Tackling Predestination

[benedictus2]

Are you a universalist, Benedictus? If not, then your post is just as much directed against yourself with the exception that you have God offering a grace to people that He knows will be ineffective.

Not universalist at all. I incline towards Molina and he is hardly a universalist.

Here is a link to my post 100
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=6806017&postcount=110

It is only when you think that grace is always efficacious that you come to the conclusion that I have “God offering a grace to people that He knows will be ineffective.”

My post 110 explains this in detail. This explanation actually makes sense of scripture better than a straight reading of the Thomist or Augustinian position.

Irresistible grace at the outset leaves no room for free will and are contradictory in the same manner that an irresistible force and immovable object cannot both exist.

Also, please don’t use inflammatory language. It hurts our witness.

Sorry but the kind of explanation that people have put forward in defense of Calvinistic predestination seems not to have been put through any critical thought process - just a simple regurgitation of Calvin or Spurgeon.

 

[benedictus2]

benedictus2;6810899:

Hi benedictus

So what you are saying once you are given grace you have the ability to will and act.
So at what point are you given this Grace. In other words are you given Grace before you can have faith. Or do you have to have faith first coming from you. Then God gives you the Grace???

I refer you back to my post 110

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=6806017&postcount=110

I will reply to the rest of your post this evening.

 

[Bengoshi]

(Edited)

First, you have to realize that God’s ways are higher than our ways. What may seem evil and sadistic to you may not necessarily be if you only know the purposes of God. Ephesians 1 syas that God’s decisions are all for His glory and pleasure. Moreover, consider Paul’s anticipation of the common objection in Romans 9:14, “What then shall we say? Is God unjust?” The very reason Paul said this was because people would normally think the way you do.

It says further:

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, a to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump d one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience e vessels of wrath f prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he i has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? (Rom. 9:15-24)

Some of Paul’s readers might expect him to appeal to human free will to resolve the problem posed in v. 19. Instead, he insists that finite human beings may not rebelliously question God’s ways, that God as a potter (cf. Jer. 18:1–6) has the right to do what he wishes with his creation. The honorable and dishonorable vessels in this context represent those who are saved and unsaved. Paul affirms that humans are guilty for their sin, and he offers no philosophical resolution as to how this fits with divine sovereignty. He does insist that God ordains all that happens (cf. Eph. 1:11), even though God himself does not sin and is not morally responsible for sin.

Second, Rom. 5:20 does not talk about predestination. So it is out of context to quote it here.

 

[Bengoshi]

Okay. So practically you actions don’t support your declared theology. Who do you need to prove your election to?

• To God? That’s would be silly in any theology because God knows men’s hearts and doesn’t need proof, right?.
• To others? Why would that be important? In Calvin’s theology, nothing you do will have an effect on your’s or others salvation because salvation is pre-ordained by God, right? So what is the point of proving your election?
• To yourself? Again, why would that matter? God’s view is the only one who counts in your theology

Its clear to me (if not to you yet) that in your heart of hearts you actually believe that your actions mean something in terms of salvation. This is because the truth can not be denied.

As for the statement about perseverance of the Saints, this only matters if your actions matter. If you are pre-ordained to go to heaven, regardless of your actions, then there is no perseverance required by definition.

Calvin’s theories of salvation are in error. They render all moral law superfluous because nothing you do matters if your salvation was determined prior to your birth. Can’t you see that?

Of course our actions matter. Faith without works is dead, right? We show our faith by our works. What Protestants are merely saying in this regard is that works do not merit our salvation in any way. It is only by the grace of God received by faith. Good works are evidence of our salvation and election by God. It is not that we are proving our election but the good works in themselves will be the result of our election. If a person who claims to be elect and hence, saved, does not have a transformed life, then it just goes to show that that person isn’t really elect at all.

 

[Bengoshi]

Hi Paul C!

