How is it possible that some of us will perish?

[Richca]

It’s always interesting to see how people deal with verses that contradict their theological presuppositions. Romans 9 says that God creates some people for destruction like a potter molds clay? Just ignore that. God explicitly says in Isaiah that he creates evil? Doesn’t matter, it’s just one verse. Seems to me that it’s very disrespectful of sacred scripture.

Counterpoint, you could tattoo these verses all over their bodies, they will never read them or acknowledge what they say.

This is a misinterpretation of Scripture. Romans 9 does not say that God creates some people for destruction like a potter molds clay without foreknowledge of their sins. This would be contradictory to many passages of scripture including passages from St Paul himself who says that God wills all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. What St Paul is saying is that God is patient with sinners because he desires their conversion (see parallels in Wisdom 12) but some people God knows will never repent and thus they are fitted for destruction on account of their wickedness.
When the prophet Isaiah says that the Lord creates evil this refers to the evil of penalty or punishment of which God is the author. For example, the Israelites were exiled from their land on account of their disobedience to God’s commandments. The evil of punishment is according to God’s justice which justice is a good.

 

[Mr_Clean]

Question: If God is not willing that any should perish and no one can resist his will, then how is it possible that some of us will perish? (Remember, it is God who works in us “both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”)

If God wills us to have free will and also gives a manual on how to live in accordance with His will yet we decide to use our free will to not follow His will…

Well it seems it was His will, that even though some would perish, we decide our fate by exercising free will. Apparently us not having the option is not an option for God.

 

[tonyrey]

If God wills us to have free will and also gives a manual on how to live in accordance with His will yet we decide to use our free will to not follow His will…

Well it seems it was His will, that even though some would perish, we decide our fate by exercising free will. Apparently us not having the option is not an option for God.

Not having the option would make us incapable of love.

 

[Robertanthony]

Not having the option would make us incapable of love.

God doesn’t have the option to not love, yet no one would argue that he is incapable of love. I mean I could turn the table and say, "What is God’s love for me worth, it’s not even a conscious decision. " It’s like hearing your dad say,“Son, I love you, but not any more or any less than I love all your friends, all your teachers and everybody i come in contact with”.

 

[Doug_Kraeger]

Does anyone have any evidence, in the end, at the final judgement, why God cannot in His infinite mercy and power, give each soul, whether in heaven or hell for ever and ever and ever… give each soul truly infinite graces and save them by reconciling them with God, without violating their free will’s ability to choose? I see no evidence to disprove the points I made in posts 57 and 58 and

for counterpoint a question: You say you believe in “universal reconciliation because I believe in an all-loving God.” but do you have any evidence that God cannot reconcile those in hell and thereby save them in hell and give them the peace, love, joy, thanksgiving and sorrow for all sin that Jesus had on the cross? Is your God infinitely all powerful enough to create freewill such that when we get to heaven (if and when) we will be given truly infinite graces to see The Infinite God as He Is and still have free will? If so, why can not God do the same with those in hell for ever and ever and ever…?

 

[Richca]

God doesn’t have the option to not love, yet no one would argue that he is incapable of love. I mean I could turn the table and say, "What is God’s love for me worth, it’s not even a conscious decision. " It’s like hearing your dad say,“Son, I love you, but not any more or any less than I love all your friends, all your teachers and everybody i come in contact with”.

hello robertanthony,
God does have free will for we are made in His image. God freely chose to create us and not by a necessity of His nature. God freely chooses to keep us in existence at every moment. And God has destined us for eternal life in which he has freely chosen to keep us in existence for all eternity and to partake of His beatitude.

 

[oldcelt]

If God wills us to have free will and also gives a manual on how to live in accordance with His will yet we decide to use our free will to not follow His will…

Well it seems it was His will, that even though some would perish, we decide our fate by exercising free will. Apparently us not having the option is not an option for God.

There are many problems with free will and an omniscient god. If something that creates you already knows the outcome, then how can you have free will? If, as so many say, God has a plan for your life, how can there be free will?

Just two.

 

[Aloysium]

There are many problems with free will and an omniscient god. If something that creates you already knows the outcome, then how can you have free will? If, as so many say, God has a plan for your life, how can there be free will?

