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Sig
Guest
I’m certain you know they’re in John’s Gospel, and in 1 John.Hi Sig, would you give me the bible references for this? If you already gave it and I missed it I apologize.
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Sig
Guest
How long have you believed that God throws people into hell for no good reason?
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Sig
Guest
The same number of times you pasted the same thing over and over.
I’ve not been uncharitable to you at all. I’m sorry you feel that way.
Perhaps it’s best that you’re done engaging with me.
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fhansen
Guest
Of course not. We can have a strong assurance, based on what we know we’ve received from God and how we’ve responded to it. But only God can have 100% certainty about any of it. At least a little concern for ones salvation is healthy, and humility, itself, calls for it, and is, in real life, the way many non-Catholic Christians practice their faith in any case. So if there’s any doubt, it would be doubt in* ourselves.* But at least what we do counts. In the other scenario, God whimsically decides who will be saved and no one can have 100% certainty about who those people are either, in spite of what they may claim.
Here’s how Trent put it:
**For even as no pious person ought to doubt of the mercy of God, of the merit of Christ, and of the virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, even so each one, when he regards himself, and his own weakness and indisposition, may have fear and apprehension touching his own grace; seeing that no one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God.
**
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Church_Militant
Guest
1 John 2:3, 1 John 2:5, 1 John 3:24, 1 John 4:13, These are likely some of the verses he might cite, but that first one is very much conditional and so I suspect counters his position.Hi Sig, would you give me the bible references for this? If you already gave it and I missed it I apologize.
Knowing is not faith is it? Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. (Hebrews 11:1)
[bibledrb]Joshua 24:15[/bibledrb]
Yet what do any of us have that is not from Him? Is faith or grace or charity or any good thing from ourselves? Ultimately it is always God’s grace, (defined as His unmerited favor) that influences us to turn to him in faith, believing what He has said to us and responding accordingly.
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Lisa44
Guest
Thanks
1 John 2:3
We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.
1 John 2:5-6
But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
1 John 3:24
Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
1 John 4:13
We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
Thanks for the quote from Joshua. Do we not have anything from the N.T. to support free will?
As for the quote you gave, it does not address whether we in fact have free will or if our choices are predetermined. Verse 16 answers “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt,…”
This suggests that they were predetermined to serve him.
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Lisa44
Guest
But from the Catholic standpoint are we not assured of salvation if we are baptized and not in mortal sin? (Assuming that if we commit a mortal sin we are no longer saved).
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fhansen
Guest
John 5:24 and Rom 10:13Actually, I don’t know where the quotes are? Gee wiz. Thanks anyways.
Does anyone else know the quotes that Sig is referencing?
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fhansen
Guest
Yes, quite assured. But, In Calvinism salvation depends solely on faith, which itself comes by grace, and there’s nothing one can ever do to lose it providing it was genuine to begin with-occurring at one single instance in time. They believe that true saints will simply persevere, because God wills it. But even if this is true, it’s still an academic point, because how can we know for sure who will persevere? In order to know one is saved, one simply has to have 100% faith in their faith.
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Cat_Herder
Guest
Actually in Calvinism, salvation is predestined. Faith is considered to be an indication of who is saved.
As I have been pointing out, the fact that there is a hell forces the Calvinist into a terrible conclusion: that God wills people to go to hell. This is expressly refuted in 1 Timothy 2:3-4.
This whole business of denying free will makes God evil. If all of our actions are predetermined, then God is willing us to sin. If a man robs a bank, then the Calvinist holds that God willed that, so God would be a bank robber. This is completely ridiculous. God is Perfect Love. His will is for sin to be destroyed, not committed; and for man to be saved, not condemned.
Free will is the only logical answer to why sin exists. The only alternative is to make God imperfect, which is what Calvinism does.
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fhansen
Guest
They take a dimmer view of fallen human nature than we do-in that they believe we all deserve hell, including infants, and that God is just because none of us deserve the mercy He shows to those He’s elected to be saved.
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Cat_Herder
Guest
Then that means that God created us to be evil. Yes, we are conceived into sin, but that’s not because God made us evil. It is because the devil tempted man into sin.
Have you ever noticed how Calvinists are too busy talking about double predestination to even mention the devil? What does that tell you?
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Lisa44
Guest
1 Tim doesn’t refute that people will go to hell:
1 Timothy 2:3-4
This is good and it pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth.
Contrast that with Jesus’s own words:
Matt 7:21
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
So we have the claim by Paul in 1 Timothy that our Savior “wants” everyone to be saved, but we have the knowledge from our Savior that not everyone will be saved.
If nothing exists that God does not will (as I have heard Catholics here say at CAF) then obviously God does will there to be a Hell. Either it is his will, or he is not omnipotent.
Denying free will doesn’t make God evil, it just makes him omnipotent and omniscient.
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fhansen
Guest
Yes, God wills hell, whatever that term means. But God’s will isn’t always done, or else there’d be no reason to pray, “Thy will be done”, in the Lords Prayer. Free will is the ability to oppose the will of God-and that freedom is what God wills, not the evil that may follow from it, including the original sin, or else we’d have say that God is the author of evil.
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Church_Militant
Guest
Well remember that all of creation was created to serve him. That is God’s purpose for all of us, right? But…the very verses that I cited and you quoted show that we know we are His (IOW have assurance of our salvation) by virtue of our obedience to Him, so wouldn’t that be your New Testament proofs?Thanks
1 John 2:3
We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.
1 John 2:5-6
But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
1 John 3:24
Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
1 John 4:13
We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
Thanks for the quote from Joshua. Do we not have anything from the N.T. to support free will?
As for the quote you gave, it does not address whether we in fact have free will or if our choices are predetermined. Verse 16 answers “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt,…”
This suggests that they were predetermined to serve him.
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Cat_Herder
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fhansen
Guest
It’s a synergistic effort, which is why St Augustine said:
**He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.
The God who gave you free will does not violate it to save you**
And why the Catechism says:
**2002 God’s free initiative demands man’s free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of “eternal life” respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:
If at the end of your very good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed “very good” since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.52
1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom. On man’s part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:
When God touches man’s heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God’s grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God’s sight.42
**
God will not force us; Scripture says ‘no one can come to Jesus unless the
Father draws him’, and **‘We love Him because He first loved us’-**but we don’t have to come, we don’t have to love Him.
I’d read and consider what the Parable of the Talents and the Parable o the Ten Virgins are telling us about grace and free will. Here are some other verses to consider, verses which admonish genuine believers to continue to persevere, lest they lose eternal life. Why would the writers bother telling people believers any of this if our wills aren’t involved and salvation can’t be forfeited? Also the Sheep and the Goats, Matt 25:31-46
**God “will give to each person according to what he has done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. Rom 2:6
Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Heb 12:14
10 Therefore, my brothers and sisters,[a] make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 2 Prt 1:10
For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,… Rom 8:13
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matt 5:48
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” 1Pet 1:15-16
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Phil 2:12-13
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Gal 6:7-9
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Phil 3 :7-14
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