What Are We Distracted From? (Question 5 of 6: Purpose - God with Arbitrary Power or Pre-Ordained Power)

What Are We Distracted From? This is the great question of our age, because we know we are being distracted. We can break down that question into six parts, six First Questions. The entirety of the Answers differentiates and elevates the Catholic faith and way-of-life.

Here are the four First Questions so far. Each of their Answers helps us converge on Catholicism as the highest way-of-life.

1) Reality: What one most true, significant, and authentic entity(ies) do humans encounter in existing?

• Answer: The Noumenal – The reality is the separate ideal o perfect or eternal behind the appearances and the substrates.
• This contrasts with the sensed reality and the impersonal substrate reality characterizing Modernism and Eastern religions.

2) Purpose: What one function impels the universe, God, and/or humans within Reality to the most good and beautiful?

• Answer: The Creative – The driver is the act of creating, or being a creator, often out of nothing.
• This contrasts with Eastern religions' cyclical/unchanging and pantheistic drivers.

3) Perspective: What one point-of-view provides the knowledge about the true Reality and the most good Purpose?

• Answer: The Revelatory – Truths show-through and transcend the individual and the unbiased, inhuman observer.
• This contrasts with the subjective and objective point-of-view of Modernism.

4) Reality2: Is the difference between God and humans in degree, or in kind?

• Answer: In kind – Understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity as perfect, overshadowing the concept of God-as-a-being, is the key to realizing the Holy Trinity’s magnificence and love, and leads to our humility.
• This contrasts with the view that God is just another being, bringing Him, even just a little, to our level, decreasing markedly the need to praise Him and humble ourselves.

In this post, we’ll answer Question 5 to help elevate Christianity over other Abrahamic religions and other ways-of-life.

First Question #5: Purpose: Are God and His decrees absolute and changeable according to His will, or pre-ordained according to His design?

Both Questions 4 and 5 are more ambiguous in their dividing lines, within Christianity. Here, although we clearly elevate above non-Christian religions, the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism will remain a matter of degree, a matter of emphasis. This ambiguity is aided by the disagreement on the Answers, even within Catholicism and Protestantism themselves. We also find murkiness because most of us think so little about these Questions.

In the 1200s, the answer to Question 5 began to change within the Church, ushering in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and Modernism as we know it. When mankind’s thinking about the nature of God’s decrees changes, so does mankind.

Hans Boersma describes the history and implication of the Answer in his book Heavenly Participation (2011)1. Boersma first states what Aquinas established: that the Holy Trinity’s “will” was part of Its pre-ordained design.

(1) “For Aquinas, we might say, divine decisions had always been in line with eternal truth. For example, when God condemned theft or adultery, this was not an arbitrary divine decision, but it was in line with the truth of divine rationality. Or, to use another example, when God rewarded almsgiving, this was not because he arbitrarily decided that almsgiving was a commendable practice, but because it was in line with the very truth of God’s character.” (p. 76) 

During Aquinas’s age, thinking began to change, thanks to the Franciscans Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.

(2) “Duns Scotus proffered a radical disjunction between will and reason, between goodness and truth. The new voluntarist approach departed from the Platonist-Christian [Augustinian and Thomistic] synthesis by arguing that God’s will determines the moral status of a particular act and that his intellect simply follows along. The consequences were close at hand; if something is good strictly because God wills it to be good, then couldn’t God declare anything, even the most horrible act, to be good?” (p. 77)

(3) “Aquinas, for example, had used the distinction to say that God had ordained to use his power – which of course, was in itself absolute or unlimited… But Duns Scotus – and after him especially the Oxford scholar William of Ockham (c. 1288-c.1348) – gave far greater rein to God’s potential absoluta. These fourteenth-century Franciscans shifted the traditional balance between God’s ordained and absolute power by implying that God might actually use his absolute power to do things that were outside the scope of his ordained will.” (p. 77) 

The following sums up the implication, indeed of both the modern Answers to Questions 5 and 6:

(4) “The world’s real, sacramental participation in God gave way to an external relationship in which God ruled from afar, by means of the absolute freedom of the divine will: God was in heaven; human beings were on earth.” (p. 78)

The pre-ordained will, or the Holy Trinity’s pre-design, has overwhelming implications for human purpose. Part of the perfect design of God is the nature of humans. Catholics, and most Protestants, believe humans have free will to move toward God’s revealed design, or not, through the free choices we constantly make. A God exhibiting arbitrary power and a changing design, will, and law negates that innate human purpose altogether. 

