Hitetlen:
Now, there was another thing I learned, namely that God does not predestine anyone to hell, but he does predestine some people to heaven. So there are some people who are given a generous amount of grace, who gain the necessary faith to love and serve God sufficiently well, so they will be admitted to heaven. These people of course retain their free will.
For the following discussion I will call these people “type-A” persons, because it would be too cumbersome to write every time: “those people who - through God’s grace - gain sufficent faith to enable them to be loving and obedient enough to deserve heaven via exercising their free will; those who are predestined to heaven”. Every other person I will call “type-B”, to save bandwidth.
In order to become a “type-A” person one does have to do anything, the grace and their resulting faith is a free gift from God.
I was also told that God’s grace gives the “type-B” persons a lesser amount of faith, so they can work and expand it, and hopefully they will also merit admission to heaven, though that is not assured.
No, you are confused about this. The only person I know of who ever held this view was the heretical Protestant (by that I mean that he was heretical by mainstream Protestant standards) John Milton.
Catholics argue a lot about predestination. It’s a speculative subject on which the Catholic Church has wisely not declared one particular opinion to be true.
Anyone not predestined to heaven will not be saved. That much is clear. Hence, those Catholics who say that God unconditionally predestines some to heaven are forced to admit that God passively allows the others to go to hell (without violating free willin either case). Just how this happens and how it does not violate God’s goodness and human free will is an extremely difficult philosophical/theological problem.
Today, most Catholics (like most Protestants) have moved away from this traditional view, toward a view closer to that traditionally held by Eastern Christians (the Orthodox). This would hold simply that God desires the salvation of all, and gives everyone the grace that enables them to be saved. Beyond that it’s a mystery.
A few would even suggest that it’s possible that everyone will be saved. This is a dubious view among orthodox Catholics, but it has not been condemned by the Church (the view that everyone will inevitably be saved has been condemned, but the view that everyone *may *be saved has not).
This is very difficult stuff. It touches directly on the problem of evil, which is the single strongest reason not to believe in God. So if you find it off-putting, I can’t blame you. I don’t think any single explanation is entirely satisfactory. It’s a mystery we believers have to live with, no matter which theory we adopt.
Now here comes the question: “Why did God create ‘type-B’ people?”
It’s a very difficult question, since in fact the form it takes is “why did God create people whom He knew would go to hell.” It’s more than just creating people who might or might not be saved. Obviously (whatever we believe about predestination) God knows which people will be saved and which will not. So why didn’t He just create the people whom He knew would be saved? I don’t claim to have an answer to this.
Edwin
so forgive me please if I end up complicating things.
I am sure there is a lot of discussion going on considering such difficult subjects.
