** (:EMAIL.COM EMDIR) asked:

** Can anyone help me with a query? Briefly, how does the Catholic Church reconcile determinism with free will? If God is omniscient and omnipotent then He must have known the course of his creation before He created it. So how can we have free will to act as we please? And how can sinners be banished to Hell if God knew they were going to sin? I know this subject has been done to death but I am looking specifically for the Catholic viewpoint. I need the information for a debate I am having with my girlfriend's Catholic grandmother.

Yes, the theodicy issue has been done to death. I hope your intention is not to throttle your girlfriend's grandmother with the inconsistencies of the Catholic position. There are some things beyond human understanding.

The first thing to recognize is that Catholic doctrine develops in response to heresies, and are formulated to position the Church between extreme positions which are judged as contrary to faith and tradition. There may be very little logical space left between the affirmation of God's omnipotence on the one hand and human free will on the other, but human logic does not have all the answers. "Now I know only in part: then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." (1Cor 13:12)

The history of "free will" within the Church is a long and complicated one. The fact that Augustine changed his mind on the subject is proof enough of this. The main problem is that the Scriptural testimony is varied (Romans 9 vs. the rest of the canon). Martin Luther's denial of "free will" renewed but barely advanced the discussion on theodicy. Two distinct discussions on free will can be seen: (1) classical theodicy - God as omnipotent creator, with the existence of evil attributable to human free will; and (2) Luther's answer to the theodicy problem - the denial of free will.

The Stoic concept of Providence left no room for free will, thus the Fathers of the Church focus on human freedom. (Everyone knows the importance of freedom to the Greeks, among whom the earliest Fathers can be counted. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was a Semite). The great classical humanist Cicero saw the incompatibility of Stoic divine foreknowledge/fate on the one hand, and human free will on the other, and denied divine foreknowledge to preserve free will (taking the opposite course to Luther's). The Church would reject this either/or argumentation, and maintain both.

Pelagius taught that salvation is a human work, that it could be earned without grace (a position which sounds very much like caricatures of the Catholic position from ill-informed Protestants).

Augustine's idea of <servum arbitrium emerges in his response to this heresy: Romans 9:13 is the key text. While asserting this "enslaved, or servant will," Augustine also wanted to avoid the spectre of an arbitrary or unjust God, and so he asserted that God foreknew Jacob's merits. God did not choose Jacob's future good works, but Jacob's future faith. At this time, Augustine held that faith was not a gift, but man's response to God's universal <vocatio .

Later in life, after being chosen bishop of Hippo, he came to realize that his earlier notion of the "hidden merits of souls" made faith a work done by Jacob, something within Jacob's control. In his <Ad simplicianum , Augustine asserts that faith itself is a gift from God (which some don't receive), while maintaining that God can do no injustice. Augustine's study of Paul, flavored by opposition to Pelagius' reading of Paul, led him to this tense balance.

The Second Council of Orange (529 A.D.) appropriated Augustine's latter doctrine of grace to counter the Semipelagian error (scil, that man's will is the source of the BEGINNING of faith, which is brought to full fruit by grace--just a modified form of Pelagianism); late Scholasticism seems unaware of this Council's proceedings.

Thomas of Aquin, influenced by Paul and Augustine, maintains this tense balance: God's providential direction (<gubernatio ) will infallibly bring the individual rational creature to its destiny of eternal beatitude, though without taking away from the creature its free will. Aquinas speaks only of positive predestination. "He does not will sin as he wills grace" (<De Veritate , qu. 5). Aquinas distinguished two ways in which God can will: either necessarily or contingently. The latter act of willing leaves room for the operation of the creature's will. Luther considered this distinction empty sophistry.

Luther took the route opposite Cicero, maintaining Providence and sacrificing human free will. In 1520, Luther published <Assertio omnium articulorum D. Mart. Luth. per bullam Leonis X damnatorum , which stated, among other things: free will is a fiction; a pious man sins doing good works; a good work is a mortal sin. Luther's fierce (and at times, twisted) rhetoric, inspired by the excesses of indulgence-peddling, had once again carried him into doctrinal conflict with Rome.

Erasmus grudgingly picked up the gauntlet, writing <De libero arbitrio in 1524. Luther responded with <De servo arbitrio in 1525. Here Luther outlines fully his necessitarian error (as later Lutheran confessions also judge it). Erasmus' parting shot was the oft-neglected <Hyperaspites diatribe adversus servum arbitrium M. Lutheri . Erasmus challenged Luther's biblical method, whereby a doctrine drawn from a few verses then dominates the interpretation of the entire canon. Although explicit testimonies to free will in the OT circumscribed in a verse or two (Luther's preferred, atomistic method) are rare, free will is everywhere presumed. In Erasmus' words, it was "like looking for water in the ocean."

After this extensive debate, Erasmus drifted into relative obscurity. Luther's rhetorical skill, style and verve was too much for Erasmus. Noting that Erasmus' section on "Christian Piety" (in "On the Freedom of the Will") never mentioned Christ by name, Luther responded "You ooze Lucian from every pore; you swill Epicurus by the gallons!"

Subsequently, Sir Thomas More became Luther's pseudipigraphal opponent, for which Rome awarded Henry VIII the title "Defender of the Faith." (Anne Boleyn had not yet entered the picture.)

For Luther, the slavery of the will is a central element in his reformed theology: it's the other side of justification's coin, as he admits in "On the Bondage of the Will." Luther believed that Paul's doctrine of justification was an assault on the doctrine of free will. Luther and Calvin's atomistic approach to Romans 9, on the basis of which a doctrine of double direct predestination is asserted as Paul's, neglects the context of Paul's argument.

Paul's intention is differnet. He tensely holds together 3 facts: the inclusion of Gentiles into the promises made to Israel; Israel's rejection of Jesus as the Christ; and God's faithfulness to His promises to Israel, even in light of this Jewish rejection. Paul speaks in corporate terms, and the destiny of individual humans is not the issue--he would find that kind of speculation offensive (contra Calvin).

The issue is a difficult one, but hardly the core of Paul's gospel; a pressing issue in the first century Roman church, given its mixed constituency of Gentiles and Jews, but not so pressing in first century Corinth, much less in sixteenth century Saxony. Romans 9 must be considered in the context of chs. 9-11, of Romans entire, and of the whole Pauline corpus (not to mention the NT canon). For instance, Paul's use of athletic metaphors clearly presume the efficacy of human effort (1 Cor 9:24-27). The hortatory subjunctives used in Rom 13:12-13 also presume human decisions leading to action. Other passages, too, can be adduced to temper the fierce polemic of Rom 9. Luther's fishbowl exegesis of Romans 9 is that upon which this second phase of the free will debate rests--an odd aftershock of Saxony's great theological earthquake.

Luther's exegesis is influenced by his spirited reaction against Scholastic appropriations of Aristotle's philosophy of habitual virtue. The Nominalist School, in which Luther received his theological training, perpetuated the Semipelagian error which had been anathematized at the Second Council of Orange, nearly a millennium before. Luther's extreme position becomes understandable considering his teachers spread a heresy refuted by Luther's theological father, Augustine of Hippo. Later Lutheran confessions, as I've said, have reversed the Reformer's denial of free will.

The Church's position today still hearkens back to Augustine's and Aquinas' tense formulations. Perhaps Paul really did believe in double direct predestination (which is by no means acceded here or within Catholic teaching), but that is not the Church's position. Does the Church's tense balance withstand the buffets of human reason? "You will say to me then, 'Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?' But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God?" (Rom 9:19-20). This is an insufficient answer for some, I know.

Hope that helps.

Peace and grace,
Edward John Craig