A concept involved intimately with the idea of predestination is that of predilection, described as "the love of predilection." To quote Father Garrigou-Lagarange (all quotations will be from his book, Predestination):

Predestination implies, therefore, along with foreknowledge a love of predilection or the will to effect in a particular person and by means of him in preference to a certain other, this salutary good by which such a person will actually merit and attain eternal life." (Page 47)

While you will not find a direct quote in the solemn magisterium that "God loves the elect more," such a view is "the logical result" of the teachings of the solemn magisterium:

The Council of Orange makes no positive affirmation about predestination to glory and grace; but we see that this is the logical result of the canons just quoted, especially of canons twelve and twenty. The latter canon reads: "There is no good act done by man which God does not help man to do." Canon twelve declares that "God loves us because of what we will be by the gift of His grace, not because of what we are by our own merit." These two statements along with the Pauline text: "What hast thou that thou hast not received?" are tantamount to saying that one would not be better than another if one were not loved more and helped more by God, and that in the work of salvation everything comes from God, in this sense that we cannot detect therein the least good which could be said to be exclusively from ourselves and not from Him." (Page 52)

This idea of the elect being "loved more by God" is clear in St. Thomas:

On the other hand, as regards the consequent will, St. Thomas affirms, more clearly than anyone had done before his time, the principle of predilection, which is that one would not be better than another unless one were loved more by God. As he says: "Since God's love is the cause of goodness in things, as has been said, no one thing would be better than another if God did not will greater good for one than for another . . . And the reason why some things are better than others, is that God wills them a greater good. Hence it follows that He loves more the better things." (Pages 75-76)

And again:

The fourth article proves that the predestined are elected by God, so that predestination presupposes election, and this latter presupposes love. As St. Thomas says: "Predestination presupposes election, in the order of reason; and election presupposes love" (page 86)

The second principle applied here is that of predilection: no thing would be better than another, unless it were loved more by God. St. Thomas, without alluding at all to the foreseeing of our merits, whether conditionally future or future, excludes any idea of passivity or dependence from the divine knowledge. He writes as follows: "Election and love, however, are differently ordered in God than in ourselves: because in us the will in loving does not cause good, but we are incited to love by the good which already exists; and therefore we choose someone to love, and so election in us precedes love. In God, however, it is the reverse. For His will, by which in loving He wishes good to someone, is the cause of that good possessed by some in preference to others. Thus it is clear that love precedes election in the order of reason, and election precedes predestination. Whence all the predestinate are objects of election and love." (Page 87)

When God says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," He's not kidding.

The principle of predilection explains a lot, like no salvation outside the catholic church, and the baptism of some infants who die before being able to exercise personal faith, and not others.

I wonder when was the last time the principle of predilection was spoken of by a priest in a homily in a Catholic church.

DR

Welcome to the board here DecemRationis, I always think on that one verse in the Bible you quoted: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,"  

twiceborn said:

I think Molinism has been like a cancer in The Church, expanding and undermining even the most fundamental of doctrines (Original Sin, EENS, etc).

Or you could see it as having a Counter-Reformation effect, preventing a too-rigid Augustinianism ( boy, does that sound pompous ).  

I think it's a red herring, this whole argument.  It's something Catholic intellectuals like to do to sharpen their wits.  But the question is not resolvable, in my view.  There are problems with every schema that you can come up with on grace vs. free will.  The problem with Molinism is that it posits what I imagine like a giant invisible pool of grace that we just have to reach up and grab some of, as if it were an apple hanging from a tree.  Any of us can have it, just as any of us can have air, as long as we choose to breathe.  It's sloppy, sort of like my mixed metaphors in this paragraph.

If Molinism is unsatisfactory from the point of view of God's predestination, Thomism is unsatisfactory from the point of view of our free will.  It also makes the idea that God wants all men to be saved an in-name-only proposition.  The will has to correspond with sufficient grace, but God already knows whose will is going to respond, so that He can give them more grace ( efficient grace ).  Yet if the will responds in the first place, it can only be because of grace, because of what He gives.  So you enter this Catch-22.  The sufficient grace of Thomism is actually often insufficient!