I am sincerely asking this: Why would I highlight free will? Bengoshi said:

It is important that we follow the advice of Augustine, in that if a schismatic or heretic “wish to come over to the Church, he is made sound in those points in which he was unsound and went astray; but where he was sound in union with the Church, he is not cured, but recognized, ─ lest in desiring to cure what is sound we should rather inflict a wound” (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Bk. 1, Ch. 8).

We must be careful to “become all things to all people, that by all means [we] might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). To a Calvinist, become as much like a Calvinist as Catholic dogma allows!

Calvinists like to see things like this:

“We confess together that all persons depend completely on the saving grace of God for their salvation. The freedom they possess in relation to persons and the things of this world is no freedom in relation to salvation, for as sinners they stand under God’s judgment and are incapable of turning by themselves to God to seek deliverance, of meriting their justification before God, or of attaining salvation by their own abilities. Justification takes place solely by God’s grace. Because Catholics and Lutherans confess this together, it is true to say:

“When Catholics say that persons ‘cooperate’ in preparing for and accepting justification by consenting to God’s justifying action, they see such personal consent as itself an effect of grace, not as an action arising from innate human abilities” (Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification).

If you want to persuade Bengoshi to Catholicism, help him to embrace the fact that regeneration occurs when we are baptized in water and the Spirit. This is where the real difference lies, and mending this wound will lead to healing everywhere else. As it is, I see you and our sister Benedictus hurling your assaults against a position – as if directed towards Bengoshi – that he doesn’t even hold. My admonition to you both is that you ask more questions and make fewer assertions.

Are you a universalist, Benedictus? If not, then your post is just as much directed against yourself with the exception that you have God offering a grace to people that He knows will be ineffective. Also, please don’t use inflammatory language. It hurts our witness.

Peace to you my brother and sister!

Your brother in Christ,
Pete

Thank you! You perfectly expressed my feelings!

I didn’t know that Benedictus2 was a lady!

 

[Bengoshi]

Sorry but you’re wrong there. All men have consciences - that tiny voice of God that tells you to act according to His will. But some have drowned that voice.

Okay. Point taken.

No it does not. If God predestines some to salvation it does not mean that He predestines some to damnation because there is also a choice of predestining everyone to salvation. The choice is not mutually exclusive.

To understand predestination of some a little bit better think of spiritual warfare.

God is at war with Satan. God chooses some (the elect) to form the inner core of the military – the generals, lieutenants,etc. We are the foot soldiers. God chooses to give some this super abundance of grace because these will be the men and women who lead the fight and who will guide us foot soldiers in the battle.

Where is this in the Bible?

He did not elect them so as to damn the rest but rather so that the elect will help us in the fight against Satan. Even from the beginning you see this. You see in the OT and NT God raising men and women who will preach His Word, preach the Gospel so that in turn this men and women will guide us back to Him and away from the snares of Satan.

Yes He does because Love is His nature. God cannot do anything other than Love us all because He IS LOVE. This is one major fact, that is always missing from your explanation.

There is no way you can reconcile the kind of god you have have with the Loving God of the Bible. Any which way you present your case, you always end up with an evil psychopath for a god.

The doctrine of election and reprobation itself is based on God’s love, mercy, and justice.

 

[Bengoshi]

Sorry but you’re wrong there. All men have consciences - that tiny voice of God that tells you to act according to His will. But some have drowned that voice.

It is like this. In the first instance God’s voice tells you to do the right thing. If you do the right thing, then the next time good and bad choice comes up again, choosing rightly will be a little bit easier. And so it goes. However, if in the first instance you chose evil, then sin gets a stronger hold on you such that choosing goodness the second time is harder.

This is how we habituate into either virtue or vice. Big sins start with small ones. And it is the same with virtue.

No it does not. If God predestines some to salvation it does not mean that He predestines some to damnation because there is also a choice of predestining everyone to salvation. The choice is not mutually exclusive.
To understand predestination of some a little bit better think of spiritual warfare.

