St. Augustine and Predestination

[goldenchild17]

A friend is asking me some questions. I'm not really sure what he's saying, or how to respond, because I never really understand this very well myself so... I wanted to ask you all what you thought.




"okay first off a little background might help get me to understand things better... a lot of my theology is close if not identical to St. Augustine (well Jesus number one... but you know what I'm trying to say). I love the guy and I love the way he thinks. But yeah... predestion theology, I call myself Augustinian...similiar but not Calvinist....I like to see it as more of the Calvin of the Catholics and Mullins(i think that's his name) being the more Arminian one. With that in mind... I have a small issue.

now... when you accept your salvation and you lose it, you can't come back to the Church.

Hebrews 6:4-6
4It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

That confuses me on how the Church says you can lose and come back, lose and come back... Now, I go with St. Augustine's idea of Final Preservation... that God preserves his people to the end. That they can backslide but never truely fall away... and if they fall away, they were never truely saved in the first place."

[StColette]

This section of a Commentary by Fr. Most talks about Hebrews 6:4-6

But more seriously: if they now fall away, after having been
enlightened (Baptism was often spoken of as receiving light) there
is no way they can be converted again. The mention of crucifying
Jesus ("again") may mean that He would need to die all over to
bring them back, when His already accomplished death has not
succeeded).

There is a similar statement in The Shepherd by Hermas in
Similitude 9. 26. 6: "It is impossible for him who now denies His
Lord to be saved." Many think Hermas is using a psychological ploy
to deter people from sinning after receiving the seal, Baptism.
Pardon was given in the first centuries even to apostates, but only
after years of long and difficult penance - in the thought that
something so drastic was needed to really cause them to see the
truth, especially if a Christian when called before the Roman judge
thought to himself: "I will deny now, and then get pardon later".
His repentance shortly after that would almost certainly not be
real, not sincere. It would be preplanned, and so not involved a
real change of heart. (More on this later in comments on 10. 36).

But what is the reason now why those who fall back into Judaism or
paganism cannot be restored? Surely God Himself would not be
unwilling to grant pardon even for such sins. For the death of
Jesus infinitely earned forgiveness for every sin.

The answer is that such people had made themselves incapable of
taking in what God would gladly offer. It is helpful to start with
Matthew 6. 21: "Where your treasure is, there is your heart also."
One can put his treasure in a hoard of money, or in eating, or in
sex, or in travel, or in study, even studying Scripture. But all
these things are lower than God Himself.

Further, some allow themselves to be pulled more than others by
these outside attractions - even to habitual mortal sin. In such a
case two factors work together: what they seek is much lower than
God, and they have surrendered to the pull of creatures with
abandon.

A modern comparison will help to supplement this thought. We think
of a galvanometer, a compass needle on its pivot, with a coil of
wire around, it through which we pass a current. The needle should
swing the right direction and the right amount. But if there are
powerful outside pulls, e.g., 33000 volt power lines or a mass of
magnetic steel - then these outside forces may be so strong as to
overwhelm the effect of the current in the coil. We are thinking of
our mind as a sort of meter, which should register the movement of
grace, that is, the current in its coil. But grace is gentle, in
that is respects our freedom; outside pulls if one surrenders to
them with abandon can take away freedom: then the needle, does not
register the effect of grace which tries to put into a man's mind
what God is trying to tell him to do.

Then if grace cannot do the first thing, it will not do the further
things. So the man is left without grace, is blind or hardened.
Then even though God gives grace, the man is incapable of taking it
in. Then his conversion, is, humanly speaking, impossible.

We said "humanly speaking" because there is always the possibility
of a grace comparable to a miracle that can cut through or
forestall such resistance, and so cause the man to follow the
movement of grace. But this is not given ordinarily - for then the
extraordinary would become ordinary. It is given only when some
other person by heroic prayer and penance, puts, as it were, an
extraordinary weight into the one pan of the scales of the
objective moral order: it can call for, and obtain, an
extraordinary grace.

The case is similar with the classic unforgivable sin, of which Our
Lord Himself spoke when the scribes attributed the work of the Holy
Spirit to the devil. The Father and He would gladly grant pardon -
but the hardness was so immense that they could not even perceive
the first movement of grace.

This problem happens especially with those who have already had
great light from grace -- if they become habituated to special
favor, and even then reject, they make themselves hardened - they
are harder to convert than a beginner who never felt the effects of
grace.