In short, the more God’s power and purpose becomes changeable and arbitrary, the more our purpose becomes subject to heresies and errors:

• Islam: This Question about God’s pre-ordained and eternal vs. absolute and arbitrary power also explains the underlying difference between Islam and Christianity. Father Matthew Schneider writes here [https://catholicstand.com/abba-allah-2-views-1-god/]: “The basic distinction: our Trinitarian God does everything according to reason while Allah can follow reason or do things arbitrarily.” He explains further:

“In Islam, Allah’s will is above his intellect, while in Christianity, God’s intellect is above his will. This difference in the internal hierarchy might seem like an abstract distinction but as we work through the consequences, we realize that this tiny change makes a huge difference. God can will things beyond our reason but not against it while Allah can will things against reason. This distinction of superiority is the reason for the discrepancy regarding science – if God wills arbitrarily, why try to understand non-existent laws. The same applies for finding beauty in God’s handiwork of creation. The same distinction applies to morality: there is a rational reason Christians believe in one-man-one-woman marriage but the reason a Muslim can have four wives but not five is Allah says so. With regard to wives, one is a special number while four is simply an arbitrary limit chosen. As Christians, we understand that God always wills good, yet permits evil, but Allah can will that someone does evil.”

• Calvinism, Jansenism: If the answer to the question is that God’s arbitrary will overrules all, religions such as variations of Calvinism and Jansenism result. In these, humans do not have truly free choice. Here, God’s power depends on Him being the only possible cause, overriding human will as a real force. In other words, according to this determinist belief, if someone commits an atrocity, it is ultimately because God must have willed it to happen in the first place. That is, to them, humans do not choose to be good or evil; God must provide our will for us. In fact, Jansenists believe that humans cannot determine their futures. This leads to the thinking that humans cannot choose or know Truth, that God’s purpose for humans is so unpredictable that humans should only focus on the sensed world.

 As you can see, the implications of this Answer on our Purpose and way of-life, as well as the Reality of the Holy Trinity, are enormous.

 Thus, here’s the Fifth Question: Are God and His decrees absolute and changeable according to His will, or pre-ordained according to His design?

• Answer: Pre-ordained, according to His design

Questions 1-3 and their Answers fully elevate the Abrahamic religions and ways-of-life. But remember, some disagreement exists within the Church on matters of emphasis on Question 4 and 5 and their Answers. But without correct Answers here, we cannot converge on the Truth: that God is near to us, indwelling in our souls and in the Eucharist. And we cannot fully cast away Modernism, Protestantism, and Islam.

Also, to elevate Catholicism over other Christian religions and ways-of-life, we still require Question 6 and its Answer.

To further reveal our Purpose-by-Design, Scripture and Tradition continue to guide us, as follows:

The Holy Bible ²

Matthew 5

[48] Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.

Romans 2

[2] And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. 

Romans 13

[1] Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God.

Job 11

[7] Peradventure thou wilt comprehend the steps of God, and wilt find out the Almighty perfectly? [8] He is higher than heaven, and what wilt thou do? He is deeper than hell, and how wilt thou know? 

The Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) ³

The Lord’s Prayer: Thy Will be Done - Man’s Proneness to Act Against God’s Will

From the beginning God implanted in all creatures an inborn desire of pursuing their own happiness that, by a sort of natural impulse, they may seek and desire their own end, from which they never deviate, unless impeded by some external obstacle. This impulse of seeking God, the author and father of his happiness, was in the beginning all the more noble and exalted in man because of the fact that he was endowed with reason and judgment. But, while irrational creatures, which, at their creation were by nature Food, continued, and still continue in that original state and-condition, unhappy man went astray, and lost not only original justice, with which he had been supernaturally gifted and adorned by God, but also obscured that singular inclination toward virtue which had been implanted in his soul. All, He says, have gone aside, they are become unprofitable together; there is none that doth good, no, not one. For the imagination and thought of man's heart are prone to evil from his youth. Hence it is not difficult to perceive that of himself no man is wise unto salvation; that all are prone to evil; and that man has innumerable corrupt propensities, since he tends downwards and is carried with ardent precipitancy to anger, hatred, pride. ambition, and to almost every species of evil.

