Persevering Towards the "P"

This article focuses on theological dialogue between Calvinists and Catholics on doctrines relating to predestination, efficacious grace, and related issues.  If you are not familiar with these issues, I would recommend you read these two articles (here and here) before reading this one.  I am going to be making a lot of assumptions and using specific terminology that you will want some background for before diving into this subject.

In a previous article, I compared Catholic theology with the famous Calvinist TULIP doctrines.  I concluded that, if we take the soundest versions of both theologies, they are actually mostly in agreement.  The one area where there seemed to be an irreconcilable difference in substance was in the P of TULIP - the Perseverance of the Saints.  But even here, there was a lot of agreement.  Here is how I summarized the agreements and the area of disagreement in my previous article:

I think we can distinguish three parts to the Calvinist doctrine of the perseverance of the saints:  1. All those whom God has elected to eternal salvation will certainly persevere to the end and attain eternal salvation.  2. There is a fundamental difference between the elect and the reprobate.  Considering each in terms of the whole course of their existence (as opposed to one isolated moment in their lives), the elect receive a victory over sin that the reprobate never receive.  Whatever repentance and holiness the reprobate attain by God's grace in this life, they are eventually conquered by sin and die in a state of enmity with God, in which they are confirmed forever.  So only the elect are ever the children of God in the fullest sense.  The reprobate may receive some temporary benefits from God's grace, but they are never possessers of the full, eternal aspects of justification, sanctification, or adoption.  3. All those who are brought to faith and repentance in any real sense at any one moment in their lives will certainly be given the gift of final perseverance by God and so will attain to eternal salvation.  In other words, only the elect ever actually come to any real faith and repentance.  The best the reprobate ever attain to is a kind of partial repentance which leaves them in the depths of their heart in a continuing state of rejection of God.

Catholic doctrine agrees with the first two of these three points but rejects the third.  The Catholic Church does not teach that all who are in any real sense regenerated or brought to faith and repentance at any moment in their lives are certainly elect and will be given the gift of final perseverance.  Catholic doctrine allows for the idea that God may give a temporary regeneration, a temporary faith and repentance, to some of the reprobate but withhold from them the gift of final perseverance, granting them a temporary taste of the life of Christ in this world but not the fullness of eternal life in Christ.

I would like to propose a possible reconciliation between Catholics and Calvinists on this point of disagreement.  Calvinists typically grant that there can be a kind of limited and temporary conversion that can happen to the non-elect.  They can come to be attached to God in certain ways and to turn away from some sins.  There can be a limited faith and repentance.  What distinguishes this temporary conversion from real regeneration is that regeneration is more universal.  That is, in real regeneration, the sinner comes to love God above all things.  Of course, he is not completely consistent in this supreme love, for he falls into sins on a regular basis.  But he eventually repents of his sins and moves towards holiness.  His fundamental life choice is for God supremely and all created things are subordinate to God, so that the overall trajectory of his life is towards God and towards holiness.  In temporary "pseudo-regeneration," on the other hand, although the sinner moves towards God in some ways and may turn away from some sins, he never really loves God supremely.  There is always some created thing that is higher in his value system.  So long as his limited obedience to God is consistent with his pursuit of that which he values more highly than God, he may act in a way that is indistinguishable, to outsiders at least, from a truly regenerate person.  But once his highest love comes into conflict with his obedience to God, as it must eventually, he will show his true colors by falling away.  (Think of two cars on the same highway, going the same direction, but having two different ultimate destinations.  You won't be able to tell the difference between their destinations until they have to take different paths to get to their diverse destinations.  But, eventually, they will have to take different paths, and so their different destinations will become apparent.)

So the question is:  Can this Calvinist view be reconciled with the Catholic position which holds that people can be truly in a state of grace temporarily without having the gift of final perseverance and so eventually fall away?

