Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Joseph Ratzinger on the Dynamic Relationship Between God's Foreknowledge and Human Freedom


While reading his interview with Peter Seewald, Joseph Ratzinger, then-Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, answered a question about human free-will and God’s foreknowledge which I am sure many Latter-day Saints will appreciate as well as his affirmation of the “fortunate fall” (felix culpa) (why yes, I am feeling very ecumenical today . . . ;-) )

God has created true freedom and allows his own plans to be confounded (even if he does so in such a way that he can then make something new out of them). History shows this. First the sin of Adam upsets God’s plan. And God answers this by giving himself more powerfully, by giving himself in Christ.

That is, so to say, the one great example. There are many other lesser ones. Let’s take the people of Israel. They were supposed to live in a theocracy, an arrangement whereby there were no human rulers, but only judges who applied the divine Law. But the Israelites wanted a king. They wanted to be like other people. And they wrecked the plan. God gave way. He gave them Saul, then David, and from that point he built the road to Christ again, to the King who overthrew all monarchy by dying on the Cross.

We have here models by which Scripture would have us understand that God fully accepts freedom, on the one hand—and, on the other, is greater than we and is able to make a new beginning out of failure, out of destruction, a new beginning that in some way improves on the original and appears greater and better. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald [trans. Henry Taylor; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002], 58-59)