Introduction

SECTION I

THE VIEWS OF PREDESTINATION HELD BY THE SCHOLARS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

THE question of predestination was studied by the scholars of the Middle Ages. They were guided by the principles which St. Augustine formulated in defense of the teachings of the Gospel and of St. Paul against the Pelagians and Semipelagians. After the time of St. Anselm several theologians, like Peter Lombard, were satisfied with a compilation of the principal teachings of St. Augustine, explaining some of them by others and reviving the memory of predestinarianism, a heresy in direct opposition to that of Pelagianism. Not a few theologians sought also to reconcile St. Augustine’s doctrine with what St. John Damascene wrote concerning God’s will to save all men, which he calls His antecedent will.

To see more clearly the meaning and scope of these works of the Middle Ages, we should recall that St. John Damascene and St. Augustine held different views on this subject of predestination. The former ' almost always considered the question from the moral point of view, in its relation to God's goodness and men’s sins. If God is supremely good, he asks, how does it happen that not all are saved? He answers this question by saying that some sin and remain in sin. Consequently God punishes them; but previous to the sin, God wills the salvation of all, because He is supremely good. If He punishes after the sin, it is because He is also supremely just.

This answer given by St. John Damascene, which is accord-¹ ing to common sense and is Christian in sentiment such as to be naturally understood by the faithful, somehow did not take into consideration God’s omnipotence and the efficacy of grace. It also failed to solve from the speculative point of view many difficulties, even those to which St. Augustine replied in his contest against the Pelagians. These heretics, denying the mystery of predestination, claimed that God wills equally the salvation of all, and thus they misconstrued St. Paul’s text on this point.?

Certainly St. John Damascene had clearly affirmed in the same passage that “every good comes from God” and that no evil can happen unless it is permitted by Him. But many persons, after they read his distinction between the antecedent and consequent wills in God, asked this question: If God is omnipotent, how are we to explain that His antecedent will for the salvation for all is only partly realized? Does the divine will meet with an insurmountable obstacle in the malice of some? Looking at it in this way, what becomes of the revealed mystery of predestination, which does not allow of our affirming with the Pelagians that God wills equally or in the same way the salvation of all?

Whereas St. John Damascene insisted on God’s will to save all mankind, St. Augustine, to correct the Pelagian and Semipelagian interpretations of St. Paul's text, which states that “God will have all men to be saved,” * stressed the mystery of predestination. At the same time he maintained that God never commands what is impossible, and thus He wills and actually makes it really possible for all who are bound to observe the precepts to be saved.

Thus the two extreme aspects of the mystery were affirmed. It was for the theologians to endeavor to formulate them so well that one should not exclude the other. They all agreed that the mode of their intimate reconciliation is just as much

beyond our powers of perception as is that of God's infinite mercy and justice.

Footnotes

1. De fide orth., II, 29. 57 ↩