Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
Minatios says, "good and of obedient will". That means, God chooses those who would, per Augustine, "believe on Him".
Just because we are unable ALONE to acquire God's grace and be pleasing in His eye doesn't mean we don't have a responsibility to fulfill His commands. Now, if you say Christ is your King, but you disobey your King, what do you think the King will do to you? Will He excuse you from your responsibility because "you couldn't, obey God anyway"? If God gives a command, it implies that a person has the ability to follow it. Or not to follow it. Based on our response to God's graces (which are NOT irrestistible), the Scriptures clearly say we will be judged.
All the faith in the world is worthless without love. 1 Cor 13:2.
I would be careful about your confidence in faith alone.
Regards
St. Monica is the patroness of every missionary.
She once complained to her bishop that Augustine would not understand Christianity. The bishop told her to spend more time talking to God about Augustine and less time talking to Augustine about God. It is prayers of saints, not bibliolatry, that converts. Something I should remember more often.
You are misreading the good Bishop. Either point of view is acceptable to Catholicism. The Bishop doesn't say (in your quote) that a person received grace because God foreknew that man would react positively (which, by the way, is NOT Pelagianism. You sure throw that word around a lot. It is the idea that man can come to God, even before initial justifying grace, by natural means.)
Regards
I said that a gift only becomes a gift in the full sense of "gift" if it is accepted.
And I stated that was nonsense in the context you are putting this in. In the story of the pearl of great value the context is that someone is offered something they will never refuse. Man who fully understand the valuable treasure laid before them will never refuse the gift. That is what the story is about. Our Lord Jesus stated to the woman at the well that if she knew the gift she would desire the gift. If someone offers you $50 billion dollars are you going to say, "I'll get back to you."
Since you feel that accepting Christ is a gift you can refuse I'm still waiting for your response to my question: "When do you believe; before or after the gift of faith?"
2)Not all men have faith (to choose God-Dion)
2a) Some men have faith (see #1)
3)Therefore God doesn't give faith to all men.
An imposition is by definition forcing something on an unwilling person. If you are willing, if you willingly ask God to "impose" on you, then he would not be able to impose. What you wrote is self-refuting.
Rape is rape because the victim does not consent, does not want, does not accept what the person does to her. If she were to ask her rapist to rape her it would not be rape.
Does the language offend you?
Change "imposition" to "harrass"--someone harrasses me, annoys me by trying to sell me a life insurance policy I don't want evem to be "sold"--don't want to hear about. By definition what he does to harrass me is unwanted and I am unwiling and unaccepting of what he does to me. But if I were to say, please harrass me by trying to sell me the life insurance policy, then he ceases to harrass me because I now want him to do what he is doing. Whether the life insurance policy is a good thing or a bad thing is irrelevant. If I don't want him to offer me a good thing he is to my eyes, imposing (I may be foolish to consider him imposing on me but if I don't want his act, it is, to me, an imposition).
So, one cannot beg someone to impose on her. Your statement presupposes that you already belief God's gift to be a gift and you want the gift and you already are ready to accept the gift. It is truly then a gift, both in your eyes and God's eyes. The one thing it is not is an imposition.
Nice try but you show that you don't understand the plain meaning of imposition if you think that you can beg someone to impose on you. You think that what God wants to do to you is good so you beg him to do it. Fine. But that's not an imposition, that's your accepting of his gift to you.
If you were to refuse God's gift and God nonetheless forced it on you it would cease to be a gift and become an imposition. And your refusal of it would make the difference. And someone who forces something, even if it a good thing, is imposing, is forcing against the person's will. Somtimes parents have to impose on their children for the children's own good. And there may be times that God imposes on us for our own good (punishes us when we'd rather not be punished--if God punishes and we recognize that we need the punishment then we are accepting the punishment and God is not imposing on us against our will).
But for the gift of salvation truly to be a gift, it cannot be imposed against our will. That's the self-refuting core of your whole impossible system: you claim that God's gift to us cannot be refused. If it truly cannot be refused it ceases to be a gift. You are free to believe that God imposes his salvation on us against our will but you cannot call it a gift.
And when you set out to illustrate how glad you are that God imposes salvation on you against your will in fact what you stated was that you are willing that God "impose"--so, in fact, you are not willing that God impose; you are willing (exercising your free will as you beg God).
So my original point stands: a gift that cannot be refused is no gift but an imposition. And claiming that you want to be imposed on only shows that you don't understand what either gift or imposition means.
But I don't expect you to understand. You will insist that you wish God would impose himself on you against your will.
Scripture for that, please?
Bishop Minatios - "for He foreknows that the person will be good and of an obedient will."
According to the kind Bishop that is why God saves a person. I may be a lousy Bridge player but I can read.
The silence to my question is deafing.
Amen, brother. The Scripture clearly states in Phillipeans that Christ humbled Himself. Over and over throughout His life, He humbled Himself. We believe that God is not about to change. Love is a total giving of the self. How can one love another WITHOUT being humble!!! Yet, our separated brothers would have it both ways. As you said, it goes back to the Traditions we have been taught, in BOTH cases. If a Calvinist, one follows that tradition, if of the Apostolic Church, one follows a different tradition - tradition being a teaching, oral, written, and daily practiced in liturgy and our Christian walk.
Regards
If man fully understood the valuable gift being offered, OF COURSE he'd ACCEPT - but it doesn't follow that he'd DO. Our intellects are clouded, AND our will is weakened as a result of original sin. This doesn't change instantly upon our Baptism/Sinner's Prayer. Doesn't Paul discuss the DECISION to be made in Romans 7? Does he always make it? No. You'd think he'd be aware of it - but such is our wounded nature. Knowing is only half the battle. DOING is the other half.
Regards
I humbly ask you to explain the leap of logic of going from "foreknows" to "WHY God SAVES a person" in your snippet. Because I foreknow, it doesn't follow that I save someone... I can read too, but I am having trouble making the leap.
Regards
Men's "good will" has little to do with God's sovereign election.
No doubt Goering's Luftwaffe possessed good will. A lot of good it did them, eh? All men are fallen, and none seek God unless and until God rebirths their dead hearts.
Sola gratia. We are saved through the "washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost."
LOL. Do you want it to offend me?
No, your bizarre reference to rape does not offend me. Your demeaning of Scripture, however, is another story altogether.
As God wills.
That's not what Scripture says.
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." -- Romans 3:10-11"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
No, it changes instantly God instills faith in us. We don't do it ourselves. That's my point. Something that people here seem to wish to deny or believe it is our effort.
The only way we come to God is when He has given us faith. And if we have faith we will go to God.
Which came first -- the Chicken or the egg?
Whichever God created first. I would presume the chicken, since there would not have been an existing chicken to warm the egg until hatching. Of course I could be wrong. In any event, you didn't address the point I raised.
Post #969 Me: "Was God just lucky then, that Judas betrayed Christ?"
No, read post #925
I did. In #925 Kosta says :"He has foreseen and incorporated our choices into His plan." That means that God's plan is necessarily DEPENDENT on our free-will choices. God is incorporating something external to himself (our choices) into His plan. I give God much more credit concerning His sovereignty and power. I don't think God's divine plan works around us, I say that it works through us.
My confidence is in God's grace through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice and His glorious resurrection.
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." -- Eph. 2:8-10"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
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