Perhaps a reconciliation can be reached if we think of an individual person in terms of their overall life narrative instead of considering only what they are experiencing at a given moment.  Consider a person who is in what Catholics would call a state of grace but who is not elect (and therefore will not receive the gift of final perseverance).  Does this person love God supremely?  Yes, considering the options they have before them in their current experience of reality.  Looking at the things they are aware of, they want God above all else.  But, if they will not end up persevering, we know that there is something down the line in their future that they will end up loving more than God.  God has not given them efficacious grace to resist all alternatives to God, though he has given them the grace to choose God above all currently experienced alternatives.  On the other hand, the elect person (considered in terms of their whole life narrative) has been granted by God a grace that will prove efficacious universally - that is, it will, eventually, bring them through every temptation so that they will end up choosing God above all things and will arrive at a state of moral perfection (after this life is over) and remain there permanently.

So is the converted, non-elect person ever truly regenerate?  It depends on how you define the concept of "regeneration."  If by "regenerate," we mean that, given all currently-experienced alternatives, the person loves God above all other things, then yes, he is regenerate.  But if we mean that he has been given by God a grace that will prove eventually victorious over all alternatives to God so that he will have the will to choose God above all things absolutely in all conditions that will come to him during the course of his entire life narrative, then no, he is not regenerate.  So if we look at the elect and the non-elect (even the converted non-elect) from a God's-eye point of view, considering their identities as bound up with all that they have been, are, and will be, and all that they have been granted by God from eternity, there is a fundamental and eternal difference between them:  The elect have been given by God a grace that overcomes all obstacles of will and will effectively cause them to love God perseveringly through all temptations, while the non-elect have been given a grace that is more limited and temporary - it will get them through some temptations, but not all, for it will eventually fail.  Therefore, if we define "regenerating grace" as a grace that has the power to effectively bring a person through all obstacles into heaven eventually, the non-elect never have it.  They have a more limited and temporary grace that falls short of overcoming all temptations.

Calvinists recognize that the elect can fall away temporarily (the example of David committing adultery and murder in the Bathsheba affair and continuing unrepentant for a time is often cited in this context).  But they have a grace granted them by God that will always keep coming back to bring them eventually to repentance, and, in the end, it will be victorious over all sin.  This is all part of how Calvinists think about the idea of "regenerating grace."  Here is the Westminster Confession (Chapter 17) on these matters:

I. They, whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved. . . .

III. Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein: whereby they incur God’s, displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.

So even though Catholics typically speak as if non-elect persons can really be in a state of grace, albeit temporarily, perhaps we can say, using Calvinist terminology, that the grace that these people have is not "real regeneration" because, although it turns them towards God and away from all the alternatives to God that they currently have experience and awareness of, it does not give them the strength of will to turn from all alternatives to God that they will eventually encounter and will not give them final perseverance.  Again, Calvinists typically grant that "non-regenerate" people do experience many effects similar to regeneration.  They can truly be turned away from many sins and come to cling to God in a number of ways.  There is certainly a robust concept of "temporary and limited conversion" in Calvinist thinking.

But is all this enough to truly reconcile the two views?  I'm not entirely sure.  I think it will depend on how broadly Calvinists want to construe the possible effects of "temporary, non-regenerate conversion."  If the elect can have periods of time where they are not pursuing God as their supreme end and yet, during that very time, they are still considered to possess efficacious grace and be regenerate, perhaps the non-elect could be imagined to have periods of time where they are pursuing God as their supreme end (at least considering all currently-experienced alternatives), and yet, during that time, they are not regenerate because they do not possess grace which would preserve them in that state through all future temptations.  If Calvinists could grant something like that, I think we might be able to bridge the gap between Calvinists and Catholics on this point.  However, if Calvinists want to say instead that the non-elect never love God supremely at any given moment of time even considering all currently-experienced alternatives - that is, if the non-elect are always in a state of loving some currently-experienced created reality above God - then I don't think a full reconciliation can be reached.  Honestly, I'm not entirely sure at this moment which scenario is actually the case.  This would be a great point for further dialogue between Calvinists and Catholics.  (I should note, however, that even if full reconciliation on this particular point could be reached, there would still, I think, be a substantial difference in terms of the doctrine of assurance - for Calvinists seem clearly to want to say that elect persons, as such, in principle at least if not always in practice, have the ability to know if they are elect, while the Catholic Church has made it plain that certain knowledge of one's election cannot ordinarily be had in this life.  But, even here, perhaps further dialogue will reveal more possibilities than I can currently imagine.)

Published on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene.