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Fr. Most claims “that the interpretation of Romans 8-9 which St. Thomas inherited from St. Augustine is erroneous,”90 and he emphatically states, “All exegetes today reject this interpretation.”91

Salza, John. The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas (p. 30). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

We first note that Fr. Most in GPS [the book cited in reply #45 above] does not provide any meaningful exegesis of Romans 8 or 9. He engages in no contextual, grammatical, or lexical analysis of the applicable texts. This is uncharacteristic of Fr. Most’s otherwise thorough scholarship. One would expect more from a renowned scholar, particularly when he is criticizing a position shared by the two greatest minds of the Church. Yet Fr.Most repeatedly claims that St.Augustine, St.Thomas, and other theologians who followed them “were severely hampered by a formerly current misinterpretation” of the passages.92 Fr.Most says, “Today we know that these interpretations of Scripture were all erroneous for they are rejected with unanimity by all good exegetes of all schools.”93 Fr. Most continues by saying, “[E]xegetes of all schools teach a different interpretation of the passage from the Epistle to the Romans.”94 And again, he says, “[T]his interpretation … is now rightly abandoned, as false and lacking in foundation, by all good exegetes of all schools.”95 Fr. Most makes these kinds of sweeping statements throughout his nearly 700-page book.

Salza, John. The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas (pp. 30-31). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

***numbers (e.g., 92, 93 etc., are to footnotes to the text)

After summarily dismissing the views of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, Fr.Most appeals to the “modern scholarship” of Père Lagrange, J. Huby, and A.M.Dubarle. Based on this modern scholarship, Fr. Most says, “As a result, we are able to know clearly that which was hidden in the days of St. Thomas, namely:St. Paul, in Romans 8-9, was not speaking about the infallible predestination of individuals to eternal glory, but about the plans of God for the call of peoples to be members of the Church, in the Old or New Testament, in the full sense, and about the divine plans for those who already are members of the Church in the full sense.”96

Salza, John. The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas (p. 31). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

Continuing with his novel theory about Romans 9, Fr. Most sees a distinction between what he calls the “internal economy” that regards individual salvation (whether a man will go to heaven or hell) and the “external economy” that regards the external order (whether a man or a nation will belong to the Church). Fr. Most applies this concocted paradigm to any verse he thinks speaks of individual predestination (e.g., Rom. 8-9; 1 Cor. 4:7; Acts 13:48).Fr. Most argues that Romans 9 is about the external economy, not the internal economy. Specifically, Fr. Most advances the Arminian argument that St. Paul is speaking about the predestination of “nations” and not individuals.98

Salza, John. The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas (p. 32). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

Notwithstanding Fr. Most’s assertions, the Council of Valence authentically teaches that Romans 9 is about individual predestination and election! After citing both Romans 9:21 (about the potter’s power over the clay) and Romans 9:22 (about the vessels of mercy and wrath), the council offers its interpretation of those verses: “[F]aithfully we confess the predestination of the elect to life, and the predestination of the impious to death; in the election, moreover, of those who are to be saved, the mercy of God precedes merited good. In the condemnation, however, of those who are to be lost, the evil which they have deserved precedes the just judgment of God.”97 In short, Fr. Most’s interpretation of Romans 8-9 is expressly rejected by the Council of Valence as well as the constant teaching tradition of the Church espoused by Sts. Augustine and Thomas.

Salza, John. The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas (pp. 31-32). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

When Fr. Most reveals his two categories, he also includes the Church in the category of the “external economy.” However, St. Paul never mentions the “Church” in Romans 8 or 9. Rather, he is focused on the nation of Israel and the Jєωs’erroneous understanding of how God determines His election. Moreover, we fail to understand Fr. Most’s distinction between individual election (internal economy) and membership in the Church (external economy). God predestines people (internal economy) to eternal salvation precisely by bringing them into the Catholic Church (external economy). In light of this truth, we must also disagree with Fr. Most’s assertion that “God has freely decided upon different fundamental principles for the two economies. These principles are quite incompatible with one another.”100

This assertion is problematic because individual salvation is one effect of predestination, and membership in the Church is another effect of predestination. In fact, one effect (Church membership) may be called the cause of the other effect (salvation). As St. Thomas remarks, “[T]here is no reason why one effect of predestination should not be the reason or cause of another.”101 Even if there were two economies as Fr. Most maintains, this does not mean that God would govern them by different principles, since both economies flow from God’s single decree of predestination. This is why St.Thomas says that all the effects of predestination proceed “from its first moving principle,” which is God.102 If God really governed the “external economy” differently than the “internal economy,” one could argue that God wills to save some people (internal economy) but doesn’t will them to be Catholic (external economy). Nevertheless, we do not assume that Fr. Most’s distinction was motivated by any dissent from the Church’s infallible dogma: Extra ecclesia nulla salus est (outside the Church there is no salvation).103

Salza, John. The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas (pp. 32-33). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

Fr. Most contends that modern scholarship refutes the massa damnata interpretation of Romans 9. He even implies that the Church has overturned this long-standing interpretation. After claiming that “the obstacles that arose from the erroneous interpretations of the Epistle to the Romans (and a few other passages in St. Paul) have been removed,” he says that “the Church, benefiting from the cuмulative light which the Holy Spirit has now sent through so many centuries, teaches many truths more clearly, especially the salvific will of God.”104

Salza, John. The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas (p. 33). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

Chapter 13 [X]—His Seventh Error. (See Above in Book II. 13 [IX.].)

If you wish to be a catholic, do not venture to believe, to say, or to teach that “they whom the Lord has predestinated for baptism can be snatched away from his predestination, or die before that has been accomplished in them which the Almighty has predestined.” There is in such a dogma more power than I can tell assigned to chances in opposition to the power of God, by the occurrence of which casualties that which He has predestinated is not permitted to come to pass. It is hardly necessary to spend time or earnest words in cautioning the man who takes up with this error against the absolute vortex of confusion into which it will absorb him, when I shall sufficiently meet the case if I briefly warn the prudent man who is ready to receive correction against the threatening mischief. Now these are your words: “We say that some such method as this must be had recourse to in the case of infants who, being predestinated for baptism, are yet, by the failing of this life, hurried away before they are born again in Christ.” Is it then really true that any who have been predestinated to baptism are forestalled before they come to it by the failing of this life? And could God predestinate anything which He either in His foreknowledge saw would not come to pass, or in ignorance knew not that it could not come to pass, either to the frustration of His purpose or the discredit of His foreknowledge? You see how many weighty remarks might be made on this subject; but I am restrained by the fact of having treated on it a little while ago, so that I content myself with this brief and passing admonition.

Augustine, Saint. The Complete Works of St. Augustine: Cross-linked to the Bible and with in-line footnotes (p. 8846). Kindle Edition.