Do You Believe Our Deaths Are Preordained?

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IrishDude45

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According to Church teaching, are the time and place of our death set?
 
It depends on your perspective. From our perspective, there is quite a lot of free action on our part and on the part of others that can affect when and where we die, so the answer is no. But God’s perspective is not constrained by the limits of time. He knows all that will happen, including where and when we will die.

But it may not be be accurate to describe this as preordained, because we do not know that God experiences temporal events sequentially. I believe the general theological opinion is that He does not; that all times are present to Him. So the most accurate thing we may be able to say is that the times and places of our deaths are ordained.
 
They are without a doubt the time and place of our death is “known” by God who knows all things, but not set. This is similar to free will. We have a free choice, even though God, who knows all things, knows in advance what choice we will make.
 
Psalm 139:13-16
13 You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works!My very self you knew; 15 my bones were not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.
 
That has never made sense to me. How can we say that our death is not preordained if God knows that on December 5, 2035 I’m going to be hit by a car and die on the spot?
 
Phemie said:
That has never made sense to me. How can we say that our death is not preordained if God knows that on December 5, 2035 I’m going to be hit by a car and die on the spot?
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Because if to God all times are present, then to God this is not a future event, which is what pre-ordained means.
 
Phemie said:
That has never made sense to me. How can we say that our death is not preordained if God knows that on December 5, 2035 I’m going to be hit by a car and die on the spot?
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Foreknowledge is different from preordained!
 
There is a very interesting passage in Acts Ch.2:23 where St. Peter is preaching to the Jews on Pentecost about the death of Christ. Here is the quote: “This same(Jesus) being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you by the hands of wicked men have crucified and slain.” Now the key words here are “determinate counsel, foreknowledge”. Certainly God in his foreknowledge saw that evil men,by excersing their freewill, would put to death the Son of God, and knowing this, ordered it so that this would accomplish His plan and purposes. So this seems to suggest that God is not merely a passive observer of all events, both present and future, but is instead an active participator in the affairs of men without violating their freewill. There is a saying “Man proposes, but God disposes”, which I take to mean that both concepts of Predistination and Foreknowledge are not necessarily at loggerheads with each other. There are certain scriptures that explicitly indicate that “God numbers our days”,ect. But yet man has a freewill to choose when to die. But our freewill is limited. A person for example can choose a certain time to commit suicide, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will happen.(as the many failed suicide attempts throughout the world attest to)That is because God is sovereign and it is up to him to decide when someone is going to die. There are many examples of people who chainsmoke and drink liqour on a regular basis, but yet they live to a ripe old age. Then there are those who strive to live as healthy as possible, but they end up dying of cancer. The point is that mans’ freewill is limited, and Gods’ freewill is unlimited.The Preordination of God is not possible without the volition and freewill of man.
 
ApocalypseNow said:
That is because God is sovereign and it is up to him to decide when someone is going to die.
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That is what I was thinking when I posted this. I have absolutely no power, in reality, to change the time, place, or manner of my death which only God knows. I could get up from this PC and shoot myself in the head trying to change that but if God did not will for me to die today, he would not allow me to die but instead allow me to live in order to die at His appointed time. So if we cannot change the time or place of our deaths why do we worry about our safety and live in fear? If we had complete trust in God, we would not be afraid of any bodily harm out of fear of death because we know that God will allow us to die when and only when He wills…Just a thought.

pax
 
Phemie said:
I’m sorry, but to me that is nothing but semantics.
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I don’t think it is. Foreknowledge implies knowledge but not necessarily causation of an event before it occurs. Preordained, I think, implies a causal relationship. Foreknowledge says something is going to happen, preordination says something must happen. If I see you walking toward an open manhole I have foreknowledge that you may fall in. But I do not preordain, or cause you to fall in before the event occurs.

Or I may be wrong.
 
Leopard said:
I don’t think it is. Foreknowledge implies knowledge but not necessarily causation of an event before it occurs. Preordained, I think, implies a causal relationship. Foreknowledge says something is going to happen, preordination says something must happen. If I see you walking toward an open manhole I have foreknowledge that you may fall in. But I do not preordain, or cause you to fall in before the event occurs.

Or I may be wrong.
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That’s correct.
 
Phemie said:
I’m sorry, but to me that is nothing but semantics.
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Phemie,

A lot of people get confused over free will, predesination, and God’s foreknowledge. Leopard gave you a good explanation.

