Were you and I ever meant to be here originally?

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So our life is predestined. In the fact that our free will is already chosen?
 
Human beings have genuine free will. We experience this daily in our lives. And God could not justly reward us for doing good or punish us for doing evil if we didn’t have genuine free will.

As Mmarco indicated above, God’s knowledge of the future includes our free will choices.
 
MasterHaster said:
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Richca:
Human beings have genuine free will.
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This of course is a debatable assertion and not proven depending on what you mean by “genuine” free will.
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It is proven by our own experience. For example, in replying to your post, I can genuinely tell you that nothing forced me to do it. I freely willed to do so though I could have not. It is self-evident.
 
Mmarco said:
The parents have free will, but God has always known eternally what they will freely choose, and He has included their free choices in His plan.
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GOD DESIGNED THE UNIVERSE AND THIS WORLD, NOT OUR FREE WILL CHOICES DESIGNED IT.

Please @Mmarco consider you are an architect.

You designed a building, you designed every event down to its minutest details which need to take place to complete your building.

You give the builders your building design, which contains every event/ act down to its minutest details.

Your Designed, Decreed, Foreordained Plan causes every event/ act down to its minutest details which need to take place to complete your building.

Your building design creates/causes your builders their DETERMINED WILL and their DETERMINED ACTIONS which determined actions you tailor made everyone of your builders which need to perform to complete your building.

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GOD DESIGNED THE UNIVERSE AND WE ARE HIS BUILDERS

God designed the universe includes this world, He Designed, Decreed, Foreordained and He causes every event/ act according to His design down to its minutest details.

As we are God’s fellow workers" and co-workers for his kingdom, God’s building design creates/causes us our DETERMINED WILL and our DETERMINED ACTIONS which determined actions God tailor made every-one of us from all eternity, which actions we need to perform to complete God’s kingdom.
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There is a supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul, which precedes the free act of the will, (De fide dogma).
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Without even knowing, we are all God’s builders, every choice we make, every act we perform, tailor made to each one of us, and Designed, Decreed, Foreordained by God from all eternity and He causes us to FREELY perform in order to complete the work of His creation.
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CCC 308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator.
God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes:
"For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it.
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CCC 307 God thus enables men to be intelligent and free, causes in order to complete the work of creation, … Though often unconscious collaborators with God’s will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan. They then fully become “God’s fellow workers” and co-workers for his kingdom.
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Because God works in us He causes all our actions, we all freely do what we want to do and we don’t even realize, we are freely cooperating with His graces and working on to complete His creation.
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St. Thomas teaches that all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and not to any other cause, because Gad alone is the cause of our willing and choosing. CG, 3.91.

CCC 2022 The divine initiative (supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul) in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man.
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God bless
 
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Mmarco said:
God has always known eternally all the sins we will freely commit.
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Catholic Encyclopedia : Evil
“But we cannot say without denying the Divine omnipotence, that another equally perfect universe could not be created in which evil would have no place.”
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If God would willed, He could create all of us like He created Mary, with the privilege of immunity from sin and in this world would be no one commit even a single act of sin.
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CCC 310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection, 314 through the dramas of evil and sin. – God freely willed to create the dramas of evil and sin for our benefit.

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THE REASON GOD CREATED THE DRAMAS OF EVIL AND SIN.

Life without suffering would produce spoiled brats, not joyful saints.

Our struggle and tribulation while journeying towards our ultimate perfection through the dramas of evil and sin is the cost which in-prints the virtue/ nobility into our souls – the cost of our road to nobility and perfection.

In this world man has to learn by experience and contrast, and to develop by the overcoming of obstacles (Lactantius, “De ira Dei”, xiii, xv in “P.L., VII, 115-24. St. Augustine “De ordine”, I, vii, n. 18 in “P.L.”, XXXII, 986).
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As we see above, we are all sinners because God willed to create us to be sinners for good reason, for the benefit of the entire human race.

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Free Will explains;

“God is the author of all causes and effects, but is not the author of sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen. Still God is the cause of sin.
God’s omnipotent providence exercises a complete and perfect control over all events that happen, or will happen, in the universe.”

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains;

His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.

God preserves the universe in being; He acts in and with every creature in each and all its activities.

He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.

Evil He converts into good (Genesis 1:20; cf. Psalm 90:10); and suffering He uses as an instrument whereby to train men up as a father traineth up his children (Deuteronomy 8:1-6; Psalm 65:2-10;

Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in “P.L.”

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12510a.htm

CCC 324 Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.
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CCC 313; St.Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: “Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best.” 182
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God bless
 
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I have a question. If your God is all-knowing, that means he KNEW this would happen. He KNEW there would be death for all humanity. Why couldn’t he have prevented this in the first place?
 
