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yunat
Guest
Refusing to believe that God is real is a deliberate rejection of God.
In my experience, many Atheists are well aware what they are denying and what the apparent consequences hold.
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In my experience, many Atheists are well aware what they are denying and what the apparent consequences hold.
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davidv
Guest
My post is very much on topic. If God didn’t create anyone who would reject Him, no one would exist. Adam and Eve (probably aliases) rejected God (the original sin). If they were not created, no humanity would exist.
Our capacity to reject God is the same capacity that allows us to love. Without this capacity would we not be human.
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Trurl
Guest
Let’s not make the error of confusing a concept with its referent. This error is being propagated all the time.
As I said, I do not reject God. It would be a logical impossibility for me to reject God. ONLY a believer can “reject” God. As for the rest of your post, it is just a strange opinion. Do you really think that God could not have created an alternate pair (say John and Julie) who would not have “rejected” him? That there was no “possible world” where the “original sin” was avoided? Are you aware thet this would REALLY deny the existence of “free will”?
By the way, I disagree that the alleged “taking the apple” equates a “rejection”. There is no logical connection there. If a parent forbids the child to take a cookie, and the child disobeys, it does NOT mean that the child rejected the parent. (Of course, not even the catholics are under obligation to take the Eden story as a verbatim description of what allegedly transpired. For non-christians it is just a story.)
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
There’s an opportunity for confusion here. There’s several concepts that are often conflated in the word “believe.” Among others this includes (but isn’t limited to):
- trust confidence
- hope
- assessment of what is most likely true
- position that embodies one’s values
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
The God Christians believe in is unchangeable. We cannot transfer human categories of knowledge to God. God knows all things, all acts, all contingencies in the Oneness of His Eternal Existence without change. It is not something that can be proven except through a philosophy like that of Thomas Aquinas or through Divine Revelation. Both Thomistic Philosophy and Divine Revelation teach the same truth.
Right, there is no before and after in the existence of God but His effects have a before and an after. Right, for God there is only the eternal now of His infinite being. The fact that He creates space, time, contingent being does not alter His eternal now any more than it alters His unchangeable Oneness. How He accomplishes this we cannot hope to know. Onece again, we cannot transfer human categories of thinking and knowing to God.
It seems to me that you may be confusing the ontological being of a person with the unfolding or perfecting of his personality. Without getting too technical, once a person exists, his creation is complete.This is at conception or at the point God creates and implants the human soul. From that moment there is only development, not only the unfolding of the physical aspects but of the personality. These latter two are not creative acts but the effects of secondary causes of various sorts including mans will. God is still the primary cause in these effects. That is deep philosophy, don’t ask me to explain now. So, we develop our " selves " in various ways, we don’t create. Only God does that.
Your parents were the seconday causes of your existence. They provided the matter of your body but God created your soul immediately and implanted it. God was the primary cause of the matter that went into your body and of all the acts involved there. You became a " free " agent from the moment of ensoulment but of course you needed to develop. And God does know your future and all its contingencies. That is part of what it means to be God. He is He than Whom no greater can be conceived. God knows all about your future. That is demonstrated by Thomistic philosophy, by Revelation and by the consistent teaching and Dogma of the Catholic Church.
I think you are getting close. I think you have it in this last paragraph. Yes, unless the free agent acts, there is only contingency and possibility. It would be better if you did not use " create " in these contexts. We are secondary causes only. We may make something, only God creates.
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davidv
Guest
Disagree all you want. What merit is there in that? To do so is equivocate on the meaning of rejection. Highly irregular for someone claiming the higher ground of logic.
How is your opinion of the story relevant? Either the story has real referents or it doesn’t. Your opinion is not the deciding factor. My post is not based on lituralistic reading of Genesis. No strawmen allowed.
