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  • Thread starter Thread starter michael_quinlan
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I disagree. Ephesians says that we were saved by Grace through faith and were created in Christ for good works:
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Eph. 2:8-10
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Maybe you could expand on why you think we are incapable of doing any good in the world?

God bless
 
We can only cooperate through grace to allow good to enter the world. Good was created by God. Only God can do good. We can either allow it to arrive in the world, or do evil.

Our talents, skills, abilities(ex: weight-lifting) are not ours. We cooperated with grace so that these good(s) of God could be manifested here on earth.
 
Grace is the super-natural gift from God granted to man to accomplish His Will. Good is the act and creation that only God can do.
 
michael_quinlan said:
that we cannot do any good in this world?
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Yes, I think God should get all of the credit for any good done in the world. If we cooperate with God’s grace and do good, He should get the credit. I also think He causes the cooperation!

God bless you!
 
michael_quinlan said:
Grace is the super-natural gift from God granted to man to accomplish His Will. Good is the act and creation that only God can do.
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Do you abide by the Lutheran theology that man is never holy but simply declared so because of Christ’s sacrifice? Or can man actually be made holy by Christ?
 
MarcoPolo said:
Do you abide by the Lutheran theology that man is never holy but simply declared so because of Christ’s sacrifice? Or can man actually be made holy by Christ?
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I think we’re made holy. The Lord disciplines us so that we won’t be condemned along with the world (1 Cor 11:32). This implies we have to be in shape so we won’t be condemned along with the world…an inherent shape, not an imputed shape.

Right?

God bless you,
 
When we do good, we do it through cooperation with God. When we do evil, we do it through refusing to cooperate with God.

However, our free will plays a part here. We are not God’s ‘robots’; we are His creatures. Some of us will do good through doing His will; others will do evil in not doing His will. . .but when we choose cooperation we are in fact ‘doing good’. We’re not passive conduits through which good ‘flows’ whether we will it or no.

It appears to me that given the OP’s logic, we are not responsible for our evil deeds either. If when we do good it is all ‘God’ and not ‘us’ in any way, then in doing evil how is it that suddenly it all becomes ‘us’ and never a scrap of God into the equation? I think he (the OP) definitely is limiting God here as well as limiting humanity into only being ‘free’ to do ‘evil’.
 
We are free to cooperate by praying for the grace to allow good to enter the world.(If you want to see praying for this grace as a good, OK) We are also free to do evil
 
So basically you’re saying that we’re ‘free’ to do actual evil (by not doing God’s will), but we aren’t ‘free’ to do actual good?

Sorry, sounds vaguely Jansenist to me! 😃
 
Many people have a problem with accepting the fact that all good comes from God. We are merely the conduits for it to flow to earth. Musicians especially find this hard, since they practice vigorously and become adept at “their” skill. They find it outright insulting to find out that it isn’t theirs.

By nature we want to be creators. How humbling it is to discover we are only pipes.
 
michael_quinlan said:
Many people have a problem with accepting the fact that all good comes from God. We are merely the conduits for it to flow to earth. Musicians especially find this hard, since they practice vigorously and become adept at “their” skill. They find it outright insulting to find out that it isn’t theirs.
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But michael, you said that we can’t do good without supernatural grace. Didn’t you?

So. . . either musicians in mortal sin aren’t doing good when they play good music, or musicians in mortal sin who play good music receive supernatural grace to play music while in mortal sin?

VC
 
Can you still be a good pipe, though not perfect in every area?
 
Your initial statement misled me a little. Honestly, at first reading I thought that you were making a very hopeless statement. I thought that you were saying that we cannot do anything in cooperation with God because we are imperfect beings. Please correct me if I am wrong, but after reading further posts I think you were saying something different.

I think I slightly disagree with you, because while I do think that we should give all of the glory and credit to God (because after all He is Goodness Himself and created everything capable of doing good (and evil)), somewhere along the line we do actually make a choice to let God work in our lives, and that choice is actually doing good.

Otherwise if we could do no good, couldn’t one also say that we could do no evil? (Playing the Devil’s Advocate here) couldn’t one turn that into saying that it is God’s fault and not our own for every sin we commit in the world? If doing good is all God’s business, then why should we care about it? I think we do have some responsibility in there somewhere, and that that responsibility comes from the only thing we are capable of gaining some sort of control over: our own will. Though doing good is impossible without God, the choice on our behalf to offer ourselves to Him is small and often times wimpy, but still very important.

So IMO, the only good that we can receive any credit for is in our choices to obey God: to follow Christ. Yes, He makes all of it possible through and through, but it is our small-yet significant decision to give it all back up to Him. Without our choice somewhere in there, wouldn’t it all be just a game?
 
By_His_Mercy said:
I think we’re made holy. The Lord disciplines us so that we won’t be condemned along with the world (1 Cor 11:32). This implies we have to be in shape so we won’t be condemned along with the world…an inherent shape, not an imputed shape.

Right?

God bless you,
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Yup, Christ transforms us. It sounds like the OP does not believe this.
 
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