Louis Le Blanc On Predestination in the Roman Catholic and Reformed Schools (Theses 11-17)
On Alphonus Mendoza's definition of predestination. Infra- and supralapsarian definitions of predestination among the Roman Catholics.
11. In fact, Alphonsus Mendoza of the Augustinians (already cited above), professor at Salamanca, goes even further. For he expressly holds that the first act of all divine acts was predestination, from which all the other decrees concerning the founding of the world, creation of human beings, the permitting of sin, etc., follow. Therefore, he wants the creation and preservation of this whole world—indeed the very reprobation of the demons and of the impious including their just damnation—to be numbered among the effects of the predestination of Christ and the elect. And, in a word, he continually insists that nothing whatsoever of any kind, whether something small or big, is brought about by God or permitted which is not an effect of predestination and a means ordained to bringing it about.
12. For in his Theological Controversies (the already cited first scholastic question about predestination, section six) this is his second conclusion: “The mind of God presupposes the foreknowledge of nothing future for predestination, but everything follows from it. And therefore, God decrees from eternity to do absolutely nothing, nor in time does he make or permit anything, either natural or supernatural, whether it is a thing of great importance or of little importance. And practically everything which comes into existence is an effect and means of the predestination of the elect and Christ. And, so, everything is subordinate to divine predestination as means ordained for the glory of Christ and the saints.”
13. So, this is his third conclusion: “There is not any other providence of God antecedent to predestination, from which natural and some other supernatural effects come into being. But providence is no less unique and is itself a predestination, from which everything in the universe must follow with absolutely no exception. And therefore, according to this conclusion, the whole world—including the natural and supernatural, good and evil, substances and accidents, and all modes of being and acting in the world, not only in general, but specifically, and individually—should be considered as one complete object of divine predestination. Thus, just as absolutely nothing evades the extent of that object, so there is nothing which does not fall under that act of predestination.”
[No Thesis 14]
15. But from this it is possible to deduce in what way those two doctors think that a person is the object of predestination by God, namely, in the divine foreknowledge as neither fallen nor created, but rather simply as possible or creatable. For given that the permission of the fall of the first man, and even the creation of man himself, is enumerated by them as among the effects of predestination, it is necessary that, from their perspective, foreknowledge of the fall and creation did not precede the decree of predestination in God, according to our mode of understanding, but rather followed it. And so, God was not able in predestinating mankind to consider them as fallen or created, but only as creatable by him. Estius with Mendoza acknowledges this: “We thus do not call it ‘the predestination of fallen man’ as if the foreknowledge of the fall of the first man and in him the whole human race preceded in God (according to our mode of understanding) the predestination of some from the whole race of mankind to eternal life.” (Distinction 40 of book 1 of the Sentences, paragraph 6).
16. But Alphonsus Mendoza shows that not a few of the scholastics—both the older and more recent scholastics—think the same thing as he does regarding this point. Cf. the already mentioned question, section four. There, he cites for himself Bishop of Chioggia Jacob Naclantus, , Albert Pighius, Peter Galatinus, Ambrosius Catharinus, and the man whom he prefers above all the others, Duns Scotus, whom he quotes many times, from which quotes it is clear that according to the subtle doctor, God predestined the elect and willed the gifts of grace for them before he had willed this sensible world, which God willed from eternity for the sake of predestined man, on account of whom he established to create all of visible nature.
17. But the more common opinion in the Roman Schools is that when God predestined from eternity certain people, he considered them as fallen in Adam, and corrupt in their sin. For commonly, their theologians believe that that decree by which God predestined certain people to salvation, according to our mode of conception, followed the foreknowledge of the fall of the first man, and from that, the attendant original sin, by which the whole race of mankind has been infected.