Posted on 02/09/2010 9:21:02 AM PST by GonzoII
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re:I have a hard time imagining God creating someone He knows will go to hell after death.
They go to hell by their own use of free will. Allowing them to live a life here on earth, maybe of riches, is quite a gift from God for which God foreknew they would be totally undeserving. It shows God’s mercy.
Wherever it takes me. I’m just asking questions to see others views on the subject.
Yeah, don’t you think it ties in with salvation?
So why does He create innocent victims and evil people?
Doesn’t God know when He creates someone, if they will die in sin or not or whether they will be saved at the time of death??
Yeah, that’s the hard part I have. If God knows someone will go to hell of their own volition, why does He create them? How do you think He decides those that will live, and go to hell? It seems there must be some criteria God uses when He creates someone, knowing they will choose to die in sin.
You have your answer above in Replies Volume 2. It will tell you much more than I can type.
Okay, that's fine, but it doesn't quite answer the question that was posed in the topic of the thread.
Here was the question: What precisely do you mean by the saving of one's soul?
The answer is simple, in a way: Saving one's soul is saving one's life for and in the future - i.e., at the resurrection, which is settled at the time of one's earthly death.
Now, naturally, the question pops up of "How does one save one's life/soul?" The answer to that is the Gospel of Christ. It is to accept and obey that Gospel, nothing else is all that important!
Now let's let the discussion continue :-)
From what I got out of Vol 2, is that stuff happens, and God really does willingly choose who will die as a victim, but He has nothing to do with the bad persons’ choice...and we should just accept all that.
Since this was written by a man, that I do not believe can know anymore about God than any other man, I have to say that I disagree.
Thanks for pointing me to that volume.
OK
Consider what The New Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about the Hebrew word nephesh (or nepes) and the Greek word psuche as it appears in the manuscripts of the Bible:
“Nepes comes from an original root…to breathe, and…thence, breath of life. Since breath distinguishes the living from the dead, nepes is used in regard to both animals and humans… After death, the nepes goes to sheol [Hebrew word for grave]. The above summary indicates that there is no dichotomy of body and soul in the Old Testament…other words in the Old Testament such as spirit, flesh, and heart also signify the human person and differ only as various aspects of the same being. The notion of the soul surviving after death is not readily discernible in the Bible. The concept of the human soul itself is not the same in the Old Testament as it is in Greek and modern philosophy…The soul in the Old Testament means not a part of man, but the whole man—man as a living being” (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, art. "Soul, Human, Immortality of").
And in another place:
“The soul in the OT means not a part of man, but the whole—man as a living being. Similarly in the NT, it signifies human life: the life of an individual conscious object (Matt 2:20; 6:25; Luke 12:22-23; 14:26; John 10:11,15,17; John 13:37; Acts 27:10, 22; Phil 2:30; 1Thess 2:8). Recent exegetes…have maintained that the NT does not teach the immortality of the soul in the Hellenistic sense of survival of an immortal principle after death (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Soul, Human, Immortality of, In The Bible.").
Check out this ARTICLE I wrote some time ago. It gets to the heart of the question asked in this thread.
Thanks, I’ll take a look at your article.
re: How do you think He decides those that will live, and go to hell? It seems there must be some criteria God uses when He creates someone, knowing they will choose to die in sin.
You’ll have to do some studying on the subject, the Catholic answer is too long for me to type. Read the 1907 (1900 to 1918 all the same) Catholic Encyclopedia section on Predestination, it covers your question. How God chooses has not been dogmatically defined, but it’s been studied for centuries.
As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.”
re:Since this was written by a man, that I do not believe can know anymore about God than any other man,
You are correct, if it is just one mans opinion.
However, a Catholic has to document the geneology of his opinion down through the ages. If you concede that some men may be holier than others, wiser than others, or have assistance from the Holy Spirit not enjoyed by each individual, or if you concede that generations of men laboring down the centuries may add to and refine our understanding in a way no single lifetime would allow...
Well, then, it becomes impossible to claim that consensus of opinion as one’s own understanding.
As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.”
To maintain faith in YOPIOS, one must cavalierly dismiss twenty centuries of the spiritual and intellectual work product of history’s greatest minds and holiest men as nothing more than something done by other men, as though one could stay home from work one morning and recreate it by noon.
The way to discern this priests personal opinions is to look for his references to the consensus through the centuries. That is why I started by quoting a dogmatic decree by a pope, and a comment from St. Augustine that’s like 1500 years old, AND has never been rejected by the Church.
re: From what I got out of Vol 2, is that stuff happens, and God really does willingly choose who will die as a victim, but He has nothing to do with the bad persons’ choice...and we should just accept all that.
Actually, I really ask these questions because I would like to get individual’s answers, not the church’s. Thanks
In matters like this, I am unable to concede any of those things.
To save space, I’ll just list #13, 15 and 16 of Vol 2.
re: Actually, I really ask these questions because I would like to get individual’s answers, not the church’s. Thanks
Individuals opinions with no basis in consensus through the ages, are good for nothing. A waste your time.
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