Posted on 12/29/2001 1:02:06 PM PST by AndrewSshi
How could anyone argue that this is true. There was always plenty of dissent.
Yo, homey: I know what you are attempting to do.
Trouble is, you really haven't addressed Augustine's treatment of Matthew 11:20-27.
And it is fundamental. Your claims that Calvin and Luther "went much further" than Augustine are groundless. Such is the normal Roman claim, I'll admit; but that doesn't change the fact that it is a ridiculous claim. Augustine's writings on the doctrine of Reprobation, the Predestination of the Damned (so called "double" predestination), were if anything considerably stronger than Luther's or yes, even Calvin's. And the reason you don't know that, is because you aren't familiar with Augustine's treatment of Matthew 11:20-27.
Maybe you shouldn't dismiss my reading of your essay so swiftly. I realize that you are trying only to air your claims regarding the authority of the Patristics. But understand that orthodox Protestants do know our Patristics. And I am telling you that your understanding of the Patristics is wrong.
FWIW, I think it is a fairly silly excercise in attempting to apply our own feeble reason to the workings of the Infinite Mind.
FWIW, I think it is a fairly silly exercise to claim that you cannot attribute certain facts of Foreknowledge to God which He expressly claims to know!! No one is asking you to "reason out the workings of the Infinite Mind". We are, however, asking you to acknowledge those Facts of which God (in the Person of the Incarnate Christ) expressly declares his own knowledge. And the reason you are unwilling to attribute to God specific Facts of Foreknowledge which He attributes quite specifically to himself, is because you really are Semi-Pelagian, and you really do understand that this passage annihilates your position... just as Augustine knew it annihilated the Pelagians.
Do NOT deny to God Foreknowledge which He specifically claims unto Himself. Let's try this again:
Question
True, or False?
No one is asking you to "reason out" the workings of God's Mind in this; only to acknowledge as fact that Foreknowledge which He claims unto himself.
I'll await your response.
Still, I don't know that I am a double-Predestinarian. It may just be another "terminology" type confusion. I have so many...
I believe the problem is only a matter of terminology in your case.
When you think about it, a double predestination actually just amounts to absolute predestination--which tells us that real predestination is necessarily "double or nothing, as one theologian has said. To use Spurgeon's language, if there is a single atom out of the control of God--anywhere in the universe--we have chaos!
It is important to notice that the term "double predestination" does not in and of itself discuss how the predestination of the reprobate is arranged. It merely presents the fact of that predestination.
In his post on Matthew 11, OrthodoxPresbyterian has elucidated something of the arrangement of the predestination of the reprobate. God's foreknowledge is a planning faculty. It plans the salvation of the elect, but it also plans the sealing of the reprobate in his doom. God deliberately passes up some folks. The interesting thing about this is that He often makes confrontational presentations of Himself to reprobates even as He allows them to get worse. And they certainly will get worse!
In the case of reprobate churchgoers, this entails what is called "gospel hardening." It is a thing of divine design. And it leaves the sinner responsible. He really does despise the warnings and the free offer which could save him.
In other words, the predestination of the reprobate unfolds in such a way as to make us realize that God's predestination of the reprobate involves a passive decree. But it is nonetheless a decree. This idea of a decree is seen in verses such as "vessels of wrath fitted for destruction" and "before of old ordained to this condemnation."
Another knotty problem in the matter of the arrangement of God's absolute and necessarily double predestination--i.e., real predestination--concerns the order of God's decrees. This centers on the controversy of the supralapsarians versus the infralapsarians (see below).
The supralapsarian position basically involves the notion that God's decree to damn comes before His decree to create. The idea which winds up being emphasized in this proposed theology is that God purposed to damn people who were not sinners--so He ordained that they become sinners to make for a just damnation.
The infralapsarian, on the other hand, insists that we cannot look at the order of things in God's decrees (e.g., creation versus damnation) in that simplistic way--largely because the decrees did not occur in time and therefore do not have have what we would regard as chronology. The infralapsarian regards the whole matter of the decrees of creation and the Fall and reprobation as a matter of logical order rather than temporal order. And the infralapsarian maintains that God never decreed to reprobate sinners until He regarded them in their status of sinners. (Never mind that this regard on the part of God occurred before even creation.)
Romans One seems to support this infralapsarian position, since God's revealed reprobation of the non-elect does not hit the Adamic race until the Fall.
