PREDESTINATION, ST. AUGUSTINE AND FR. PANTELEIMON
Written by Vladimir Moss
There is, as everyone knows, an heretical, Calvinist doctrine of
predestination. Less well known is the fact that there is also an Orthodox
doctrine. It is contained in two verses from
Let us look at each of these doctrines in turn.
1. Calvinism. The
first, Calvinism, can be disposed of quickly because all Orthodox agree that it
is false. Calvin believed that all human beings are assigned by God in a
completely arbitrary manner to two categories: the saved and the damned, and that
there is nothing that any man can do to take himself out of one category and
into the other. “Predestination” for him meant “predetermination” and fatalism;
and it involved the denial of the place of freewill in our salvation.
2.
The Orthodox Teaching.
Commenting on this passage, St. Theophan
the Recluse writes: “God knows everything – both the past, and the present, and
the future, - the beginning and the end of every man, and in accordance with
this knowledge He makes His decisions: in knowing beforehand, He foresees; in
deciding how things must be beforehand, He predestines. He sees beforehand all
the free actions of men and, in accordance with them, He predestines concerning
them. So here the Lord foresaw who will truly believe in Jesus Christ and
follow Him through an exact fulfilment of His commandments and, having been
sanctified by grace, will become a saint. Therefore He also predestined that
these should be saints, ‘in conformity with the image of His Son’, that is,
that in the sacrament of Baptism, with the help of the gifts of grace, they
should be clothed in the image of Jesus Christ and become like Him, which they
will attain in full measure in the future life: so that the Incarnate Son of
God should be ‘the first-born’ – the first to re-establish in Himself a pure
human nature, and the first among His followers – His brethren. That is God’s
predestination concerning those who are being saved. How does He bring it to
fulfilment?
“Moreover,
those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also
justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified (v. 30). This
predestination of men to salvation God accomplishes and brings to fulfilment by
drawing them to Christ (John 6.44), by disposing their spirit to realize
the necessity of salvation in Christ; then by justification – by liberating them from sins and regenerating the
spirit of those who believed in Him by the grace of the Holy Spirit; and,
finally, he finishes by glorifying
them also in the body in the life to come.
“If such is the love of God for those who
are marked for salvation, then no obstacles, external or internal, should
frighten Christians on their path.” [1]
Bishop Elias Miniatos summed up the matter
well: “God desires, and if man desires also, then he or she is already
predestined.”[2]
We can draw two preliminary conclusions
from this commentary:
1. Predestination is by no means
incompatible with man’s free will. In fact, predestination is the working of
God’s Providence together with, in
harmony with man’s free will. Man shows a will to be saved, and God
predestines him to be saved, that is, runs to meet that good will by arranging
all things in such a way that he will in fact be saved. For example, he leads
him to meet the True Church, gives him the desire to be baptized, sends him
good teachers, sends him temptations that he can overcome and which thereby,
through his overcoming them, bring him closer to God, but removes temptations
that he would not be able to overcome, which would lead him to falling away
from God…
Many stumble at the
Orthodox doctrine of predestination because they assume that God’s
foreknowledge of the events of a person’s life “predestines” in the sense of
“predetermines” them – wholly, and without room for the exercise of freewill.
But this, as we have seen, is not the meaning of “predestination”. In any case,
as St. Justin the Martyr writes: “The cause of future events is not
foreknowledge, but foreknowledge is the result
of future events. The future does not flow from foreknowledge, but
foreknowledge from the future. It is not Christ Who is the cause of the
betrayal of Judas. But the betrayal is the cause of the Lord’s foreknowledge.”[3]
Again, Diodore writes: “This text does not
take away our free will. It uses the word foreknew
before predestined. Now it is clear
that foreknowledge does not by itself
impose any particular kind of behaviour. What is said here would be clearer if
we started from the end and worked backwards. Whom did God glorify? Those whom
He justified. Whom did He predestine? Those whom He foreknew, who were called
according to His plan, i.e., who demonstrated that they were worthy to be
called by His plan and made conformable to Christ.”[4]
2. Predestination is only for those
who are show a will to be saved (cf. also Ephesians 1.5), not for those
who show no such good will. That is, as
3.
First, it is often
claimed that
However, Augustine
is more culpable in his teaching that some are “predestined to eternal death”.
For, as we have seen, there is no such thing in the Orthodox teaching, but only
predestination to salvation. Moreover, there are some grounds for believing
that he did not accept the apostle’s words that “God wills that all men should
be saved” in their literal sense.[9]
But here, too, we must be careful not to ascribe to him a Calvinist kind of
fatalism. In the passage where Augustine speaks of “predestination to eternal
death”, he immediately adds: “not only because of the sins which they add of
their own willingness, but also because of original sin”.[10]
In other words, “predestination to eternal death” is not the result of some
kind of completely inscrutable and arbitrary choice on the part of God, but of
the sins of man. This does not remove the error of Augustine’s phrase, but it
does make us think that he did not mean “predestination” in the Calvinist sense
here, but rather something closer to “condemnation”.
4. The Teaching of Fr. Panteleimon. This is preceded by a
ritual condemnation of
“Because of this
novel teaching of predestination, Augustine not only did not have any problem
with consigning most of mankind to eternal damnation. But there could be no
other way about it. He had no qualms about this. In his pagan legalistic mind,
this is what God’s justice demanded, and consequently God was bound. He would
not, or to put it more plainly, could
not overrule His own Divine justice and predestination.” (p. 5).
It is not our
intention to provide a detailed defence of
Again, while we
might agree that Augustine’s thought is legalistic at times, we cannot in any
way agree that it was pagan. His bowing down before the abyss of God’s
judgements, and His God-fearing refusal to question them, far from showing that
He believed that God was bound by some pagan goddess of chance or necessity,
shows his profoundly Orthodox refusal to twist the evidence in favour of a more
palatable theodicy. There is nothing pagan in the assertion that “God’s justice
requires expiation for sin”, any more than it is pagan to say that “God’s love
required that He die as a sacrifice for the sin”. In both statements we are
simply making assertions about the nature of God as He reveals Himself in His
actions towards us. We are saying that God
always acts in accordance with justice as well as love in order to abolish sin
and reconcile men to Himself.
Irrational nature is bound by necessity, the laws of nature that God has
decreed. Rational beings are free, in that they can act in accordance with
their nature or against it. But the absolute freedom that belongs to God alone
is far above the freedom of rational creatures. As St. Maximus the Confessor
explained, God does not have freewill in the sense that He makes choices
between good and evil – which always presupposes the possibility of committing
evil. Rather He is like the Child in Isaiah Who, “before he knows either
to prefer evil or choose the good, [or] before He shall know good or evil,
refuses the evil, to choose the good” (7.15-16). That is, good is so intrinsic
to His nature that He chooses it without any possibility of choosing the
opposite. Thus God is just, not because He makes a choice between acting justly
and acting unjustly (which is the case with all those who have not reached
perfection and deification), still less because He is compelled to by some
external force or principle, but because justice flows from his nature like
light from the sun or water from a source. That is why God does not simply act
justly: as
Having clarified this point, let us pass on to Fr. Panteleimon’s main
thesis, which is that it is unjust that
men who have never had the opportunity to become Orthodox in this life should
not have a second chance after death. This is related to his further thesis
that Christ’s Descent into Hell is
repeated continuously in order to give this chance to those who have died
before having Orthodoxy taught to them. Which is related (although the
connection is not immediately obvious) to his further thesis that the idea propagated by
Let us begin with this third thesis. We know concerning Christ’s Descent
into Hell that “He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, who were at
one time disobedient when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah,
while the ark was being prepared” (I Peter 3.19-20). But do we know
whether all these accepted His preaching and were saved?
Fr. Panteleimon cites the story of a monk to whom the philosopher Plato
appeared, saying that He had believed in Christ’s preaching when He descended
into Hell, and so was saved. Fair enough; so we know that Plato was saved, and
we may hope that other worthies among the ancients, such as Socrates, were also
saved. But does that entitle us to say that all
were saved?