God is at war with Satan. God chooses some (the elect) to form the inner core of the military – the generals, lieutenants,etc. We are the foot soldiers. God chooses to give some this super abundance of grace because these will be the men and women who lead the fight and who will guide us foot soldiers in the battle.

He did not elect them so as to damn the rest but rather so that the elect will help us in the fight against Satan. Even from the beginning you see this. You see in the OT and NT God raising men and women who will preach His Word, preach the Gospel so that in turn this men and women will guide us back to Him and away from the snares of Satan.

Yes He does because Love is His nature. God cannot do anything other than Love us all because He IS LOVE. This is one major fact, that is always missing from your explanation.

There is no way you can reconcile the kind of god you have have with the Loving God of the Bible. Any which way you present your case, you always end up with an evil psychopath for a god.

Hi Bengoshi

The Foreknowledge in the dictionary means Knowing the future. If somebody told me a bomb was going to explode in that building in 2 hours time. And it came to pass. That means i knew before it happened.
Either God knows what happens in the future. Or he has designed it to happen in the future.
Which is it??

When it comes to God, it is both. He is both omniscient and omnipotent.

 

[Bengoshi]

Let me tell you, you will not convince anyone that their position is false by arguing and insulting them. You will change people’s minds instead through love and through prayer. They will know we are Christian by our deep theological arguments and mental gymnastics?
I encourage you guys to make sure you are speaking in love, not speaking because you want to be right or you want the other person to see things your way. Remember that there are actual people on the other side of the link, not just an abstract entity. Would you speak the same way to a friend who is sitting with you in a coffee shop? If not, please reconsider your tone and words.

I agree. The tone and choice of words of Benedictus are kinda offensive and insulting. It’s like she’s telling me that I don’t think for myself. Paul C is fine with me. I find him gracious.

 

[Bengoshi]

Not universalist at all. I incline towards Molina and he is hardly a universalist.

Here is a link to my post 100
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=6806017&postcount=110

It is only when you think that grace is always efficacious that you come to the conclusion that I have “God offering a grace to people that He knows will be ineffective.”

My post 110 explains this in detail. This explanation actually makes sense of scripture better than a straight reading of the Thomist or Augustinian position.

Irresistible grace at the outset leaves no room for free will and are contradictory in the same manner that an irresistible force and immovable object cannot both exist.

Sorry but the kind of explanation that people have put forward in defense of Calvinistic predestination seems not to have been put through any critical thought process - just a simple regurgitation of Calvin or Spurgeon.

You are not in a position to judge whether or not our position was “put through any critical thought process”. I don’t think I would have become a lawyer if I’m the type of person who doesn’t think. I quoted Sproul because I agree with his explanation. I don’t agree with the explanations of all Calvinists by the way.

 

[benedictus2]

Where is this in the Bible?

And where does the Bible say that every single truth is to be found in the Bible?

The doctrine of election and reprobation itself is based on God’s love, mercy, and justice.

You have not been able to show that with any of your post.

You have shown how it relates to His omnipotence. You have show that it is definitely his prerogative but you have not been able to reconcile it with the fact that God IS love, God IS Merciful and God is Just.

The way you have presented your case has portrayed a God that is NOT love, NOT really merciful and NOT just, because you failed to take into account 1) that He created us, 2) the nature of grace, and 3) that man has free will.

 

[benedictus2]

You are not in a position to judge whether or not our position was “put through any critical thought process”. I don’t think I would have become a lawyer if I’m the type of person who doesn’t think. I quoted Sproul because I agree with his explanation. I don’t agree with the explanations of all Calvinists by the way.

Fair enough. But then explain how you can keep saying the same thing when I have already shown that since God created us therefore, predestining us to damnation means that He created us for for the sole purpose of sending us to hell.

And I asked you to please think hard about that. But all you replied was more of the same thing.

