God's Ordained or Permissive will

[MarcoPolo]

I understand Father Mitch Pacwa went into the difference between God’s ordained will vs. His permissive will. Does anyone know where to find this? Or any other Catholic speaker or writing that goes into this??

The theory I understand is along these lines:
Ordained Will - that which God will not change
Permissive Will - that which God permits our prayers to affect

 

[CatholicSamurai]

Can anyone give insight? Suggest a book, article? I’m looking for answers to the same question.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Bump.

 

[Luke_Arredondo]

One of my teachers once said that this is one way to explain the problem:

When we conceive of God’s will and that he knows the result of our actions ahead of time, etc., we run into the problem of wondering whether we can change anything. The main problem with this is that we are conceiving of God as “in time” when He is really beyond time.

So, how is it that our prayers, etc. can have any effect on our future if God already knows all that we will do?

His answer (but if I recall, is essentially that formulated by Boethius, though I don’t know where) was that all of eternity is seen by God as one present reality. And in this way, His will does not affect any of the actions that we have freedom to make.

 

[urban-hermit]

I understand Father Mitch Pacwa went into the difference between God’s ordained will vs. His permissive will. Does anyone know where to find this? Or any other Catholic speaker or writing that goes into this??

The theory I understand is along these lines:
Ordained Will - that which God will not change
Permissive Will - that which God permits our prayers to affect

I look at it a little differently:
God’s Ordained Will (.aka. God’s Positive Will, or sometimes God’s “Perfect Will”) = the “ideal” or perfect good that could happen in a given situation.

I believe this is what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer when we say “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

God’s Permissive Will = everything else that happens!

I didn’t have much success finding on-line resources to expound upon this concept, but I did find this page which talks about the existence of God and touches upon the problem of evil, i.e. why God “permits” certain things that are less than His perfect will to occur:
newadvent.org/library/almanac_rumble.htm
(search the page for “positive will” or scroll down about a fourth of the way into the page to see the answer to the question “Is it, then, God’s will that people should suffer from such terrible diseases as cancer?”)