Just two.

Reflect on yourself in this moment. You exist now.
Consider that your past has occurred in a similar fashion - in each moment.
This now is new, fresh, present, it contains your thoughts, perceptions and memories - this monitor is happening now.
Each moment is pretty much the same thing, you can at any point say to yourself, “I am now.”

Right now you can choose to continue reading, go for a coffee, whatever.
In each moment we are free to choose what will follow.
That choice will change what follows.
In each moment its past is fixed and the future is malleable.

God exists at the beginning of time, at the end of time and outside of time.
God is aware of each moment, what led to it and how it turns out.
Each moment, each now is a connection with His eternal now.
At this very moment, time intersects eternity. Time flows through the now.
It is this connection with the Godhead that gives life, meaning and the ability to act creatively right here and now.

You have free will in each moment, God is in each moment. I don’t have any problem with an omniscient God and my having free will, because that’s what I am experiencing,

God warned Cain, IMHO, to make clear the choice that he was about to make in allowing sin to overtake him and go on to kill his brother.
We are all given a choice as to what will be our destiny. There’s more to it but it’s something along those lines.

 

[Mr_Clean]

There are many problems with free will and an omniscient god. If something that creates you already knows the outcome, then how can you have free will? If, as so many say, God has a plan for your life, how can there be free will?

Just two.

Just because God knows I’m going to commit a mortal sin tomorrow at noon by robbing a store does not mean he planned it. I by free will chose it. He is already there and knows the choice I’ll make and maybe he’ll use it to the greater good in the end but I still can chose my actions. I don’t think we should look at it as if God wrote a program at the beginning of time that we are held to. St Paul talks about running a race - you ever run a race? There’s a track to follow isn’t there? You can stay on it or not but if you want to finish then its best to follow the track not run off into the woods chasing your tail. The ppl who organized the race plan the course but they don’t follow you while holding a gun to your head saying “follow the path or you fail”. They let you know where to run. How you run is up to you.

 

[ericc]

There are many problems with free will and an omniscient god. If something that creates you already knows the outcome, then how can you have free will? If, as so many say, God has a plan for your life, how can there be free will?

Just two.

There is this thing called foreknowledge. God tries to save all, but not all wanted to walk his way. Throughout the centuries, he sent out his prophets, angels, and finally his Son to help us get back to the true path. Prophets and His Son get killed. Preachers of the Good News get killed. Don’t blame him at the end of the road you don’t see him waiting there if you decide to walk a different path. Don’t get confuse what God’s plan is vs the freewill he gave us. He showed us the way i.e. his plan, the rest is up to us to choose i.e. our freewill. He won’t force you to act in accordance to his wish/desire/plan because he loves us too much.

 

[Rolltide]

There are many problems with free will and an omniscient god. If something that creates you already knows the outcome, then how can you have free will? If, as so many say, God has a plan for your life, how can there be free will?

This is NOT a perfect analogy in any way, but maybe it will help:

Think of God as an NFL official who is also a football commentator for ESPN. It is the end of the season, and the Super Bowl is over. God is giving a report on the season in review.

Since all the games have been played, God knows every score, every play, and the outcome of every down. He knows who caught the ball, and who failed to make a tackle. He can analyze every aspect, or watch it in slow motion. God has knowledge of everything that happened that season.

As an NFL official, God also constructed the rules of the game. He picked the people who would officiate, and used the “instant replay” when necessary to overturn a few bad decisions, in order to make sure that the rules that he set came out the way they were intended.

Now, that said, God did not actually interfere in any of the plays, nor did he play the game for the people. Each coach, and player could have made any decision they chose. In a given situation, a quarterback could have opted to run the ball, make a pass, take a knee, or, heaven forbid, even throw the game. God did not make any of these decisions. He granted the players free will to play however they desired. This, however, does not in any way impact the fact that God still knows what happened, since it’s the end of the season, nor does it change the fact that God provided the rules to the game.

Eternity is a difficult concept, and it works a bit like that. Imagine God sitting at the end of time looking back at everything that has happened and knowing the outcome. He was able to construct rules… a plan… but still give us free will. It is a daunting concept to wrap one’s mind around.

