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[Here he says again that these Gentiles, before their conversion,
had no hope of salvation. Why, then, do Liberals say
otherwise?]
G.
Predestination and Divine Election
The joy of the Early Church was not in the delusion that their
salvation was an accomplished fact, the error of modern Evangelicals
(and, apparently, Conciliar Catholics), but that they were in "the way
of salvation,"” whereas those outside the communion of the faithful
were not. In what exactly were the Christians rejoicing? In the fact
that they had received the "adoption of sons of God." (Gal. 4:5). This
is most beautifully expressed by St. Paul to the Ephesians. We remind
you again: Read these words as addressed to Catholics, converts to
the Catholic Church, whose relatives and friends thought they had
been seduced into an outlandish Jєωιѕн cult, who did their best to
bring them back to their senses. (We are aware that we have
considered these verses above; your attention here is invited to verses
which bear witness to the Doctrine of Predestination, which must be
seen as subsidiary to the Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation.)
Ephes. 1:3 — Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings in
heavenly places, in Christ:
4 — As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight in charity.
5 — Who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children
through Jesus Christ unto himself: according to the purpose
of his will:
6 — Unto the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he hath
graced us in his beloved son.
7 — In whom we have redemption through his blood, the
remission of sins, according to the riches of his grace,
8 — Which hath superabounded in us in all wisdom and
prudence,
9 — That he might make known unto us the mystery of his
will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed
in him.
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10 — In the dispensation of the fulness of times, to reestablish
all things in Christ that are in heaven and on earth,
in him.
From these words we may draw the following conclusions:
1. With respect to the salvation of souls, we must recognize that
all is achieved by divine initiative. We have italicized the verbs which
describe the actions of God on our behalf.
2. Nothing could be more obvious than that St. Paul is exulting
over the fact that the Almighty has selected certain ones out of the
host of humanity for the "adoption of children."
3. St. Paul’s realization is of "the great mystery," that whereas
in the Old Testament NO ONE could attain Heaven, now, "in these
days," "in the fulness of time," certain persons are able to do so, not
only from among the Jews, but from among the Gentiles also. It is this
fact that makes the age "the fulness of time."
4. Reflexively, we react by saying: But what about the rest?
How is it just of God to choose some and to reject others? There can
be but one answer to such a question, though admittedly it does not
satisfy us, for it is not fully comprehensible, not, that is, as comprehensible
as we would like. The answer is that those have been
chosen, who were foreknown to accept their election. If others are
rejected, it is because quite freely they reject the grace which would
be for their peace.
5. If, therefore, anyone is chosen, the choice must begin in and
with God, for no one can do anything for himself, unless God chooses
him and enables him.
6. The joy of the predestinated, therefore, is that, of His infinite
mercy, God has chosen us, through Jesus Christ . . . according to His
good pleasure, in Whom He means "to re-establish all things in
Christ." It is the holy Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation coupled with
the mystery of Divine Election which explains the sustained, unremittant
joyfulness of the Sacred Liturgy. In the Old Testament, the
Israelites exulted over the fact that their God was true, whereas those
of the Gentile nations were false, non-existent, dead objects of wood
and clay and stone. They jubilated further over their own predilection:
the true God had chosen them and guaranteed them His special favor,
unending protection, and eventual salvation; an everlasting kingdom
and innumerable progeny. The word, salvation, in the Old Testament
meant earthly peace and security, divine protection, so that life on
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earth could be lived without enslavement to heathen enemies or loss
of national identity.
