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Freddy
Guest
I’m sure He does. But there’s only one course of action you ever take.
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Freddy
Guest
So if you don’t understand something any explanation must be wrong? I’m using an analogy. I think it’s as close as we’re going to get as regards your idea of God and time. If you have a better one then please offer it. It may help solve the problem.Freddy:
You’re putting God in a box of your own making. You don’t understand the concept of God being outside of time, therefore it can’t be true.
If you don’t then we’ll have to do with what we’ve got.
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Freddy
Guest
I keep rejecting this. It’s not that you don’t have a choice. It’s not that you are compelled to one decision. But if God knows what you are going to do then it’s not that you must do it, it’s that you will not do anything other.
That, to me personally, does not match the concept of free will as I understand it. Your mileage may vary.
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Mountie
Guest
It is worth noting that there are different conceptions of free will. Typically when we discuss free will, I’d argue that most people think about libertarian free will, which is absolute freedom to choose or choose otherwise. There is another side of free will in the compatibilist camp. I find this position to be particularly interesting. If we look at a purely scientific study of human cognition, we do see a deterministic picture of free will. However, free will isn’t something that we can actually measure on an objective scale. Rather, it seems to be a subjective phenomenon. Perhaps we ought to make a distinction between the objective and subjective realms of human freedom and decide where free will actually belongs.
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LouLouTyson
Guest
Just because I know that my child isn’t going to eat her broccoli at dinner tonight, doesn’t mean that she isn’t choosing not to eat her broccoli.
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Goldenme
Guest
God is all-knowing. It would be impossible for God to NOT know how you are going to act. But His knowing doesn’t preclude you from acting any way you wish. He has knowledge of our choices. He doesn’t choose for us.
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Latin
Guest
We FREELY will what God wills us to will, and we FREELY do what God wills and causes us to do.
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Explanation through an example: The best Architect decided to build the most beautiful building.
He designed the building, he designed every event down to its minutest details which need to take place to complete the building.
He gives his builders the building design, which contains every event down to its minutest details.
The architect causes every event/ act, which events/ acts tailor made to each of his builders to complete the building.
The architect and his building design causes/ creates the builders Free will = Aided free will.
If the architect would give his builders Libertarian free will, they would build the Tower of Babel.
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IN THE SAME WAY WE ARE GOD’S BUILDERS
God designed the universe includes this world, He Designed, Decreed, Foreordained and He causes every event/ act according to His design down to its minutest details which need to take place to complete His creation.
As we are God’s builders, for every one of us God Designed, Decreed, Foreordained and He causes every event/ act down to its minutest details, which acts tailor made for every one of us need to do to complete His creation.
Without even knowing, we are God’s builders, every act we perform, Designed, Decreed, Foreordained by God from all eternity and He causes us to do in order to complete the work of creation.
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CCC 308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator.
God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes:
"For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it.
CCC 307 God thus enables men to be intelligent and free, causes in order to complete the work of creation, … Though often unconscious collaborators with God’s will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions.
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St. Thomas teaches that God effects everything, the willing and the achievement. S. Th.II/II 4, 4 ad 3.
The same is true for events in our lives. Relative to us they often appear to be by chance.
But relative to God, who directs everything according to his divine plan, nothing occurs by chance.
Hence if this divine influence stopped, every operation would stop.
Every operation, therefore, of anything is traced back to Him as its cause. (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III.)
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AS WE ARE ALL GOD’S BUILDERS
God Designed and tailor made for everyone of us, every our acts, includes the acts of every our sins, Decreed and Preordained from all eternity. – CCC 310, CCC 314, etc.
Nothing that is outside of God’s creating, sustaining, and governing will.
As God himself operates in our wills, we are freely cooperating with His graces, without even knowing it.
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God bless
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Latin
Guest
God did not create in this world evil and sin for eternal suffering in hell!
God created in this world evil, sin and suffering (not eternal suffering in hell) for good reason as follows.
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Catholic Encyclopedia : Evil
“But we cannot say without denying the Divine omnipotence, that another equally perfect universe could not be created in which evil would have no place.”
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310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it?
With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection, 314 through the dramas of evil and sin. – God created the dramas of evil and sin, started with Satan’s rebellion, then the “fall” of Adam and Eve.
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THE REASON GOD CREATED THE DRAMAS OF EVIL AND SIN
Life without suffering would produce spoiled brats, not joyful saints.
Our struggle and tribulation while journeying towards our ultimate perfection through the dramas of evil and sin is the cost which in-prints the virtue/ nobility into our souls – the cost of our road to nobility and perfection.
In this world man has to learn by experience and contrast, and to develop by the overcoming of obstacles (Lactantius, “De ira Dei”, xiii, xv in “P.L., VII, 115-24. St. Augustine “De ordine”, I, vii, n. 18 in “P.L.”, XXXII, 986).
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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Free Will explains;
“God is the author of all causes and effects, but is not the author of sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen. Still God is the cause of sin.
God’s omnipotent providence exercises a complete and perfect control over all events that happen, or will happen, in the universe.”
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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains;
“His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.
He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.
All events preordained by God in accordance with His all-embracing purpose.
Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design” (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in “P.L.”,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12510a.htm
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As we see above, God created in this world the dramas of evil and sin for good reason, to train us to be joyful saints in Heaven , NOT for eternal sufferings in hell.
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God’s will is the cause of all things, every event that happen or will happen in the universe.
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Nothing that is outside of God’s creating, sustaining, and governing will.
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CCC 324 Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.
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Anyone who study the Book of Jonah knows, God promises hell and provides Universal salvation, this is the way God provides.
