ARTICLE III

In the Third Article We Ask: IS PREDESTINATION CERTAIN?

Difficulties:

It seems that it has no certitude, for

1. No cause whose effects can vary can be certain of its effects. But the effects of predestination can vary, for one who is predestined may not attain the effect of his predestination. This is clear from the commentary of Augustine on the words of the Apocalypse (3:11), "Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take . . . ," in which he says: "If one person will not receive glory unless another loses it, then the number of the elect is certain." Now, from this it seems that one could lose and another receive the crown of glory, which is the effect of predestination.

2. Human affairs fall under God's providence as things in nature do. But, according to the ordering of God's providence, only those natural effects that are produced necessarily by their causes proceed from them with certainty. Now, since the effect of predestination, man's salvation, arises not necessarily but contingently from its proximate causes, it seems that the ordering of predestination is not certain.

3. If a cause has certitude with respect to some effect, that effect will necessarily follow unless there is something that can resist the power of the agent. For example, dispositions in bodies here below are sometimes found to resist the action of celestial bodies; and, as a consequence, these celestial bodies do not produce their characteristic effects, which they would produce were there not something resisting them. But nothing can resist divine predestination, because, as we read in the Epistle to the Romans (9:19): "Who resisteth his will?" Therefore, if divine predestination is ordered with certitude to its effect, its effect will necessarily be produced.

4. The answer was given that the certitude which predestination has of its effect presupposes the second cause.--On the contrary, any certitude based on the supposition of something is not absolute but conditional certitude. For example, it is not certain that the sun will cause a plant to bear fruit unless the generative power of the plant is in a favorable condition; and, because of this, the certitude of the sun's producing this effect presupposes the power of the plant as though the latter were a second cause. Consequently, if the certitude of divine predestination includes the presupposition of a second cause, that certitude will not be absolute but merely conditional--like the certitude I have that Socrates is moving if he runs, and that he will be saved if he prepares himself. Therefore, God will have no more certitude about those who are to be saved than I have. But this is absurd.

5. We read in Job (34: 24): "He shall break in pieces many and innumerable, and shall make others to stand in their stead." In explanation of this passage, Gregory writes: "Some fall from the place of life while others are given it." Now, the place of life is that place to which men are ordained by predestination. Hence, one who is predestined can fall short of the effect of predestination; therefore, predestination is not certain.

6. According to Anselm, predestination has the same kind of truth that a proposition about the future has. But a proposition about the future does not have certain and determinate truth. Such a proposition is open to correction--as is clear from that passage in Aristotle where he says: "One about to walk may not walk." Similarly, therefore, the truth that predestination has does not possess certitude.

7. Sometimes one who is predestined is in mortal sin. This was clearly true of Paul when he was persecuting the Church. Now, he can stay in mortal sin until death or be killed immediately. If either happens, predestination will not obtain its effect. Therefore, it is possible for predestination not to obtain its effect.

8. But it was said that, when it is stated that one predestined may possibly die in the state of sin, the proposition is taken compositely and so is false; for its subject is taken as simultaneously having the determination predestined. But if its subject is taken without this determination, then the proposition is taken in a divided sense and is true.--On the contrary, with those forms which cannot be removed from the subject, it does not matter whether a thing is attributed to the subject with those qualifying determinations or without them. For example, taken either way, the following proposition is false: "A black crow can be white." Now, predestination is the kind of form that cannot be removed from the one predestined. In the matter at hand, therefore, there is no room for the afore-mentioned distinction.

9. If what is eternal be joined to what is temporal and contingent, then the whole is temporal and contingent. Thus, it is clear that creation is temporal, even though its notion includes God's eternal essence as well as a temporal effect. The same is true of a divine mission, which implies an eternal procession and a temporal effect. Now, even though predestination implies something eternal, it also implies a temporal effect. Therefore, predestination as a whole is temporal and contingent and, consequently, does not seem to have certitude.

10. What can be or not be cannot have any certitude. But the fact that God predestines to salvation can be or not be. For just as He can, from all eternity, predestine and not predestine, so even now He can predestine and not predestine, since present, past, and future do not differ in eternity. Consequently, predestination cannot have any certitude.

To the Contrary:

1'. In explanation of that verse in the Epistle to the Romans (8:29), "Whom he foreknew, he also predestined," the Gloss says: "Predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God by which whoever are freed are most certainly freed."

2'. If the truth of a thing is unshakable, it must be certain. But, as Augustine says: "The truth of predestination is unshakable." Therefore, predestination is certain.

3'. Whoever is predestined has this predestination from all eternity. But what exists from all eternity cannot be changed. Predestination, therefore, is unchangeable and, consequently, certain.

