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)