So God KNEW humans would sin. Wouldn’t it have been better had he not made humans? Sounds to me he was setting humans up for failure, no?
 
“No, death was a consequence of sin.
If Man hadn’t sinned, there would be no death.”

So man is the cause of all death in the universe? Stars die out in the universe and animals die and they don’t “sin”. Everything dies in the universe, so blame it on humans, is that correct?
 
ChocolateCake said:
I have a question. If your God is all-knowing, that means he KNEW this would happen. He KNEW there would be death for all humanity. Why couldn’t he have prevented this in the first place?
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Because God has chosen to create man with a free will; God let us make mistakes so that we can learn from our mistakes and become aware of what we really are and how much we need His saving grace.
 
Latin said:
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Mmarco:
The parents have free will, but God has always known eternally what they will freely choose, and He has included their free choices in His plan.
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GOD DESIGNED THE UNIVERSE AND THIS WORLD, NOT OUR FREE WILL CHOICES DESIGNED IT.

Please @Mmarco consider you are an architect.
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Hi Latin, I don’t understand why you have written this to me. I certainly agree that it’s God who designed the universe. Anyway we have already discussed this point in detail just a few weeks ago, and I am not interested in repeating our discussion again.
 
ChocolateCake said:
So God KNEW humans would sin. Wouldn’t it have been better had he not made humans? Sounds to me he was setting humans up for failure, no?
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On Easter Vigil, we pray about the “happy fault which gained for us so great a redeemer”. I think I would say that if God was “setting us up” for something, it was redemption through Jesus Christ!
ChocolateCake said:
So man is the cause of all death in the universe?
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No. Some say that, based on their reading of St Paul, but I think they’re mistaken. The ‘death’ that Paul talks about is due to sin. Animals and stars don’t sin.

I would say that physical decay and death are natural parts of physical nature. Humans, originally, were meant to be exempt from that, but we reappropriated that part of physical nature when we sinned.
 
Gorgias said:
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ChocolateCake:
So man is the cause of all death in the universe?
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No. Some say that, based on their reading of St Paul, but I think they’re mistaken. The ‘death’ that Paul talks about is due to sin. Animals and stars don’t sin.

I would say that physical decay and death are natural parts of physical nature. Humans, originally, were meant to be exempt from that, but we reappropriated that part of physical nature when we sinned.
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I would say that death and physical decay are part of the universe because God has conceived a universe “suitable” for sinners.
 
" On Easter Vigil, we pray about the “happy fault which gained for us so great a redeemer”. I think I would say that if God was “setting us up” for something, it was redemption through Jesus Christ!"

It that’s the case it was also a setup for suffering, pain and other anguish. Do you think he could’ve done it a different way without all the suffering in the world?

“No. Some say that, based on their reading of St Paul, but I think they’re mistaken. The ‘death’ that Paul talks about is due to sin. Animals and stars don’t sin.”

That’s what I said in my previous post. Stars and animals don’t sin so why should they die? Everything dies in the universe. Christians believe death is the consequence for sin. Does death give “justice” to God or something when humans sin?

“I would say that physical decay and death are natural parts of physical nature. Humans, originally, were meant to be exempt from that, but we reappropriated that part of physical nature when we sinned.”

Couldn’t God have made the universe where death does not exist to all things?
 
ChocolateCake said:
It that’s the case it was also a setup for suffering, pain and other anguish. Do you think he could’ve done it a different way without all the suffering in the world?
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Not if it includes the free will choices of humans. Remember – “suffering, pain, and anguish” proceeds from human sin! So, you could ask the question of whether He could have made us unthinking automatons, but that seems at odds with God’s will that we make the free choice to love Him (or not).
ChocolateCake said:
Stars and animals don’t sin so why should they die?
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Because they’re physical, and that seems to be part of the nature of physical things. Entropy and all that.
ChocolateCake said:
Christians believe death is the consequence for sin.
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Catholics believe that human death is the consequence for human sin.
ChocolateCake said:
Couldn’t God have made the universe where death does not exist to all things?
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I would argue “no”, inasmuch as things that are physical – that is, composite – decompose as part of their nature. To say “yes” would be akin to saying “couldn’t God have made square circles and married bachelors?”
 
“I would say that death and physical decay are part of the universe because God has conceived a universe “suitable” for sinners.”

Then it was a setup. He knew it beforehand, obviously.
 
I still can’t wrap my mind on this. But then again, I’m not Catholic or really a believer. It just doesn’t make sense. It all sounds like your God set all this up, knew about the nature of humans and continued to proceed with it anyway regardless. As if he wanted to get angry and “save” humans, which doesn’t make any sense.🤷‍♀️ I know this isn’t what you believe but that’s what it sounds like to me.

Not a very attractive being to want to worship!
 
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