Predestination and freewill: Are they compatible?

[empther]

A weary pilgrim approached the Pearly Gates of Heaven where the sign on the gate read, “Well done, for you have chosen to serve me” (Joshua 24;15). On passing thru the gate on the other side the sign read, “You have been chosen, predestined” (Eph. 1:11).

From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website, the letter to the Ephesians:
usccb.org/bible/ephesians/1

The Father’s Plan of Salvation.
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• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,c who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,*
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  as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.d In love
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  he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will,e
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  for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.f
  Fulfillment through Christ.
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  In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his graceg
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  that he lavished upon us. In all wisdom and insight,h
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  he has made known to us the mystery* of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in himi
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  as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.j
  Inheritance through the Spirit.
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  In him we were also chosen, destined in accord with the purpose of the One who accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will,k
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  so that we might exist for the praise of his glory, we who first hoped* in Christ.
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  In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised holy Spirit,l*
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  which is the first installment* of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s possession, to the praise of his glory.m
  The Church as Christ’s Body.

There is not a word there about man having no choice.
All it says is that the Holy Trinity stacked the deck in the game for men’s souls, gave us a head start as I’ve said before, to getting to Heaven.

Of course,

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as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.d In love

does not mean we have no free will. We cannot be forced to be holy and without blemish for then it has no merit. The Bible and Jesus in particular constantly tries to get us to be good.
There is the story of the rich young man who asked what more he could do to be perfect, and when Jesus told him to sell all he had, give to the poor and follow him, the man went away saddened for he had much. Jesus said it was easier for a camel to pass throught the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. When the Pharisees asked, “then who can be saved?” Jesus answered that man alone couldn’t do it but all things are possible with God.
Would God deny his help to some, sending them irrevocably to hell? We know he would not.

 

[R_C]

Perhaps you are right, but i don’t see how hundreds of yes of debate and thinking amounts to evidence of a rational solution.

Inasmuch as the whole system of thought, a core of the Catholic religion, has withstood centuries of careful studies. This is compelling evidence for its rationality. Matter of fact, the Catholic understanding of freewill and predestination is more reasonable than other systems inasmuch as it can refute them or otherwise prove them rationally weaker.

 

[jasperg357]

There are several argument against compatibility of these system of thoughts:

1. Suffering argument: Why we should be in state of suffering, physical, mental and spiritual if God knows our final destiny. Why doesn’t God create us in the final state of beings, since he knows our final destinations and his love for us beyond imagination. 2) How could God prove his omniscience?: How God could prove his omniscience to us, without allowing us to be God?
2. How does God know the result of our decisions?: We are either simple mechanical objects from God point of view or not. By mechanical, I mean that our decisions in all possible situations for all creatures are known by God. We are then reduced to entities that our decisions solely depend on the situations in this point of view and are not responsible for our actions, otherwise our decisions depend on us as well which means that our decision is not determined from God’s point of view, simply we have free will.

This is just my opinion but I believe God doesn’t just make you into the being you will end up as, and just bypass all the suffering that a person can go through in their life because that would take away there freewill even though God knows that is exactly where you would have ended up anyway. Plus I also believe there something’s a person has to learn on there own usually the hard way. Telling someone about it just isn’t the same as experiencing it for themselves.

 

[pocohombre]

From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website, the letter to the Ephesians:
usccb.org/bible/ephesians/1

There is not a word there about man having no choice.
All it says is that the Holy Trinity stacked the deck in the game for men’s souls, gave us a head start as I’ve said before, to getting to Heaven.

Of course,

does not mean we have no free will. We cannot be forced to be holy and without blemish for then it has no merit. The Bible and Jesus in particular constantly tries to get us to be good.
There is the story of the rich young man who asked what more he could do to be perfect, and when Jesus told him to sell all he had, give to the poor and follow him, the man went away saddened for he had much. Jesus said it was easier for a camel to pass throught the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. When the Pharisees asked, “then who can be saved?” Jesus answered that man alone couldn’t do it but all things are possible with God.
Would God deny his help to some, sending them irrevocably to hell? We know he would not.

Yes, as Marco Polo said in post #14, God enables the will to do good.

