Predestination, Freedom, and the Logic of Love

Abstract

The christian affirmation of predestination is one of the more difficult challenges to the credibility of the Christian faith. The topic is most often avoided entirely in presentations of the Christian faith on a popular level, especially in Catholic circles. This is likely be- cause the very idea that the ultimate destiny of the human person is foreordained makes contemporary Christians instinctively uncom- fortable; it seems to call into question both human freedom and the justice of God, two notions that are cherished by contemporary believers. Yet a doctrine of predestination is an undeniable part of the biblical, traditional, and magisterial heritage of the Church. Is this traditional doctrine comprehensible from the perspective of contemporary belief? The notion of predestination has its roots in Scripture, but it has received much of its development from Augustine, who is the common foundation of later thought on predestination in both the Protestant and Catholic traditions. The Catholic tradition receives its Augustinian heritage on this question through Thomas Aquinas; it is Thomas's expression of the doctrine that will be explored here. (For the sake of simplicity, consideration will be limited to his sig-