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Trurl
Guest
In this case the “rejection” can only mean one thing: “a formal statement indicating that one does not wish to do anything with God”. Acting in a way that is supposed to be against God’s alleged will does not count, since neither God’s existence nor God’s supposed will has ever been substantiated. It remains on the level of the opinion of a certain group of people. As I said before, I fully reject this opinion, but that does not equate to rejecting the alleged referent of this opinion. As soon as God will come and manifest himself, we all shall be in the position to accept or reject him. But not until then.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Then he said to the disciples, “Anyone who accepts your message is also accepting me. And anyone who rejects you is rejecting me. And anyone who rejects me is rejecting God, who sent me.” (Luke10:16)
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Peter_Plato
Guest
I am not clear that is true with regard to “self.”I think you are getting close. I think you have it in this last paragraph. Yes, unless the free agent acts, there is only contingency and possibility. It would be better if you did not use " create " in these contexts. We are secondary causes only. We may make something, **only God creates. **
"But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’ (13:27)
This passage seems to imply that God speaking at the judgement has determined that he does not know where the evildoers came from nor does he “know” them. This means they originated from some other source, not God. The implication seems to be that total self “creation” is possible, but if it is done without God, then the consequences are that God will not endorse what has been created and it won’t go on in his sight, whatever the implications of that are.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Perhaps “self” is in a kind of plasma state between being and non-being. It hasn’t been created yet, i.e., by God, so it doesn’t exist in actuality. That is why our lives seem to have an aura of nebulous illusion about them, they don’t seem complete.
In that case you would be correct to say only God creates in this full sense of bringing into being.
We could be in a “contained” transition state where we are determining “self” by choices we make. God provides all that we need to “create” this self, but it does not become fully actualized, i.e., created as endorsed by God to come into fullness of being, until God makes that step.
Thus we are truly ourselves because we originate and are accountable for what we have made, have done so freely and out of our own choices so we are responsible for those choices and can do so with full access to the resources (graces) provided by God, so we have no excuse for not becoming a self of dignity and worth in the eyes of God.
In that case you would be correct to say only God creates in this full sense of bringing into being.
We could be in a “contained” transition state where we are determining “self” by choices we make. God provides all that we need to “create” this self, but it does not become fully actualized, i.e., created as endorsed by God to come into fullness of being, until God makes that step.
Thus we are truly ourselves because we originate and are accountable for what we have made, have done so freely and out of our own choices so we are responsible for those choices and can do so with full access to the resources (graces) provided by God, so we have no excuse for not becoming a self of dignity and worth in the eyes of God.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
No. You are misreading here. Scripture is speaking metaphorically here. It is true we are totally responsible for how our personality ( the phychological and moral " self " ) develops.
Christ knows the evildoers alright, but he will treat them as though he did not know them. They will have chosen their fate by intentionally disregarding and ignoring Christ and his teaching. Now he will ignore them and leave their fate in the hands of those totally superior and absolutely evil demons of hell. Not a pleasant thought. And we can ignore it all we want, we can deny it all we want, but we cannot avoid making a choice with our every thought and act. Makes one pause, doesn’t it. We should be thinking of it all the time ( at least in our subconscious ).
Again, it is better to use " create " in its philosophical/theological sense. This helps eliminate confusion.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Yes, that was a very poor answer. Most of us here are ordinary people answering questions as best we can. C.A. has a few trained apologists but only a few and they don’t have time to deal with the thousands of posts - they have real lives to live. So, most of the time posts are answered by anyone who comes along and takes an interest. Some of those are quite intelligent, so not so much, some old, some very young, some well meaning, some quite perverse. A mixed bag to be sure.
But to answer your question. Our free will is not contingent on anything. It certainly does not depend on God creating people whom he knows will not obey him. We make our own choices. Of course, sometimes our free will may be mitigated by of various life circumstances beyond our control. And you know, that will mean salvation for many. A grace in disguise.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
There is a rich Biblical tradition concerning the word “know” as a unitive and creative act. When a man and woman come to “know” each other, the result is a child. That is not a metaphor, the child is a being of its own right. When God “knows” something, it comes into being or existence. That is not a metaphor, that statement expresses a reality far more substantial than our knowledge can conceive.
