Nova et vetera

This study is an ambitious and wide-ranging effort to articulate the clear but generous boundaries of Roman Catholic orthodox teaching concerning predestination within the context of alternatives, both within and without Roman Catholicism. Eduardo J. Echeverria's interlocutors thus range from the Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) to the Dutch Reformed theologians Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) and G. C. Berkouwer (1903–1996), as well as the German Protestant Karl Barth (1886–1968), Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835–1888), and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988). A noteworthy feature of Echeverria's engagement with these diverse figures is his care to provide as nuanced and sympathetic an account of their views as possible. Thus, even where there is disagreement—and in some cases it is sharp—Echeverria provides a model of principled and charitable ecumenical interaction.

Echeverria's erudition is on full display in this volume. In addition to those figures named above, who receive chapter-level attention, Echeverria brings to bear a wide array of secondary sources and commentators related to the figures themselves and their respective traditions or schools of thought, as well as to Scripture and Church tradition. If the doctrine of divine predestination has been called "a portentous, awesome word in theology" (Scheeben) and "deep waters, in which every human mind begins to flounder" (Balthasar), then this treatment does justice to its subject matter by consistently placing the reader into very deep waters indeed.

At the same time, Echeverria provides a very helpful and summative statement at the end of each chapter, as well as in the concluding chapter of the book itself, concerning the Roman Catholic orientation for the elements that have been discussed in the preceding sections. This "Catholic orientation" is one of the clear strengths of the book and provides a valuable service for those looking to, as Echeverria puts it, understand "the boundaries of confessional Catholicism" (283). As might be expected, given the disagreements over predestination and grace that were at issue during the era of the Protestant Reformation, the Council of the Trent [End Page 271] figures largely in drawing such boundaries.

Nevertheless, Echeverria is to be commended for making clear from the outset that predestination is itself an ecumenical topic. Much popular and even semi-academic writing has characterized predestination as a specifically Protestant, and particularly Reformed or Calvinist, distinctive. Not so, contends Echeverria. Predestination is itself a biblical doctrine, and thereby an inheritance of theological tradition from the Church Fathers onward, particularly Augustine in the West. Echeverria's book thus explores questions that are of ecumenical or universal concern to all Christians: "The topic of the mystery of God in himself and his relationship with human persons, in short, divine election and human freedom. In other words, how do we reconcile God's sovereignty of grace with human freedom, not just in general but particularly with respect to the Church's full understanding of God's plan of salvation as a work of grace?" (2).

Even if predestination as such is not solely the domain of the Reformed tradition, Echeverria does consider whether Calvin, perhaps that tradition's most identifiable figure, is culpable of the heresy of predestinarianism, which logically equates and holds as symmetrical God's decision to elect some to eternal life and reprobate others to eternal damnation in the same manner and mode (62). Likewise, the Reformed tradition, as represented by Calvin, is judged to depart from the "Augustinian Principle," which holds that human nature remains fundamentally unchanged in the states of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation (36). Because this position holds that human nature is capable only of evil in the fallen state, "this fallen state is inconsistent with Calvin's description of the created will in its pre-fallen condition" (46). Echeverria leaves unexplored how the basically Augustinian view that humanity in the fallen state is unable to not sin (non posse non peccare), affirmed and codified by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), differs...