For what reason did God predestinate believers to salvation? There are three main points of view on this matter: a) God predestined those who, as He foresaw from eternity, would love Him, live godly and do good works (predestination based on the foreknowledge of human merits); b) God predestined those who, as He foresaw from eternity, would believe in Christ (predestination based on the foreknowledge of man's response to God's mercy); c) God predestined people to salvation solely by His mercy, without any reason or merit on their part (unconditional predestination).

The latter two points of view do not differ as much as it may seem: when we speak of God's "foreknowledge," we must not forget that in relation to created reality, God is Creator, Preserver, and Provider, and not merely an outside Observer. He not only observes the course of events, but also actively directs it. God not only waits for the conversion of sinners, but actually leads them to it (John 6:37, 44). Repentance is a gift from God (Acts 5:31, 11:18; 2 Tim. 2:25). Many Christians, looking back on their lives, can recognize that God directed all the circumstances of their lives long before their conversion and showed concern for their salvation when they did not yet know Him and did not want to know Him. Thus, in foreseeing the repentance and faith of sinners, God foresees not some fact external to Him, but the result of His own actions. It is therefore difficult to draw a clear line between God's foreknowledge and His predestination. The Greek word translated "foreknew" in Rom. 8:29, as Bishop S. Cassian Bezobrazov, already contains the moment of election (Christ and the First Christian Generation, p. 225). It is God's acts in our lives that have led us to conversion, not our actions that have caused God to take care of us.

I must also admit that I have not been able to find convincing support in Scripture for what we have designated in point (a) as "predestination according to foreseen merit." If we ask directly why God predestined us to salvation, then the Apostle answers: according to the good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:5). This is exclusively a matter of His goodwill. We cannot claim that any of our own merits and good works, which God foresaw, have disposed Him in our favor: But if by grace, it is not by works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. And if by works, then this is no longer grace; otherwise a deed is no longer a deed (Romans 11:6).

The Apostle Paul writes that election is election by grace (Romans 11:5). This question is explained in detail by Blessed Augustine: Let us therefore understand the calling by which the elect are chosen: not those who are chosen because they believe, but those who are chosen to believe. For the Lord sufficiently reveals this calling when He says: "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you" (John 15:16). For if they were chosen because they believed, they themselves would have chosen first, believing in Him, that they might deserve to be chosen. All this is completely taken away by Him who said, "You did not choose Me, but I chose You." For they themselves undoubtedly chose Him when they believed in Him. Wherefore for no other reason did He say, "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you," except that they did not choose Him to choose them, but He chose them to choose Him: for His mercy preceded them (Psalm 58:11) by grace, and not by duty. So He chose them out of the world when He lived here in the flesh, but those who had already been chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. This is the unshakable truth of predestination and grace. For why does the Apostle say: "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4)? For if this is said because God foreknew their faith, and not because He was going to make them believers; then the Son opposes this foreknowledge when He says, "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you": for in this case God rather foreknew that they would choose Him, that they might deserve to be chosen by Him. Therefore they were chosen before the creation of the world by the predestination by which God foreknew His future works: but they were chosen of the world by the calling by which God fulfilled that which He had predestined. For whom He predestined, He also called; the very vocation that is according to the intention. And so, not others, but those whom He predestined, they themselves He called: not others, but those whom He so called, whom He also justified: not others, but those whom He predesceed, called and justified, and glorified them also (Romans 8:30); With the goal, of course, which in turn has no purpose. So God chose the faithful, but in such a way that they might become faithful, and not because they were already faithful. The Apostle James says: "Did not God choose the poor of the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to them that love Him" (James 2:5)? And so, in choosing, He makes them rich in faith, as well as heirs of the Kingdom. It is rightly said that He chose in them what He Himself created, for which He chose them. I ask, who, hearing the words of the Lord, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," will dare to say that men believe in order to be chosen, while they are rather chosen to believe, lest those to whom Christ says, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," be found against the truth?

Who, listening to the Apostle saying, "

In him we have also become heirs, having been predestined to this according to the decree of Him who doeth all things according to the purpose of His will, that we might serve for the praise of His glory" (Eph. 1:3-12): who, I say, hearing this attentively and with understanding, will dare to doubt the truth which we defend? God in Christ chose before the creation of the world the members of His body: and how would He have chosen those who did not yet exist, except by predestination? So He chose us, predestinating. And did He choose the ungodly and unclean? For if it be asked whether he has chosen those of whom we have spoken above, or rather the holy and blameless, no one will hesitate to answer, and will immediately vote for the holy and blameless.