In Christ, the joy of the ancient Promise is made full and offered
to men of all races and languages and tribes and nations. But more
important, Christ our Savior reveals that the ancient Promise had
dimensions only vaguely conceived by the Israelites. He makes his
promises not to the whole human race, but to the Elect among the
nations, Jews and Gentiles both. In the New Testament, salvation is
revealed to be everlasting life in the immediate vision of the most
Blessed Trinity in Heaven. The jubilation of the early Christians
which inspired the Sacred Liturgy is the assurance that there is life
after death, that most men will suffer eternally because of their
perverseness, but they, who have been called through the preaching of
" the Apostles and their co-workers, will not be lost due to their sins,
which they could not deny, but will be saved through the Spirit, the
Water and the Blood (I Jn. 5:8)., the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth,
Baptism and the Eucharist. St. Paul is unmistakable in his insistence
that only those who enter the Church have hope of salvation. He
insists that before faith and Baptism, whether for Jew or Greek, there
is only damnation. (I Cor. 1:18). He says that even in his day, the
word had already filled the earth. (Rom. 10:18). The reason the word
travelled so quickly was its absoluteness, its urgent warning, and its
message of hope. The message was utterly simple: I say unto you that
unless you repent and accept Baptism and believe in Christ, you shall
perish. What he was saying and what he was understood to mean was
that all who might wish to be saved must become Christians by joining
the Church, believe and live the Gospel, whole and entire, pure
and unadulterated.
St. Paul tells the people that they should not be petty and
frivolous, as were the pagans around them, and such as they had
formerly been. Their conversation (i.e., their preoccupation and orientation)
should be toward Heaven (Phil. 3:20). They should give themselves
up to constant prayer. (I Thes. 5:17). Their primary prayer
should be one of thanksgiving (Col. 1:12)., thanksgiving over their
predestination to salvation.
And, as we have said, the Liturgy which grew out of the Early
Church reflects this spirit of exultant gratitude. The spiritual elation
expressed in the psalms of David and the other inspired singers of the
Old Testament was raised to a much more sublime dimension in the
New. Thus do the songs of Israelite joy become the canticles of the
Christian Church, sung in the catacombs, in the Coliseum and arenas
of martyrdom, and in the monasteries of the East and West.
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The idea of salvation outside the Church is opposed to the
Doctrine of Predestination. This Doctrine means that from all eternity
God has known who were His own. It is for the salvation of these, His
Elect, that Providence has directed, does direct, and will always
direct, the affairs of men and the events of history. Nothing, absolutely
nothing, that happens, has not been taken into account by the
infinite God, and woven into that tapestry in which is written the
history of the salvation of His saints. Central in this providential overlordship
is the Church itself, which is the sacred implement which
God devised for the rescuing of His beloved ones from the damnation
decreed for those who would not. (Mt. 23:37).
The Doctrine of Divine Election means that only certain
individuals will be saved. They will be saved primarily because, in
the inscrutable omniscience of God, only certain individuals out of all
the human family will respond to the grace of salvation. In essence,
this doctrine refers to what in terms of human understanding and
vision, is before and after, the past, the present, and the future, but
what in God is certain knowledge and unpreventable fact, divine
action and human response. St. Paul summarized this doctrine with
these words in his Letter to the Romans:
8:28 — And we know that to them that love God, all things
work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose,
are called to be saints.
29 — For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made
conformable to the image of his Son; that he might be the
firstborn amongst many brethren.
30 — And whom he predestinated, them he also called. And
whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified,
them he also glorified.
Calvin and others have made the mistake of believing that these
words mean that predestination excludes human choice and dispenses
from true virtue. Catholic doctrine explains simply that the foreknowledge
of God precedes the giving of grace. It means, further,
that, since without grace there can be no merit, and without merit no
salvation, those who will be saved must be foreknown as saved by
God, if they are to receive the graces necessary for salvation. Among
the discourses of Christ we find the following refrain: "He who has
ears to hear, let him hear." (Mt. 11:15, 13:9, 43). Jesus was aware that
in the crowds He addressed were some who would be saved. They
would be saved because they would find faith in Him by the power of
the Spirit, through Whom they would recognize the divine truth which
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He spoke. Moreover, again by the power of the Spirit within them,
these would respond to the truth which they recognized with the
assent of faith and the grasping of joyful love. Others who listened to
Christ heard exactly the same words, but did not have the "ears with
which to hear;" that is, they would not accept the grace to believe the
truth which Christ expounded; for these latter, it had neither
comprehensibleness nor urgency nor appeal. It might be better to say
its meaning was both comprehended and its demand recognized. The
reason Christ’s words were not accepted by most of His hearers was
that they were unwilling to submit to its demands.
