Predestination vs Free Will and Once Save Always Saved
Predestination vs Free Will
"Once we are adopted as children of God, He will not let His children be lost," said an evangelical friend. Yet in the same conversation, he admitted that not all who claim Christ as their salvation are saved because their conversion was not based on "true faith," thus eviscerating his own argument for "assurance of salvation."
Perhaps part of the solution to the predestination versus free will dilemma can be seen in an understanding of time versus eternity and men versus angels. God sees all of time unfolded before Him in the "one moment" of eternity, which does not flow, but is entirely a present "now." If eternity is not continuous time, but rather something without on moment following the other, it simply exists forever because there is not start or end of eternity. In this sense, our fates appear "sealed" or "predetermined" only in the sense that the full run of time is already complete from the perspective of eternity. We experience it as time only in that "time is what keeps everything from happening all at once."
But what of angels, created in eternity without time? The traditional teaching of the Church is that the fall/salvation of angels was immediate and instantaneous. In their prefect free will and perfect knowledge they were given the eternal and instantaneous choice of choosing love and obedience to God or love of self and rebellion. So, did God fore-ordain Satan's fall? No, God does not create or intend evil. But in granting free will, God accepted the risk that some would rebel. Perhaps, in the case of the angels, He did not even know with certainty if any or all would rebel. Perhaps, since they had free wills, He had to "wait" (perhaps in yet another layer of eternity above that of the eternity of angels) for them to make their own eternal decision, before he knew of their fate.
In this we see that free will is respected and is real and that God did not preordain Satan to be evil. Within eternity, even God may not know in "advance" how an angel would exercise his free will before he did. But since the choice is eternal, once obedient always obedient, or vice versa.
The same applies to man, except we are in time. Our choices don't happen all at once. Yet from eternity, God sees the end of time as well as the beginning and each now in between. In this sense, Creation and time are already finished in eternity.
God sees through an eternal viewpoint how we have chosen even while we, at this "now", feel as though we are still in a process of choosing.
Can We Lose Our Salvation? Or Once Saved, Can We Sin with Impunity?
As with the angels, God created us with the hope and intent that we would choose to be united with Him in eternal glory. But we are free to leave that path. And from that eternal moment when he created time, perhaps in the passing of an "eternal second" analogous to the instant that it took the angels to make their decision, God saw all of time unfolded even to the last and saw how each of us, is and will decide to obey and rebel.
Even Christ, who is God in time, must have faced difficulties of human language and culture. Explaining eternity, time, predestination and free will, would inevitably introduce as many mysteries as answers and may even have created more tendencies toward evil than good. For example, the idea of his own hypostatic union (God and Man in one person)_was only hinted at in veiled language...not a dissertation. It is an idea that took centuries, with the help of the Holy Spirit, for the Church to more fully understand and articulate even while recognizing we will never fully understand or articulate it. The same limitations apply to predestination and free will.
Scripture and tradition do not give us all answers to all questions of faith or even morals. God reveals all we need to know....not everything we desire to know. Once saved always saved is a comforting idea, but not a biblical idea. Perhaps the "hound of heaven" truly does track down every wayward adopted child prior to our deaths.
But even if it is true, perhaps God doesn't want to promise us this salvation either in Scripture or tradition precisely so we will not rely on it and boldly sin because we have no fear of eternal death. This is precisely like the father who never promises to always bail his children out of jail every time they get into trouble, even though he secretly intends to do so. Both Father and father want their children to work out their salvation with a bit of fear and trembling. This lack of assurance of salvation may also inspire a bit more charity, since we are less inclined to coast and more anxious to earn the awards allotted to each according to their works.
In short, is assurance of our salvation something we NEED to know, or only something we WANT to know?
The role of choices and Purgatory
It is God's desire that all should be saved. But He will not force us to live with Him forever. He gives us the choice. (Review Day 140, of The Catholic Catechism in a Year, "Purgatory and Hell")
The Catholic view is that our choices shape us...for eternity. And that is God's design...the way for us to become like Him and ready to be united to Him. For nothing that is contrary to God can persist in His presence.
By contrast, the view of Martin Luthor was that all humans are depraved and forever remain depraved. In his view, salvation comes to us by our depravity being covered over by the grace of Christ. As an analogy, Luthor says we are dung hills covered over by the white snow of Christ's redemption. Beneath, we are still dung, but God does not see it, seeing only Christ's purity.
In contrast, Catholic theology teaches that we are not depraved but rather deprived...deprived of the fullness of grace which we can and will obtain and perfect through a purgation, purgatory, that drives out imperfections and leaves only that which is fit to be in the presence of God. Part of that purgation can occur in this life, part in the next.
The problem of Hell
We can hope that no one is in hell, but we should live with a will to avoid it.
In short, hell is the absence of God. It is the absence of love. Hell certainly exists, and Christ says the way to it is wide (there are many ways to not love) while the path to eternal life is narrow (love....being perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect). But while we are certain that hell is eternal (just as God is eternal, so the state and or possibility of separation from God is eternal), the Church does not specifically teach that any particular persons are in hell. It declares Saints. It has not declared the damned, even in the case of Judas.
So clearly Jesus, and the Church, want us to live with a conscious fear of separation from God (aka Hell). And while most Catholic theologians teach that at the time of death there is a loss of any further opportunity to repent...but not the loss of the opportunity for purification (Purgatory)...that teaching is not di fide, it is not a dogmatic truth defined by church councils or the popes.
In short, the possibility that those who die in alienation from God may still have an opportunity to repent and be purified is not definitively ruled out by Church dogma. Therefore, we can hope that hell is empty...or will one day be emptied through some process of subsequent opportunities of repentance and purification.