Predestination or not

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dmar198 said:
For some issues there are also good explanations already available and known to some people, but some of us forum-dwellers just aren’t personally familiar with them yet.
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I don’t doubt that this is a question that has been asked and answered, but no matter how many “good” explanations there are, when you are talking about Why God Does Stuff, there is always going to be “more” out there or a “better” explanation. We are never going to have the Complete Guide to God and Why He Does What He Does wrapped up in a neat little bow. Quesitons that will always have more dimensions include
  • why does God allow evil in the world
    and its corollary,
  • why does God create men knowing they will turn away from him/ do evil
    which has subparts like
  • why doesn’t God just not create men who will use their free will to make the “wrong” choice
  • isn’t God handicapping these poor people in some way by not “creating” them differently so they make the “right” choice
  • isn’t God just predestining them to do bad and live a sad life and end up in Hell
    etc
This question is basically the second question above and all its subparts.
There is never going to be a “complete” explanation on earth unless God himself comes down and hands us one.
 
Your answer, although clear, confused me even more. I doubt I will ever resolve this issue in my head.
 
So, the question was, why is God merciful to us? How his mercy manifests within us?
 
DavidCro said:
That is so because there are laws of physics that determine the cars will collide. Are there then laws within humans that make us sin, without possibility of repentance and these laws are known to God?
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Actually the laws of physics make predestination impossible because of heisenberg’s uncertainty principle
 
That’s a whole nother topic.

I suggest you start a new thread for that.
 
DavidCro said:
Some human error already determined how are we going to act. This error we call original sin.
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Original sin doesn’t determine how we are going to act. Original sin is a fallen nature or separation from God. It doesn’t force us to do something wrong. However, the separation God does have consequences such as suffering, temptation and a tendency to sin. Just because God knows how we well we will or won’t deal with this separation doesn’t mean he predestined us to sin.
DavidCro said:
Why then, as I asked before, God gives us mercy, if he already knows that some men won’t act upon it?
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In a word LOVE. He loves us.

Sometimes my oldest daughter will get in a mood. She’s 24 years old and I’ve know darn well, since she was a kid, that there is absolutely nothing I can do to make her feel better. She turns into one of those people that the only thing that will make her happy is everyone else being miserable with her. Anyone with half a brain would leave her alone and let her stew in her misery. Well guess what? I guess that would mean every loving father on the planet must not have half a brain. Been doing it for 24 years now. The mood swing starts, know there is nothing I can do, if i was smart I would run the other way, but no I try to talk to her. i cook her her favorite meal. I make sure to help her with chores at the barn, I let her have her space…Basically, I show her mercy. Why? Beats the heck out of me. My only reasoning is Love, because if I used my brain instead of my heart I now darn well at that moment she won’t accept my Love and I would see that I am just wasting my time.

or maybe not.

The one thing I can’t see, that God can, is how does my mercy on her affect her siblings? Does it teach them to love? Does it make them feel even more loved knowing dad is willing to sacrifice for them? here is so much more to the story that we can’t see. God gives us mercy because He loves us and knows we are in need of His mercy.

Does this example help at all?

God Bless
 
Mercy is given in light of our eternal existence. If apart from God, we will know eternally that God did for us what was good and just. If God didn’t give Mercy to those He knew would not accept it they would have reason to blame Him
 
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This is what I found in the CCC,

600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” 395 For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness. 396
 
Now I have another question that comes to my mind. The consecration of Russia, for example. Why did Our Lady asked us to pray for the consecration of Russia, when it was already known to God what will occur?

Another thing. Guardian angels. Why would God provide them to the people for whom he’s sure they will go to hell anyways, with or without guardian angels? Does that mean not all people have guardian angels?
 
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JanSobieskiIII said:
I liked how CS Lewis put it.

Since God exists outside of how we experience time, He can see everything as it’s happening.

So it’s not that he’s seeing our future, he’s seeing our past, present, and future, all at his present.

It’s not predestination because we still make the choices, he’s just already watching us make the choices.
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Which is basically what would happen to you if you fell into a black hole, innit
 
EXACTLY. There is no way around this one. Besides, how free (and/or ‘dignified’) is man given how the whole thing is set up…‘believe and accept and live’ or ‘deny and reject and die’, not just die mind you but endure eternal anguish. Also, God calls/elects his flock - that theme is everywhere in the New Testament (and Old) no matter how hard we try and gloss over it.

That said, for sincere (i.e ‘elected’ 😊) believers I think God does ‘free’ you from sin, a sort of self-enclosedness, through grace; you have the potential to achieve freedom anyway. Love frees you. Here I can accept the ‘dignity’ part. But for nonbelievers, it is a tough one. By which I mean my comprehending God’s foreknowledge of their rejection of Him and ultimate fate (how is this dignity or freedom). I am not a universalist. I think the battle with sin and achieving selflessness is incredibly hard work, alien to fallen human nature. Many fail. And don’t repent. So many people don’t believe.

I conclude this is all over my head.
 
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Many Catholics are under the mistaken notion that predestination is a Protestant belief/heresy.

It is not. Predestination is a Christian teaching, and is part of the Catholic faith. In other words, Catholicism teaches Predestination as a divinely revealed truth, i.e. it is dogma.