How do you reconcile this view of reprobation with the fact that a supposedly loving God could create us just so He can damn us? I have brought this point up up from the beginning but you have not been able to answer that.

You wrote that with “sorrow” God passes over those He wishes to damn.

So I asked you, as a parent, can you do that? Can you give birth to children that you will in fact consign to a torture chamber?

I gave you an analogy of a parent whose children are sure to be born deformed and he has the medicine to make them all well yet these parents will only give that medicine to some of the children.

So answer this, will you give the medicine to all of your children or only to some leaving the others to suffer in extreme agony?

Also, I pointed out Romans 5:20 Where sin abounds grace abounds even more. So where there is sin (i.e. all inclusive where ever there is sin, no exception), God also sends grace. How can you can then says that God reprobates some by refusing to give them grace?

So I await your answer.

 

[benedictus2]

Of course our actions matter. Faith without works is dead, right? We show our faith by our works. What Protestants are merely saying in this regard is that works do not merit our salvation in any way.

Read up on how nominalism shaped Luther’s and Calvin’s theology and you will understand that they created a false dichotomy which was not existent at all in the Church.

It is only by the grace of God received by faith. Good works are evidence of our salvation and election by God.

Nope. Good works is evidence of our cooperation with grace.

If good works is evidence of faith and salvation, then how do you account for the good works done by those who do not have faith in Jesus?

You do not realize it but you have actually argued yourself into “salvation by works”

 

[benedictus2]

Calvin’s theories of salvation are in error. They render all moral law superfluous because nothing you do matters if your salvation was determined prior to your birth. Can’t you see that?

If he hasn’t already, I wonder how Bengoshi will rebut that .

 

[Pitcharan]

Fair enough. But then explain how you can keep saying the same thing when I have already shown that since God created us therefore, predestining us to damnation means that He created us for for the sole purpose of sending us to hell.

And I asked you to please think hard about that. But all you replied was more of the same thing.

How do you reconcile this view of reprobation with the fact that a supposedly loving God could create us just so He can damn us? I have brought this point up up from the beginning but you have not been able to answer that.

You wrote that with “sorrow” God passes over those He wishes to damn.

So I asked you, as a parent, can you do that? Can you give birth to children that you will in fact consign to a torture chamber?

So I await your answer.

May I share my thoughts with both of you?

• Were the reprobate created by God at all?
• In the parable of the weeds, our Lord says they were planted on earth by the Evil one!

 

[benedictus2]

May I share my thoughts with both of you?

• Were the reprobate created by God at all?
• In the parable of the weeds, our Lord says they were planted on earth by the Evil one!

Are you seriously saying that the devil creates human beings? Is this really how you understand the parable of the wheat and the tares?

 

[benedictus2]

Hi Bengoshi

The Foreknowledge in the dictionary means Knowing the future. If somebody told me a bomb was going to explode in that building in 2 hours time. And it came to pass. That means i knew before it happened.
Either God knows what happens in the future. Or he has designed it to happen in the future.
Which is it??

That reason you have this problem is we are currently in this space/time continuum and time is linear. Eternity is not linear. It is the Kairos the Eternal Now.

At best, what we attempt to do in understanding predestination is limited by our experience of time and space.

 

[paul_c]

Quote:
Originally Posted by paul c
Calvin’s theories of salvation are in error. They render all moral law superfluous because nothing you do matters if your salvation was determined prior to your birth. Can’t you see that?

In my experience, it will simply be ignored because there is no effective rebuttal. I don’t require an answer, I just hope he thinks about it.

 

[paul_c]

Of course our actions matter. Faith without works is dead, right? We show our faith by our works. What Protestants are merely saying in this regard is that works do not merit our salvation in any way. It is only by the grace of God received by faith. Good works are evidence of our salvation and election by God. It is not that we are proving our election but the good works in themselves will be the result of our election. If a person who claims to be elect and hence, saved, does not have a transformed life, then it just goes to show that that person isn’t really elect at all.

