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toaslan
Guest
joke? You don’t by chance think there is a before and after for God? That He didn’t see “ahead”?**That occurred before the Fall of Adam and Eve**
do you mean philosophy or theology?
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toaslan
Guest
Antimon, on second thought, maybe my question to you about blindness will drag this thread off topic. So I will try to briefly give you the example and bring it back to evil.
A stone is not blind, even though it does not see. The reason we do not call a stone blind is that it is not a kind of thing which sees: stones, by their nature, have no sight.
A man born without eyes is blind. Why? Because, unlike the stone, he is a kind of thing meant to see.
His blindness is a lack of sight. It is a deprivation of sight.
A man who is blind is deprived of something he is meant to have. He does not possess blindness. Rather, he lacks sight. The situation is that he lacks a thing, not that he possesses a thing. Blindness is not a thing, it is a lack of a thing (sight).
Evil is like blindness. It also does not itself have existence, just as blindness has no existence. Evil is a lack of goodness; blindness is a lack of sight.
(This understanding saves us from a ying-yang, Good Force vs Bad Force, God vs Devil view of the things. God is all powerful, and satan is rather opposed to St. Michael the Archangel…)
God created nothing but good. He created beings with free will, a great good. Lucifer freely turned away from God, and in so doing he was like a man blinding himself. He deprived himself of goodness. He emptied his being of goodness and that is what we call evil, the lack of good. He is a twisted, distorted, perverted charicature of the beautiful archangel he once was. Still powerful, but distorted.
This is one way to see that God did not create evil–because it is an absence of something. A lack, or deprivation, or absence is not something which is created. Creation results in being, not non-being.
maybe this helps?
A stone is not blind, even though it does not see. The reason we do not call a stone blind is that it is not a kind of thing which sees: stones, by their nature, have no sight.
A man born without eyes is blind. Why? Because, unlike the stone, he is a kind of thing meant to see.
His blindness is a lack of sight. It is a deprivation of sight.
A man who is blind is deprived of something he is meant to have. He does not possess blindness. Rather, he lacks sight. The situation is that he lacks a thing, not that he possesses a thing. Blindness is not a thing, it is a lack of a thing (sight).
Evil is like blindness. It also does not itself have existence, just as blindness has no existence. Evil is a lack of goodness; blindness is a lack of sight.
(This understanding saves us from a ying-yang, Good Force vs Bad Force, God vs Devil view of the things. God is all powerful, and satan is rather opposed to St. Michael the Archangel…)
God created nothing but good. He created beings with free will, a great good. Lucifer freely turned away from God, and in so doing he was like a man blinding himself. He deprived himself of goodness. He emptied his being of goodness and that is what we call evil, the lack of good. He is a twisted, distorted, perverted charicature of the beautiful archangel he once was. Still powerful, but distorted.
This is one way to see that God did not create evil–because it is an absence of something. A lack, or deprivation, or absence is not something which is created. Creation results in being, not non-being.
maybe this helps?
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antimon
Guest
well my thoughts on it:
-everyone(except adam and eve) is born of will of the flesh (or man), because our parents wanted a baby or at least wanted to have a sex
-at the same time, since God created everything, every single human being is here because of the will of God
so everyone who is born of the flesh is at the same time created and wanted by God, and everyone created and wanted by God is born of flesh(except Adam and Eve, they weren’t born).
I think being ‘born of God’ refers to the need of being born-again (compare John 3 for example). And I don’t think it is something distinct from the baptism of Holy Spirit, because if I am born of God, why would I need to be born-again of Holy Spirit? I think it’s the same.
Verse 12 tells us “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:…”. So it is connected with us believing in Him, with us receiving Him, which is what precedes baptism. He gives us power to become sons of God (why would already born of God need this?). By baptism we are included in God’s family as His adoptive sons.
these are my thoughts. they aren’t infallible and maybe someone more clever would object, but I don’t think they go against the Church teaching.
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antimon
Guest
Well said, maybe you are right. But it’s hard for me to see evil as mere ‘void’ because of it’s fruits, which are too real. But they are only a real consequence of this void. When considering light vs. darkness, dark is only an absence of light, passive state in itself. On the other hand, evil seems to be actively opposing God, but that may be too only a consequence of the void without God.
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
That is an illogical conclusion; it does not follow from the premises.
