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To: stfassisi; kosta50; MarkBsnr; irishtenor; Mad Dawg; Kolokotronis; HarleyD; Dr. Eckleburg; ...
FK-””From what you quoted from Blessed Saint Aquinas I don't think you accept the distinction between God USING evil and God CAUSING it. “”

It's very simple Dear Brother, God is the first cause of everything created and God is flawless eternal goodness in anything He creates because He Himself is perfect goodness. Therefore evil cannot be in God, if it were, than God would be flawed.

I don't recall that I have ever disagreed with any of your above. God is the first cause of everything created - TRUE. God is flawless eternal goodness in anything He creates - TRUE. God Himself is perfect goodness - TRUE. Evil cannot be in God - TRUE. God is not flawed - TRUE.

“God saw all things that he had made, and they were very good “(Gen. i, 31): “He made all things good in his own time” (Eccles. iii, 11): “Every creature of God is good (1 Tim. iv, 4).

I guess you disagree with this Scripture?

I don't disagree with any scripture. :) The first is fine on its face, since no one argues that God created satan. The second two are also fine, as long as we understand that all that God created was good, FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE. For example, God created poisonous animals. That is still good because God had specific intentions for them. Another example is that God created Judas with the intention of him betraying Jesus. For God's will, that was good.

In other words... Now you have accepted what ever sins you have committed as part of God's plan for your life.

I have accepted that my sins were paid for by Christ's work on the cross. And since I cannot know what God's plan is, there is no reason for me to ever seek sin. Scripture teaches that I must not sin, so that is my goal. As far as God's plan for my life, scripture tells us:

Jer 29:11 : For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

"Prospering" includes learning through mistakes.

In this way of thinking you elevate evil as something God needs to create in order to be sovereign.

I don't know how. As a Sovereign, God "needs" for nothing. He does, though, make choices for His own purposes.

You have fallen into the heresy of accepting everything as fate now. In doing this you will have to accept Hitler's reign, lucifer being cast out of heaven, the fall of Adam and Eve etc... as part of God's created plan.

They WERE all part of God's created plan, or else God is not omnipotent, but rather impotent! In addition, there is a great difference between fate and predestination. From B.B. Warfield:

... What, now, is the real difference between this fatalism and the predestination taught, say, in our [Westminster] Confession? "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.

Amen. Predestination is born of love. Fatalism is born of chance.

5,371 posted on 05/06/2008 1:17:13 PM PDT by Forest Keeper (It is a joy to me to know that God had my number, before He created numbers.)
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To: Forest Keeper
AMEN to Warfield and your excellent posts, FK, each filled with Scriptural truth.

"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.

AMEN!

5,372 posted on 05/06/2008 3:13:28 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: Forest Keeper; kosta50; MarkBsnr; irishtenor; Mad Dawg; Kolokotronis; HarleyD; Dr. Eckleburg
FK (referring to Hitler and Lucifer)-””They WERE all part of God's created plan, or else God is not omnipotent, but rather impotent! “”

Evil is a secondary cause and opposite of the primary cause of All things created by God,that primary cause is love and goodness ALWAYS WILLED by God

Your view of God makes both evil and goodness primary causes of God's creative power .Thus making Evil and goodness EQUIL,Thus making God eternal evil and eternal goodness in order to fit the reformed view of a sovereign God.

You fail to recognize that God allowing evil to exist has NOTHING to do with Him creating evil,which God does not do

I don't think you realize this,fk, but what you're doing is saying the devil is not the cause of evil because you believe that God planned the devil to be evil.

CHILLING,FK. Simply chilling!

Read the scripture again...

“God saw all things that he had made, and they were very good “(Gen. i, 31): “He made all things good in his own time” (Eccles. iii, 11): “Every creature of God is good (1 Tim. iv, 4).

I pray you wake up,Dear Bother!

I wish you Blessed evening

5,373 posted on 05/06/2008 5:38:14 PM PDT by stfassisi ( ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"-St Francis Assisi))
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