The mystery of predestination is that we must altogether affirm God’s aseity, human freedom and responsibility, grace, and the permission of sin. Nobody would deny there is immediate tension in these affirmations, but are they beyond reconciliation? I don’t think so, though I admit to not having a fully worked out view on the matter.
In my preferred model, Dual Sources, I think it can be successfully argued that:
- Given divine simplicity, we can safeguard libertarian human freedom.
- That both God and us are 100% the cause of our acts.
- But that only human beings are ultimately responsible for sin.
I offer no defense of these assumptions now; I only claim they can – and have been – be adequately defended. (I provide a brief overview of the first point in HTTAG.)
What I’m interested in are the implications.
Here are some consequences of the Dual Sources account. First, that God cannot be changed or frustrated by his creatures. Nothing surprises God. Nothing can interfere with God’s meticulous providence. This is certainly harmonious with Scripture and Tradition. It’s also just good metaphysics, since anything else which exists apart from God – both creatures, their actions and effects — exist only insofar as God gives them being.
This affirms divine concurrentism: that fire really heats but that God causes to exist whatever there is in the fire heating. God gives things the dignity of being real, secondary causes, though everything derives it’s being and therefore action from God.
Many people who provide a freewill defense assume (mistakenly) God cannot have control over the free action of his creatures. This, of course, is belittling to God, and makes a mess of Revelation. God hardens Pharaohs heart (or at least permits Pharaoh to harden his own heart), God preveniently saves and protects Mary from sin, God causes Peter (freely) to deny Christ three times and Judas (freely) to sellout. God knows all this eternally because God causes all this eternally. Admittedly, this a startling implication for people, but it is at once the convergent conclusion of philosophical reason and divine revelation.
Does this make God ultimately responsible for sin? Thankfully, it does not.
The Dual Sources model only claims that when a creature sins, God is causally operative (He has to be), but his innocence can be safeguarded because 1) sin is a privation (something lacking, so not created) and 2) blame requires intention and 3) divine universal causality does not necessarily entail God’s intention to cause sin.
A quick (though possibly inadequate) example of the above points: God causes the finger and the pulling of the trigger, but does not cause the intention of murder, and so God is not blameworthy for the murder, even if God is (partly) responsible for it. The finger and the pulling of the trigger are positive actions, all of which derive their existence ultimately from God; the privation accounting for the intention to murder is not – that is due to the lack of conforming to the appropriate moral standard, and so blame is assigned to the creature alone and the defect therein. (Of course, more details are going to be desired to fully elaborate the account, which, again, is beyond the point of this post. Once more, I refer out.)
So, the question then becomes why God permits the creature to sin. Because, presumably, God could have caused the creature not to sin, and without violating the creature’s libertarian freedom. Most Thomists accept these positions: that God allows sins, though God could have prevented sin. Thomists are not (typically) Molinists, who hold that free actions are somehow beyond God’s causal control, and the best God could do is arrange the world according to His middle knowledge of creaturely counterfactuals, then “hit play” by infusing existence into that providential order. Certainly, there is an attractive logic to the Molinist account, but grounding objections aside, it seems to make God passive, and possibly creatures determined for reasons which are now too complicated to get into. (I admit these objections to Molinism can possibly be overcome.)
So, God is not ultimately to blame for sin, but God could have prevented sin. Why doesn’t He?
Here are some proposals.
Good of the Individual Account: God allows suffering and evil if – and only if – it is the best or only available means to deliver some outweighing benefit primarily to the individual, such that they would (if in perfect all-seeing rationality) accept the trade. These goods may involve a closer second-person relation to God, along with delivering their deepest desires of the heart (Eleonore Stump’s account, essentially.)
Goods of the Whole Account: It is somehow better to permit a world where creatures are allowed to sin than to create a world where no creatures actually sin, because perhaps some goods are so bespeaking of God’s goodness – goods such as forgiveness, mercy, and perhaps the atonement itself – that on the whole the trade is acceptable.
Of course, the Good of the Individual Account and Goods of the Whole Account may be compatible, but either one on its own may justify/explain God’s allowing creatures to sin. Both accounts clearly deny the premise from the problem of evil that God could not have morally sufficient reasons for allowing suffering and evil.
But could Thomists adopt a freewill defense? Well, given that God can move us freely not to sin, that option seems more difficult to embrace, though certain Thomists, such as Robert Koons, argue otherwise. I offer no evaluation of that defense because I honestly have not considered it seriously enough.
“It’s a mystery” is always an option: That we should just not expect to see the reasons why God allows some to turn away from goodness though he could have acted to prevent that from happening. Saying, “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable response to predestination and probably better than attempting divine psychology. But since we can know God is perfect goodness, justice, and love, we can rest in the assurance that God, if he permits people to turn away, has perfectly good, just, and loving reasons for doing so.
Finally, one might consider a “hopeful” universalism: Because God can possibly save everyone, we may retain a reasonable hope that God does save everyone. For Catholics, “strong-form” universalism is out, in saying that we *know* God saves everyone, but because Catholics are obligated to pray for the salvation of all souls (Fatima prayer, mass) and because God doesn’t obligate us to pray for the impossible, then possibly all may be saved.
Recommended Reading:
Freewill and Divine Universal Causality