Tackling Predestination

[Bengoshi]

Those would be the ones in error. The Catholic position is clear: no one is predestined to hell. Pitcharan does not speak for the Catholic church.

He did not. He quoted something with imprimatur and nihil obstat from Catholic bishops.

 

[Bengoshi]

Exactly. Personally I think this is at the very heart of Calvin’s errors. The man seems to have suffered from extreme scrupulocity. And so he was driven to devise a system that removed his own responsibility so as to retain his sanity. Obviously this is an opinion, as we don’t have medical records, but having suffered from the condition myself it seems clear as day to me.

Personally opinions aside. I think that a primary error in the argument that “we cannot judge God” is that it ultimately draws a picture of an inconsistent deity. God commands certain moral qualities in His people. Yet to be told that we cannot apply these same expectations to their founder is to suggest that is somehow OK for God to be hypocritical.

I’ve said before that I am always amazed at how casually people will attribute to God qualities that all people would find reprehensible in a human being. It reminds me of how the ancient Greeks designed gods who were often morally inferior to themselves.

Remember, it’s not just Calvin, there are Thomists and Augustinian Catholics on this thread who agree with the doctrine of reprobation. In fact, some Evangelical scholars don’t even want to call the doctrin Calvinistic because it wasn’t originally Calvin’s anyway.

 

[benedictus2]

I’m sorry if Sproul is just too much for you to understand…

I have not read him so can’t say whether he is too hard for me to understand or not.

It seems though that he is too hard for you to understand because I have been asking you for so long now to give us an “explanation” in you YOUR OWN WORDS of what Sproul has written and to date still nothing forthcoming from you.

Ergo, since you have read him and cannot explain what you have read, Sproul is too hard for you to understand. Which truly baffles me since you claim to be a lawyer.

 

[benedictus2]

He did not. He quoted something with imprimatur and nihil obstat from Catholic bishops.

And if you read PaulC’s refutation of Pitcharan on post 485 then you will realize that this is totally pointless.

You and Pitcharan have a habit of reading into scripture what is just not there.

 

[benedictus2]

Remember, it’s not just Calvin, there are Thomists and Augustinian Catholics on this thread who agree with the doctrine of reprobation. In fact, some Evangelical scholars don’t even want to call the doctrin Calvinistic because it wasn’t originally Calvin’s anyway.

The Doctrine is Calvinistic because Calvin warps what was proposed by Augustine. It is true however that Calvin is quite close to St Thomas and St Augustine, but close does not mean same.

 

[benedictus2]

I have no problem with the passages you quoted. But the thing is, the reprobate will not call on the name of the Lord in the first place. They are the ones who “selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness.”

Because according to you, God created them that way. So god creates men who he makes sure will disobey him and them punishes them for disobeying him.

Much like you as a father, sitting there with your legs stretched out knowing that your child will soon pass by. As he comes across you raise your leg to trip him. Then as he trips and tumbles over, he breaks the vase and spills over the water and flowers. Then you get your whip out and proceed to whip him till he is covered in sores and bleeding, in punishment for stumbling over and breaking the vase.

 

[Pitcharan]

That is right, if someone points out your boasting and pride (while you are taking someone to task for their non-existent pride) they are perverse .

It was neither stated nor implied that pride existed. It was merely advised to humbly seek truth rather than demand God’s explanation; it was furhter advised to beware of the consequence of pride while seeking to learn from God.

I clearly recognise the Accuser because the spirit of my Savior gudies me. He always vindicates me and rescues me from the tongues of slanderers.

 

[Bengoshi]

I have not read him so can’t say whether he is too hard for me to understand or not.

It seems though that he is too hard for you to understand because I have been asking you for so long now to give us an “explanation” in you YOUR OWN WORDS of what Sproul has written and to date still nothing forthcoming from you.

Ergo, since you have read him and cannot explain what you have read, Sproul is too hard for you to understand. Which truly baffles me since you claim to be a lawyer.

So it’s either that or you’re just lazy to read it. Your insults are already getting irritating. I’ve been trying my best not to even mention your density but it seems that it’s really pointless discussing with someone who doesn’t even want to read good articles on the subject.

