I'm sure that is a nice consolation to those who remain outside the camp.
Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
I have never been pointed to anything St. Augustine wrote that would convincingly teach Calvinist predestination, that is predestination that negates the free will. Besides, if it did, that would not close any argument because no work of individual fathers is wholly without error. One needs to look for the consensus of the fathers to get to the inspired teaching of the Church. Whatever St. Augistine taught is but one piece of a mosaic that needs to be looked at as one whole.
I guess we all pick and choose what we want.
No we don't. You do. You pick from St. Augistine's voluminous work what you want, force that into your belief system, ignore everything else St. Augistine wrote, and ignore the scripture when it does not say what Calvin thinks. Bishop Minatios's treatise (On Predestination) that Kosta showed us in 956 goes in the scripture to systematically prove, from scripture, that calvinist view on predestination is counterscriptural. It does not do so by picking isolated passages from St. Paul out of context, and it does not go to any of the Church Fathers at the exclusion of everything else. This is exemplary commentary centered on the scripture. To answer Bishop Minatios's treatise by "why don't you just read some Augistine" is running from debate.
Now, as to your reading of St. Augustine, this is what someone who studied Augistine in depth had to say to you:
Like any of the really great theological minds in the history of the Church, Augustine can be read to say opposite things. For goodness sake, that's what the semi-pelagian controversy was about. Cassian read him in a semi-pelagian way (the term is inaccurate--Cassian's views had nothing to do with Pelagius--the term was applied to Cassian's group, including Vincent of Lerins for the first time 1000 years later, in the late 1500s by Protestants who had an axe to grind) but Faustus of Riez and others read Augustine in an extreme opposite direction, along the lines that Calvin and Baius and Jansenius would read him.This issue is which reading of Augustine is most accurate. And Calvin's reading (and Baius and Jansenius and Faustus's) is manifestly false. Augustine refers to "irresistible" grace in one place (in De correptione et gratia found in NPFN 1, vol. 5, ca. p. 470, if I recall correctly), a work from about 427. But in works written in 412 (On the Spirit and the Letter) and 426 and 427 (On Grace and Free Choice, as well as the cover letters for that treatise) he makes equally clear that no matter what he wrote about God's grace shaping us--and he was well aware that he had written strong language--he insisted in this letter and treatise to a group of monks who were arguing exactly as Cassian and Faustus did a few years later, exactly as Calvin and Jansenius and others disagreed over what Augustine "really" meant--in these letters and the treatise from 426/427, Augustine explicitly says that whatever you make of what I have written, you must never forget that God's grace never eliminates human cooperation with it and human cooperation can never be understood in such a way as to overcome or deny God's grace. Augustine himself was well aware that people were reading what he wrote in very different ways. He was well aware that he had written what seemed like contradictory things about grace and works. And in explicit response to that he, Augustine, himself gave the authoritative interpretation: never deny free will cooperating with grace but also never deny that God's grace is always already out in front of our cooperating free will. WIthout grace our wills are captive to sin but still free; God's grace does not force, does not rape, does not coerce; it can be resisted. WE have that clarification from Augustine himself. Calvin, Baius, Jansenius willfully chose to ignore it.
I found this website for you Defenders of the Catholic Faith. It is created by Steve Ray, a Catholic convert and a former baptist. It seems to be particularly well suited to the questions coming from the baptists.
Yes I do. His foreknowledge of Judas's intention did not change His love for him. Do you pray that those who commit evil or are abut to commit evil would repent?
All Bishop Minatios treatise states is that no one can understand predestination. This to me is a spurious argument. If someone states that they understand something how can somebody else say, "No you don't."
People could understand predestination. The problem is they simply don't wish to come to the obvious conclusion. They have man's free will fixed within their tiny brains and nothing is going to bounce that out. Everything revolves around man's will and nothing around what God wills. To be perfectly blunt, this is simply forming God into our own image.
2)Not all men have faith.
3)Therefore God doesn't give faith to all men.
Awesome! Thank you annlex.
Just for the record: the Orthodox East became aware of +Augustine's works in the 15th or so century and rejected some of them (as did +Augustine himself, as redgolum points out), but did not exlcude him from Sainthood. This shows that, while +Augustine features much smaller in the East, his true teachings were never discarded. And while there are some Orhodox theologians who were unfavorably disposed towards +Augustine (just as there are reverse cases), the Church as a whole knew better.
"Yet you do not understand that God foresees from the beginning all that people do within time, that this divine foreknowledge is stable, but the works of humans within time are free. How can we reconcile the unchangeability of God's providence with the free self-determination of intelligent creatures? How is it that the immutability of divine decisions does not lead to inevitability? Why is it beyond question and not subject to chance? We must remove ourselves as far away as possible from these questions and quandaries of the scholars. These questions do not edify, but only confuse the mind. These quandaries do not enlighten, but only darken the intellect...Your predestination depends on the will of God and your will. The will of God is always ready. This means that things are determined only by your will."
That last sentence is worth repeating --
"This means that things are determined only by your will."
An assumption like this is the antithesis of Scriptural teaching, plain, simple, easy-to-understand, edifying Scripture.
Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." -- Ephesians 2:8-10"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Whose will ultimately determines our fate? By whose workmanship were we created? Whose work saves us?
"Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent." -- John 6:29
God is not ambiguous. What He does is clear. Why He does it is His business. Our job is to be grateful for His gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ, to preach His word to all nations and races, to raise strong children who kneel to none but Christ, and to live lives that glorify His name, always certain of His promise:
"For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." -- John 6: 38-39
Life is not unfolding haphapzardously. Life is being lived exactly as God has ordained from before the foundation of the world.