St. Cyril
of
The Old Testament provides us with several examples of men of evil life
who serve for the New Testament Church as exemplars of vice, and even, in some
cases, as forerunners of the Antichrist. We think of Cain and Lamech; of Esau
of whom it is written that God “hated” him; of Ham and
And what about Judas, whom Christ called “the son of perdition” and a
“devil”, who would have done better never to have been born? He died before
Christ, and presumably witnessed His preaching in Hell. And yet the tradition
of the Church is that he remains in Hell and is destined for the eternal fire
of gehenna…
But Fr. Panteleimon says: “If Hades were not annihilated by our Saviour
in His descent but only a ‘bite’ (morsus in Latin), in the words of
Saint Gregory the Great, was taken out, then what is there to be so jubilant
about and celebrate?” (p. 6).
Are we to assume, then, that since Fr. Panteleimon is celebrating, he believes that everyone is saved by the
“continuous” descent of Christ into Hades? Surely not, for this is the
heretical Origenist theory of the salvation of all!
Fr. Panteleimon goes on to criticize Fr. Panagiotes Carras for writing:
“The effect of the unique Descent
into Hades is eternal, not the process. Christ is not continuously descending
and teaching in Hades.” And yet Fr. Panagiotes is surely correct. The Descent
into Hades took place at one time, and one time only, just as the Crucifixion
of Christ took place at one time, and one time only…
Against this, however, Fr. Panteleimon cites the fact in the feasts of
the Church we are transported out of space and time, so that we chant: “Today
the Virgin giveth birth…”, “Today there is born of the Virgin…” Today there
hangeth upon a tree…” (p. 8).
But the fact that we, through the mystery of the liturgy and “Church
time”, are enabled to take part in these past events now by no means entails that these events are repeated every time we participate in them. The celebrations are repeated, but the event
itself remains unique and unrepeatable.
We can understand this most clearly with regard to the Crucifixion. This
took place at one single point in space-time, and the fixedness of the event is
emphasized in the Creed, where we declare that He “was crucified under Pontius Pilate” – that is, under this procurator of
The fruit of the Cross is the Descent into Hades and its destruction.
But just as Christ’s Blood was shed “for many” (Matthew 26.28), not for
all, - because not all believe in Him, - so the Descent into Hades was for the
liberation of many, not of all, because not all believed in His preaching. Similarly,
we read that when Christ appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, they
worshipped Him, “but some doubted” (Matthew 28.17)… So at every stage of the economy of our
salvation there is division, choice, “election”. Some through their ready faith
are predestined (we are not ashamed of that word in its Pauline, non-Calvinist
meaning!) to salvation, while others reject that opportunity.
But what of the patristic sayings that speak of Christ conquering death
in all? Here we must make a
distinction between salvation and liberation from physical death. As
regards salvation, as we have said, there is always division, separation,
election. But as regards deliverance from death, this is a universal gift to all
mankind. For at the General Resurrection, as a direct result of Christ’s
conquest of death in His own Body, all without exception will be raised from
the dead and restored to their bodies. That is why death is no longer death in
the proper sense, but falling asleep. And so: “Sleepers, awake!” is a truly
universal call and gift…[14]
“Finally,” writes Fr. Panteleimon, “we come to the issue of pagans who
never heard of or were given an opportunity in this life to accept or deny our
Saviour, as evidently those pagans that lived before the appearance in the
flesh of the Redeemer, and those millions upon millions that came after Christ
until our times…
“It is a given for us Orthodox Christians that when our Saviour
descended into Hades, He redeemed as many as accepted Him as the Christ, both
from among the righteous of the Old Testament, and the pagans. For the Roman
Catholics, following Augustine and his teaching concerning predestination, no
pagan was saved – all were predestined to be damned.” (p. 12)
Actually, Augustine’s teaching on predestination has nothing directly to
do with the issue whether any pagans were saved at the Descent into Hades. Nor
does Fr. Panteleimon produce any direct quotation from
Fr. Panteleimon continues: “If the pagans before Christ were given this
opportunity [to have the Gospel preached to them at the Descent into Hades],
why should it be denied to the pagans that come after? Why this discrimination
between the pagans before Christ and those after Christ? Both lived and died
without ever having been given an opportunity to accept or deny the Saviour. Is
this the God of love and mercy that we know and worship, to give one group this
opportunity and yet deny it all that come after because He so wills it
according to His ‘predestination’?” (pp. 12-13). Having already cited some
examples of pagans and heretics being saved from Hades through the prayers of
the Church, Fr. Panteleimon evidently thinks that the answers to these
questions are self-evident, even if, just a little later, he admits that he and
Metropolitan Ephraim consider the idea of a “second chance” for pagans to be no
more than “a possibility”.
