It is, which is the reason I asked! If it's just a matter of our having the intelligence or goodness or luck -- whatever a monotheist thinks "luck" is -- to get on the train, then we're semi-Pelagian, it seems to me (or worshippers of the whore goddess Fortuna, I suppose).
Which is why those of us on the outside looking in regularly make the charge about semi-Pelagism whenever all y'all start to wave the "free will" flag.
As I said to Miss Lucy Goosey, I think there's as good a discussion as an of our Papist view in Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundae, Q. CXI et seq. and especially Question CXIV, articles 1 and 2.
I don't have a lot of time today & am distracted because of it, but meanwhile, Project Gutenberg... http://tinyurl.com/2edjxp
Is that there are graces all the way. Grace at the start, and grace prompting and enabling the "works", (Gimme one with the works, please) and subsequent to the works.
I think this is among the parts that caused Iscool to respond to this post the way he did. A Proty will be unapologetic about saying it's Grace, Grace all of the way. Some of us will take it further & tell you that our free will can only muck it up & yeah, God allows us to do that.
Gotta run. More later. Last round of chemo starts in less than an hour. The marker in my blood tested "normal" a week ago!! Still gotta do this last batch of chemo before I'm run through some tests to see if I've beat the beast.
A big part of the confusion, I've thought for decades is like this: Moses says, wonderfully, "The Lord will fight for you and you have only to be still."
Mad Dawg says, "Learning how to be still could take a lifetime. (And even after that lifetime of struggle, it'll still be Grace that taught and Grace that let you learn."
And so it's at that area of thinking about pastroral care and "moral theology" (as distinct from ethics and morality) naturally lends itself to language that focusses on the subjective. And it SOUNDS like we're talking about works, works considered as somehow autonomous.
There IS some kind of effort, or subjective perception of effort, in, say, paying attention when I read the Bible. I mean I can think about, Oh, I don't know, my new kitty, Clint, and the local sheriff's election, both of which fascinate and divert me, or I can kind of gather myself, do a mini act of penitence (just plain "Sorrow", would be a better term) for being so labile and unfocussed and, once again, turn to my reading, asking God to steer my alertness and thought and such.
But, at the end it will be God's Spirit in me reading God's word, and at the end I simply cannot say,"Wow, I'm a good little boy, I read my bobble!"
Still there was that, as I say, subjective perception of effort.
Go ahead: Try to stop trying .....
heh heh heh
Have I given my "doing an original proof in geometry" analogy? How important is it (and how is it important) to build the altar HERE before the fire falls over there?
I didn’t know this at all. Would you like to have me send it to the Prayer Warriors? You would get Private Freepmails.
May the Lord hold you in his hand and heal the cancer within your body. Amen.
Salvation