December 25, 2010 – Mark 10:17 - 10:52
Merry Christmas!!
10:39-40 For whom it has been prepared. This brings up the notion of predestination which can be a term that is often confusing and controversial for many people. I will briefly try to lay out my understanding from what I have read and we can discuss whether I understand it correctly, close, or not at all. The other two terms that are usually in discussion of predestination are free will and double predestination. They will be thrown in there as well.
Predestination is the theology that God knows who will end up with Him in Heaven for all eternity. This idea is based on the idea that God is all knowing and eternal. The concern is that this takes away our free will, but that is not the case. God knows where will end up because He is outside of time. He is ever present; ever moment to Him throughout all of time is the present to Him. He knows what I am doing right now as I type this and He knows exactly what you are thinking when you read this and both moments are happening in God’s present even if you are reading this several years after I am typing it. That allows God to know exactly who will be with Him in Heaven after the final judgment and the end of this world because that moment is as present to Him as this moment is to us.
I was trying to think of an example that would explain this, but I couldn’t come up with anything that really explained it well. But knowing something will happen does not mean that we are necessarily causing it to happen.
Double predestination is the idea that not only does God know who will be with Him in Heaven, but that He has chosen certain people, before the beginning of time, to be with Him in Heaven and others that are chosen to go to Hell. This is not a teaching that is accepted by the Catholic Church. The Church teaches that everyone is created and designed to go to Heaven, however, some choose not to follow that path and choose to abandon a life of God and choose the path to Hell. Just because knows who they are does not mean they were created for Hell. Everyone starts as a creation, made in the image and likeness of God, with the destination for Heaven, with God their creator. Some freely choose to stay on that path and others choose to veer off. The decision we make is our own and has eternal consequences, but it is our own.