However, Fr. Panteleimon’s questions are strictly unanswerable, because
they are posed from the standpoint of human justice, which is completely
powerless to plumb the depths of Divine Justice. Fr. Panteleimon has invented
the idea of “continual” Descents into Hades, because that is what his very human
and very personal sense of justice requires. But then, knowing that there is no
evidence whatever for such an idea, he tries to protect himself by saying that
he put it forward only as “a possibility”.
A much more reliable approach is to begin from what we know about Divine
Justice, Divine Omniscience and Divine Omnipotence.
God knows the hearts of men even before they are born, when they are
still in the womb. He does not need to see their actions in order to know who
they are. So if He takes a man away from this world before he has encountered
the Orthodox Gospel, we cannot accuse him of injustice – perish the thought!
If we question
God’s judgements, then we are implicitly placing ourselves in judgement over
Him, as if we could be more just than He. What folly could be greater than
this? “Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than
his Maker? Behold, He put no trust in His servants; and His angels He charged
with folly. How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose
foundation is in the dust? (Job 4.17-19). “For who shall say, What hast
Thou done? Or who shall withstand His judgement? Or who shall accuse Thee for
the nations that perish, whom Thou hast made?” (Wisdom of Solomon
12.12).
And yet this, implicitly, appears to be what Fr. Panteleimon and
Metropolitan Ephraim are doing. Those who have never heard the Orthodox Gospel,
they are implying, do not deserve to go to Hades. Or at any rate they deserve
“a second chance” – as if God has “made a mistake” and confined to Hades
someone who should be in
But suppose that God in His omniscience knows that if the man heard the
Orthodox Gospel he would reject it? Or that, having accepted it, he would fall
away later? Perhaps God in His mercy does not send him an Orthodox preacher in
order that he should not become guilty of rejecting it, or falling away from
it?
Of course, these are merely human speculations to explain God’s
judgements. But as such they are no less valid than Fr. Panteleimon’s about a
“second chance”… Better than either course is humbly to accept God’s judgements
as just even if we do not understand why or how they can be just.
Fr. Panteleimon says that those who have never heard the Orthodox Gospel
are, or should be, judged by whether they have kept the natural law, not
whether they have kept the Christian law which they never heard. This seems
reasonable enough – according to human justice. But the question then arises: why
did the man not hear the Orthodox Gospel? It is no use saying: because he lived
in a pagan country where there were no Christian preachers. Such an obstacle is
easily overcome by God…
*
Let us begin again, from the certainty of Holy Scripture…
There is a light that "enlightens every man who comes into the
world" (John 1.9). And if there are some who reject that light,
abusing their freewill, this is entirely their fault. As St. John Chrysostom
says, "If there are some who choose to close the eyes of their mind and do
not want to receive the rays of that light, their darkness comes not from the
nature of the light, but from their own darkness in voluntarily depriving
themselves of that gift."[15]
No one is completely deprived of the
knowledge of God. Thus
Now before the Coming of Christ God
“suffered all nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14.16). However,
since His Coming He permits this no longer, but insists that men, using the
witness of creation and conscience, and helped by the Providence
(Predestination) of God, should come to the full truth in the new and still
greater witness that He has provided, the Church. For if a man follows the
teachers given to everyone, creation and conscience, then the Providence of
God, with Whom "all things are possible" (Matthew 19.26), will
lead him to the teacher that provides all the knowledge any man could need -
"the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the Truth" (I
Timothy 3.15). For "it is not
possible," writes St. John Chrysostom, "that one who is living
rightly and freed from the passions should ever be overlooked. But even if he happens to be in error, God
will quickly draw him over to the truth."[19]
Again, as Chrysostom's disciple, St. John Cassian, says: "When God sees in
us some beginnings of good will, He at once enlightens it, urging it on towards
salvation."[20]
This point was developed in an illuminating manner by Cassian's French
contemporary (and disciple of
Another striking example of how God can bring anyone to the truth,
however apparently hopeless his situation, is provided by the story of God's
favour to the Aleuts of Alaska, to whom He sent angels to teach them the
Orthodox Faith in the absence of any human instructor. Fr. John Veniaminov
(later St. Innocent, metropolitan of
"Their doctrine is that of the Orthodox Church. I, however, knowing
that even demons believe - and tremble with fear [James 3.19], wondered
whether or not this might be the crafty and subtle snare of him who from time
immemorial has been Evil. 'How do they teach you to pray, to themselves or to
God? And how do they teach you to live with others?' He answered that they
taught him to pray not to them but to the Creator of all, and to pray in
spirit, with the heart; occasionally they would even pray along with him for
long periods of time.