The Lord’s Prayer: Thy Will be Done - We Ask That Even Our Good Requests Be Granted Only When They Are According to God’s Will

We should beseech God that His will be done, not only when our desires are wrong, or have the appearance of wrong. We should ask this even when the object of our desire is not really evil, as when the will, obeying its instinctive impulse, desires what is necessary for our preservation, and rejects what seems to be opposed thereto. When about to pray for such things we should say from our hearts, Thy will be done, in imitation of the example of Him from whom we receive salvation and the science of salvation, who, when agitated by a natural dread of torments and of a cruel death, bowed in that horror of supreme sorrow with meek submission to the will of His heavenly Father: Not my will but thine be done.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995) ⁴

321 Divine providence consists of the dispositions by which God guides all his creatures with wisdom and love to their ultimate end.

323 Divine providence works also through the actions of creatures. To human beings God grants the ability to co-operate freely with his plans.

324 The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.

44 Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God. 

1743 "God willed that man should be left in the hand of his own counsel (cf Sir 15:14), so that he might of his own accord seek his creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him".

1795 "Conscience is man's most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths".

1796 Conscience is a judgment of reason by which the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act.

1797 For the man who has committed evil, the verdict of his conscience remains a pledge of conversion and of hope.

1798 A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. Everyone must avail himself of the means to form his conscience.

St. Thomas Aquinas ⁵

I answer that, There is will in God, as there is intellect: since will follows upon intellect. For as natural things have actual existence by their form, so the intellect is actually intelligent by its intelligible form. Now everything has this aptitude towards its natural form, that when it has it not, it tends towards it; and when it has it, it is at rest therein. It is the same with every natural perfection, which is a natural good. This aptitude to good in things without knowledge is called natural appetite. Whence also intellectual natures have a like aptitude as apprehended through its intelligible form; so as to rest therein when possessed, and when not possessed to seek to possess it, both of which pertain to the will. Hence in every intellectual being there is will, just as in every sensible being there is animal appetite. And so there must be will in God, since there is intellect in Him. And as His intellect is His own existence, so is His will. (Summa Theologica I, q.19, a.1)

I answer that, The will of God must needs always be fulfilled. In proof of which we must consider that since an effect is conformed to the agent according to its form, the rule is the same with active causes as with formal causes. The rule in forms is this: that although a thing may fall short of any particular form, it cannot fall short of the universal form. For though a thing may fail to be, for example, a man or a living being, yet it cannot fail to be a being… Since, then, the will of God is the universal cause of all things, it is impossible that the divine will should not produce its effect. Hence that which seems to depart from the divine will in one order, returns into it in another order; as does the sinner, who by sin falls away from the divine will as much as lies in him, yet falls back into the order of that will, when by its justice he is punished. (Summa Theologica I, q.19, a.6)

I answer that, It is necessary to attribute providence to God. For all the good that is in created things has been created by God… In created things good is found not only as regards their substance, but also as regards their order towards an end and especially their last end, which… is the divine goodness... This good of order existing in things created, is itself created by God. Since, however, God is the cause of things by His intellect, and thus it behooves that the type of every effect should pre-exist in Him…, it is necessary that the type of the order of things towards their end should pre-exist in the divine mind: and the type of things ordered towards an end is, properly speaking, providence. (Summa Theologica I, q.22, a.1)

Sources

1. Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry, 2011, Eerdsman.
2. The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims Version, 2009, Saint Benedict Press [Original published 1582-1609]
3. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, (J.A McHugh, O.P., and C.J. Callan, Trans.), 1923, Middletown, DE [Original 1566]
4. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1995, Doubleday
5. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.), [Online] Available from: http://www.documenta-catholica.eu/d_1225-1274-%20Thomas%20Aquinas%20-%20Summa%20Theologiae%20-%20Prima%20Pars%20-%20EN.pdf [Original 1265-1274]