Greg_McPherran:
We have had a long discussion about this. I have been pointed to some excellent documents on Catholic theology of predestination.
64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:jSDj7mGqvLcJ:ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ120.HTM+predestination+reprobate+Ludwig+ott+dave+armstrong&hl=en
cin.org/users/james/files/tulip.htm
My current understanding is that all is God’s grace and it is His will that is always done - not ours. Therefore we don’t really have free will because all we do works to God’s purpose and the root reason for our decisions is beyond ourselves. We can only hope to be chosen by God.
No expert here
God is not like Agent Orange: His Goodness & Love don’t destroy created goodness, or created love - they make them possible, and actual, and fruitful, and varied, and real. The NT shows us this - Jesus Christ shares His Father, His election, His dying, His Sonship, His being the Light of the world, His righteousness, His trampling satan underfoot, & His Cross. His Life becomes ours; the Spirit Who is His, is ours also. The love God requires in Deuteronomy 6 is a total and unreserved love - nothing is to be withheld; by Christ, nothing is. He fulfilled the Law because He responded with infinite obedience and infinite Love to the Commandment which summed it all up. His death on the Cross doesn’t preserve us from suffering: it guarantees it - and transforms it. He was to be crucified - so His disciples must take up the Cross, and follow Him: they don’t avoid the Cross, but share in it.
Far from obliterating, or obstructing, or making impossible the reality of beings other than God, it is their guarantee. Divine Holiness does not relieve us from being holy as He is Holy - it is an incentive to us to be holy; it helps us to be holy. The reality of His Love for others, is not a reason for us not to love others - loving others, is the test of the reality of our own love for God. What we do to others, we are, in effect, doing to Christ.
All things perform God’s Will - either willingly, without having wills, or despite their wills: for “God writes straight with crooked lines”. The injustices of Good Friday, were means to further the world’s salvation. Our wills are fulfilled by our being wholly obedient to God. Our dignity as human beings, is, to be Loved by God Our Creator - and to answer to Uncreated Love with a love which is the response of beings made in the Image and Likeness of Christ. He is Our Model, He shows what man is for, what living as man is for - He is the reason, the Logos, that creatures are created. All created nature is made for Him, and is fulfilled in Him. Because we are fallen, we are unable to be the creatures we are intended to be - in us are all sorts of contradictions - the flesh wars against the spirit, our intellects are darkened, our wills lack the spontaneity and freedom and promptness and energy they should have, and we, who are made so that we might find our fulfilment in God, insist on seeking it elsewhere. Man is made with a hunger in him which cannot be appeased by anything short of the Vision of God in Heaven - yet he tries to be satisfied by idols: things he has made, or perverted. It doesn’t work, and it can’t - so man is unhappy. Our wills work after a fashion, but not as they should. So God’s Will, which is the Will to which ours should be conformed, is mistaken for a burden and an interference.
Certainly the “
root reason for our decisions is beyond ourselves” - unless God is no greater than creatures, it will be. That does not make our willing any less ours - any more than the Life of grace ceases to be really ours for being from Christ. Grace frees us to be who we are, not to be independent of God, but to be ever more deeply and lovingly and freely united with Him. Free will is a God-like gift: it gives to limited man the freedom to direct his whole person to God - or to refuse to. It makes man capable of doing what God the Son does, in a way that is proper to a creature. To be God’s is to be ever freer and ever more lovingly obedient - to be the other, is to find that freedom apart from Christ for Whom it is made, is slavery.
Hope this helps ##
For any decision a person makes, I ask what is the root reason. E.g. if they are selfish, prideful, lustful, etc. I ask why? Is there no cause?
Greg