This doctrine means that "he that hath, to him shall be given, and
he shall abound: but he that hath not, from him shall be taken away
that also which he hath.” (Mt. 13:12). It might be stated in this way:
He who is willing to act for the sake of his own salvation, will receive
all that he needs in the way of grace to be saved, and more than
enough—"good measure and pressed down and shaken together and
running over into your bosom." (Lk. 6:38). As God has always known
which man would act thus, He has determined from eternity to save
him.
This mystery was a familiar doctrine to the Jews of the first
generation of the Church, because it was prefigured in the predilection
of God for the Israelite nation.
Those who say there is salvation outside the Church (no matter
how they say it) do not comprehend that those who are in the Church
have been brought into it by the Father, through Christ the Savior, in
fulfillment of His eternal design to save them. The only reason that
God does not succeed in getting others into the Church must be found
in the reluctant will of those who do not enter it. If God can arrange
for you to be in the Church, by the very same Providence He can
arrange for anyone else who desires or is willing to enter it. There is
absolutely no obstacle to the invincible God’s achieving His designs,
except the intractable wills of His children. Nothing prevents His
using the skies for his billboard, and the clouds for lettering, or the
rolling thunder for the proclamation of His word. (Indeed, for
believers, He does just this: "The heavens shew forth the glory of
God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands." {Ps. 18:1}.
But for atheists the heavens have no message at all.) If poverty were
the reason some do not believe, he could load them down with
diamonds; if youth were the reason, He could make sure they grew to
a hoary old age. If it were merely the want of information, He could
208 Who Shall Ascend?
put a library on their doorstep, or a dozen missionaries in their front
room. Were it for a want of brains, he could give every man an [.Q. of
three hundred: it would cost Him nothing.
The idea that someone died before he was able to receive Baptism,
suggests that God was unable to control events, so as to give the
person time to enter the Church. If time made any difference, God
could and would keep any person on earth a hundred, or a thousand,
or ten thousand years.
"O Wisdom . . . You orderest all things mightily and sweetly
..." (From the liturgy of Advent).
Thus, what is the meaning of this election? That from all eternity
God has ordered the events of history, so that His Elect might have
the grace of salvation. And how do they know of this election? By the
fact that they are in the Church, through no deservingness of their
own? They know of no reason why God should bestow this grace, the
knowledge of the truth, and the willingness and power to believe it,
upon them, while others, who seem more worthy, go without it.
As regards His Elect, not only has God determined to bestow
necessary grace, but also, all His actions in the world must be seen as
part of His salvific plan. In a word, nothing that He does is unrelated
to the salvation of His Beloved Sheep. Human history, apart from the
glory of Holy Church, and the salvation of the Elect, and the punishment
of the wicked, has little importance for almighty God. Yet, all
these purposes are only a part of the manifestation of His glory.
Those who speak of it have the problem of reconciling the
mystery of Predestination with the idea of "baptism of desire." From
all eternity, almighty God has known the fate of every soul. In His
Providence, He has arranged for the entrance into the Church of
certain millions of persons, and has seen to it that they receive the
grace of faith, the Sacrament of Baptism, the grace of repentance, the
forgiveness of their sins, and all the other requisites of salvation.
According to The Attenuators, in the case of "non-Catholic saints,"
and of those who died before they might receive Baptism, God was
simply unable to see to these necessaries. Untoward and unforeseen
circuмstances arose which prevented His providing these other millions
with the means of salvation. Theirs is a story of supreme irony,
that although the God of omniscience and omnipotence mastered the
history of all nations and the course of every life, angelic and human,
in the case of certain ones, His timing was off by just a few days, or
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hours, or minutes. It was His earlier intention to make sure that they
received Baptism of water; He had it all planned out; but alas! on the
particular day of their demise, His schedule was so full, that He simply
could not get to them; for which reason, in that it was His fault, He
is bound to provide an alternative instrumentality: "baptism of desire"
is his substitute for the real thing!