 

[Bahman]

This is just my opinion but I believe God doesn’t just make you into the being you will end up as, and just bypass all the suffering that a person can go through in their life because that would take away there freewill even though God knows that is exactly where you would have ended up anyway. Plus I also believe there something’s a person has to learn on there own usually the hard way. Telling someone about it just isn’t the same as experiencing it for themselves.

The main questions are 1) why we should go through the process of suffering when the final outcome is clear to God, 2) how possibly could God prove its omniscience to us at the end of the road? 3) how possibly God could know our decision?

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Predestination and freewill

Are these two concepts logically compatible.

I’ve got a bit of a problem with this due to some personal experiences. First of all I’ve said ad infinitum my father appeared in my room the night he died. He started with an apology for years of deliberate cruelty, we argued and talked, and at the end he gave this absolutely terrifying scream and disappeared.

However at one stage he blurted out, “I always was doomed! I really didn’t have any choice!” I was an atheist at the time, but I argued back saying, “That can’t be right!” He replied, “Oh, it’s right, all right, you can see that from here!”

But later in the same conversation he said “I was WILLING!” (to do the cruel, stupid things that condemned him).

So in the one exchange, he stated he didn’t have any choice, but at the same time said he was willing.

Now … I drove a cab for a few years part time. One night circa late 2005, I was in a suburb called Nundah, and that’s where he died. So I prayed that if there was truth in what he said, could I please have some sort of “sign”? I got this sense back that I ought to know better than to ask, but I persevered anyway.

Well, either that night, or the next night, I queued up on the Queen Street rank, and waited my turn. Eventually a bloke came up, a bit the worse for wear, hopped into my cab, and said “Nundah!” I said “Whereabouts in Nundah?” He just sort of snorted “Just drive. I"ll tell you where to go”. So off we went.

And ended up at a house directly opposite the very block of flats where my father died. I even said to the bloke, “Hmph. That’s where my father died.” I don’t think he was all that impressed with the sudden morbid turn of conversation, and seemed to be in a hurry to get out of the cab, but I digress.

As far as I was concerned, I got my “sign”. Now there are about 400,000 ratepayers in Brisbane, and even if we allow a quarter of those as businesses and other non-domestic locations, there were still about 300,000 other places he could have gone. It’s even possible he might have wanted to go to other municipialities, but the reality is that most fares tend to be within a few kilometres.

Now, assuming God arranged that answer to my request for a “sign”, I had “free will” where I drove all night, customers had “free will” when they booked cabs, the computer system allocated the jobs according to strict programming conditions, the traffic conditions and traffic lights all had an effect, the other drivers meant I had to wait my turn on the rank, the customer had “free will” when he’d decide to go home etc. etc.

But God still managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat. Or … was that customer predestined to hop into my particular cab on that particular night, so that we ended up right opposite the very unit where my father died?

I think they both operate, but I have no intention of trying to work it all out.

Or there was my old pastor’s prediction that “I think you’ll be doing a cleaning job. You won’t be doing it for long, and you won’t like it much, but I think the LORD WILL JUST WANT YOU TO HEAR ABOUT A GHOST.”

I thought it was silly, even though I knew by that time how accurate his predictions were. Fast forward about 15 years, and I did a cleaning job for about 4 months. I didn’t like it much, **and I heard about a ghost **(a former manager who committed suicide in the store I was cleaning, probably back around the 1960’s). In the process of trying to get a mass said for him (the reason I assume the LORD WANTED ME TO HEAR ABOUT A GHOST"), I actually happened upon the only Australian priest I’ve seen on this forum, and he just happened to be located at the very church in which parish the ghostly store was located.

Coincidence? A tall order if you ask me. So, I had free will when I asked about the cleaning job, the boss had free will when he allocated which stores would be allocated to which employees, the young bloke showing me the run had free will whether to tell me about the ghost or not, etc. etc.

Was I predestined to do a short term cleaning job I wouldn’t like, simply in order to get a mass said for a bloke who committed suicide about 40 or 50 years before?

I would have to say I was. This was despite al the things that would occur between the time of the prediction and the actual occurrence. And I had “free will” the whole way - or I thought I did.

Then again, maybe not.