It is irrelevant to Sola Scriptura. Your reasoning would destroy not only belief in predestination, but all other beliefs too. The relation between the English translations, & the available texts, & the witnesses to those texts, is far closer than suggested. This reasoning would destroy all knowledge of the past - not of the beginnings of Christianity alone. It’s an argument for universal scepticism. We don’t have Socrates - only accounts of him by Plato & Xenophon. For his ideas, we have to go to Plato. Which for those of us not familiar with Greek, means reading a translation.
People who talk of the unreliability of the NT always forget that it is only one of a great host of ancient, translated, texts. Luther never wrote in English, any more than St. Athanasius, or Plato.
As for predestination, it is not, nor does it imply, fatalism; & it does not imply the absence of human responsibility. Not among Catholics, not among Calvinists. One might as well argue that Catholics need to sin as much as possible, so as to have as much as possible to confess, in order to gain the greatest possible benefit from the sacrament. But that is devil’s logic.
It is equally perverse to say that, as God predestines the elect to be saved, therefore, they can be or should be totally idle. Neither position is, respectively, a fair statement of what Catholics believe, or what Calvinists believe - apart from anything else, both distortions leave out great swathes of doctrine without which neither position can be properly understood.
As for the question in the heading - how does that not equally strike at Catholic belief ? Or do Catholic Bibles leave out the passages about election & predestination ? They are as present & complete as in any other Bible.
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Linkowski
Guest
Isaiah 45:7 NAS95 7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.
from 7489; bad or (as noun) evil (natural or moral):-- adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, + displease(-ure), distress, evil((- favouredness), man, thing), + exceedingly, X great, grief(-vous), harm, heavy, hurt(-ful), ill (favoured), + mark, mischief(-vous), misery, naught(-ty), noisome, + not please, sad(-ly), sore, sorrow, trouble, vex, wicked(-ly, -ness, one), worse(-st), wretchedness, wrong. (Incl. feminine raaah; as adjective or noun.).
Evil is here evidently put for war and its attendant miseries. I will procure peace for the Israelites, and destroy Babylon by war. I form light, and create darkness. Now, as darkness is only the privation of light, so the evil of war is the privation of peace.
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tabcom
Guest
How so? The premise is that the inspired word of God was orginally written in Hebrew\Greek. The King James Bible was not translated into English until 1611. Are you suggesting that the King James Bible, and all other English Language Bible’s that followed are without translation errors?
**Let me present one example that may help illustrate my point. Pentacostals have changed the word of God. They believe that ‘speaking in tounges’ means rattling off non-sense syllable and being full of the holy spirit. Where as, the middle English word tongues is translated from the greek word glossa; we get our word glossary from it. A glossary is a section of a book that defines foreign words. The miracle of ‘speaking in tongues’ is not dancing around in circles and jabbering nonsense, it is the miracle that people from different regions of the mediterranean could even understand one another – through the Holy Spirit.
Acts 19:6
And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.**
**Let’s get specific, I"M talking about the unreliability of the NT, and I"M saying that you can not trust the English translation of it. You have to use other sources.
On-line sources that I constantly use are:
interlinear Bible and concordance
Catholic Bible
Search Gods Word
Latin Vulgate
**
:clapping:
:clapping:
** How about that, a non-catholic and a catholic find something they can agree on. :hug1:**
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heisenburg
Guest
I’m just going to post this and move on… All questions posed have been ignored it seems. but… here are some things to chew on…
Please, don’t respond with round abouts… only directs… don’t say i answered that in post x, because no, you didn’t… you have provided scriptures. but we disagree with your interpretation of that scripture.
Anyway…
Have fun kiddos
in Christ
- Can you show me where predestination (as espoused by Calvin, and our present friends) was ever taught by Judaism. Is there even a hint of it. Remember, the Old is revealed in the New. If some shadow of predestination as currently espoused wasn’t in Judaism, then it cannot be true… (by the way, I’m not talking about Bible verses since we will not agree on the meaning) Also, keep in mind, though the OT promise was for the Jews, anyone could become a Jew…
- Is there any pre-Calvin teaching on this version of predestination?
- All doesn’t mean all!!! flash back to Bill Clinton “That depends on what your definition of is, is” God desires ALL be saved. That one sentence alone should show you predestination as you espouse is bogus. He wants EVERYONE to come to him. However, WE, being the only creatures given free will, can CHOOSE to refuse it. Saying God predestines people Heaven by extension means he will predestine some to hell…
Please, don’t respond with round abouts… only directs… don’t say i answered that in post x, because no, you didn’t… you have provided scriptures. but we disagree with your interpretation of that scripture.
Anyway…
Have fun kiddos
in Christ
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frnate
Guest
For two millennia untold millions of people have worked on this particular ‘to do’ list in complete ignorance of your version of predestination. So my question remains: why is belief in your version of predestination necessary?