"Therefore He foreknew," says the Pelagian, "who would be holy and blameless of His own free will: and therefore before the foundation of the world, according to His foreknowledge, by which He foreknew that they would be, He chosen. Therefore He chose them before they existed, predestining as sons those whom He foreknew to be holy and blameless: and of course He Himself did not do so, nor did He intend to do so, but foreknew that they would be so." Let us consider, then, the words of the Apostle, and see whether He chose us before the foundation of the world because we were going to be holy and blameless, or that we might be. "Blessed," says the Apostle, "is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heaven, inasmuch as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless." Therefore, not because we were going to be, but because we wanted to be. How certain and how clear it is: because it is we who will be like this, because He Himself has chosen, predestined that we should be so by His grace. And so "He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heaven, because He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love, having predestinated us to be adopted as sons by Jesus Christ." Then, notice that he adds, "according to the good pleasure of his will"; so that in such a blessing of grace we should not boast of our will, "by which He has done us good in the Beloved": that is, by His will He has done us good. For the word "beneficence" comes from the word "grace," as well as "justify" from "righteousness." "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he hath given us in abundance in all wisdom and understanding, having revealed to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure." In this mystery of His will He placed the riches of His grace, according to the good pleasure of His will, and not ours, which could not have been good, if He Himself, in His good pleasure, had not helped it to become so. And having said, "According to His good pleasure," he added, "which He had first laid in Him," that is, in His beloved Son, "in the dispensation of the fulness of times, that all things in heaven and on earth might be united under the head of Christ. In Him we have become heirs, having been predestined by the decree of Him who does all things according to the purpose of His will, that we may serve to the praise of His glory."

It will take an extremely long time to analyze individual places. But you feel without a doubt, you feel with what clarity of the apostolic utterances this grace is defended, against which human merit is exalted, as if a man first gives something in order to be repaid to him. Therefore God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, predestinating us to be adopted as sons: not because we were going to be holy and blameless in ourselves, but because He chose and predestined us to be. And He did this according to the good pleasure of His will, that no one should boast of his own will, but of God's will concerning himself: He did this according to the riches of His grace, according to His good pleasure, which He first set in His beloved Son, in Whom also we were made heirs, being predestined to it according to the intention, not ours, but Him Who does all things, even to the point of which the will itself accomplishes in us (Phil. 2:13). But He does according to the counsel of His will, that we may be to the praise of His glory. From this comes the fact that we cry out that "no one should boast of a man" (1 Corinthians 3:21), and, therefore, not of himself; but "he who boasts, let him glory in the Lord" (ibid., 1:31), so that we may be to the praise of His glory. For He Himself works according to His intention, that we should be holy and blameless to the praise of His glory, for which reason He called us, having predestined us before the foundation of the world. From this purpose comes the very calling of the faithful in the proper sense of the word, to whom all things work together for good: since they are called according to their intention (Rom. 8:28), and the gifts and calling of God are immutable (On the Predestination of the Saints, chs. 17-18).

Likewise, commenting on Rom. 9:11-13, St. Augustine says: If he (the Apostle) had wanted to point out the future works, either good of the one or the bad of the other, which God foresaw, he would never have said "not of works," but would have said "of future works," and in this way would have settled the matter, without raising any other question to be solved (Enchiridion, ch. 98).

God does not choose us for our purity (for we are very unclean), but makes clean those whom He has chosen: Are you not the only one who is pure? We can only be pure when you purify us. And Thou cleansest those in whom Thou wilt be pleased to dwell, whom Thou hast predestined without their merits before the world, whom Thou hast called out of the world, whom Thou hast justified in the world, and whom Thou hast glorified after the world.

Those whom Thou hast chosen for Thy temple out of many, Thou hast purified, pouring pure water upon them, whose names Thou knowest, written in the Book of Life, who cannot perish in any way, and to whom all things are made possible for good (Flowers of Grace-Filled Life, p. 133).

Thus the elect received freely what they received: there was nothing before them that they had given before, and they would have been recompensed: for nothing He saved them (On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 6).

In our election there is no merit of ours and no glory of ours – it is the merit and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we doubt, we do not humiliate ourselves, but Him.

Indeed, if we believed that God chooses us on the basis of some foreseeable virtues, then we would have to choose between self-conceit and despair. We would fall into a ridiculous conceit if we saw in ourselves some virtues that were supposedly the cause of God's election; And we would fall into despair if, looking at ourselves more realistically, we saw that we have no merits of our own.