You’re not speaking facts.
**God bless James and every readers of the CAF.
You said James:
You’re not speaking facts. I show you James I speaking facts:
The Catholic Church affirms predestination as a *DE FIDE *Dogma (the highest level of binding theological certainty).
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
THE CATHOLIC DOGMA. – The predestination of the elect.**
Consequently, the whole future membership of heaven, down to its minutest details, has
been IRREVOCABLY FIXED FROM ALL ETERNITY. Nor could it be otherwise. For if it
were possible that a predestined individual should after all be CAST INTO HELL or that
one not predestined should in the end REACH HEAVEN, then God would have been
MISTAKEN in his foreknowledge of future events; He would NO LONGER be omniscient.
God’s unerring foreknowledge and foreordaining is designated in the Bible by the beautiful
figure of the “Book of Life” (liber vitæ, to biblion tes zoes). This book of life is a list which
contains the names of ALL THE ELECT and admits NEITHER ADDITIONS NO ERASURES.
(2) The second quality of predestination, the DEFINITENESS of the number of the elect,
follows NATURALLY from the first. For if the eternal counsel of God regarding the
predestined is UNCHANGEABLE, then the number of the predestined must likewise be
UNCHANGEABLE and DEFINITE, subject NEITHER to ADDITIONS nor to
CANCELLATIONS. Anything indefinite in the number would eo ipso imply a lack of
certitude in God’s knowledge and would DESTROY His omniscience.
**THE THEORY OF PREDESTINATION prævisa merita
THIS THEORY, CHAMPIONED BY all Thomists and a few Molinists (as Bellarmine, Francisco Suárez, Francis de Lugo):**
Asserts that God, by an absolute decree and without regard to any future supernatural merits, predestined from all eternity certain men to the glory of heaven, and then,
in consequence of this decree, decided to give them all the graces necessary for its accomplishment. End quote.
**THE FOLLOWING TEACHINGS CONFIRMS THE ABOVE THEORY OF PREDESTINATION
**
John 15:16; “You
did not chose Me, but I chose you …”
2 Tim.1:9; “God who saved us and called us with holy calling, NOT ACCORDING TO OUR WORKS, but ACCORDING TO HIS OWN PURPOSE …”
Eph.1:11; “… being predestined ACCORDING TO THE PURPOSE of Him …”
John 6:44 … NO ONE can come to Me unless the Father DRAWS him.
In other words, when God commands, He capacitates the hearer to respond.
Yet the ability to respond is also His gift.
Aquinas said, “God changes the will
without forcing it.
But he can change the will from the fact that
He himself operates in the will as He does in nature,” De Veritatis 22:9.
Similarly, the Council of Orange says that “in every good work, we do not begin.” (#329.2)
ST. AUGUSTINE ON GRACE AND PREDESTINATION
De gratia Christi 25, 26:
“For not only has God given us our ability and helps it, but He even works [brings about] willing and acting in us; not that we do not will or that we do not act, but that without His help we neither will anything good nor do it.”
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.”
Phil.2:13;
“For it is God who works in you BOTH TO WILL and TO ACT for His good pleasure.”
CCC 2022; “The divine
initiative in the work of grace PRECEDES,PREPARES, and ELICITS the free response of man. …”
The salvation of God’s children/elect always based on God’s initiative.
God bless James and every readers of the CAF.
LatinRight