And yes, for the very reason that I am a lawyer means that I am very busy and have little time to be writing treatises just to indulge you. That’s why I just point the readers to good materials in order to help you better understand where I’m coming from. Of course it is always better to read Sproul’s explanation itself than my own summary, which may tend to be inadequate due to space and time.

anyway, I’m done with discussing with you. Even your answers to the other posters such as Pitcharan are aggravating and have not even the scintilla of proper academic courtesy.

Goodbye Benedictus!

 

[benedictus2]

So it’s either that or you’re just lazy to read it. Your insults are already getting irritating. I’ve been trying my best not to even mention your density but it seems that it’s really pointless discussing with someone who doesn’t even want to read good articles on the subject.

And yes, for the very reason that I am a lawyer means that I am very busy and have little time to be writing treatises just to indulge you. That’s why I just point the readers to good materials in order to help you better understand where I’m coming from. Of course it is always better to read Sproul’s explanation itself than my own summary, which may tend to be inadequate due to space and time.

anyway, I’m done with discussing with you. Even your answers to the other posters such as Pitcharan are aggravating and have not even the scintilla of proper academic courtesy.

Goodbye Benedictus!

Okay who is dense: the one who did not read the article so understandably cannot explain it or the one who read the article and cannot explain it. I am the former you are the latter.

And if you are too busy to explain your postion then why bother engaging in a debate. That is only an excuse perhaps for your failure to grasp the very thing that you are asking me to read. Maybe you are hoping that once I have read it I can help you to understand it .

You manged to write a fairly lengthy explanation of “born again” and yet when pressed to explain Sproul all you could do was give a link?

I am snowed under with work but I don’t give you a link to defend my position. I actually write it.

If you are fair dinkum with your excuse, in the time that I have been asking you, you would have been able to come up with an explanation by now since you manged to do a few long posts in between.

Sorry but I see through your excuses.

I doubt if it will be goodbye. You won’t be able to resist replying to me in some thread or another . One of my posts will surely irritate you and bang goes Bengoshing pounding at the keyboard to refute Benedictus2

 

[Pitcharan]

Nope. The answer is not blowing in the wind. Shaky actually apprehends the very real and rational objection to predestination, which some here seems to keep failing to get. Top marks to Shaky.

What has happened is when someone cannot have an answer to this kind of questioning they just answer “Oh one cannot question God” or “the answer is blowing in the wind”.

God has not predestined to damnation. No one could provide a good scriptural support for it. Support for predestination to salvation abound but not for reprobation.

No, the answer is not blowing in the wind. The answer is “Because God is not like that?”

How can one call it just if God punished someone for withholding the very grace that God demands of them to be saved? The answer is simply, it is not just and it is intellectually irresponsible to suppose so just because one cannot muster enough rational argument for one’s view.

Shaky is not questioning God, rather he is questioning the weakness of the proposition of predestination to damnation.

Like those friends of Job who put forth suppositions of the why’s, the view of predestination to damnation speaks ill of God and spurts lies about God.

That take about Adam blaming God for putting the woman there is exactly how I have always explained it in my talk on the Eucharist as liberation in Christ. It was not the height of pride. That came before. This is what we call blame shifting and is always our first to being found out in our sin. How are we going to blame someone else for it. There is something terribly evil about this because it actually lays the blame for the fall squarely at God’s feet.

I have often asked people, I wonder how it would have gone, had instead of blaming shifting and scape goating, Adam and Eve had acknowledged their sins and repented.

This is why acknowledgment of one’s sin (repentance) is the first step towards breaking its hold on us.

Only Satan divides God’s children by manipulating and confusing through perverse ways.

Only the inspired children of God can understand the meaning of "the answer is blowing in the wind".

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit (John 3:8)

 

[Pitcharan]

Pitcharan.
Its good that you are submitting your views to the eclesiastical authorities. That is a sign of obedience, which is good and appropriate. however, I expect you to be disappointed in the results. It is very doubtful that you will create new doctrine.

I leave the outcome to God; I think my thoughts were inspired; let God reveal the truth through His eclesiastical authorities. You and your likes may be in the habit of becoming disappointed with God’s will. That is why you expect this of others.

This discusses predestination of the saints. On this there is no disagreement

This does not say that any individuals are predestined to hell. It merely states that some people will go to heaven and some will go to hell. This is not a surprising statement. Only those that think everyone goes to heaven would disagree with this point.

What according to you is the meaning of this?:…we are all destined to one or the other – either to reign eternally with God in Heaven or to burn forever with the devils in Hell!

 

[shaky]

This seems like a good opportunity to explain how the Catholic church really works. The Church teaches the doctrines that were passed down from the Apostles, nothing more, nothing less. That is why the Pope is infallible in areas of faith and morals - he doesn’t create new doctrine. Now to be fair, he does need to apply existing doctrine to new situations. For instance, artificial birth control was not available during apostolic times. when Pope Paul VI pronounced against the use of artificial birth control, he did so after prolonged prayer and study by a large group of bishops and he published the reasons that the ruling was an extension of existing doctrine.

As for the specific doctrine that God gives everone the opportunity to be saved, that is scriptural. After all, Jesus calls all men to himself. And to describe this practically, every one has a conscience to warn against evil and drive them toward good. That is God calling to every man to come to him, is it not?

as for Augustine: here is the support from the Catholic encyclopedia article on the teaching of Augustine:
But this decree includes also the second element of the Catholic dogma: the very sincere will of God to give to all men the power of saving themselves and the power of damning themselves. According to Augustine, God, in his creative decree, has expressly excluded every order of things in which grace would deprive man of his liberty, every situation in which man would not have the power to resist sin, and thus Augustine brushes aside that predestinationism which has been attributed to him. Listen to him speaking to the Manichæans: “All can be saved if they wish”; and in his “Retractations” (I, x), far from correcting this assertion, he confirms it emphatically: “It is true, entirely true, that all men can, if they wish.” But he always goes back to the providential preparation. In his sermons he says to all: “It depends on you to be elect” (In Ps. cxx, n. 11, etc.); “Who are the elect? You, if you wish it” (In Ps. lxxiii, n. 5). But, you will say, according to Augustine, the lists of the elect and reprobate are closed. Now if the non-elect can gain heaven, if all the elect can be lost, why should not some pass from one list to the other? You forget the celebrated explanation of Augustine: When God made His plan, He knew infallibly, before His choice, what would be the response of the wills of men to His graces. If, then, the lists are definitive, if no one will pass from one series to the other, it is not because anyone cannot (on the contrary, all can), it is because God knew with infallible knowledge that no one would wish to. Thus I cannot effect that God should destine me to another series of graces than that which He has fixed, but, with this grace, if I do not save myself it will not be because I am not able, but because I do not wish to

Hi paul

Correct me if i am wrong: What i think Augustine is saying here is that all men are given
The Grace of God to be saved in the first place: But then it is down to the individual to respond to this Grace. But at the same time he is saying> God knows infallibly who will respond and who will not respond>From what i gather God knows before these people are born who will respond and who will not respond.
Could this be down to a persons disposition?

I have thought about DNA. Esau and Jacob came from the same parents. but they still can have different DNA
Scripture seems to suggest that Esau although he had many descendants they were not the chosen people and were destroyed.
Scriptures seems to suggest that Jacob although he had many descendants who was Israel but then only a remnant of these were saved.
When you look at Cain and his descendants.Then Seth and his descendants.
Seth and his descendants were Sons of God. In Geneses:> What they did was intermingled
With Cains descendants who were Sons of men. Instead of staying with there own kind They took wives from Cains line. This why i think it caused a imbalance of evil to spread throughout the whole world. This is probably why God only saved Noah and his family. then flooded and destroyed the rest.
There is allot of intermingling Going on Now

{Mathew 24:37} As it was in the days of Noah. So it will be at the coming of the son of man.

 

[benedictus2]

It was neither stated nor implied that pride existed. It was merely advised to humbly seek truth rather than demand God’s explanation; it was furhter advised to beware of the consequence of pride while seeking to learn from God.

Oh really?  Well how about we put here your exact post here. I will number them so you can see exactly how conceited it was.

1)Either wait till I am able to publish my explanation …

      or.......            let the Holy Spirit teach you.

2)Unless you sincerely seek truth with humility, you will receive nothing. Refrain from demanding explanation. Beware! Pride preceeds fall.

Point 1 – What else were you saying with this if not: Your explanation (which you hope to publish) is the be all of explanations with regards the matter and equivalent to the guiding of the Holy Spirit. Only you or the Holy Spirit has the answer. Unadulterated conceit if ever I have heard any!

Point 2. You said that pride was neither stated nor implied. Well take a look at point 2 of your post. That my dear is saying that Shaky is prideful all because he demands explanations. And mind you, he was not demanding explanations from God but from people here like you who have a rather warped theology.

Ha! Seek truth with humility! If anyone here has been humbly seeking truth it is Shaky. What you don’t like is that he is asking you questions you don’t have answers for and in your pride you can’t just say to him that you just don’t know the answer.

Someone’s got you stumped, you don’t know the answer and you don’t like that one bit because Pitcharan is so enlightened and inspired that if he doesn’t know the answer then the only other person who would know the answer is the Holy Spirit.

I clearly recognise the Accuser because the spirit of my Savior gudies me. He always vindicates me and rescues me from the tongues of slanderers.

And again this one. A classic case. Any one who opposes you must be Satan. That kind of thinking is delusional.

If pride goes before a fall then with what you have written before you must have some nasty bruises.

 

[benedictus2]

I leave the outcome to God; I think my thoughts were inspired; let God reveal the truth through His eclesiastical authorities.

There it is again. But at least you defer to ecclesiastical authorities so that is good.

You and your likes may be in the habit of becoming disappointed with God’s will. That is why you expect this of others.

Quite the contrary, PaulC and his likes (I think) are never disappointed by God’s will. They love God’s will.

They are however (probably) disappointed with people who while having no understanding of God’s will, pretends to know God’s will and berates those who question their theories about God’s will.

 

[benedictus2]

What according to you is the meaning of this?:…we are all destined to one or the other – either to reign eternally with God in Heaven or to burn forever with the devils in Hell!

I think that is all very self-explanatory.

But just in case you are thinking this shores up your case, I think it is important to note the word used - destined, NOT pre-destined.

 

[benedictus2]

Remember, it’s not just Calvin, there are Thomists and Augustinian Catholics on this thread who agree with the doctrine of reprobation. In fact, some Evangelical scholars don’t even want to call the doctrin Calvinistic because it wasn’t originally Calvin’s anyway.

Here is something from St Thomas that is very relevant to the discussion.

All artists love what they give birth to - parents love their children; poets love their poems; craftsmen love their handiwork. How then could God hate a single thing since God is the artist of everything.

 

[benedictus2]

Only Satan divides God’s children by manipulating and confusing through perverse ways.

Satan divides through lies. He is the father of lies. Now as to those untruths that you have been proposing …

Only the inspired children of God can understand the meaning of "the answer is blowing in the wind"

. I recon Bob Dylan is an inspired child of God.

 

[paul_c]

He did not. He quoted something with imprimatur and nihil obstat from Catholic bishops.

Sure, he quoted from them. But then he extrapolated from those quotes positions that are clearly opposed to the actual position of the church. I showed that in post 485.

 

[paul_c]

“That if you confess with your mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and it is with your mouth that you are saved.” (Rom. 10:9-10)

As I’ve said, it is just a way of “confessing” one’s faith in Christ. It is not the prayer itself that saves, but the faith that comes with it.

Bengoshi,
St. Paul covers a lot of ground in Romans. In Chapter 2 he says clearly that you will be judged based on your actions. You have to incorporate them all to come to tthe fullness of truth. If you take any of them in isolation, you are in error. So, yes, you need to confess Jesus is Lord with you mouth. But you must also do the will of God to be saved. Its an AND function (you need to do both) not an OR function (you can choose to do only the one you want)…

 

[paul_c]

Quote:

Originally Posted by paul c
These passages do not say that anyone is predestined to hell, either. That is an extrapolation. It does say that Esau was to serve Jacob, but it doesn’t say Esau was destined for hell. And it does say that Pharoah was put in place to bring glory to God, but it does not say that he was destined for hell.

You are saying this as if your point of view is somehow true. You have shown no evidence that there is a reprobate class that some are some how deprived of the chance to be saved by God. The scripture passage above that you say you have no problem with says clearly that " there is no partiality with God.