Spurgeon has some unusually good meditations on this stuff, and OrthodoxPresbyterian probably has it bookmarked. (Spurgeon was basically an infralapsarian. So was Jonathan Edwards. So are most of today's mainstream Calvinists. So are OrthodoxPresbyterian and I.)
***
I hope this helps. I just wanted you to realize that double predestinarians are not necessarily supralapsarians. But as Matthew 11 reveals--not to mention several other passages, the reprobate really is predestined to hell--by the very fact that God is aware of options which He chooses not to take on behalf of the reprobate.
Ahhh! I guess when I said to Jerry Predestination involves God calling some out of their sin wallowing for His Purposes and Pleasure and that He leaves the rest to wallow in their sins, both for His glory I was basically presenting double-predestination. And that even though God has blinded the eyes of some and hardened hearts and will send strong delusions in the last days this is really not a part of Predestination and not proof that God actively seeks to damn those who have already been passively left in sin.
(After I posted #124, I thought about going back to flag it for you. The main reason why I didn't do it, other than the fact that I am lazy, of course, is that this stuff is pretty standard theology which you have already mulled over.
Besides, I know a lot of us, yourself included, are pretty busy. [Frankly, I may have to drop off for a while. I owe too many people responses already.])
Your claims that Calvin and Luther "went much further" than Augustine are groundless. Such is the normal Roman claim, I'll admit; but that doesn't change the fact that it is a ridiculous claim.
Contrast Augustine's statements, though, with what Calvin states about damnation in his Institutes (XXII, 11): "Now a word concerning the reprobate, with whom the Apostle is at the same time there concerned. For as Jacob, deserving nothing by good works, is taken into grace, so Esau, as yet undefiled by any crime, is hated. If we turn our eyes to works, we wrong the Apostle..." He further states, "the reprobate are raised up to the end that through them God's glory may be revealed."
Augustine, speaking in the same work you have recently cited states that, "Thus his mercy is unsearchable, through which he has mercy on whom he will, independent of prior merits on that person's part, and his truth is unsearchable, by which he hardens whom he will, whose deserts have indeed preceded, but deserts for the most part held in common with him on whom he has mercy" (On Gift of Perseverance, 11.25). This is the key difference between Calvin and Augustine regarding predestination. Calvin states that the reprobate are damned for nothing they have done, but for the good pleasure of God, and that their evil works are merely incidental. Augustine states that though elect and reprobate both deserve damnation, one set is given grace apart from their works, while the other is given what they deserve from their works. This seems a minor difference, but it is crucial.
Going back to my original essay, another key point raised in it is that the medieval Church, in attempting to reach a position based on predestination as fore-knowledge, was turning away from her position outlined in the Canons of Orange. You, though, immediately jump to the conclusion that I am attempting to defend the Roman position (which, btw, was what I started out planning to do, before I closely read On the Predestination of the Saints, which caused me to modify the entire direction of the paper). The straight Roman position even your Catholic will acknowledge is fairly hard to defend, since it involves concentrating on early Augustine and ignoring later Augustine. All that said, when Calvin examines the origin of the fall, he most definitely does go past Augustine. Even when Augustine issued a retraction concerning some of his earlier writings, in that retraction he still maintained that Adam fell through his free choice. Calvin, though, states the fall was planned by God. To make such an answer concerning the fall and thus the origins of evil is fraught with peril and no less a Calvinist than Jonathon Edwards had great difficulty resolving this issue.
As I contemplated the Piper meditation I mentally looked at the whole of creation. I thought of the parable of light and salt, and wheat and tares.
It seemed to me as I considered it that God allowed in His grace to allow men to be born and die .He did not wipe out man from the face of the earth as he could have. Instead He allowed man to continue to enjoy the fruits of His creation, without intervening in the fallen natural mans sinful and rebellious nature. This man ,because of the fall could not and would not hear him or see him.The nature of the fall was so great that forever producing after their own kind man would be forever rebellious and sinful.They would reject God because that was now their nature.God knew that and his decision not to act to alter their nature was infact a predestination of their lives and choices.
But God wishing to have a rhemnant,a people to be light and salt and a testimony to His glory created a people for Himself .He sowed the wheat ,and allowed Satan to sow the tares without any intervention on His part.That was a sovereign act on the part of a sovereign God .
I told you I have a "devotional" approach to scripture and scripture study. I did not consider the doctrinal aspects to this...only that God is God.
correction from you all as needed
(Now, the theological questions that the preceding statement produces are legion. However, for most of us it is sufficient.)