Look, either works matter or they don’t. You can’t logically say that our actions matter and in the next sentence say they have no impact on salvation.

Here’s where I think the confusion rests. Protestants seem to think of salvation in either / or terms. Either mans actions drive salvation (which you reject) or God’s grace drives salvation (which you support). Catholics, on the other hand, see this as an “and” function meening that both pieces have to be in place for it to be true. God must give us grace AND man must cooperate with those grace by living a life of love for him to go to heaven. This is not because God could not force man to do his will - he obviously could. It is because God WILLS man to come to him williingly.

Your final sentence is telling. To paraphrase: If man doesn’t live a transformed life, he isn’t saved. This is exactly the Catholic position: Man must live a transformed life to go to heaven.

I have found that in the deepest part of men’s hearts, they know they must follow Jesus’ words and actions to get to heaven.

 

[benedictus2]

First, you have to realize that God’s ways are higher than our ways. What may seem evil and sadistic to you may not necessarily be if you only know the purposes of God.

That only applies to things here on earth, that is why we have what we call “blessings in disguise”. If God allows us to become ill so that we may learn to turn to him then that is God’s purpose.

BUT and this is a huge BUT, that kind of reasoning you cannot apply to eternity, because Hell is the penultimate evil. It is a separation from all that is Good so how can you call that good?

Ephesians 1 syas that God’s decisions are all for His glory and pleasure.

So therefore God glories and takes pleasure in the damnation of man? Then why did He bother sending His Son to die for our sins?

Moreover, consider Paul’s anticipation of the common objection in Romans 9:14, “What then shall we say? Is God unjust?” The very reason Paul said this was because people would normally think the way you do.

Bengoshi, read Romans again and not just this tiny bit of verse. Read from Chapter 8, then you will see it all in context.

Paul did not write this in anticipation of the kind of objection that we make. So yes, read the whole of Chapters 8 and 9.

It says further:

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

And we never said it did. But please show where in this verse does it say that God will have mercy on some and not on others. All this verse says is that Mercy is His prerogative. Nothing more.

For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

But neither does it say that Pharaoh has been damned for all eternity.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, a to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump d one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience e vessels of wrath f prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he i has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? (Rom. 9:15-24)

All that this says is that God has a right to do as He pleases. But it does not say that He creates people to damn them for eternity.

Some of Paul’s readers might expect him to appeal to human free will to resolve the problem posed in v. 19. Instead, he insists that finite human beings may not rebelliously question God’s ways, that God as a potter (cf. Jer. 18:1–6) has the right to do what he wishes with his creation.

Yes. But nowhere does it say that God damns people arbitrarily. If you read the beginning of Chapter 9 it actually speaking quite the opposite. That in His compassion, His extending salvtion to those outside of the Old Covenant.

The honorable and dishonorable vessels in this context represent those who are saved and unsaved.

No it isn’t. All Paul is trying to say here is that the God has the right to create as He pleases. Here is a commentary from the NAB.
For Paul, this objection is in the last analysis a manifestation of human insolence, and his “answer” is less an explanation of God’s ways than the rejection of an argument that places humanity on a level with God. At the same time, Paul shows that God is far less arbitrary than appearances suggest, for God endures with much patience (Romans 9:22) a person like the Pharaoh of the Exodus.*
*

Paul affirms that humans are guilty for their sin,

And if man is guilty for his sin then he therefore has free will.

and he offers no philosophical resolution as to how this fits with divine sovereignty. He does insist that God ordains all that happens (cf. Eph. 1:11), even though God himself does not sin and is not morally responsible for sin.

But nowhere does he say that God damns people to hell.

 

[benedictus2]

In my experience, it will simply be ignored because there is no effective rebuttal. I don’t require an answer, I just hope he thinks about it.

Yes, that is all one can hope for.