St Augustine predestination?

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andyklein

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Why do some people call him a predestinationist? I’m thinking its in the way “predestination” is conceived. Does “predestination” have to imply they God randomly chose a select few to save while condemning the rest? This view seems erroneous. We must accept that everything created by God is good and God is perfectly just. He created mankind with an end that is good. Hell was not created by God. If so, a perfectly just and good God would not condemn a person to hell arbitrarily. Hence, this view of predestination must be wrong.

If “predestination” implies that God has merely foreknowledge of all of our actions and our eternal fate, then this view seems correct. This idea is concerned with matters of free will. If evil exists, which it does, then God could not be the cause of it. Hence, we must be the cause of it. But if we did not have free will, then evil could not possibly exist. Hence, we have free will. If we do have free will, then our eternal fate is in our hands. If God is omniscient, then he must know our eternal fate even though it has not come into occurrence yet. Hence, God may know our fate, but not necessarily pre-determine it.
 
andyklein said:
Why do some people call him a predestinationist? I’m thinking its in the way “predestination” is conceived. Does “predestination” have to imply they God randomly chose a select few to save while condemning the rest? This view seems erroneous. We must accept that everything created by God is good and God is perfectly just. He created mankind with an end that is good. Hell was not created by God. If so, a perfectly just and good God would not condemn a person to hell arbitrarily. Hence, this view of predestination must be wrong.

If “predestination” implies that God has merely foreknowledge of all of our actions and our eternal fate, then this view seems correct. This idea is concerned with matters of free will. If evil exists, which it does, then God could not be the cause of it. Hence, we must be the cause of it. But if we did not have free will, then evil could not possibly exist. Hence, we have free will. If we do have free will, then our eternal fate is in our hands. If God is omniscient, then he must know our eternal fate even though it has not come into occurrence yet. Hence, God may know our fate, but not necessarily pre-determine it.
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nicely put, i struggle with this as well sometimes.

do you think we have the power to change our fate though, like prayer and our own choices? and does God perhaps change his course of action on certain things?
 
The Catholic Church teaches singular predestination - God predestines all to Heaven, but through our free will, we have the choice to accept it or reject it.

Other churches believe (or have believed) that God predestines some to Heaven, but also predestines others to Hell, regardless of our actions. This type of predestination was found (in an extreme application) in the Rhode Island Colony of the US, where Anne Hutchinson argued that if God had predestined us, and our actions had no effect, then no sin nor grace could change that, so we should live however we wanted to. She was tried for heresy, and the doctrine of “Visible Saints” became more prevalent (it had already existed, but was reinforced to counter Anne’s heresy), where those who had been predestined ‘displayed’ this by acting with grace rather than sin.
 
andyklein said:
Hell was not created by God. If so, a perfectly just and good God would not condemn a person to hell arbitrarily. Hence, this view of predestination must be wrong.
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Sorry I missed this, but I do disagree with it. God did create Hell because that is what the will of Lucifer and the other fallen demanded - a place wholly without God. Therefore, God created Hell and sent them there, but those there have the knowledge of what they have chosen to give up through their own actions.
 
predestination is a term to signify the effects of Gods’ saving grace upon mans’ life and choices without interfering with freedom of will. If free will did not exist and human experience does show that some are good and some are bad, sinful disobedient to Gods’ will.and God created them to be that way then God becomes the author of confusion and sin. This manifest a contradiction in God which is an impossibility. The idea of no free will is fatalistic.

God is the Author of time and eternity, all is present to Him. The only reality of the past lies in human memory, the future in imagination, all we have is the present which is dynamic ever changing. In God all is absolute and complete. I AM Who Am.👍
 
Mumbles140 said:
Sorry I missed this, but I do disagree with it. God did create Hell because that is what the will of Lucifer and the other fallen demanded - a place wholly without God. Therefore, God created Hell and sent them there, but those there have the knowledge of what they have chosen to give up through their own actions.
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But if God created hell, then hell must be good. Eternal damnation, death, separation from the highest good would have to be good. According to our own apologetic, God didn’t create hell. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=151384
 
Augustine was acutely aware of the teachings of Origen.

“When God undertook in the beginning to create the world, for nothing comes to mind without cause, each that would ever exist was presented to His mind. He saw what else would result when such a thing were produced; and if such a result were accomplished, what else would accompany: and what else would be the result even of this when it would come about. And so on to the conclusion of the sequence of events…He knew what would be, without being altogether of the cause of the coming to be of each of the things which He knew would happen.”
Origen on Genesis

Forward, Augustine is further elaborated on through Bl Duns Scotus with predestination.