These hard souls had already been enlightened in

Baptism, had tasted the heavenly gift - probably the Holy
Eucharist, had received the Holy Spirit, and seen even the mighty
works of the age-to-come, i.e., the miracles which at first were
used to ground and spread the Church. If after all that they still
fell away - what was there left to awaken them anew from their
self-inflicted torpor?

So they are like land which has become hard and dry: the rains may
come, but all in vain.

Cardinal Manning, in his great work, The Eternal Priesthood. wrote
in his concluding chapter, on the death of a sinful priest: "Next
to the immutable malice of Satan is the hardness of an impenitent
priest... . They have been so long familiar with all the eternal
truths": that the end of such a man is like that of one for whom
medical science can do no more: He must die. Manning quotes St.
Bonaventure (Pharetra 1. 22): "Laymen who sin can be easily
restored; but clerics if they once go bad become incurable." We
comment: satan could not repent because his clear intellect (not
being hindered by junction with a material brain) saw everything at
once with the maximum possible clarity. So there was no room for
him later to go back on it, see it differently, and so repent. The
more one grows in knowledge, the more he approaches that condition
- though of course, still having a material brain, he does not
reach it.

[url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/HEBREWSM.TXT"]http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/HEBREWSM.TXT[/url]

[StColette]

Dear Fr.

I have read the April 2002 question regarding Hebrews 6:1-6 and still have a couple of questions. My protestant friends may sometimes use Hebrews 6:4-6 to support the argument that salvation is something man cannot lose (to which I usually roll my eyes). I personally feel this is the result of taking a couple of verses out of context, but I would feel better prepared to debate the topic with a response from this discusson board. What is the appropriate response when someone uses these two lines from Hebrews to support the argument that salvation cannot be lost? And what is the ongoing lesson for modern Christians in those verses?

Thanks in advance, and may God bless you!

Respectfully,
Randy McDonnell

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message By Fr. Richard Jaworski (fr_jaworski) on Friday, September 19, 2003 - 8:18 am: Edit Post

Dear Randy:

First, for the readers’ sake, here are the verses in question:

As for those people who were once brought into the light, and tasted the gift from heaven, and received a share of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the goodness of God’s message and the powers of the world to come and yet in spite of this have fallen away—it is impossible for them to be brought to the freshness of repentance a second time, since they are crucifying the Son of God again for themselves, and making a public exhibition of him.

Hmmm, actually I’m surprised your friends are using the verse to say salvation can’t be lost. I would have expected them to be using it in almost the opposite way, by thinking that salvation, once lost, cannot be regained (sort of like the people who fear that they’ve committed the “sin against the Holy Spirit” [cf. Mark 3:29] and are damned with no possibility of salvation).

So, indulge me while I first answer this question which you didn’t ask. . . Quoting Joel Marcus’ Anchor Bible commentary, “In the Markan context blasphemy against the Spirit means the sort of total, malignant opposition to Jesus that twists all the evidence of his life-giving power into evidence that he is demonically possessed (see 3:22, 30); those guilty of such blasphemy would not be overly concerned about having committed it. [. . .] To misconstrue this liberative divine action as a deed of the Devil is to demonstrate such a complete identification of the self with the forces of destruction, such a total opposition to the forces of life, that no future possibility of rescue remains.”

Or, from another angle, Heb 6:4-6 would be somewhat akin to our understanding of “no salvation outside the Church” for those who were part of the Church and then left.

Now, if your friends are saying that since a person who is in the situation mentioned in Heb 6:4-6 is damned (it is impossible for them . . .), then they must not have been “saved” in the first place,* then your friends are starting from a position of assuming that which they were trying to prove. It’s circular argumentation. [*must not have been saved in the first place because you can’t lose salvation]

If that’s not your friends’ line of argumentation, then how are they saying that “You can’t lose salvation” follows from Heb 6:4-6 ?

God bless you,
Fr. Rick

[url="http://oldforum.catholic.org/discussion/messages/41/765400.html?1063984713"]http://oldforum.catholic.org/discussion/me...html?1063984713[/url]

[goldenchild17]

Alright, thanks. I'll read through that tonight.

[cathqat]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='Jan 28 2005, 06:23 PM'] "I go with St. Augustine's idea of Final Preservation... that God preserves his people to the end. That they can backslide but never truely fall away... and if they fall away, they were never truely saved in the first place." [/quote]
This does not accurately represent Augustine, imo. Augustine did believe that all the elect would persevere and be saved in the end. But he also believed that it was possible for a person to be truly regenerated and justified, to lose his justification, and be condemned. So that "never truly saved in the first place" isn't Augustinian.