Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast.

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

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So the theme of tonight's lecture is predestination,

and specifically to consider what the Catholic teaching signifies

in its use of the word predestination, and then where predestination

fits within a Catholic theology of creation and recreation. And then at the end, we'll just give

little sketches, little kind of treatments of objections to the Catholic teaching on predestination.

But my hope is that that will create a space in which you can ask your questions or pose your objections,

and we can start a conversation.

Okay. And so what exactly is entailed by the Christian belief in predestination?

I think many people associate predestination with Calvinism or reformed Presbyterianism,

and this idea that one goes to heaven or that one goes to hell by God's sovereign will, and that the contribution

of the individual is minimal if existent.

But the Catholic teaching, as we'll see, on the doctrine of predestination, is distinct,

and it affords space for Christian hope and for the participation of the Christian or the exercise of his or her agency.

But this teaching isn't widely known, and it's a teaching which, I think, stands to free us or stands to animate us in our response to the preaching of the gospel and to the

reception of sacramental grace. So when we inquire, we might find kind of proposals or solutions,

which at first seem troubling, but which I think we'll find at the end of the day are consoling

and encouraging. So the manner of proceeding is first to explain what is meant by predestination

in the setting of Catholic theological tradition. And then, and in this I'll rely a lot on St. Thomas

...