Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
EVERYTIME that God tells man to obey Him, it implies that man has the ability to do so - or not. The FACT that man CAN REFUSE to do God's will tells us that God allows man's free will to exist. God made man in His image - which includes the ability to have a free will. This is something that ONLY man has. No other material creation has free will, or made in the image of God.
Quite frankly, the Church has unanimously affirmed that man has free will. They refer to Scriptures over and over again to prove this idea. It seems fairly obvious that man has free will by merely looking at life.
Regards
You have done a nice job finishing up my post.
Of course hell is a state of being. Our brethren consistently seem to misunderstand the idea of eternity and everlasting life (or death).
I can only document what I read at the Orthodox websites and post the websites where I get the information from. If they are incorrect I would suggest you contact their webmasters. Otherwise, if there are multiple versions of the Orthodox view, then that would be similar to Protestants denomination. I'd be happy to go to the correct Orthodox denomination website that you prefer for my information.
But for you to say I'm wrong on my view without a legitimate reference doesn't help my understanding. Please provide me a source for your information and I will be happy to read up on it. I don't need some Greek father to read from. I'm sure that some tech-savvy Orthodox has been able to succiently condense the Orthodox position down to a few statements. If you don't agree with the Orthodox sites that I've provided fine; just provide me with someone else that condenses this down.
My cat has free will; I'm pretty sure of it.;)
You really have a lot of wisdom and it shows Harley.
Of course he does, but put a mouse in a room with him and see what he does. It isn't that man doesn't have a will. It's how man response with his will.
I know you know that. I'm just preaching to the Catholic choir. ;O)
Esau traded his birthright of his own free will. And, as he reaped, so he did sow. This posting is of a long conversation between myself and a Reformed individual contrasting Reformed theology and Catholic theology.
You may find this explanation wonky, but if you look at the actual Semitic expressions, the connotation is “less loved” and not “hated”.
I would argue that you have the wrong implication. Every time God tells man to obey Him is simply evidences to the rest of us that we are incapable of obedience without His help. It isn't that we have the ability. The Law was given for our instruction so that we can see how far short we fall, not how much we measure up. God has given us ALL these examples simply to show us that we CANNOT obey Him.
God tell people not to stick peas up there nose and people stick peas up their noses. God tell people not to go swimming without sun screen and people go swimming without sun screen. God tell people to back up their hard drives and people don't do it and suffer the results. All the examples in the Old (and some in the New) serves to show what a disobedient people we are and how we need God's help to overcome this disobedience. God gives us His Law and we can't keep it. As Paul states, the Law isn't bad but we died because we refuse to follow it (well at least the parts we don't like).
Quite frankly, the Church has unanimously affirmed that man has free will.
Nonsense. This was always an area of contention. The west and Church has abandon their monergistic view of the western church. Roman Catholicism is moving towards Orthodoxy.
You are?
A little known fact about the choir:
Strictly speaking, the choir is that part of the church where the stalls of the clergy are. The term is often loosely used for the whole of the eastern arm, including the choir proper, sanctuary, retro-choir, etc. At Westminster Abbey the stalls are in the east nave and therefore no part of the choir is in the eastern arm. At Canterbury the stalls are in the eastern arm and the choir occupies its western bays, i.e. the space between the crossing and the sanctuary. In non-collegiate churches the eastern arm is called the chancel, the eastern portion of which is the presbytery or sanctuary.
Or were you talking about the singers? :)
We should distinguish between:
spontaneous acts, those proceeding from an internal principle (e.g. the growth of plants and impulsive movements of animals);
voluntary acts in a wide sense, those proceeding from an internal principle with apprehension of an end (e.g. all conscious desires); and, finally
those voluntary in the strict sense, that is, deliberate or free acts.
Am I to understand that under Reformed doctrine that man can only commit acts of spontaneity (ie God providing the entire inner principle of action and man CANNOT do any other), or does man have the ABILITY to commit acts only with that apprehension of an end (ie towards either heaven (if elect) or hell (if non elect)), but not voluntary in the strict sense of free will that man deliberately chooses specific actions freely?
.30-06 is a nice caliber, no doubt about it.
I’m liking the Weatherby Magnums more and more.
.300 mag is good for deer and elk. .378 for large game animals while on safari. .460 in case you have to shoot a whale.
LOL. Are there a lot of whales where you live that you would need a .460?
Of course not, everyone knows it's at the center of the earth surrounded by a big oxygen pocket next to a lode of brimstone.
It could be at the end of a Black Hole
No oxygen, no light. sorry.
or right beneath our feet in another dimension.
You get this from scripture, right?
I cannot help what John Paul might have thought.
Your original point was about what Roman Catholics believed. I gave Acquinas, a Pope and the Catechism.
I know Catholics are trying to change the definition of hell to be more consistent with the Orthodox.
Or perhaps we're one church and it's frustrating when attempts at "let's you and him fight" don't work.
Not for the faint of heart: http://leighhouse.typepad.com/blog/images/fat.bmp
Smooches and kumbaya to all.