“No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Luke 10:22)
Consider the above in light of Trinitarian theology that inadequately portrays the Son as the Father’s perfect self-knowledge. The Son proceeds from the Father as a perfect act of omniscient self-knowledge. The “knowledge” of the Father is the Son. So when the Son, “chooses to reveal” the Father, it is the light, the illuminating knowledge of the Son that brings us, as human persons, into being, just as the knowledge of the Father brings the Son into being, eternally. Our knowledge of ourselves if “in tune” with the Son’s knowledge of us, brings us into being, i.e., actualizes us. In fact, it is God’s knowledge of us that brings us into being. However, if we choose to “disconnect” ourselves from the Son’s actualizing knowledge of us, then, like the branch that severs itself from the tree, we, as persons, become less real, less actualized and more illusory. We are separated from God, from Truth and, ultimately, from Being itself.
The difference between the nature of God and the nature of man is that God exists necessarily because God’s nature is “to be.” His nature is to exist. God is Being itself. Our nature is contingent upon the Being of God. We do not exist by some essential quality in human nature because our nature is contingent upon God bringing us into being, sharing existence with us. We exist to the extent that we participate or share in existence, but that sharing is not necessary, it is contingent upon the will and knowledge of God.
Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (John 1:12)
What does “born of God” mean if not sharing, by participation, i.e., adoption, in the Being of God? Otherwise, there is no difference between merely being born of natural descent, human decision or will, and being “born of God.”
Reread my last two posts in light of this.
I am not saying we “create” our “selves” as God creates, but we do originate the kind of self that, if endorsed by God, is actualized into being by him. Self is only actually realized as an interplay between our will and God’s. On our own we cannot actualize what we conceive self to be. That would be a kind of spiritual masturbation, a self-love that goes nowhere precisely because God’s (name removed by moderator)ut is missing. We do not receive God, therefore we cannot be born of God, i.e., be fully actualized as existing “selves.”
Yet to all who received him,… he gave the right to become children of God … born of God. (John 1:12)
Incidentally, this explains why all forms of sexual auto-eroticism and homosexual love are inherently distortions of a much greater reality, the creative love of God. Doing things “our way” by shutting out God will only end in termination because there is no “power” to endure or create from contingency.
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fred_conty
Guest
Maybe “contingency” upon others means the same as what had already taken place between the good angels and the bad angels who fought. They had battle and there would not have been such if one or the other had not existed to fight the other, and so they were contingent upon one another. To show evil needs good. To show good needs evil. This is contingency.
Or something along these lines.
Just a thought.
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Linux
Guest
This does not seem like Catholic teaching to me.
Good is absolute in terms of existence. In Catholic terms, Existence is Good. Evil and Good are not contingent upon each other for existence. To speak of good and evil is to measure the difference between a choice to do that which is either a deprivation to the potentially of good things or a fulfilment of the potentiality of good things. Evil is not a real being in and of itself. Evil is simply the failure to do that which truly reflects the good of beings.
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fred_conty
Guest
If evil isn’t real then what are beings doing in hell?
In the bible this same thought is expressed. That God uses the devil to test the good.
Job is an example of this. How can we be virtuous if we are not tested? And we aren’t tested by the good. St. Paul says something to the effect that we are like metal strengthened by being put in the fire. And gold is purified by fire as well.
All things glorify and serve the Lord, including the evil.
Just some thoughts.
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davidv
Guest
The beings in hell are not evil. They were created good and chose to reject good.
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Trurl
Guest
Well said. I can only add one little thing: the apologist who gave that answer WAS one of the official ones (on the Ask the Apologist forum).Yes, that was a very poor answer. Most of us here are ordinary people answering questions as best we can. C.A. has a few trained apologists but only a few and they don’t have time to deal with the thousands of posts - they have real lives to live. So, most of the time posts are answered by anyone who comes along and takes an interest. Some of those are quite intelligent, so not so much, some old, some very young, some well meaning, some quite perverse. A mixed bag to be sure.
But to answer your question. Our free will is not contingent on anything. It certainly does not depend on God creating people whom he knows will not obey him. We make our own choices. Of course, sometimes our free will may be mitigated by of various life circumstances beyond our control. And you know, that will mean salvation for many. A grace in disguise.
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Trurl
Guest
Yes, that would be a contingency - but what you refer to, is an action. But the argument was that the “mere” existence of people who freely embrace God is “contingent” upon the existence of some other people, who reject God. And that is the logical error.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
No one is perfect.Well said. I can only add one little thing: the apologist who gave that answer WAS one of the official ones (on the Ask the Apologist forum).
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