 

[oldcelt]

God exists at the beginning of time, at the end of time and outside of time.
God is aware of each moment, what led to it and how it turns out.
Each moment, each now is a connection with His eternal now.
At this very moment, time intersects eternity. Time flows through the now.
It is this connection with the Godhead that gives life, meaning and the ability to act creatively right here and now.

All those are your beliefs but they conflict directly with Free Will by a loving god. If this god knew of terrible events to innocent people then you have to be honest and admit that permitting that was not an act of love. It is usually at this point that the “for better good” comes out, but we are talking about an omniscient and omnipotent god who could have protected the innocent and didn’t. His free will with all the rules has led to a tremendous body count through the ages.

I was once able to overlook these things, but I can’t any longer.

 

[oldcelt]

There is this thing called foreknowledge.

That is exactly what is is, and in the human world it can be a crime that results in the death penalty. Remember, the Christian God not only has foreknowledge, but had it before he created any of those involved; innocent or guilty. That pretty much excludes true free will, it is more like a playwright…creating a story, developing the characters and then staging it.

 

[oldcelt]

This is NOT a perfect analogy in any way, but maybe it will help:

Think of God as an NFL official who is also a football commentator for ESPN. It is the end of the season, and the Super Bowl is over. God is giving a report on the season in review.

Since all the games have been played, God knows every score, every play, and the outcome of every down. He knows who caught the ball, and who failed to make a tackle. He can analyze every aspect, or watch it in slow motion. God has knowledge of everything that happened that season.

As an NFL official, God also constructed the rules of the game. He picked the people who would officiate, and used the “instant replay” when necessary to overturn a few bad decisions, in order to make sure that the rules that he set came out the way they were intended.

Now, that said, God did not actually interfere in any of the plays, nor did he play the game for the people. Each coach, and player could have made any decision they chose. In a given situation, a quarterback could have opted to run the ball, make a pass, take a knee, or, heaven forbid, even throw the game. God did not make any of these decisions. He granted the players free will to play however they desired. This, however, does not in any way impact the fact that God still knows what happened, since it’s the end of the season, nor does it change the fact that God provided the rules to the game.

Eternity is a difficult concept, and it works a bit like that. Imagine God sitting at the end of time looking back at everything that has happened and knowing the outcome. He was able to construct rules… a plan… but still give us free will. It is a daunting concept to wrap one’s mind around.

As is obvious, I don’t but it. To me, an all powerful deity who sets a plan in motion, knowing the outcome from the start, cannot escape culpability because of Free will. Especially since it is acknowledged by Catholicism that the Christian God intervenes on Earth. He is making choices about when to intervene and for whom. That is fixing the game.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

As is obvious, I don’t but it. To me, an all powerful deity who sets a plan in motion, knowing the outcome from the start, cannot escape culpability because of Free will. Especially since it is acknowledged by Catholicism that the Christian God intervenes on Earth. He is making choices about when to intervene and for whom. That is fixing the game.

That intervention is “fixing the game” is an assumption about when and how He does and does not intervene.

Culpability for what? Obviously God is not culpable for my decision to reject Him, if I make it. That originated within me, in contradiction to anything He may have shown me. Culpable for the state of the world? Should we blame God for not making everything perfect now? Are you saying it is His fault that I exercised my freedom to stop the world from developing as He intended, because He should have just annihilated me if I was going to be annoying? If He were to do that, would you not call Him a tyrant?

Now, if God were going to allow the world to persist in a state of being messed up forever, then you might successfully argue something. But He’s not. He is allowing the weeds and the wheat to grow together for a time, but there will be a harvest, a time when everything is restored. And in the mean time, some of the weeds may choose to become wheat.

This is the problem with dwelling on suffering and blaming God for it. It refuses to acknowledge that all this is temporary, that in a fairly short amount of time, from the perspective of eternity, it will end and we will have a choice to escape it entirely and come to the source of goodness itself.

