Read James 2 closely - the first 15 verses or so. Are we any less guilty than whom James was writing to 2000 years ago? Humanity may be more technologically inclined, but we still are the same wounded creatures.
I do agree with you that people are responsible for damning themselves with regard to salvation. Our difference is whether God allows that to happen after salvation is objectively held.
The New Testament is very clear on this. Men fall. Even AFTER receiving God's Word!!!
Fate has never, nor will it ever, be a Christian idea. Such is the mindset of the "Reformed" Protestant theology. One is saved (fated) before even being born. I think if you read about ancient cultures, you will find that one of Christianity's greatest draws was that it broke free from such a mindset. That men's salvation was determined before they were born. It gave hope to the poor, the malcontent, the everyday "joe's" of the world who barely got by in THIS life.
Christianity teaches something different. It teaches that man CAN COOPERATE with that almighty Creator and come into union with Him if man follows the lead of this Creator. Calvinism is just another system that moves man back into paganist ideas of fate. Does this "take away" from the Sovereignty of God? Only in the mind of those who believe they are fated to eternal life before they were born...
Just as an example, could two Catholics commit adultery under identical circumstances and for one it would be a mortal sin, but not for the other, and it's all based on how well each knew his own faith?
I believe faith is not an exercise in black and white logical rules. The Roman Catholic Church went through that sort of period - and frankly, it stifled love and forgiveness. You are asking me to return to a Pharisaical understanding of our relationship with God... A relationship that is judged by dotting our "i's" and crossing the "t's". Perhaps you are aware of the Jewish Talmud and it extensive rules laid out for everything situation done in society. The Talmud is the place to look for such detailed rules. Fortunately, the Canon of the Catholic Church is not in the Western mold of tort law.
To simplify my answer to you - I do not know. Only the individual can judge whether his relationship is merely wounded or is destroyed with God. The Church, the Body, the community, has rules of thumb to judge from the outside looking in. But they are not absolute. I have found in my dealing with the Catholic Church this : that it has many rules - but it is very flexible in adhering to them. Again, we are not a tort-law society. Pastorally speaking, the Church must reach out to people. Sometimes, interpretation of these rules are given latitude by the priest - that is the point that Christ makes, I believe, in expressing Christ's love to people, such as the adulterous woman in John's Gospel. The "rules" would have Jesus throw the first stone. He didn't. But the "rules" are still there for us to follow.
Double predestination is a disgusting idea? :) Well, all of us know good people whom we call friends, who also happen to be unbelievers. Many of them would consider much of what God did in the OT, "disgusting". :) God's ways are His own.
That is comparing oranges and apples.
While I am not so bold as to claim full awareness, I can say that I have learned much about the Eucharist as practiced by the Church. However, I can also say that I honestly know that I have not received anything I could call as a revelation from God on the subject to cause me to accept the Church's view on the matter. It hasn't been revealed to me, spiritually. I don't even say defiantly that it never will, for who would I be to deny a revelation from God? (I would be a lost person.) It just hasn't happened yet. So until then ....... :)
Fair enough. God says in John 6 that He sends such faith to those whom He will - and Jesus also says it takes the Spirit, not the flesh, to understand it.
This builds on the same theme. Of course, the Eucharist is "available" to me, physically. Yet, I have no honest leading, that I perceive, from the Lord to partake appropriately. OTOH, does the doctrine of invincible ignorance include the possibility that God has not made it "available" TO ME, e.g. through God-given understanding?
I suppose it depends on what you would require for God to have "revealed it" to you. Some atheists require a divine visitation before they believe... I don't know what you would require, but I think the evidence is there for those who are seeking the truth.
Regards
Most certainly so. You are correct that fate (predestination) was/is a profoundly pagan idea and that by rejecting it Christianity offered a universal hope.
Not at all. We are just as guilty as the Israelites when they were shown miracle after miracle, and yet still turned away.
Fate has never, nor will it ever, be a Christian idea. Such is the mindset of the "Reformed" Protestant theology. One is saved (fated) before even being born. I think if you read about ancient cultures, you will find that one of Christianity's greatest draws was that it broke free from such a mindset. That men's salvation was determined before they were born. It gave hope to the poor, the malcontent, the everyday "joe's" of the world who barely got by in THIS life.
You are right that fate is not a Christian idea, but you are wrong to think fate is a part of our mindset. Very wrong. Fate and predestination do not mix. From God's POV, a man's salvation IS determined before he is born, but that is not fate. Here is an illustration from an excerpt from Is Predestination the Same Thing as Fate? by B.B. Warfield:
"What, now, is the real difference between this fatalism and the predestination taught, say, in our Confession [Westminster]? "Predestination and fatalism," says Schopenhauer, "do not differ in the main. They differ only in this, that with predestination the external determination of human action proceeds from a rational Being, and with fatalism from an irrational one. But in either case the result is the same." That is to say, they differ precisely as a person differs from a machine. And yet Schopenhauer can represent this as not a radical difference! Professor William James knows better, and in his lectures on "The Varieties of Religious Experience" enlarges on the difference. It is illustrated, he says, by the difference between the chill remark of Marcus Aurelius, "If the gods care not for me or my children, there is a reason for it," and the passionate cry of Job, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" Nor is the difference solely in emotional mood. It is precisely the difference that stretches between materialism and religion. There is, therefore, no heresy so great, no heresy that so utterly tears religion up by the roots, as the heresy that thinks of God under the analogy of natural force and forgets that he is a person.
There is a story of a little Dutch boy, which embodies very fairly the difference between God and fate. This little boy's home was on a dike in Holland, near a great windmill, whose long arms swept so close to the ground as to endanger those who carelessly strayed under them. But he was very fond of playing precisely under this mill. His anxious parents had forbidden him to go near it; and, when his stubborn will did not give way, had sought to frighten him away from it by arousing his imagination to the terror of being struck by the arms and carried up into the air to have life beaten out of him by their ceaseless strokes. One day, heedless of their warning, he strayed again under the dangerous arms, and was soon absorbed in his play there—forgetful of everything but his present pleasures. Perhaps he was half conscious of a breeze springing up, and somewhere in the depth of his soul he may have been obscurely aware of the danger with which he had been threatened. At any rate, suddenly, as he played, he was violently smitten from behind, and found himself swung all at once, with his head downward, up into the air; and then the blows came, swift and hard! O what a sinking of the heart! O what a horror of great darkness! It had come then! And he was gone! In his terrified writhing, he twisted himself about, and looking up, saw not the immeasurable expanse of the brazen heavens above him, but his father's face. At once he realized, with a great revulsion, that he was not caught in the mill, but was only receiving the threatened punishment of his disobedience. He melted into tears, not of pain, but of relief and joy. In that moment, he understood the difference between falling into the grinding power of a machine and into the loving hands of a father.
That is the difference between fate and predestination. And all the language of men cannot tell the immensity of the difference."
Christianity teaches something different. It teaches that man CAN COOPERATE with that almighty Creator and come into union with Him if man follows the lead of this Creator. Calvinism is just another system that moves man back into paganist ideas of fate. Does this "take away" from the Sovereignty of God? Only in the mind of those who believe they are fated to eternal life before they were born...
Fate is mindless. Predestination is God's love. God does what we cannot do for ourselves. But, some still insist that man must have the power to effectively save himself. Many men feel this is what makes them important, that they have power and control. It is human instinct, but it is also what must be overcome, not embraced.