the communication of the abyss of faith, wherein God supernaturally and secretly instructs the soul, and exalts it in virtues and gifts.” 1°

In other words, grace by a secret instinct sets us at peace concerning our salvation and the intimate reconciliation in God of infinite justice, mercy, and sovereign liberty. Grace, by this secret instinct, sets us thus at peace, because it is itself a real and formal participation in the divine nature, in God's intimate life in the very Deity, in which all the divine perfections are absolutely identified,

If we stress too much our analogical concepts of the divine attributes, we set up an obstacle to the contemplation of the revealed mysteries. The fact that these concepts are distinct from one another, like small squares of mosaic reproducing a human likeness, is why they harden the spiritual aspect of God for us. Wisdom, absolute liberty, mercy, and justice seem in some way to be distinct in God, and then His sovereignly free good pleasure appears in an arbitrary light, and not entirely penetrated by wisdom; mercy seems too restricted, and justice too rigid. But by faith illumined by the gifts of understanding and wisdom, we go beyond the literal meaning of the Gospel and imbibe the very spirit of God’s word. We instinctively feel, without seeing it, how all the divine perfections are identified in the Deity, that is superior to being, the one, the true, the intellect, and love. The Deity is superior to all perfections that are naturally susceptible of participation, these being contained in it formally and eminently without any admixture of imperfection. The Deity is not naturally susceptible of participation, either by angel or man. It is only by grace, which is essentially supernatural, that we are permitted to participate in the Deity, in God’s intimate life, inasmuch as this latter is strictly divine. Thus it is that grace is instrumental in causing us mysteriously to reach, in the ob-

18 St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. II, chap. 29, nos. 5-8 (Eng. tr. by Allison Peers.)

scurity of faith, the summit where the divine attributes are identified. The spiritual aspect of God for us is no longer hardened. We do not see His countenance, but we instinctively feel it, and this secret instinctive feeling, in the supernatural abandonment of ourselves, gives us peace.