By Deacon Mike Seibert, Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
“For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate” (CCC 599-612)
Was that part of the plan? I mean – when Jesus suffered, was crucified, died and was buried, was He just acting out the plan that God the Father gave Him to play, or was He acting on His own will? Were Pilate and Judas just hapless players on a stage that was preset by God – in a script written from the beginning of time, or did their free-will stay intact?
We might ‘think’ everything is pre-destined, so to speak. For example, if we look at scriptures like this: “He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake” (Acts 4). Psalm 2 also seems to prophesy his Passion and Death, “Kings on earth rise up and princes plot together against the Lord and against his anointed one.” Obviously, God MUST have planned everything that happened, right?
Unfortunately, this takes us down the path of ‘predestination’. I ain’t no philosopher, so I hate to even take one step on that path, but I’ll at least attempt a basic response. The Catechism summarizes it this way: “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace.” (CCC 600)
Did you catch that? Somehow God leaves our free will intact, but He knows every moment of time as if it was the present to Him.
I’ve heard it explained with a paper towel tube. (Go ahead, grab one right now… I’ll wait…:) When we look at time, we see the outside of the tube; 12 inches long. The left end represents the beginning of time, and the right side represents the end of time. Each inch represents a thousand or million years. But God doesn’t see time that way! He picks up the tube and looks down the middle like a telescope – seeing all moments of time at once. Therefore, IN time (chronos), things happen in sequence – but outside of time (where God exists), all moments of time are present to Him. Therefore, He knew from the beginning what would happen to His Son and who would do it. That also means He knows how the story ends: We Win!
Which leads back to the original question: were Pilate and Judas just playing on a stage that was set for them? The answer is no. Our free will is guaranteed by God, but God knows how we will respond to His grace. God’s grace always gives us a way out of any situation, so we’re never “forced” to do anything.
What about Jesus – was He just a pawn in this game played by God the Father? Absolutely not. Jesus freely accepted his Passion and death: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (Jn 10:18) Even though Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, His human will was still subject to temptations – including the temptation to walk away from His Passion and Death. Yet he CHOSE to do this. “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.” (Jn 12:27)
Everyone in the Biblical story had free will – including Pilate and Judas. What makes Judas’ sin so notorious was that he had the ultimate chance for grace: He ate and drank with Jesus and he even received the Eucharist at the last supper moments before walking out to betray Jesus. God insists on our free will, but He continues to pour out His grace upon us to help us to do the good. He knows how/if we will respond to His grace. He is the perfect gentleman: ever wooing us but never acting without our cooperation. “Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.” (St. Augustine)