Another text quoted in favor of absolute predestination ante praevisa merita, is Acts XIII, 48: “As many as were ordained (praeordinati, τεταγμένοι) to life everlasting, believed.” Here, we are told, predestination to eternal life is given as the motive why many believed. But the text really says nothing at all about predestination. Τεταγμένοι is not synonymous with προτεταγμένοι or προωρισμένοι. The more probable explanation is the following: As many believed as were disposed to receive the faith. It is wellnigh impossible to assume that all who received the faith at that time were predestined, while those that refused to be converted were without exception reprobates. But even if praeordinati were synonymous with praedestinati, the text would merely say that certain predestined souls embraced the faith, without affording any clue as to the relation between conversion and predestination.
The ninth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is the main reliance of the advocates of absolute predestinationism, though the passage is unfit to serve as a locus classicus because of its obscurity. Let us examine a few of the verses most frequently quoted. Rom. IX, 13: “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated,” is alleged to prove the absolute predestination of Jacob and the negative reprobation of Esau. But many theologians hold that Esau was saved, and, besides, the Apostle is not dealing with predestination to glory, but with Jacob's vocation to be the progenitor of the Messias. Esau, who was not an Israelite but an Idumaean, was simply passed over in this choice (odio habere [pg 202] minus diligere; cfr. Matth. X, 37). If the passage is interpreted typically, it should be done in harmony with the context, that is to say, as referring to the gratuity of grace, not to predestination.
The same may be said of Rom. IX, 16 and 18: “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.... He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.”[611]
The strongest text alleged by the advocates of absolute predestination is Rom. IX, 20 sq.: “O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” Here the Apostle really seems to have thought of predestination. But the simile must not be pressed, lest we arrive at the Calvinistic blasphemy that God positively predestined some men to heaven and others to hell. The tertium comparationis is not the act of the Divine Artificer, but the willingness of man to yield his will to God like clay in the hands of a potter.
Nor is it admissible to read into the Apostle's thought even a negative reprobation of certain men. For the primary intention of the Epistle to the Romans is to insist on the gratuity of man's vocation to Christianity and to reject the presumption that the Mosaic law and their bodily descent from Abraham gave the Jews preference over the heathens. The Epistle to the Romans has no bearing whatever on the speculative question whether or not the free vocation of grace is a necessary result of eternal predestination to glory.[612]
b) Among the Fathers the only one to whom the advocates of absolute predestinationism can appeal with some show of justice is St. Augustine, who, with the possible exception of Prosper and Fulgentius, was the most rigorous among early ecclesiastical writers,—so rigorous, in fact, that Oswald does not hesitate to call him “the head and front of all rigorists in the Church.”[613]
However, this is saying too much. Augustine's genuine teaching is still in dispute among our ablest theologians. Some[614] deny that he broke with the almost unanimous teaching of his predecessors, while others think that in the treatises De Dono Perseverantiae and De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, and in several of his letters, the Saint frankly taught absolute predestinationism. The latter group of writers is split into two classes. A number of Thomists and Cardinal Bellarmine not only assert that Augustine taught absolute predestination, but boldly adopt his supposed teaching. Petavius, Maldonatus, Cercià, Oswald, and others censure this view. Franzelin[615] undoubtedly strikes the right note when he says: “If there were a manifest discrepancy between Augustine's [pg 204] teaching and that of the other Fathers, I should not hesitate to follow Pighius, Catharinus, Osorius, Camerarius, Maldonatus,[616] Toletus,[617] and Petavius[618] in reverently departing from his doctrine, because in that case we should be dealing merely with a private opinion.”[619] Under these circumstances the Patristic argument for the theory of absolute predestination evidently lacks convincingness.[620]
c) It was probably because they felt its weakness that some of the later champions of the theory attempted to prove absolute predestination ante praevisa merita by philosophical arguments. Gonet reasons as follows: “He who proceeds in an orderly way, wills the end before he wills the means necessary to attain it. But God proceeds in an orderly way. Therefore he wills the end before the means. Now, glory is an end, and merits are means to attain that end. Consequently, God wills glory before He wills merits, and a man's preëlection to glory cannot be based on foreknowledge of his merits.”[621] This argument, [pg 205] if it proved anything, would prove the logical impossibility of conditional predestination. But it overshoots the mark and consequently proves nothing at all. Qui nimium probat, nihil probat.
Gonet moreover assumes what he sets out to prove, namely, that God voluntate antecedente decreed the glory of certain men to the exclusion of others. This petitio principii vitiates the entire polysyllogism. God's will to save is universal. He wills the eternal happiness of all men antecedenter, and the reprobation of some only consequenter; hence eternal predestination is not absolute, but hypothetical, that is, it depends on merit. That the divine scheme of grace can take a different course in ordine intentionis from that in ordine executionis is a mere fiction. If eternal salvation in the order of temporal execution is given only as a reward of merit, it must be a reward of merit also in the order of intention. In both cases predestination depends upon a future condition.
Perhaps the worst feature of the theory of absolute predestination is the fact that it involves the absolute reprobation of those not predestined to glory. “If it could be validly argued,” says Gutberlet, “that, since the end must be willed before the means, salvation must be decreed before the means to its attainment (i.e. merits), the argument would be applicable also to the damned. If God voluntate antecedente wills to lead only a few to salvation, and if this intention must precede every other, then He must likewise voluntate antecedente have in view the end of the reprobates, which is His own glorification through the manifestation of His justice and mercy. [pg 206] Hence He must also decree the means necessary to obtain this end, i.e. He must cause these unfortunate creatures to sin, in order that they may reach the end for which He has predestined them; in other words, He must pre-ordain them to sin and eternal damnation,”[622] which is what Calvin teaches. The advocates of the theory naturally shrink from adopting such a blasphemous conclusion, and fall back upon the theory of negative reprobation, which, however, amounts practically to the same thing.[623]