Peace,
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frnate
Guest
For two millennia untold millions of people have worked on this particular ‘to do’ list in complete ignorance of your version of predestination. So my question remains: why is belief in your version of predestination necessary?
Peace,
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tabcom
Guest
**
As the OP, I’ve tried very hard to answer as many questions as possible.
Please take a few minutes to review my prior post.**
Yes.
Yes.
**Regarding your translation of ‘all’ to ‘everyone’, I’ve discussed that in length earlier within this thread. When you use ‘however’, you are adding to the word of God. Can you see that?
God does not predestine vessels of wrath for hell. Predestination is for the elect. Vessels of wrath are fully accomplished for hell.**
Heisenburg, by the way you phrase your post, it leaves me with the impression that you really havent read anything beyond post #1. If you would be so kind as to review the thread throughout, I’ll be happy answer your questions in more detail. Your intro says you are going to ‘move on’. What is the value of me spending an hour replying back to your questions if you are not even going to read it?
ok…here is a good place to start. Heisenburg, what is you definition of the word predestiation? I’m not asking what you think the doctrine of predestiation is. I’m asking you to simple define the word.When you provide a satifactory answer to this simple question, I’ll expand my answer to the questions listed above.
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Axion
Guest
None at all - of course.
Which is why the original Calvinists (after their initial efforts to “convert” or force Catholics into their beliefs tailed off) didn’t do any evangelising of heathens.
According to them heathens (ie most of the world) had been condemned by God as reprobate and were doomed to hellfire. Therefore they were to be left in their heathen state. This had the useful additional benefit that their lands and property could be taken and themselves wiped out - since, after all, they were abandoned by God anyway. The US idea of “manifest destiny” comes out of this sort of thinking. Manifest destiny meant that God had already condemned the American Indians to destruction, and given their land to the Protestant settlers who were to relace them.
So while catholics tried hard to convert native peoples across the world. Protestant colonisers largely avouided this. Few protestant converts were made outside Europe for three centuries.
Only in around 1800 did Protestants suddenly realise that they were being outflanked and reverse their beliefs. Suddenly they began to set up missionary societies and tried to catch up.
Of course this made no sense with respect to Calvinism. But calvinists solved this contradiction by not thinking about it!
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tabcom
Guest
**Because it is found through out the bible. It has a particular meaning. That meaning is NOT fatalistic, nor a license to be idle in ones faith. Yes, there has been christians fo two millennia doing the Truth. They may not have articulate predestination the why I am doing so within this thread, but they didn’t have to. Predestination is about doing something. He that does the Truth, comes to the Light. Do a word search on called, ordained, choosen, predestinated, foreknew, draw, to name a few. All convey the idea that God picks his servants to do something.
**
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mikeledes
Guest
.I can (or I have to) accept that. My understanding is that the elect are those of whom God knows that they will accept His grace and persevere to the end so He chooses to save them
A Thomist Catholic would not agree with that. The elect freely chose God because God freely chose them first. I also believe a Molinist Catholic will find this a bit problematic:
This is from the Catholic encyclopedia.
newadvent.org/cathen/10437a.htm
God Bless,
Michael
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tabcom
Guest
It is becoming frustrating to have posters, without first taking the time to read all the post within the thread, accusing me of not answering question, as though I’m trying to hide. Axion . . . please ask a question, just one, and I will reply back.
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Axion
Guest
The Council of Trent Condemned Calvinistic ideas of Predestination.
**CANON IV.-If any one saith, that man’s free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema. **
**CANON V.-If any one saith, that, since Adam’s sin, the free will of man is lost and extinguished; or, that it is a thing with only a name, yea a name without a reality, a figment, in fine, introduced into the Church by Satan; let him be anathema. **
CANON IX.-If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.
**CANON XVII.-If any one saith, that the grace of Justification is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema. **
**CANON IV.-If any one saith, that man’s free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema. **
**CANON V.-If any one saith, that, since Adam’s sin, the free will of man is lost and extinguished; or, that it is a thing with only a name, yea a name without a reality, a figment, in fine, introduced into the Church by Satan; let him be anathema. **
CANON IX.-If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.
**CANON XVII.-If any one saith, that the grace of Justification is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema. **
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Axion
Guest
The protestant Arminius also set out very powerful anti-Calvinist arguments:
From the writings of James Arminius - sentiments
If creation be the way and means through which God willed the execution of the decree of his reprobation, he was more inclined to will the act of reprobation than that of creation; and he consequently derived greater satisfaction from the act of condemning certain of his innocent creatures, than in the act of their creation.