Let me answer your question by asking you a question; what choice do you think that man, as a free agent capable of choosing specific actions would make if given the choice of heaven or hell? Put another way, if God lined everyone up in the Garden of Eden and told each person, "Don't eat the fruit.", do you think there would be some in the crowd that would heed what God said? Do you think that you are far more capable of making a better decision than Adam who was perfect man? Yet that is what you are saying.
It's the way in which we have been created. We will all take that fruit because we want it. Adam was perfect but we can get down on him. We would make the exact same choice. 100% of the time.
Actually NewAdvent proposed that it was at the center of the earth. I'm not sure. The scriptures are silent as to where hell is just as it is silent as to where our Lord is physically seated (you do believe in a physical resurrection I hope). Of course Mary was suppose to have been physically resurrection-that I'm not sure. Elijah and Enoch also were taken immediately to heaven. Where are they?
Or perhaps we're one church and it's frustrating when attempts at "let's you and him fight" don't work.
Nope! Pretending to be "one church" is a farce in my mind. The doctrine and organizational structure between Orthodox and Catholic are completely different. What I find is that the Orthodox tend to be very firm and committed in their beliefs. Catholics, otoh, have been slowing discarding and dissolving their beliefs for the last 1500 years. Fathers that have written things 1700 years ago mean nothing anymore because we have "later" information. HA! Augustine said that Christianity was like someone throwing a pebble into water, the farther away the ripple, the more distortion.
There's only two beliefs. You can stay where you're at but if you move you can only go one of two ways.
You are forgeting that just because man has been given free will does not mean that God does not aid man to complete a task that man assents to, with God's help. You seem to hold an "either/or" idea, rather than one where God and man "work" together. If man has no free will, then there is no such thing as sin, since sin is a WILLFUL disobedience to God.
The west and Church has abandon their monergistic view of the western church. Roman Catholicism is moving towards Orthodoxy.
Nonsense. I have posted numerous Western Fathers that show they also believed in free will.
Regards
In other words, you’re ducking the question as to the level that God controls each individual.
Okay, let’s take the Adam scenario. The Cherub called Lucifer tempted Eve and Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit. Until that temptation occurred, did either Adam or Eve have inclination towards disobeying God? Nope.
It wasn’t until the serpent brought that temptation forward that Eve, then Adam disobeyed God. The serpent persuaded Eve, who then persuaded Adam. If the temptation was not there, we have no evidence that Adam and Eve would have disobeyed whatsoever.
The father of all lawyers persuaded Eve. He didn’t frogmarch her over and make her eat. He didn’t program a robot slave. He was smooth and slick and influenced her to make up her own mind. So she did. Now did she know the extent of what would happen after she did what she did? Not really. Did she know that: Gen 3:
16
To the woman he said: “I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.”
17
To the man he said: “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, “Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life.
18
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field.
19
By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.”
She didn’t know that she chose hell. The difference is that we do know, we Christians. We do know that God reaches out with His Grace and we do know that if we repulse it, then we choose hell as well as Eve. We do know the difference between good and evil because it passes to us from Adam and Eve.
And, faced with a choice between heaven and hell, with God in His Heaven on one side and satan and his angels in everlasting fire on the other, most people are going to choose God.
It is a ridiculous notion that God chooses people to go to hell and adjusts their mindset so that they like it. The descriptions of hell are the worst possible descriptions of any environment that the early Jews could think up. Hell is NASTY. It is TERRIBLE. It is everlasting agony beyond description for all eternity.
Now what exactly it is, or where it is, or anything along those lines - does it really matter? No. All we need to understand is how utterly impossibly terrible it is. We need God’s Grace to understand the difference between them, as well as the understanding that our actions and choices lead us along the Via, the Way, the Journey. The Reformed contention that God’s Grace is necessary is absolutely true. It is.
But it doesn’t stop there. We suffer the consequences of what we DO. And don’t do. Salvation is not a bottomless drink glass that we get as a door prize, or a debit card that never runs out no matter how much we sin.
Jesus said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He doesn’t say that He drives the bus to Heaven. He walks beside us. But we have to walk.
It may be a farce in your mind, but your mind is not the Church. St. Augustine said a lot of things, as did many of the Church Fathers that were corrected or treated as heresy by the Church.
The Church is greater than the sum of its earthly parts due to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is why errant men can be a part of the inerrant Church.
New Advent has this to say on the physical location of hell: The Church has decided nothing on this subject; hence we may say hell is a definite place; but where it is, we do not know. St. Chrysostom reminds us: “We must not ask where hell is, but how we are to escape it” (In Rom., hom. xxxi, n. 5, in P.G., LX, 674). St. Augustine says: “It is my opinion that the nature of hell-fire and the location of hell are known to no man unless the Holy Ghost made it known to him by a special revelation”, (De Civ. Dei, XX, xvi, in P.L., XLI, 682).
Hell is a state of the greatest and most complete misfortune, as is evident from all that has been said. The damned have no joy whatever, and it were better for them if they had not been born (Matthew 26:24).
Hell could be a place; it could be a state. All that matters is that it is a really bad place to be.
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