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God bless
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whatistrue
Guest
So do you not believe that humans can make their own choices? That God decides everything for us? That’s what this phrase means to me. If you intended a different meaning, please explain in your own words.
My assertion is that humans have free will to choose their actions. Are you saying that the Church teaches otherwise? Or that the quote above actually supports free will?
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whatistrue
Guest
If you say that God says one thing and does another, then you say that God is a liar. Is that what you meant?
Isn’t Universalism a heresy? Or am I mistaken about that?
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goout
Guest
Anything pertaining to God is by definition mysterious.goout:
Frankly it doesn’t seem all that difficult to me. Knowing and determining are not the same thing, so omniscience does not invalidate free will. Being able to do something doesn’t mean it will be done, so omnipotence doesn’t invalidate free will. God gave us free will, so we have it. What is so mysterious?
Mystery in the Christian sense is not pure ignorance but rather an invitation to ever deeper knowing.
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whatistrue
Guest
Okay; different sense of the word. I have no problem with that. Of course, the mere fact of omnipotence and omniscience existing at all is mysterious in itself, no?
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MarkRome
Guest
You are mistaken. God did not create evil. Period. That is not in the Catholic Encyclopedia. God is not the author of evil. God created free will and allows evil in his permissive will.
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Mot
Guest
I totally agree
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Gorgias
Guest
No to the first and yes to the second.
That God “causes” doesn’t mean that we do not. Keep in mind the distinction between “primary causation” and “secondary causation”. God’s causation is primary, and in His plan for us, He enables us to be agents of secondary causation. So, when we say that “He causes every event”, we don’t mean that He is the sole agent of causation and we are mere pawns in a deterministic game.
So… yes, God causes, and yes, we have free will.
Not unless you think that “mercy” is just another word for “lying”…
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Latin
Guest
I believe humans freely make their own choices.
But the heart of the matter is, knowing the theological technicality of our free choices.
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THE THEOLOGICAL TECHNICALITY OF OUR FREE CHOICES AND DECISION MAKING
St. Thomas teaches that God effects everything, the willing and the achievement. S. Th.II/II 4, 4 ad 3.
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CCC 308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator.
God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes:
"For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it.
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CCCS 1990-1991; Justification is also our acceptance of God’s righteousness.
In this gift, faith, hope, charity, and OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S WILL are given to us.
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God enabled us by the infused graces to be obedient agents as “secondary causers.”
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GOD IS THE ARCHITECT OF THE UNIVERSE AND WE ARE HIS BUILDERS/ COWORKERS.
The technicality of our choices and actions:
CCC 307 God thus enables men to be intelligent and free, causes in order to complete the work of creation, … Though often unconscious collaborators with God’s will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions.
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In God’s building works, as He is “primary causer” continually infuses into us “secondary causers” our tailor made tasks in the building work.
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PLEASE KEEP IN MIND
God at our justification infused into us His gifts of faith, hope, charity, and OBEDIENCE TO HIS WILL so we are obedient, and there is newer any conflict between God and us.
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God’s will is the cause of all things, every event that happen or will happen in the universe.
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Nothing that is outside of God’s creating, sustaining, and governing will.
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As God himself operates in our wills, we are freely cooperating with His graces, without even knowing it.
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St. Augustine on Grace and Predestination
De gratia et libero arbitrio 16, 32: “It is certain that we will when we will; but He brings it about that we will good … . It is certain that we act when we act, but He brings it about that we act , providing most effective powers to the will.”
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St. Thomas teaches that all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and not to any other cause, because Gad alone is the cause of our willing and choosing. CG, 3.91.
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THIS IS ABOVE THE WAY
We FREELY will what God wills us to will, and we FREELY do what God wills and causes us to do.
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God bless
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Vico
Guest
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whatistrue
Guest
The way the sentence I was referring to reads, to this fairly well educated native speaker of modern American English, it says that God is essentially the ultimate micro-manager. If that is not what is meant, the terminology needs to reflect that.
Where was “mercy” in that sentence? I fully understand and accept that God can save whomever he wishes and has more mercy than I can imagine, but there is a difference between “provides universal salvation” and “provides for the possibility for all to be saved who want it”.Not unless you think that “mercy” is just another word for “lying”…
Just because God knows what you will do doesn’t mean you have no free will. The issue here isn’t free will, it’s how beings that live in a realm of time can relate to their creator who is a being that is outside of time. We find it very difficult to think about that because we have no frame of reference in our minds to think about something “outside of time”.
The whole of human existence is “present” to God. I can see how one would come to this conclusion when considering that God “knows” what we will do. If you think about it, God created time, and while it’s difficult for us to think about life outside of time, He is the “engineer” of it and there’s no reason why He couldn’t see all of time at once.
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whatistrue
Guest
Why say “A” in a simple declarative sentence, and then hedge that statement with a wall of text that seems to deny the simple statement?
Let me try this another way.
Please answer either “Yes” or “No” to the following question, without the flowery convoluted quotes from long ago Saints or citations from the CCC or anything other than a simple affirmative or negative response:
Do you believe that it is possible for a human being to freely choose to refuse the grace offered by God and to thereby condemn themselves to Hell, and that God would therefore allow them to suffer in Hell for all eternity since it is their choice?
Let me try this another way.
Please answer either “Yes” or “No” to the following question, without the flowery convoluted quotes from long ago Saints or citations from the CCC or anything other than a simple affirmative or negative response:
Do you believe that it is possible for a human being to freely choose to refuse the grace offered by God and to thereby condemn themselves to Hell, and that God would therefore allow them to suffer in Hell for all eternity since it is their choice?
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