Many Catholics also mistakenly equate Predestination with God’s foreknowledge only. It also is not, although foreknowledge is a significant component of the mystery. Predestination also includes a resolve of God’s will. The concise wording of the teaching is this:

“God, through an eternal resolve of his will, has predestined certain men to eternal blessedness.”

This is the gist of it. The error many Catholics make is to implicitly deny God’s sovereignty in their efforts to defend man’s free will. But the dogma is precise: God actively elects those who will go to heaven.

Now that said, Catholicism also requires us to affirm the following as revealed truths as well:
  1. The Universal Desire of Salvation (and its corollary: that all human beings are given sufficient grace);
  2. Man’s free will;
  3. God’s infallible and sovereign will.
The difficulty is in reconciling God’s sovereignty and his eternal decree of predestination with man’s free will and grace. This is where the Church stops and allows multiple opinions, which offer differing but otherwise conforming schools of thought. Two of the more well-known and acceptable schools are the Banez/Thomist school and the Molinist school. They differ in their opinions as to whether God has predestined the elect before (Thomism) or after (Molinism) consideration of their foreseen merits, and whether his order of intention vs. his order of execution with regards to grace and glory coincide (Molinism) or is reversed. (Thomism).

The Church has not defined how grace, free will, and predestination are reconciled; only that all these need to be affirmed.

This is in fact part of the beauty of Catholicism. The Church lays the boundaries, but within those bounds, the faithful can actually play.

But denying predestination outright is not an acceptable position. It is contrary to the Catholic faith and is heretical.
 
DavidCro said:
Now I have another question that comes to my mind. The consecration of Russia, for example. Why did Our Lady asked us to pray for the consecration of Russia, when it was already known to God what will occur?
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To understand this we need to first understand the meaning of what is meant by God “already knows”. When we say God already knows we are using our point of view, as in God already knows what we will do. However, from God’s perspective God doesn’t know OUR future and FUTURE. To God what we did, what we are doing and what we will do, are and will always be seen in the present tense to God (described from our point of view). This is God’s eternal knowledge.

I am hoping that makes sense.

Anyway to answer the question, I need to define one more term…God’s will.

Some people define God’s will as… God says this will happen and it happens. or God says no this will not happen and it doesn’t happen.

They believe that if God’s will includes our response to His grace then we are saying that God is incapable of doing something without our cooperation and we are limiting God’s power.

The thing they don’t realize is they are actually limiting God’s power because they believe God is incapable of saying “It is My will to do X if David does Y”.

Taking both of these into account God can will the consecration of Russia if we pray for the consecration of Russia. God can also send Our Lady to ask us to pray for an event that hasn’t happened to us yet, knowing full well if we will or won’t pray for it. Since it has happened already I’m guessing we did what God asked.

Let me know if something here doesn’t make sense so we can flush it out a little more.

God Bless
 
DavidCro said:
Another thing. Guardian angels. Does that mean not all people have guardian angels?
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Whether or not every individual soul has a guardian angel has never been defined by the Church, and is, consequently, not an article of faith. Basically, we are not required to believe it. If it deepens your faith you are free to pray to your guardian angel. If your having a hard time grasping the concept, don’t sweat the small stuff.
DavidCro said:
Why would God provide them to the people for whom he’s sure they will go to hell anyways, with or without guardian angels?
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I would answer this the same way I did the last time. LOVE.

Dr. Ray Guarendi (father of 10 and a clinical psychologist) says “the child you love the most is the one that is the most difficult.”

I didn’t mention in my above story, about my daughter, that I am the father of 5. And yes she is the most difficult.

Hope this helps

God Bless
 
What if our spirits are sent by God on Earth repeatedly but not necessarily. Returning souls (as human beings! I am not advocating re-incarnation that means we also change species to re-become humans) answers a lot of questions. He can also send His saints back (the world is not necessary a punishment like in Buddhism, it is not sufficient to overcome it in order to find Heaven… or Hell).
This explains why some have a tendency to certain things (even evil things), why some people seem to “get their way around the world” more than others.
My theory does not contain the idea that this series of coming backs is endless, like an energy in the Universe that will never end because God created it and He is omnipotent and eternal. An eternal being can create a limited thing. For example God is immortal yet He created us mortal (for a reason).
The Church teaches that history is never circular but also linear, it has a beginning and an end (because it has a purpose, it’s not randomly appeared). History as in time not as in the history of what people have doing on Earth from the beginning. What people did and created I am sure is mostly outside God’s wishes and plans (ok I am not an optimist, or not today).
In this case predestination simply isn’t needed anymore, the emphasis is on free will.
Also answers the question as to what happens with the souls of unborn children (they come back, God solves this for the kids but the sin of the mother remains; why would He punish the babies because they weren’t the ones responsible for the abortion?).
 
I think a lot of the confusion about predestination and omniscience stems from the fact that God created us. Some wonder why he didn’t create everyone as loving people of faith. They can’t see that this would rob us of free will. They counter with, “We could still have free will, but we’d just always choose good.” Doesn’t work that way.
 
God is not giving up, on such people, till the last breath of their lives ,that’s God’s love and mercy,and He is just in his judgement, if the person persist in sin,using his free will ,God is not responsible for his soul, but he is.
 
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