"They taught him to exercise all pure Christian virtues (which he
related to me in detail), and recommended, furthermore, that he remain faithful
and pure, both within and outside of marriage (this perhaps because the locals
are quite given to such impurity). Furthermore, they taught him all the outward
virtues..."[22]
Very apt was the comment of one of the first who read this story:
"It is comforting to read about such miraculous Divine Providence towards
savages, sons of Adam who, though
forgotten by the world, were not forgotten by
These cases lead us to draw the following conclusions: (1) Divine
Providence is able to save anyone in any situation, providing he loves the
truth. Therefore (2), although we cannot declare with categorical certainty
that those who die in unbelief or heresy will be damned forever, neither can we
declare that they will be saved because of their ignorance; for they may be
alienated from God ”through the ignorance
that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians
4.18), and not simply through the ignorance that is caused by external
circumstances. Therefore (3) there is no need to posit any “second chance”,
still less a “continual Descent into Hades”. And so (4) if we, who know the
truth, say that people who died in ignorance of the Gospel did not need to
become Christians in order to be saved, then we shall be guilty of indifference
to the truth; for which we shall certainly merit damnation.
For while we cannot presume to know the eternal destinies of individual
men, we do know this, that the Word of God is true that declares: "He that
believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be
damned" (Mark 16.16). And again: "Except a man be born of
water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
Vladimir Moss.
March 23 / April 5,
2011; revised September 16/29, 2011.
[1] St. Theophan, Tolkovanie Poslanij Sv. Apostola Pavla,
[2] Miniatos, “On Predestination”, Orthodox Life, November-December, 1990.
p. 28.
[3] St. Justin, in Miniatos, op.
cit., p. 84.
[4] Diodore, in Gerald Bray (ed.), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.
VI. Romans,
[5] Origen, Commentary on Romans, in Bray, op. cit., p. 234.
[6] St. Theodoret, Interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, in Bray (ed.), p. 234.
[7] Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Place of Blessed Augustine in the
Orthodox Church, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of
[8]
[9] Rose, op. cit., p. 17.
[10]
[11] Notably Romaric d’Amico, a True
Orthodox Christian from Paris who is writing a thesis on
[12]
[13] St. Cyril, in Ancient Christian Commentary
on Scripture, Vol. 11, InterVarsity Press, 2000, p. 107-108.
[14] See Fr. Georges Florovsky,
“Redemption”, in Creation and Redemption,
[15] St.
Chrysostom, Homily 8 on John.
[16]
[17] St.
Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Romans, 2.
[18] St.
Chrysostom, First Homily on Hannah, 3.
[19] St.
Chrysostom, Homily 24 on Matthew, 1.
[20] St.
Cassian, Conferences, XIII, 8.
[21] Prosper,
The
Call of the Nations, II, 33.
[22] Paul
Garrett, St. Innocent, Apostle to
[23] Garrett,
op. cit., p. 85, footnote.
[24] “Weep for the unbelievers! Weep for
those who differ not a whit from them, those who go hence without illumination
[Baptism], without the seal [Chrismation]! These truly deserve our lamentation,
our tears. They are outside the royal city with those who have been found
guilty, with the condemned. “Verily, verily, I say unto you: except a man be
born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven’.” (