Simply put, God gives us free will and allows us to make choices as we see fit. Since God is all knowing, He knows, in advance, what choices we will make. If He didn’t know this, He would not be all knowing. Knowing what will happen is different than pre-ordaining it to happen. If you watch a blooper home video, two times, of someone slipping and falling off the roof, the second time you watch it you will know in advance what will take place, but this does not mean that you caused it to happen. It just means you knew what would happen. So too, God’s foreknowledge of an event does not mean He pre-ordained it to happen. It juste means He knew it would happen since He knows all things.

Likewise with our death; If someone violates God’s law by jumping off a bridge and killing themselves, God’s foreknowledge of this would not mean He pre-ordained this particular death, which is a violation of His own law. That would be a contradiction. It simply means that God, who knows all things, knew in advance that this person would make the unfortunate choice He did.
 
Jesus says, “not one bird falls from the sky unless God wills it”.

You have so many days on this earth, make the best of them.
 
It occurred to me that since God is outside time and space, He knows everything we are going to do. I was wondering this as I was reading the Passion the other night. Jesus seems to know that Judas is going to betray him; that Peter is going to deny Him. Why–were they pre-ordained to do that and not responsible for their actions then?

No, Jesus knew because He existed as God before He became human, and since he was outside space and time then, He already knew their actions. (This is what happens when you watch Lost and read the Passion in one night.) So our death is perhaps not preordained but He knows how it is going to happen
 
turtle18- Why can’t it be both? Why does predestination or a preordaining by God preclude mans freewill? I would submit that both go hand in hand. Yes, God does see all of our actions in the future, everything is present to him, but He also takes an active role in the affairs of men. When it comes to the matter of salvation, God is the one who preordains us to eternal life, not us. Check out Romans 8:29-30. “For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son; that he might be the firstborn of many brethren. And whom he predestinated,them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Now the upshot of these verses seems to say that God has an ultimate say in our destiny. Yes, we do have freewill, but God has a will too. Say for example that God in eternity past foreknew that we would choose salvation, but yet he instead decided not to send his Son into the world. We can have all the freewill in the world to choose salvation, but if no salvation is made available to us by the Sovereign will of God, then we are doomed. God in his acts of preordaining, has presented to every single human being on the planet unique circumstances that forces each and every one of us to make a choice for Eternal life or Death. We do not create or ordain these circumstances because we are limited in knowledge and power as oppossed to God who has unlimited knowledge/power. Here is an example of God ordaining circumstances. Genesis Ch.3 relates the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. God had placed them in the garden as well as the serpent. He also enjoined them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These are examples of God preordaining or ordering circumstances so that our first parents would make a choice by excersing their freewill. They were forced to make a choice. But had not God ordained these circumstances, there would have been no opportunity for man to make a choice. If it weren’t for God placing certain people in our lives, then we would not have opportunity to accept his salvation. He even ordains it so that that personal sins that we commit, in some way, by some mysterious action on his part, brings us closer to Him.
 
WhollyRoamin said:
At least you’re sorry.

Or is that just semantics too?
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Wow, you’re kind of edgy there aren’t you?

I have a question. If God is all knowing and knows the decisions you will make, then why does God let serial killers, rapists, and drug dealers to be born which only cause havoc on the Earth. I understand these people have free will, but why would God create these people while knowing that they would CHOOSE to live that way?
 
boondocksaint said:
Wow, you’re kind of edgy there aren’t you?

I have a question. If God is all knowing and knows the decisions you will make, then why does God let serial killers, rapists, and drug dealers to be born which only cause havoc on the Earth. I understand these people have free will, but why would God create these people while knowing that they would CHOOSE to live that way?
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Am I edgy? Then I am edgy. :console:

In truth, you’ve asked a complicated question that is hard to rationalize. It demands that God conform to our expectations of Him rather than the other way around.

What is the difference between omnicience and predestination? I confess that I do not know. But I think about it in this imperfect way: if you have an 8 year old boy and you ask him if he’d like to have dessert after dinner-- you know how he’ll answer-- “yes!” He is free to reply however he wants, but the parent still knows how he’ll react. So it is with God and Humans. He knows how we’ll act and yet he lets us act anyway.

Why does God permit evil to happen? It’s hard to say. Perhaps because he also lets love happen and kindness happen? Those are unsatisfying answers! But they are unsatifsying questions.
 
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