"That every mouth be stopped.” (Rom. 3:19). The Diluters of the
Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation do not perceive the Pelagian tenor of
their position, that some may be saved outside the Church through
nothing but their good will. It is exactly because this is impossible
and, more important, offensive to God, that the notion must be
rejected. We say impossible, because no man can save himself. The
fact that every man must receive Baptism and thus enter the Church
means that he is dependent upon God to make it possible for him to
receive the Sacrament, and further, through this Sacrament, it is
Christ Who acts to purge the sinner of his sins, and ingraft him into
His Mystical Body. No individual can do this by himself. He is
dependent upon another to pour the water and say the words, and he is
dependent upon God to provide this minister, and to make the
sacramental sign effective of grace. It is thus so that none may attribute
his salvation to his own doing.
Pride is the chief vice of man, as it was and is of the demons of
Hell. It is pride more than any other fault that blinds men to the truth,
that obstructs faith, and hardens their hearts to conversion from sin.
As was said above, it is not a want of information, nor is it a lack of
enough time to do what they must, nor is it a want of someone to
teach them, nor the abstruseness of revealed truth, nor the confusion
created by the welter of heresies which grow like cockle amidst the
wheat (Mt. 13:25f)., which prevents men from coming to the
knowledge of the truth. The root problem is pride, which gives birth
to the refusal to believe; because with the truth comes the imperative
of obedience. The primordial disposition of all the damned is the
same: "I will not serve."
The Doctrine of Predestination is that almighty God from all
eternity both knew and determined who would be saved, that is, who
would allow Him to save them. He would be the cause of their salvation,
and, as there is no power that can even faintly obstruct or
withstand Him, there is no power which can prevent His saving whom
He wishes, except, of course, the man himself. The means which He
established to accomplish this act of salvation is the Catholic Church.
It is through this sacred instrument that He fulfills His eternal deter210
Who Shall Ascend?
mination with respect to the souls of the Elect. Therefore, it is
altogether unreasonable to suggest that, in the case of some, the
Church is not this instrument.
Knowing who are "His own," God orders all things toward drawing
them into the flock of His Church (Jn. 10:3), the Bark of Peter.
(LK. 5:3). No matter what else God is doing invisibly and sovereignly
within the affairs of man, His chief work is saving those who will be
saved, those who will respond to His Voice, that is, His truth. For
those outside the Church, there is actual grace, which has the chief
purpose of gently but surely bringing them to repentance and faith and
Baptism. The mystery of Predestination is in the fact that the Almighty
knows the hearts of all His children, and He knows which
ones among them will by whatever stratagem He employs with them,
whatever fisherman’s trick He might use to catch them, result in their
happy sequestration. For those whom He knows will eventually be
His, nothing is too much for Him to do; to "land them," He will
humble Himself to a beggar, or pour out all His wealth. But these are
the "few" of the Gospel. (Mt. 20:16). These few are those who receive
the word with joy and bear fruit, some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold,
and some a hundred-fold—these last being His great saints. (Mt.
13:8).
The "many" are those whom God knows will not be saved no
matter what He does; on the contrary, they are the dogs and swine
whom He describes thus: "Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither
cast ye your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under
their feet, and turning upon you, they tear you." (Mt. 7:6). Though He
loves all men, the Lord does not love all men equally, because He
knows their hearts. The hearts of the "many" He will never win
permanently, and nothing that He might do will secure them to Himself.
The Liberal Gainsayers imagine that they are more loving and
understand God better than the Church, and that if He would simply
make a greater effort, supply them with more information, He could
win "the many" also.
The Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation is the Church’s way of
informing us that there is no acceptable excuse for any person on
earth’s not becoming a Catholic. The Doctrine of Divine Election
teaches us that at least some, a mere handful in comparison with all
those for whom Christ died, will accept the grace—the graces, for
there is an endless stream of them—of salvation.
