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Quote from: Predestination 17/09/2024, 13:21:21
Hello friend - I think you are misunderstanding the definition of double predestination. Double predestination is not the Calvinist idea of equal ultimacy. The term double predestination was first used by st Isidore of Seville who said -

“Predestination is double (gemina) whether of election to peace, or of reprobation to death.’ The same thing, therefore, (with others) I believe and confess, though whatever may happen, with those who are the elect of God and true Catholics, according as I am helped by divine inspiration, encouragement and provision. Amen.”
(Sentent. 2. cap. 6)

the difference is whether positive reprobation is consequent (dogma) or antecedent (heresy).


God bless you,

also why is everyone assuming I’m trying to get on the bad side of people for posting Lagrange? Again Matthew if you want me to I will move this to a more fitting thread all you have to do is tell me to.

God bless

Friend, I am referring to double predestination in that sense in which it was condemned by the Councils of Orange and Trent. We will come back to Catholic schools of thought on this subject in a minute. First, to begin with, the twin heresies of Calvinism and Pelagianism are condemned by the Church and thus anathema to us Catholics on this issue.

This is from the Council of Orange: "According to the catholic faith we also believe that after grace has been received through baptism, all baptized persons have the ability and responsibility, if they desire to labor faithfully, to perform with the aid and cooperation of Christ what is of essential importance in regard to the salvation of their soul. We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema. We also believe and confess to our benefit that in every good work it is not we who take the initiative and are then assisted through the mercy of God, but God himself first inspires in us both faith in him and love for him without any previous good works of our own that deserve reward, so that we may both faithfully seek the sacrament of baptism, and after baptism be able by his help to do what is pleasing to him. We must therefore most evidently believe that the praiseworthy faith of the thief whom the Lord called to his home in paradise, and of Cornelius the centurion, to whom the angel of the Lord was sent, and of Zacchaeus, who was worthy to receive the Lord himself, was not a natural endowment but a gift of God's kindness." Trent reiterated this: " CANON XVII. If any one shall say, that the grace of justification only befalleth those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema."

Now, regarding acceptable schools of Catholic thought on Predestination, I agree with this from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia: "Whatever view one may take regarding the internal probability of negative reprobation, it cannot be harmonized with the dogmatically certain universality and sincerity of God's salvific will. For the absolute predestination of the blessed is at the same time the absolute will of God "not to elect" a priori the rest of mankind (Suarez), or which comes to the same, "to exclude them from heaven" (Gonet), in other words, not to save them. While certain Thomists (as Bañez, Alvarez, Gonet) accept this conclusion so far as to degrade the "voluntas salvifica" to an ineffectual "velleitas", which conflicts with evident doctrines of revelation, Francisco Suárez labours in the sweat of his brow to safeguard the sincerity of God's salvific will, even towards those who are reprobated negatively. But in vain. How can that will to save be called serious and sincere which has decreed from all eternity the metaphysical impossibility of salvation? He who has been reprobated negatively, may exhaust all his efforts to attain salvation: it avails him nothing. Moreover, in order to realize infallibly his decree, God is compelled to frustrate the eternal welfare of all excluded a priori from heaven, and to take care that they die in their sins. Is this the language in which Holy Writ speaks to us? No; there we meet an anxious, loving father, who wills not "that any should perish, but that all should return to penance" (2 Peter 3:9)." https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm