Understanding free will in light of God's sovereignty

[Robert1111]

can see evidence for Molinism though. I am not totally against it. But is it any less “depressing”? I mean Jesus told the Capernaum : And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.

That tells me that God could’ve saved Sodom if He wanted to. He just had to have performed the miracles there that Jesus did in Capernaum. I can see where Molinism might come in to explain this paradox.

That is one of the quotes used by some molinists to theorize God’s middle knowledge, reconciling molinism and God’s unconditional predestination in the process.

But those words from Jesus maybe exist because Jesus was overemphasizing how dangerous was the refusal of conversion.

For example, Fr. Most, a modern day thomist, believes that God wants to predestine literally everyone to Heaven, and those who are not predestined are not reprobated “for no reason except the divine will” BUT because God has foreseen that they will remain stubbornly unrepentant until the end. In other words, God reprobates only those who really don’t want to be with him according to him.

He clearly gives another interpretation of those Jesus words.

 

[Robert1111]

We do know that the reprobates freely decline to cooperate.

Which, if the thomist and augustinan doctrine of sufficient Grace is true, is also unavoidable, since that “sufficient” Grace only makes you accountable for your sin and nothing more.

 

[Robert1111]

I linked a paper which explains this too. The difference between Calvin and Thomistic thinking

Well, Jimmy Akin proved that the difference are not as striking as some people make them out to be. I suggest you to read this http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

Good stuff, thank you. You know perhaps I’ll come around to Molinism, who knows. I don’t see dangers in it and the Church has not taken a side between the two schools. It’s good to have unity among brothers in the faith.

Following Jimmy Akin who first wrote TipToe Through the Tulip, one of the best articles on Calvinism from Catholic perspective I’ve ever read, it was surprising to read that he was softening his tone and became more of a molinist later in life. But then again he too came from a Calvinist background.

You see it’s hard to give up the Calvinism at first because it’s so gripping. It makes you think that if you abandon any part of it, you’re a heretic who is going to hell. A new Catholic gravitates toward Thomism in order soften the change.

But I am still learning, and so far I am immensely grateful for Augustine and Thomas Aquinas for helping me away from Calvinism and to the true Church.

 

[Robert1111]

But I am still learning, and so far I am immensely grateful for Augustine and Thomas Aquinas for helping me away from Calvinism and to true Church.

Well, God may have used their positive influence on you to bring you here, so it’s a good thing.

 

[Robert1111]

Following Jimmy Akin who first wrote TipToe Through the Tulip, one of the best articles on Calvinism from Catholic perspective I’ve ever read, it was surprising to read that he was softening his tone and became more of a molinist later in life. But then again he too came from a Calvinist background.

Exactly. I appreciate his argument not because i agree with it, but because it serves the purpose of making my point more clear : the difference between thomism/augustinianism and Calvinism are mostly technicalities that really don’t change (if Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine were right) the end result.

Which is to say, if you are a reprobate born in a thomist universe you are not better off than a reprobate born in a calvinist universe.

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

Well, God may have used their positive influence on you to bring you here, so it’s a good thing.

Some of the best Catholic apologists all came from Reformed, Calvinist backgrounds; Jimmy Akin, David Anders, Scott Hahn, and Jay Richards for a short list. They’re amazing at apologetics. It’s because Calvinists are great at exegesis. They’re trained in a system, while flawed, to rapidly see things others miss in scripture. Their analyzing skills are top game.

This is why I think Augustine and Aquinas should be stressed and why the youth are gravitating toward them. It’s because there are Reformed youth training in this system, and they sometimes run laps around the more borderline universalists in the Church, and some of the Molinists. Calvinism sort of trains you to take no prisoners and the talk of “love” and “God’s mercy” means nothing to them (I embellish of course) in light of stressing God’s sovereignty and how you should be so lucky, and need to get on your knees everyday that He chose you and not the guy next to you.

 

[Robert1111]

Calvinism sort of trains you to take no prisoners and the talk of “love” and “God’s mercy” means nothing to them (I embellish of course) in light of stressing God’s sovereignty and how you should be so lucky, and need to get on your knees everyday that He chose you and not the guy next to you.

Eh, the problem is when the “guy/gal next to you” is someone you really care about. That is the moment where the thought of this person having been reprobated “for no reason except divine will” becomes soul-crushing.

Expecially when there are no good reasons to think that this person is numbered among the elect.

That was the moment where i personally realized that Thomas and Augustine’s perspective about this subject wasn’t true. That it couldn’t be true.

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

Exactly. I appreciate his argument not because i agree with it, but because it serves the purpose of making my point more clear : the difference between thomism/augustinianism and Calvinism are mostly technicalities that really don’t change (if Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine were right) the end result.

Which is to say, if you are a reprobate in a thomist universe you are not better off than a reprobate born into a calvinist universe.

Continuing what I wrote before this. All of these differing positions and no emphasis on what Aquinas and Augustine wrote is going to lead to a terrible cycle. A bunch of Reformed students are graduating seminary and they’re bitter at the last generation which were very Arminian. They’re going to come out with all guns blazing. That may not mean much to you since you’re in another country, but in the United States it’s a big thing.

They’re probably going to be almost hyper Calvinist in their young zeal, and anything to the left of them will seem like absolute heresy including Molinism. Catholics might see this extreme ideology and retreat to only emphasizing God’s love and mercy, as if those are the only attributes God has and the only ones worth mentioning. They’ll think of Thomism and Augustinianism as the proto theologies that started these heresies and not read them. Meanwhile, I am afraid of Catholics sinking more and more into universalism as a result, and putting it all under the banner of “God’s infinite love and mercy”. We will be right back to neopelagianism in no time.

That’s just my pessimistic side talking, bear it no mind. LOL.

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

Eh, the problem is when the “guy/gal next to you” is someone you really care about. That is the moment where the thought of this person having been reprobated “for no reason except divine will” becomes soul-crushing.

Expecially when there are no good reasons to think that this person is numbered among the elect.

That was the moment where i personally realized that Thomas and Augustine’s perspective about this subject wasn’t true. That it couldn’t be true.

But that guy or girl next to you still has the free will to choose. I know you think it’s splitting hairs but both Thomas Aquinas and Augustine reaffirmed their belief in free will, and did not believe in double predestination.

Secondly, again this is a very emotional issue for you and understandable. I just don’t see this winning out in a debate with a Calvinist. Not that a debate matters more than your sincere feelings about your loved ones, but I am thinking about the Church as a whole, and people who are searching for God.

We need a strong defense for what is coming. I am guessing this is why the Church at least in the States puts the former Reformed Calvinists at the forefront of apologetics here.

 

[Robert1111]

Continuing what I wrote before this. All of these differing positions and no emphasis on what Aquinas and Augustine wrote is going to lead to a terrible cycle. A bunch of Reformed students are graduating seminary and they’re bitter at the last generation which were very Arminian. They’re going to come out with all guns blazing. That may not mean much to you since you’re in another country, but in the United States it’s a big thing.

They’re probably going to be almost hyper Calvinist in their young zeal, and anything to the left of them will seem like absolute heresy including Molinism. Catholics might see this extreme ideology and retreat to only emphasizing God’s love and mercy, as if those are the only attributes God has and the only ones worth mentioning. They’ll think of Thomism and Augustinianism as the proto theologies that started these heresies and not read them. Meanwhile, I am afraid of Catholics sinking more and more into universalism as a result, and putting it all under the banner of “God’s infinite love and mercy”. We will right back to neopelagianism in no time.

That’s just my pessimistic side talking, bear it no mind. LOL.

I see where you are coming from. I’m not a universalist but God knows if i wouldn’t like that to be true.

I’m not a universalist but if God proved me wrong i would immensely happy.

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

I see where you are coming from. I’m not a universalist but God knows if i wouldn’t like that to be true.

I’m not a universalist but if God proved me wrong i would immensely happy.

I don’t know about that brother. That would cheapen Christ’s death on the cross.

We need a strong defense for what is coming. I am guessing this is why the Church at least in the States puts the former Reformed Calvinists at the forefront of apologetics here.

 

[Robert1111]

But that guy or girl next to you still has the free will to choose.

Well, yeah, but still if you have been passively reprobated from the beginning “for no other reason except the divine will” (quoting Saint Thomas) the fact is, you are going to Hell.

I know you think it’s splitting hairs but both Thomas Aquinas and Augustine reaffirmed their belief in free will, and did not believe in double predestination.

But here is the thing: it doesn’t matter. And i really mean it. The end result is exactly the same, you have been rejected before having done anything simply because God didn’t wish you eternal life. You would have been better off if you hadn’t been born, just like Jesus said about Judas. And, you know, now you are born and there is nothing you can do about it, because God will not even allow you to humbly crawl into eternal nothingness. Nope, you have to live, so that he will allow you to be tempted, and your free-will, tainted by original sin, will certainly want to freely sin, unless he gives you his all-important and all-saving efficacious Grace. You just want to Nope out of it and kill yourself, hoping that if not Heaven, at least the peace of eternal nothingness is within reach? Same as above, eternal hellfire.

There is literally nowhere to run to baby!

Mash that throttle you filthy reprobate! Mash that throttle and at least make your reprobation worthy!

Kind of a sobering perspective, right? Fr. Most’s perspective that Hell is not empty but those who go there are there entirely because they chose to remain stubbornly unrepentant until the end and this was the unique reason behind their reprobation, well, it’s different.

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

Very sobering but with a clarity that is worthy of praise, i.e. well written. If you think that is depressing, then please I implore you, never deep dive into Calvinism. It’s psychologically scarring.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

We do know that the reprobates freely decline to cooperate.

Which, if the thomist and augustinan doctrine of sufficient Grace is true, is also unavoidable, since that “sufficient” Grace only makes you accountable for your sin and nothing more.

We know that the Church opposed latter opinion of St. Augustine, Predestinarians, Calvinists, the Jansenists.

• Despite men’s sins God truly and earnestly desires the salvation of all men. (Sent. fidei proxima.)

The condemnation was given

• Council of Quiersy, 853 A.D.: Chap. 3. Omnipotent God wishes all men without exception to be saved[1 Tim. 2:4 ] although not all will be saved. However, that certain ones are saved, is the gift of the one who saves; that certain ones perish, however, is the deserved punishment of those who perish.
• Council of Trent, Session VI, 1547 A.D.: Can. 17. If anyone shall say that the grace of justification is attained by those only who are predestined unto life, but that all others, who are called, are called indeed, but do not receive grace, as if they are by divine power predestined to evil: let him be anathema.
• Pope Innocent X, Errors of Jansen, 1658 A.D.: 5. It is Semipelagian to say that Christ died or shed His blood for all men without exception. – Declared and condemned as false, rash, scandalous, and intended in this sense, that Christ died for the salvation of the predestined, impious, blasphemous, contumelious, dishonoring to divine piety, and heretical.
• Pope Alexander VIII, Errors of Jansenists, 1690: 4. Christ gave Himself for us as an oblation to God, not for the elect only, but for all the faithful only. 5. Pagans, Jews, heretics, and others of this kind do not receive in any way any influence from Jesus Christ, and so you will rightly infer from this that in them there is a bare and weak will without any sufficient grace. 6. Grace sufficient for our state is not so much useful as pernicious, so that we can justly pray: From sufficient grace deliver us, O Lord.

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

Although have you ever thought that Molinism was a convoluted way to avoid the sobering truth? And that it is all a ploy to run away from it under the guise that the sobering reality doesn’t conform to God’s love and mercy? I have thought about that, but if Molinism doesn’t try to undo God’s sovereignty then I might think about it some more.

 

[AugustineFanNYC]

But among most of the modern students of St. Augustine the conviction is constantly gaining ground that the African Doctor at no time of his life, not even shortly before his death, embraced this dangerous view of grace which Jansenism claims to have inherited from him. Even the Protestant writer E.F.K. Müller emphasizes the fact that St. Augustine, with regard to the liberty of the will in all conditions of life, “never renounced his repudiation of Manichæism, a step which had caused him so severe a struggle” (Realencyk. für prot. Theologie, Leipzig, 1904, XV, 590).

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12376b.htm

 

[Vico]

But among most of the modern students of St. Augustine the conviction is constantly gaining ground that the African Doctor at no time of his life, not even shortly before his death, embraced this dangerous view of grace which Jansenism claims to have inherited from him. Even the Protestant writer E.F.K. Müller emphasizes the fact that St. Augustine, with regard to the liberty of the will in all conditions of life, “never renounced his repudiation of Manichæism, a step which had caused him so severe a struggle” (Realencyk. für prot. Theologie, Leipzig, 1904, XV, 590).