absoluteprimacyofchrist.org/duns-scotus/

absoluteprimacyofchrist.org/eph-13-10/

"For the question recurs: Why did not God give to Judas the same efficacious, infallibly successful grace of conversion as to St. Peter, whose blasphemous denial of the Lord was a sin no less grievous than that of the traitor Judas? To all these and similar questions the only reasonable reply is the word of St. Augustine (loc. cit., 21): “Inscrutabilia sunt judicia Dei” (the judgments of God are inscrutable). "

newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm

Thomas Aquinas

newadvent.org/summa/1023.htm

Hell

newadvent.org/cathen/07207a.htm

You create your own hell. As to where and what it is the link is helpful.
 
andyklein said:
Why do some people call him a predestinationist? I’m thinking its in the way “predestination” is conceived. Does “predestination” have to imply they God randomly chose a select few to save while condemning the rest? This view seems erroneous. We must accept that everything created by God is good and God is perfectly just. He created mankind with an end that is good. Hell was not created by God. If so, a perfectly just and good God would not condemn a person to hell arbitrarily. Hence, this view of predestination must be wrong.

If “predestination” implies that God has merely foreknowledge of all of our actions and our eternal fate, then this view seems correct. This idea is concerned with matters of free will. If evil exists, which it does, then God could not be the cause of it. Hence, we must be the cause of it. But if we did not have free will, then evil could not possibly exist. Hence, we have free will. If we do have free will, then our eternal fate is in our hands. If God is omniscient, then he must know our eternal fate even though it has not come into occurrence yet. Hence, God may know our fate, but not necessarily pre-determine it.
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Hi andy,
I agree with you that one of St Augustine’s views of predestination, namely, that God randomly chose a select few to save while condeming the rest is erroneous. The Church has never officially accepted this interpretation of predestination and actually officially teaches the contrary. St Augustine came up with this particular view of predestination which we are discussing essentially from a misinterpretation of Romans 9. He applied Romans 9 to the predestination of individual souls to either heaven or hell. All biblical scholars and exegetes today say that St Paul was not talking about the predestination of individual souls to heaven or hell in Romans 9 but the election of Israel as the chosen people of God; whose election was not based on works but on grace which is a free gift from God.

The Church teaches that God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth as St Paul says (1 Tim 2:4).

The Church further teaches in 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.”

blessings and peace, Richca
 
Here’s my understanding of it. There are some (a few?) who are predestined by God
for His Kingdom, like Jeremiah, who was known by God before his birth and was appointed
before his birth to be a “prophet to the nations”.

According to “The Mystical City of God”, which has been approved by several Popes and a number of Bishops, the are also some who are “foreknown” to condemn themselves to Hell, such as Judas Iscariot, about whom Jesus said (well before his betrayal) that he was “a devil” and later “the son of perdition”.

Of course, it also remains true that God wishes that all men come to the knowledge of Christ and be saved.
 
bsroufek said:
Here’s my understanding of it. There are some (a few?) who are predestined by God
for His Kingdom, like Jeremiah, who was known by God before his birth and was appointed
before his birth to be a “prophet to the nations”.

According to “The Mystical City of God”, which has been approved by several Popes and a number of Bishops, the are also some who are “foreknown” to condemn themselves to Hell, such as Judas Iscariot, about whom Jesus said (well before his betrayal) that he was “a devil” and later “the son of perdition”.

Of course, it also remains true that God wishes that all men come to the knowledge of Christ and be saved.
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But they still had the choice whether to follow that call or not. Just because God knew what they would do does not suggest that what they would do was predetermined. Action and knowledge of action appear to be different things.
 
andyklein said:
Why do some people call him a predestinationist? I’m thinking its in the way “predestination” is conceived. Does “predestination” have to imply they God randomly chose a select few to save while condemning the rest? This view seems erroneous. We must accept that everything created by God is good and God is perfectly just. He created mankind with an end that is good. Hell was not created by God. If so, a perfectly just and good God would not condemn a person to hell arbitrarily. Hence, this view of predestination must be wrong.

If “predestination” implies that God has merely foreknowledge of all of our actions and our eternal fate, then this view seems correct. This idea is concerned with matters of free will. If evil exists, which it does, then God could not be the cause of it. Hence, we must be the cause of it. But if we did not have free will, then evil could not possibly exist. Hence, we have free will. If we do have free will, then our eternal fate is in our hands. If God is omniscient, then he must know our eternal fate even though it has not come into occurrence yet. Hence, God may know our fate, but not necessarily pre-determine it.
Click to expand...
ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/AUGUSTIN.HTM

God Bless!👍
 
GaryTaylor said:
Hell

newadvent.org/cathen/07207a.htm

You create your own hell. As to where and what it is the link is helpful.
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I just read the whole thing.

The fear of Hell is said to deter man from sin, but if anything, it only makes me more want to believe that Christianity (and any other religion with ostensibly cruel afterlives for the wicked) is false.

In some way, I’ve always considered nihilism, existential bleakness and lack of afterlife as a horrible thing to consider as it is, but sometimes I feel as if I’d rather have that than know Hell exists.
 
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