If you possess Trinitarian faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you are most probably saved, by the grace of God alone. That's what Scripture tells us and I believe it, by the will of God alone.
Others may prefer to heed the voices of men and not Scripture. Some always have. The fact remains all men are led by their hearts, some still dead in sin, some regenerated by His will for His glory and to the everlasting joy of His flock.
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." -- Titus 3:4-7 "But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
It's a constant bemusement to see how men try to clutter up the things of God. It's sooo much simpler than some would have it. But men love to have control over other men, and do not give it up without a fight.
The real sadness is that some submit so readily. I urge anyone to return to the Bible and read for themselves. It's all there, by the work of the Holy Spirit.
No king but Christ.
Kosta-Yes I do.
On the other hand I believe God is in control. Consequently I can pray for individual knowing that God is fully capable of overriding their wills to bring them to a saving knowledge if He so deems. In fact it is my obligation to pray to God to do so.
No, that is not all. It says, correctly, that we cannot fully comprehend the omnipotence of God who both foreknows and reflects our will. But he also explains what we can understand, -- that Divine Predestination is an outcome of our free will. It does so by referring to fundamental scriptural episodes that illustrate predestination and free will, such as the Esau's forfeit of his birthright to Jacob and Judas's betrayal.
LOL. You're just making this up as you go along.
"The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born." Matthew 26:24
It would have been better for Judas, the "Son of Perdition," that he had never been born. Did Judas birth himself, or is every birth by the will of God?
Things are determined by our free will because God's will to provide for us is always available. This is why the bishop's treatise does not in any way takes away from sovereignty of God, and all that your verses show is that God is sovereign and we are His workmanship. The good bishop, and I, agree. But we also know what kind of workmanship we are. You don't.
"Your predestination depends on the will of God and your will"
I think we can get some light on this from that great philosopher Dr. Friedrich von Frankenstein. One of his greatest quotes was "Hearts and kidneys are tinkertoys! I'm talking about the central nervous system".
Now if we apply this to the proposition before us we get, "Your predestination depends on the will of God", "your will is a tinkertoy (in comparison), I'm talking about predestination".
That should just about do it.
The fact that Christ sorrows over Judas's fate is an illustration, not a refutation, of His love for Judas.
I recall mentioning this to you a few months ago.
Heaven forbid!!! No!
I am saying that the Scripture often writes in human manner when it talks about God's eternal plan.
Let's try again. What God did in Genesis 1 occurs SIMULTANEOUSLY with what I am typing right this very moment, TO GOD. This is so because He is outside of time. He is not constrained, by neither space OR time. However, the Scriptures, in an effort to teach God's "predetermined" will and plan, describes God's actions on a scale of time - in other words, from OUR point of view. Thus, from OUR point of view, God did everything you mentioned. To us, it appears that God has planned everything "before" the creation of the world (which should be your first clue on the ability to delve into this mystery - there is no "before" time).
While God is not subjected to the laws of time, His creation and creatures are. The universe, the angels and man are all subject to time and will forever be subject to it. God works within the bounds of time but He is not bound to it and, make no mistake, neither is His creation if He so deems
Exactly. WE are subjected to time, and thus, the Scriptures describe God's actions in this manner. But if you take this thought of timelessness, that God exists in an eternal, unchanging present, to its logical conclusion, then God doesn't plan like men. Thus, God is able to see simulataneously my birth and death, my response or lack thereof to His grace.
The question that the Church has not answered: What makes a grace efficacious - man's response or God? That will twist your noodle (or maybe not, since you don't believe in free will). However, the very fact that the Church does not declare either answer incorrect shows that we just don't know - that the Church HAS NOT taught that man has no free will.
Regards
Astounding, isn't it, where this kind of humanistic teaching leads?
Straight to an ineffectual Christ and a tentative salvation. Exactly as the powers of this world prefer.
The arrogance of Protestants never ceases to amuse me. Just how does God foreknow? Have you forgotten the passage about "My thoughts are not your thoughts...."
What's almost funny if it weren't tragic for your spiritual wellbeing is that the Protestants always talk about the sovereignty and absolute power of God, yet they continuously reduce His mysteries to "logical" sequecnes that we are perfectly equipped to understand.
Such as that even children can understand Scripture! Isn't that a Protestant view? Unless you design integrated circuits, do you understand how a TV works? You may know how to turn it on, and that's about it. Well, God gave us some knowledge of Him in the Scriptre and in the Flesh, and that is no more than the "On" button on your remote control.
And we are forming God into our own image?
You say 1)Faith is a gift of God. 2)Not all men have faith. 3)Therefore God doesn't give faith to all men. Augustine saw this clear logic...
If that's what he said? If he did, then +Augustine was wrong on this, and so are you.
We are all subject to God's laws. If we have no faith, it can not be because God didn't give it to us, but because some choose not to believe that which is in their hearts.
By saying that you understand God's predestination you are implying that you are superior to Him. For, how can a tool understand the Maker? God cannot be defined or explained, or understood with our faculties. He can only be believed. True faith is the moment when all reason stops.
Any logical approach that leads you to conclude that you "understand" God better, as to how He does or accomplishes things in real time, rest assured you are in error lest you be the master of Him.
God "reflects our will"???
Astounding.
I have no doubt that God loved Judas despite his betrayal.
I'm sure that is a nice consolation to those who remain outside the camp.
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