Among the champions of this “eclectic” theory may be mentioned: Ockam,[644] Gabriel Biel,[645] Ysambert,[646] and Ambrosius Catharinus.[647] The Saints regarded by these writers as absolutely predestined to eternal glory are: the Blessed Virgin Mary, the prophets and Apostles, St. Joseph, St. Aloysius, and a few others, as well as all infants dying in the grace of Baptism. Billuart,[648] Dominicus Soto, and certain other divines attack this theory on the ground that it makes the salvation of the great majority of the elect a matter of chance and thereby imperils the dogmatic teaching of the Church. This objection is unfounded. For though the “eclectic” theory has little or no support either in Revelation or in reason, it sufficiently safeguards the dogma of predestination by admitting that voluntate consequente none but the predestined can attain to eternal beatitude.
Only with regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary are we inclined to make an exception. It is probable that she was predestined to eternal glory ante praevisa merita, because, in the words of Lessius, the privileges she enjoyed “exceed all measure and must not be extended to any other human being.”[649]
Article 4. The Reprobation Of The Damned
The reprobation of the damned is sometimes called praedestinatio ad gehennam, though, as we have remarked, the term “predestination” should properly be restricted to the blessed.
There can be no absolute and positive predestination to eternal punishment, and the pains of hell can be threatened only in view of mortal sin. Hence reprobation may be defined, in the words of Peter Lombard, as “God's foreknowledge of the wickedness of some creatures and the preparation of their damnation.”[650]
A distinction must, however, be made (at least in theory), between positive and negative reprobation. To teach positive reprobation would be heretical. Negative reprobation, on the other hand, is defended by all those Catholic theologians who advocate the theory of absolute predestination ante praevisa merita.[651]
1. Heretical Predestinarianism or the Theory of the Positive Reprobation of the Damned.—Heretical Predestinarianism was taught by Lucidus, Gottschalk, Wiclif, Hus, the younger Jansenius, and especially by Calvin. The latter asserted that the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate are the effects of an unconditional divine decree.[652]
According to this abominable heresy, the sin of Adam and the spiritual ruin which it entailed upon his descendants are attributable solely to the will of God. God produces in the reprobate a “semblance of faith,” only to make them all the more deserving of damnation. In the beginning of the seventeenth century Arminius and a few other theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church, repelled by Calvin's decretum horribile, ascribed the positive reprobation of the damned to original sin (lapsus). These writers, called Infralapsarians or Postlapsarians, were opposed by the strict school of Calvinist divines under the leadership of Gomarus. The great Calvinist Synod of Dordrecht (1618-1619) condemned the principles of Arminius, and subsequently his adherents were driven from Holland.
The Catholic Church condemned Predestinarianism as early as 529 at the Second Council of Orange, which among other things declared: “We not only refuse to believe that some men are by divine power predestined to evil, but if there be any who hold such a wicked thing, we condemn them with utter detestation.”[653]