I assume you are married to a woman right??:>)))
I grew up one of those kids that always asked WHY....
I do understand that no one knows the mind of God and can accurately explain His ways But great men have contemplated this for years......I am just looking to have an understanding that is correct and reflect the best thought and prayer on it....But I do understand that the understanding is a work:>)))
Indeed this is Augustine's position.
But you overstep yourself when you go on to claim:
Augustine makes no such exceptions as those you claim for him. In the very next sentence following his analysis of Predestination unto Salvation, Augustine affirms that the Reprobation of the Damned necessarily entails the action of a positive and efficacious decree:
To put it bluntly, Augustine PRE-EMPTIVELY DISALLOWS the unscriptural and inconsistent idea of "single predestination" claimed by Rome against the Reformers. Augustine affirms that a negative decision is of necessity a positive decision of Negation.
Essentially, Augustine's argument is that, if presented the choice to wear black shoes or brown, you elect to wear black shoes, you are of necessity actioning a positive decision NOT to wear the brown shoes. And if a mere Man understands that when he Elects the black shoes and not the brown, he is positively de-selecting the brown, we cannot claim that it "would not occur" to the perfect Knowledge of God that in positively selecting the One, He is positively de-selecting the Other. Augustine tells us, in short, that "single predestination" is a doctrine of thoughtlessness, and we cannot claim that Almighty God is "less thoughtful" than a mere Man. Any negative decisioning is, of necessity, a decisioning of negation.
Entirely true.
And entirely Calvinist.
Some Calvin to establish the point:
THE REPROBATE BRING UPON THEMSELVES THE RIGHTEOUS DESTRUCTION TO WHICH THEY ARE DOOMED.
...The refusal of the reprobate to obey the word of God when manifested to them, will be properly ascribed to the malice and depravity of their hearts, provided it be at the same time added that they were adjudged to this depravity, because they were raised up by the just but inscrutable judgment of God, to show forth his glory by their condemnation. In like manner, when it is said of the sons of Eli, that they would not listen to salutary admonitions "because the Lord would slay them," (1 Sam. 2:25), it is not denied that their stubbornness was the result of their own iniquity; but it is at the same time stated why they were left to their stubbornness, when the Lord might have softened their hearts: namely, because his immutable decree had once for all doomed them to destruction. Hence the words of John, "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him; that the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled which he spake, Lord, who has believed our report?" (John 12:37, 38); for though he does not exculpate their perverseness, he is satisfied with the reason that the grace of God is insipid to men, until the Holy Spirit gives it its savor.
(backtracking to Calvin on the subject of Will, Institutes Book II, excerpts...)
Bernard says not improperly, that all of us have a will; but to will well is proficiency, to will ill is defect. Thus simply to will is the part of man, to will ill the part of corrupt nature, to will well the part of grace....
Let this, then, be regarded as the sum of the distinction. Man, since he was corrupted by the fall, sins not forced or unwilling, but voluntarily, by a most forward bias of the mind; not by violent compulsion, or external force, but by the movement of his own passion; and yet such is the depravity of his nature, that he cannot move and act except in the direction of evil. If this is true, the thing not obscurely expressed is, that he is under a necessity of sinning. Bernard, assenting to Augustine, thus writes: "Among animals, man alone is free, and yet sin intervening, he suffers a kind of violence, but a violence proceeding from his will, not from nature, so that it does not even deprive him of innate liberty," (Bernard, Sermo. super Cantica, 81). For that which is voluntary is also free. A little after he adds, "Thus, by some means strange and wicked, the will itself, being deteriorated by sin, makes a necessity; but so that the necessity, in as much as it is voluntary, cannot excuse the will, and the will, in as much as it is enticed, cannot exclude the necessity." For this necessity is in a manner voluntary. He afterwards says that "we are under a yoke, but no other yoke than that of voluntary servitude; therefore, in respect of servitude, we are miserable, and in respect of will, inexcusable; because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin." At length he concludes, "Thus the soul, in some strange and evil way, is held under this kind of voluntary, yet sadly free necessity, both bond and free; bond in respect of necessity, free in respect of will: and what is still more strange, and still more miserable, it is guilty because free, and enslaved because guilty, and therefore enslaved because free."
My readers hence perceive that the doctrine which I deliver is not new, but the doctrine which of old Augustine delivered with the consent of all the godly, and which was afterwards shut up in the cloisters of monks for almost a thousand years.