This Predestination is inconsistent with the Nature and Properties of Sin in two ways:
It denies, that Christ is the meritorious cause, that again obtained for us the salvation which we had lost, by placing him as only a subordinate cause of that salvation which had been already foreordained, and thus only a minister and instrument to apply that salvation unto us.
It takes away all that most salutary fear and trembling with which we are commanded to work out our own salvation. (Philippians 2:12) for it states “that he who is elected and believes, cannot sin with that full and entire willingness with which sin is committed by the ungodly; and that they cannot either totally or finally fall away from faith or grace.”
This doctrine inverts the order of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For in the Gospel God requires repentance and faith on the part of man, by promising to him life everlasting, if he consent to become a convert and a believer. (Mark 1:15; 16:16.) But it is stated in this decree of Predestination, that it is God’s absolute will, to bestow salvation on certain particular men, and that he willed at the same time absolutely to give those very individuals repentance and faith, by means of an irresistible force, because it was his will and pleasure to save them.
The Gospel says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life.” (John 3:16.) But this doctrine declares; “that God so loved those whom he had absolutely elected to eternal life, as to give his son to them alone, and by an irresistible force to produce within them faith on him.”
This Predestination is in open hostility to the ministry of the Gospel.
From the writings of James Arminius - sentiments
If creation be the way and means through which God willed the execution of the decree of his reprobation, he was more inclined to will the act of reprobation than that of creation; and he consequently derived greater satisfaction from the act of condemning certain of his innocent creatures, than in the act of their creation.
This Predestination is inconsistent with the Nature and Properties of Sin in two ways:
- Because sin is called “disobedience” and “rebellion,” neither of which terms can possibly apply to any person who by a preceding divine decree is placed under an unavoidable necessity of sinning.
This Predestination destroys grace, Because the representations of grace which the scriptures contain, are such as describe it capable of “being resisted, (Acts, 7:51,) and received in vain;” (2 Corinthians 6:1,) and that it is possible for man to avoid yielding his assent to it; and to refuse all co-operation with it. (Hebrews 12:15; Matthew 23:37; Luke 7:30.) While, on the contrary, this Predestination affirms, that grace is a certain irresistible force and operation.
It denies, that Christ is the meritorious cause, that again obtained for us the salvation which we had lost, by placing him as only a subordinate cause of that salvation which had been already foreordained, and thus only a minister and instrument to apply that salvation unto us.
It takes away all that most salutary fear and trembling with which we are commanded to work out our own salvation. (Philippians 2:12) for it states “that he who is elected and believes, cannot sin with that full and entire willingness with which sin is committed by the ungodly; and that they cannot either totally or finally fall away from faith or grace.”
This doctrine inverts the order of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For in the Gospel God requires repentance and faith on the part of man, by promising to him life everlasting, if he consent to become a convert and a believer. (Mark 1:15; 16:16.) But it is stated in this decree of Predestination, that it is God’s absolute will, to bestow salvation on certain particular men, and that he willed at the same time absolutely to give those very individuals repentance and faith, by means of an irresistible force, because it was his will and pleasure to save them.
The Gospel says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life.” (John 3:16.) But this doctrine declares; “that God so loved those whom he had absolutely elected to eternal life, as to give his son to them alone, and by an irresistible force to produce within them faith on him.”
This Predestination is in open hostility to the ministry of the Gospel.
- For if God by an irresistible power quicken him who is dead in trespasses and sins, no man can be a minister and “a laborer together with God,” (1 Corinthians 3:9,) nor can the word preached by man be the instrument of grace and of the Spirit, any more than a creature could have been an instrument of grace in the first creation, or a dispenser of that grace in the resurrection of the body from the dead.
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tabcom
Guest
:clapping:
:clapping:
** I challenge anyone to show me where in the bible those ‘evil’ ones are called and predestinated. **
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Flos_Campi
Guest
Sorry, but I don’t know which section to put my question.
So hopefully it can be replied to here.
In which century did Christianity and the gospels first reach the shores of Great Britian , and by whom ?
Thank you .
So hopefully it can be replied to here.
In which century did Christianity and the gospels first reach the shores of Great Britian , and by whom ?
Thank you .
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tabcom
Guest
**Axion . . .why are your last two posts condemning calvinist? There has been nothing presented before within this thread that argues for calvinist doctrine.
I still can’t understand how the word predestination has unofficially became the trademark of calvinst. Can you help me understand this?**
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