It makes you wonder, "Then why doesn't He give sufficient grace to everyone, so that their sufficent grace becomes efficient grace through a motion of the will?  Why is this sufficient grace only sufficient for some and not for others, when it is God who controls how much grace is necessary for each person?"  Couldn't this lead to the conclusion that God Himself is responsible for not giving enough grace to certain people?  

So yeah, if you are going to be a Thomist, you flirt with the idea that God intended for some to be damned.  And how does this square with His desire for universal salvation?  Yes, He has favorites, but He still desires the salvation of all.  Molinism resolves this problem, and its sufficient grace really is sufficient in all cases.  That is the virtue of Molinism, that is the "Eureka!" aspect of it.  It's just kind of sloppy, with grace being poured out all over the place indiscriminately.  

Liguori had an in-between view, I forget the name of it, but that is what I have.

Raoul,

Thomism is unsatisfactory from the point of view of our free will . . . .The sufficient grace of Thomism is actually often insufficient!

So yeah, if you are going to be a Thomist, you flirt with the idea that God intended for some to be damned.

Such are the facile objections.

I'm wondering, before we get into this deeper, do you know the Thomist response to these objections? I take it, in light of your criticism, that you find the responses insufficient. In what way do you find them so?

Before we do get into this more, I'll cite the Haydock commentary on Romans 8:29:

This foreknowledge of God, according to St. Augustine,[6] is not merely a foreseeing of what men will do by the assistance and graces of God's ordinary providence, much less a foreseeing of what they will do by their own natural strength, as the Pelagian heretics pretended: but is a foreknowledge including an act of the divine will, and of his love towards his elect servants; (as to know in the Scriptures, when applied to God, is many times the same as to approve and love) God therefore hath foreseen or predestinated, or decreed that these elect, by the help of his special graces, and by the co-operation of their free-will, should be conformable to the image of his Son, that so his Son, even as man, might be the first-born, the chief, and the head of all that shall be saved. (Witham) --- God hath preordained that all his elect shall be conformable to the image of his Son. We must not here offer to dive into the secrets of God's eternal election: only firmly believe that all our good, in time and eternity, flows originally from God's free goodness; and all our evil from man's free will. (Challoner)

In a nutshell, the predetermination and choice of God includes the choice that the elect act "freely." This can be understood philosophically and logically, without contradiction to either the principle of God's infallible and independent choice, not based on the merits of men, and the freedom of the ones chosen.  

As to the sufficient grace being insufficient - no. The grace is sufficient; the response to it is insufficient. The power is capable of doing what it was intended for; thus, it is "sufficient." You're arguing that the failure in fact shows that the power is not sufficient potentially. If I roll a normal die a thousand times and a 1 never comes up, that does not show the die "insufficient" in the matter of rolling ones, or not truly have the power to come up 1. It just presents the circuмstance of the die not coming up 1. If this were to happen a million or a billion times, you still would not be able to prove the die was not sufficient to roll a 1, or that a claim that it "could" was not true. Man's failure in fact does not show the grace insufficient for its purpose, or to not truly have the potential. As I said, it's a facile objection that does not reveal a rational or logical contradiction, and thus is not an objection that stands the test of truth.

I give you the original Rheims commentary on God "intending some to be damned," Romans 9:14:

In all this mercy of God towards some, and justice towards othersome, both the pardoned work by their own free will, and thereby deserve their salvation: and the other no less by their own free will, without all necessity, work wickedness, and themselves and only of themselves procure their own damnation.

Lest you think this comes from a Molinist perspective, here's the commentary on the "[n]ot yet born" of verse 11:

"By the same example of these twins, it is evident also, that neither nations nor particular persons be elected eternally, or called temporally, or preferred to God's favor before others, by their own merits: because God, when he made the choice, and first loved Jacob, and refused Esau, respected them both as ill, and the one no less than the other guilty of damnation for original sin, which was alike in them both."

DR

Caminus,

Agree with you on almost all counts. Not quite sure on the "new theology" part, simply because I'm not sure what you mean. But ditto as to Father GL. And I agree about Molinism and the damage it does to the principle of predilection.

DR

Myrna,

Thanks for the welcome. That verse gives one a lot to ponder.

DR

Yes, welcome and wonderful quotr from St. Edmund

DecemRationis~

Welcome to this forum and thank you for the thoughtful topic (which I had to edit because of pathetic spelling and comprehension.)

Elizabeth and Dawn,

Thanks for the welcome.

DR