No, I freely admit: It is indeed, a crucial distinction.
And what is more, it is a distinction which you have fabricated!!
Calvin stands in unbroken solidarity with Augustine on this matter.
If anything, his declaration is more clear than that of Augustine:
"THE REPROBATE BRING UPON THEMSELVES THE RIGHTEOUS DESTRUCTION TO WHICH THEY ARE DOOMED" (Calvin's own subtitle for his chapter on the subject!!)
Going back to my original essay, another key point raised in it is that the medieval Church, in attempting to reach a position based on predestination as fore-knowledge, was turning away from her position outlined in the Canons of Orange.
I'm pleasantly surprised that you are able to admit this much.
In fact, I would argue that even the Acts of the Council of Orange were flawed.
But it did not stop there. Medieval Rome not only discarded the (Augustine-derived) truths of Orange, she whole-heartedly embraced the errors thereof!!
Personally, the more I study the subject, the more I am inclined to blame the Synergism of Maximos (called "Confessor). But that is a subject for another day.....
You, though, immediately jump to the conclusion that I am attempting to defend the Roman position (which, btw, was what I started out planning to do, before I closely read On the Predestination of the Saints, which caused me to modify the entire direction of the paper). The straight Roman position even your Catholic will acknowledge is fairly hard to defend, since it involves concentrating on early Augustine and ignoring later Augustine. All that said, when Calvin examines the origin of the fall, he most definitely does go past Augustine. Even when Augustine issued a retraction concerning some of his earlier writings, in that retraction he still maintained that Adam fell through his free choice. Calvin, though, states the fall was planned by God. To make such an answer concerning the fall and thus the origins of evil is fraught with peril and no less a Calvinist than Jonathon Edwards had great difficulty resolving this issue.
Nope.
Calvin not only depended upon Augustine for his exposition of this doctrine, he adamantly refused to go beyond Augustine's treatment of the matter.
In fact, Augustine (only echoed by Calvin, and less forcefully at that) insisted rightfully that the very first clause of the Nicene Creed, our belief in God the Father Almighty, demanded of the Christian the belief that God ordained the fall of Man (and, commensurately His own eventual Conquest of the Fall) by the decree of His Sovereign Will.
Your battle is not with Luther.
Your battle is not with Calvin.
Your battle is with Augustine, and with the Scriptures upon which Augustine stood.
Augustine, Augustine, and Augustine stands (with Paul and Peter and James and John and Christ) as the foremost Patristic expositor of the doctrine of God's Absolute Sovereignty. Augustine demands of the Christian the belief that GOD, God alone, God always, and God without exception, is constantly and unreservedly in intimate, undiluted, uncontested, and total authority and control over every atom of creation from beginning to end.
Augustine's exigesis carries the implicit claim that Scripture is intelligible and that it means what it says.
Which brings us again to this:
Question
True, or False?
Or at least leach some learning when you come up here.
Regards.
This is Uriel's favorite Chorazin/Bethsaida post. Have you borrowed it from him? You have repeated it several times, insisting upon an answer before you go on, as though you were getting ready to pin a wrestler to the floor. Would you do such a thing? I'll say this, you can wax fully as voluminous as doc.
Uriel's point always was to attempt to prove by this passage that Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom are in Hell now because God withheld the grace to repent. That is not the point our Savior is making.
He is saying that the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida at that time were rejecting a Greater Light, and thus if they persist they will be much worse off in the Day of Judgment than those who do not receive His personal ministry in this life (which is almost everyone who ever lived, including us), but would have repented if they had. No statement is made as to the final status of any individual or group. If Jesus had gone to Tyre and they repented, for example, they may have returned to sinfulness later, as Judas did. Some individuals in Chorazin may have hearkened to His message.
There have been many excellent posts from Hank and others on free will. The Calvinist notion of it is simply not correct. Will is not free if it is overpowered by a fallen nature. We all have God-given free will and are accountable before Him for our use of it and all His other gifts to us. Without it, no learning or spiritual growth is possible. All of us use it everyday, so Calvinists understand it in a practical sense even if their theoretical understanding of free will or free agency is the prisoner of tangled logic. It is very important to understand this doctrine properly, because we are accountable before God for what we do.
LOL!
Especially when I see the posts by OPie that are positioned between our comments. He certainly did give you plenty to mull over, didn't he!
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