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Among the realizations which the Lord Jesus wept and bled for
in the Garden of Gethsemani is this: No matter what He might do to
save them, the "many" will hate Him for it; they will take all His
material, earthly gifts, and devour them like pigs, and ever clamor for
more. But of gratitude and repentance, of faith and love, they will
have nothing. These accursed souls are personified in Judas, who had
received nothing but kindness and honor and enlightenment from
Christ. Let The Deniers give an explanation why Judas did not just
walk away from Christ, or tell Him that he had lost interest, that he
liked the feel of money, and had decided to open a clothing store. No,
he must sell his Master, Him Whom, for months he had seen as the
sweetest, most thoughtful, most patient, and wisest of all the men of
his experience.
The "many" are personified in Pilate, whom Our Lord tried
sincerely to save, while He proceeded to thwart Pilate’s lame efforts
to save Him. But Pilate, like ninety-nine percent (or thereabouts) of
those in public office, determinedly thrust away the grace. It would
have been perfectly easy for him to save Jesus and his own soul (The
Savior of the world stood right before him, subject to him!—as He
does to every man, in the Church), but he chose to do everything the
wrong (and harder) way.
The "many" are personified in the scribes and Pharisees, the
priests, and Annas and Caiphas, who knew perfectly well, as
Nicodemas said, that Christ had come "a teacher from God," (Jn. 3:2).
They knew that His miracles were authentic, that His character was
blameless, that His teaching was irresistible and holy, that He was a
luminous exemplar of every man of religion. "He saved others; himself
he cannot save" (Mt. 27:42 and Mk. 15:31)., they said, thus admitting
the former truth, while closing their eyes to any explanation
for the latter. The truth was clearly before them, as the truth of the
Catholic Church is before the men of the world of this and every other
generation, but they were determined to reject Christ, and in order to
justify their doing so, they must convince themselves and everyone
around them, that He was not what He appeared to be. Furthermore,
they will not be content simply to let Jesus go. They must kill Him;
and not kill Him merely, but kill Him cruelly and ignominiously.
They must somehow vent their resentment of His grace and His
majesty and His holiness against Him, to teach Him that they would
bow to NO ONE, save each other. They will take their revenge
against Him, Whose very divinity they could not deny, Whose resurrection
they could not disprove. Mutatis mutandis, the very same can
212 Who Shall Ascend?
be said of all those who have rejected the Church, from that day to
this one. If they would only make an effort, it would be no problem to
them, but they will not. And the Lord Jesus, there in the Garden, saw
that they would not, and it sorely grieved His Sacred Heart to foresee
it.
H.
The Mystical Body of Christ
And he is the head of the body, the church,
who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead;
that in all things, he may hold the primacy:
Because in him, it hath well-pleased the Father,
that all fulness should dwell;
And through him to reconcile all things unto himself,
making peace through the blood of his cross,
both as to the things on earth,
and the things that are in heaven.
(Col. 1:18-20).
Catholics believe that as Jesus Christ lived His natural
life on earth two thousand years ago in a Body drawn from
Mary, so He lives His Mystical Life today in a Body drawn from
the human race in general—called the Catholic Church—that
her words are His, her actions are His, her life His (with certain
restrictions and exceptions), as surely as were the words,
actions, and life recorded in the Gospels: it is for this reason
that they give to the Church the assent of their faith, believing
that in doing so they are rendering it to God Himself. She is
not merely His vicegerent on earth, not merely His representative,
not merely even His Bride: in a real sense she is Himself.
That in this manner, as well as in another which is not our
business at present, He fulfills His promise to be with His
disciples all days, even to the consummation of the world. To
express the whole position once more under another aspect, in
order to make clear what the position on which I purpose to
enlarge, it may be said that God expressed Himself in terms of
a single life in the Gospels, and of a corporate life in the
Church. The written Gospel is the record of a past life; the
Church is the living Gospel and record of a present life. Here
He "looks through the lattice," (Prov. 7:6). visible to all who
have eyes; here He reproduces, in century after century and
country after country, the events and crises of the life lived in
Judaea. Here He works out and fills up, on the canvas of the
world’s history, that outline laid down two thousand
Topic: Ephesians 1: "predestinated" (Read 482016 times)