4'. As is clear from the Gloss mentioned above, predestination includes foreknowledge. But, as Boethius has proved, foreknowledge is certain. Therefore, predestination is also certain.

REPLY:

There are two kinds of certitude: certitude of knowledge and certitude of ordination. Now, certitude of knowledge is had when one's knowledge does not deviate in any way from reality, and, consequently, when it judges about a thing as it is. But because a judgment which will be certain about a thing is had especially from its causes, the word certitude has been transferred to the relation that a cause has to its effect; therefore, the relation of a cause to an effect is said to be certain when the cause infallibly produces its effect. Consequently, since God's foreknowledge does not imply, in all cases, a relation of a cause to all the things which are its objects, it is considered to have only the certitude of knowledge. But His predestination adds another element, because it includes not only His foreknowledge but also the relation of a cause to its objects, since predestination is a kind of direction or preparation. Thus, not only the certitude of knowledge, but also the certitude of ordination is contained in predestination. Now we are concerned only with the certitude of predestination; the certitude of knowledge, found also in predestination, has been explained in our investigation of God's knowledge.

It should be known that, since predestination is a particular type of providence, not only its notion adds something to providence, but also its certitude adds something to the certitude of providence. Now, the ordering of providence is found to be certain in two respects. First, it is certain with relation to a particular thing, when God's providence ordains things to some particular end, and they attain that end without failure. This is evident in the motions of celestial spheres and in all things in nature that act necessarily. Second, providence is certain in relation to things in general, but not in particular. For example, we see that the power of beings capable of generation and corruption sometimes falls short of the proper effects to which it has been ordered as its proper ends. Thus, the power that shapes bodies sometimes falls short of forming members completely. Yet, as we saw above when treating providence, these very defects are directed by God to some end. Consequently, nothing can fail to attain the general end of providence, even though it may at times fall short of a particular end.

The ordering of predestination, however, is certain, not only with respect to its general end, but also with respect to a particular and determinate end. For one who is ordained to salvation by predestination never fails to obtain it. Moreover, the ordering of predestination is not certain with reference to a particular end in the way in which the ordering of providence is; for, in providence, the ordering is not certain with respect to a particular end unless the proximate cause necessarily produces its effect. In predestination, however, there is certitude with respect to an individual end even though the proximate cause, free choice, does not produce that effect except in a contingent manner.

Hence, it seems difficult to reconcile the infallibility of predestination with freedom of choice; for we cannot say that predestination adds nothing to the certitude of providence except the certitude of foreknowledge, because this would be to say that God orders one who is predestined to his salvation as He orders any other person, with this difference, that, in the case of the predestined, God knows he will not fail to be saved. According to this position, one predestined would not differ in ordination from one not predestined; he would differ only with respect to [God's] foreknowledge of the outcome. Consequently, foreknowledge would be the cause of predestination, and predestination would not take place by the choice of Him who predestines. This, however, is contrary to the authority of the Scriptures and the sayings of the saints. Thus, the ordering of predestination has an infallible certitude of its own--over and above the certitude of foreknowledge. Nevertheless, the proximate cause of salvation, free choice, is related to predestination contingently, not necessarily.

This can be considered in the following manner. We find that an ordering is infallible in regard to something in two ways. First, an individual cause necessarily brings about its own effect because of the ordering of divine providence. Secondly, a single effect may be attained only as the result of the convergence of many contingent causes individually capable of failure; but each one of these causes has been ordained by God either to bring about that effect itself if another cause should fail or to prevent that other cause from failing. We see, for example, that all the individual members of a species are corruptible. Yet, from the fact that one succeeds another, the nature of the species can be kept in existence; and this is how God keeps the species from extinction, despite the fact that the individual perishes.

A similar case is had in predestination; for, even though free choice can fail with respect to salvation, God prepares so many other helps for one who is predestined that he either does not fall at all or, if he does fall, he rises again. The helps that God gives a man to enable him to gain salvation are exhortations, the support of prayer, the gift of grace, and all similar things. Consequently, if we were to consider salvation only in relation to its proximate cause, free choice, salvation would not be certain but contingent; however, in relation to the first cause, namely, predestination, salvation is certain.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. The word crown as used in the Apocalypse (3:11) may mean either the crown of present justice or the crown of future glory. No matter which meaning is taken, however, one person is said to receive the crown of another when that other person falls in the sense that the goods of one person help another, either by aiding him to merit or even by increasing his glory. The reason for this is that all the members of the Church are connected by charity in such a way that their goods are common. Consequently, one receives the crown of another when that other falls through sin and does not achieve the reward of his merits; and another person receives the fruits of the sinner's merits, just as he would have benefited from the sinner's merits had the latter persevered. From this, however, it does not follow that predestination is ever in vain.

Or it can be answered that one is said to receive the crown of another, not because the other lost a crown that was predestined for him, but because whenever a person loses the crown that was due to him because of the justice he possessed, another person is substituted in his place to make up the number of the elect--just as men have been substituted to take the place of the fallen angels.

2. A natural effect issuing infallibly from God's providence takes place because of one proximate cause necessarily ordered to the effect. The ordering of predestination, however, is not made certain in this manner but in the manner described above.*

3. A celestial body, taken in itself, imposes a kind of determinism in its action on bodies here below. Consequently, its effect necessarily takes place, unless something resists it. But God does not act on the will in the manner of one necessitating; for He does not force the will but merely moves it, without taking away its own proper mode, which consists in being free with respect to opposites. Consequently, even though nothing can resist the divine will, our will, like everything else, carries out the divine will according to its own proper mode. Indeed, the divine will has given things their mode of being in order that His will be fulfilled. Therefore, some things fulfill the divine will necessarily, other things, contingently; but that which God wills always takes place.

4. The second cause, which we must suppose as prerequisite for obtaining the effect of predestination, lies also under the ordering of predestination. The relationship between lower powers and the power of a superior agent is not one of predestination. Consequently, even though the ordering of God's predestination includes the supposition of a human will, it nevertheless has absolute certitude, despite the fact that the example given points to the contrary.

5. Those words of Job and Gregory should be referred to the state of present justice. If some fall from it, others are chosen in their place. From this, therefore, we cannot conclude to any uncertainty with reference to predestination; for those who fall from grace at the end were never predestined at all.

6. The comparison Anselm makes holds good in this respect, that just as the truth of a proposition about the future does not remove contingency from a future event, so also the truth of predestination [does not take away the contingency of predestination]. But, in another respect, the comparison is weak. For a proposition about the future is related to the future in so far as it is future, and, under this aspect, it cannot be certain. As we pointed out previously, however, the truth of predestination and foreknowledge is related to the future as present, and, consequently, is certain.

7. A thing can be said to be possible in two ways. First, we may consider the potency that exists in the thing itself, as when we say that a stone can be moved downwards. Or we may consider the potency that exists in another thing, as when we say that a stone can be moved upwards, not by a potency existing in the stone, but by a potency existing in the one who hurls it.

Consequently, when we say: "That predestined person can possibly die in sin," the statement is true if we consider only the potency that exists in him. But, if we are speaking of this predestined person according to the ordering which he has to another, namely, to God, who is predestining him, that event is incompatible with this ordering, even though it is compatible with the person's own power. Hence, we can use the distinction given above; that is, we can consider the subject with this form or without it.

8. Blackness and whiteness are, in a sense, examples of forms that exist in a subject said to be white or black. Consequently, nothing can be attributed to the subject, either according to potency or according to act, as long as blackness remains, if it is repugnant to this form of blackness. Predestination, however, is a form that exists, not in the person predestined, but in the one predestining, just as the known gets its name from knowledge in the knower. Consequently, no matter how fixed predestination may remain in the order of knowledge, yet, if we consider only the nature [of the predestined], we can attribute something to it which is repugnant to the ordering of predestination. For, considered this way, predestination is something other than the man who is said to be predestined, just as blackness is something other than the essence of a crow, even though it is not something outside the crow, but, by considering only the essence of a crow, one can attribute to it something that is repugnant to its blackness. For this reason, as Porphyry says, one can think of a white crow. Similarly, in the problem being discussed, one can attribute something to a predestined person taken in himself which cannot be attributed to him in so far as he is predestined.

9. Creation and mission imply the production of a temporal effect. Consequently, they affirm the existence of a temporal effect, and so must be temporal themselves, even though they include something eternal. Predestination, however, does not imply the production of a temporal effect--as the word itself shows--but only an ordering to something temporal, such as will, power, and all such attributes also imply. Since it does not affirm the actual existence of a temporal effect, which is also contingent, predestination is not necessarily temporal and contingent itself, because from eternity something can be unchangeably ordained to a temporal and contingent effect.

10. Absolutely speaking, it is possible for God to predestine or not to predestine each and every person, and it is possible for Him to have predestined or not to have predestined. For, since the act of predestination is measured by eternity, it never is past and never is future. Consequently, it is always considered as issuing from His will as something free. Because of the supposition, however, certain things are impossible: He cannot predestine if He has predestined, and He cannot predestine if He has already not predestined--for God does not change. Hence, it does not follow that predestination can change.