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12376b.htm

Interesting summary there also:

The essence of this heretical Predestinarianism may be expressed in these two fundamental propositions which bear to each other the relation of cause and effect:

• the absolute will of God as the sole cause of the salvation or damnation of the individual, without regard to his merits or demerits;
• as to the elect, it denies the freedom of the will under the influence of efficacious grace while it puts the reprobate under the necessity of committing sin in consequence of the absence of grace.

 

[Robert1111]

I don’t know about that brother. That would cheapen Christ’s death on the cross.

Like i said, i will probably never be a universalist, for many reasons.

But i really don’t understand this. I have heard this argument a lot, but it really doesn’t make sense to me. If anything, to me universalism would be the most powerful demonstration that Jesus sacrifice on the Cross is really all-powerful, just like His love. It would be the demonstration that the Son has already and truly satisfied Justice with his sacrifice and we need no “sinners in the hand of an angry God” anymore. It would be the demonstration that even the most vile sinners surrender to the power of love at the end, because love is ultimately the meaning of our life and sin is just the symptom of a disease (original sin) that is not inherent in our nature.

I would be very happy to be a universalist, but even if i probably never will be one, i can get on board with molinism or Fr.Most’s understanding without problems.

What i simply can’t accept anymore is the concept of unconditional reprobation and unconditional (albeit passive) reprobation. These concepts to me are just irreconciliabile with a loving God, period.

If you think that is depressing, then please I implore you, never deep dive into Calvinism. It’s psychologically scarring.

Been there, done that, bro. Thomism has scarred me a lot, it’s really not that different, it’s not a heresy because there some cleverly designed sheaningans but as i’ve shown in the previous post, it’s practically the same thing.

I’ll say it once again: if God directly wills your damnation (Calvinism) or simply passes you over (thomism/augustinianism) you will end up in the lake of fire either way and you had no say in the matter. You sinned, sure, but without his efficacious Grace even Padre Pio would have freely wanted to sin. That’s what matters.

Although have you ever thought that Molinism was a convoluted way to avoid the sobering truth? And that it is all a ploy to run away from it under the guise that the sobering reality doesn’t conform to God’s love and mercy?

I have. But after having read many approved private revelations of the saints where Jesus talked to them, i saw that there was no way that Jesus was a “thomist” or an “Augustinian”.

And thinking that all of those approved private revelations are false, well, it’s just unlikely to me.

Other than that, yes, you made a valid point.

 

[Robert1111]

We know that the Church opposed latter opinion of St. Augustine, Predestinarians, Calvinists, the Jansenists.

• Despite men’s sins God truly and earnestly desires the salvation of all men. (Sent. fidei proxima.)

The condemnation was given

• Council of Quiersy, 853 A.D. : Chap. 3. Omnipotent God wishes all men without exception to be saved[1 Tim. 2:4 ] although not all will be saved. However, that certain ones are saved, is the gift of the one who saves; that certain ones perish, however, is the deserved punishment of those who perish.
• Council of Trent, Session VI, 1547 A.D. : Can. 17. If anyone shall say that the grace of justification is attained by those only who are predestined unto life, but that all others, who are called, are called indeed, but do not receive grace, as if they are by divine power predestined to evil: let him be anathema.
• Pope Innocent X, Errors of Jansen, 1658 A.D. : 5. It is Semipelagian to say that Christ died or shed His blood for all men without exception. – Declared and condemned as false, rash, scandalous, and intended in this sense, that Christ died for the salvation of the predestined, impious, blasphemous, contumelious, dishonoring to divine piety, and heretical.
• Pope Alexander VIII, Errors of Jansenists, 1690 : 4. Christ gave Himself for us as an oblation to God, not for the elect only, but for all the faithful only. 5. Pagans, Jews, heretics, and others of this kind do not receive in any way any influence from Jesus Christ, and so you will rightly infer from this that in them there is a bare and weak will without any sufficient grace. 6. Grace sufficient for our state is not so much useful as pernicious, so that we can justly pray: From sufficient grace deliver us, O Lord.

Yeah, of course the Church condemned these heresies. But still, what i said to AugustineFanNYC remains untouched.