Complaining about the way things are and saying that a good God would fix now or not allow it to happen is like a child who refused to eat breakfast complaining that it’s his parent’s fault that he’ll be hungry forever and that any good parent would allow him to eat the rotting vegetables out of the trashcan while ignoring the fact that the parent is fixing him lunch. It is to purposefully limit ourselves to less than half the picture while demanding a solution in a form much, much less than the solution that is already there and which we are purposefully ignoring.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Complaining about the way things are and saying that a good God would fix now or not allow it to happen is like a child who refused to eat breakfast complaining that it’s his parent’s fault that he’ll be hungry forever and that any good parent would allow him to eat the rotting vegetables out of the trashcan while ignoring the fact that the parent is fixing him lunch. It is to purposefully limit ourselves to less than half the picture while demanding a solution in a form much, much less than the solution that is already there and which we are purposefully ignoring.

Which isn’t at all to say that everything that happens to us is our own fault, only that there is a greater good waiting than the absence of suffering now.

 

[Aloysium]

. . If this god knew of terrible events to innocent people then you have to be honest and admit that permitting that was not an act of love. It is usually at this point that the “for better good” comes out, but we are talking about an omniscient and omnipotent god who could have protected the innocent and didn’t. His free will with all the rules has led to a tremendous body count through the ages.

I was once able to overlook these things, but I can’t any longer.

I believe something that sounds contradictory at best and delusional to many: One truly lives after one dies.
It ain’t over, til it’s over, and for us, it’s never over. (Reviewing the Catechism would be my suggestion.)

Being is eternal. Everyone knows this on some level. There are many ways in which this is understood, organized in the various religions of man.
But even outside religion, in the concern expressed above about terrible things happening to innocent people, the context is eternity.
This one life in all of eternity without the resurrection, living it in suffering, would be truly, completely tragic.

In time, all that is transient disappears; if the soul were temporary, there would be no loss at all.
One is gone and all is gone - what would it matter?
Body counts? There are plenty of rocks around, what would be the difference?

I am able to love, to know compassion because I am loved, because God is love.

Sometimes when we see something not right in the world, it is a call to action.
There is no point blaming God, the system or whatever, if it is an imperative to do something.
If one can’t, one has to accept one’s limitations, doing one’s best to love others and love God.

 

[Doug_Kraeger]

To not understand how God can create a freewill such that we freely do choose and can be held culpable for some of our wrong decisions is not a problem. If God is truly infinitely good and infinitely powerful, then He must be able to give His peace, love, joy, thanksgiving to everyone (as He wills to do) even those that go to hell for ever and ever and ever. If God is infinitely good and powerful then He must be able to give everyone something that is so good that they count all the suffering in all of time as little more than an uncomfortable night on an old mattress.That we cannot understand the details of such infinite power is not supprising.

The question that is important is: Is there evidence that you can know in your heart that there must be an infinite God, creator of all things, all space and time? Are there some actions that you know are absolutely right and good, or other actions that are always absolutely wrong and evil? If not, just say so. If there are some such actions: How can there be such an absolute objective moral order without an all-powerful Creator God? If there is no God to cause existence, how can there be a cause of an absolute objective moral order?
.

 

[Doug_Kraeger]

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” To “create evil” cannot refer to sin, since sin is not something created. Sin is a rejection of God and His graces, it is therefore an absence of grace, an absence of a good. God is eternally saying in the perfect present tense, “It is very good” in regards to all that is created. God loves the sinner but hates the sin.
To “create evil” must mean to arrange the specific consequences (evils) that befall people as a result of their sinful decisions. In this way God gives us help to determine that we made a mistake, suffered consequences we did not like, and ask what should we have done, what should we do now and if there are should’s and should not’s then there must be a God and what else does He want me (everyone) to know and believe for my own benefit and good?
To “perish” is known to mean going to hell. That someone does in fact go to hell does not in and of itself prove that God cannot reconcile them with Himself while they remain in hell for ever.

 

[jpett]

Scripture says that the “Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

Moreover, the Scriptures say: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13

Finally, the Scriptures say: “Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his [God’s] will?” Romans 9:19

Question: If God is not willing that any should perish and no one can resist his will, then how is it possible that some of us will perish? (Remember, it is God who works in us “both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”)

some hold to the doctrine of universalism and say that all will at some time be saved. The catholic theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar holds to this view. there are some arguments that say that the biblical term for eternal, really can mean pertaining to an age, so that eternal hell can be truly translated as an age of hell.