The Ladder of Divine Ascent
Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
We all agree there was divine foreknowledge.
The essence of free will is that foreknowledge does not translate into taking over the will. For example, a parent may foreknow that his adult child is making bad choices in life, yet he respects the choices for the sake of the child himself.
The Scripture teaches with great clarity that both in the case of murder of Abel and of the redemptive work of Christ culminating at Calvary, God did not take over the will of the evildoers. Cain is depicted choosing a poor sacrifice, then killing Abel out of envy. God is not shown to instill these choices into Cain. The Crucifixion happened as a complex interaction of human wills, punctuated by choices of individual players and culminating in the direct choice between Christ and Barabbas, exercised by the Jews. Christ, dying, described God as abandoning Him, rather than killing Him. In both cases we have God allowing human will to be exercised, then taking his turn to exact justice and do other good.
Yup. Restricting church membership to an elect group is donatism, regardless of the outreach to the nonmembers. Specifically, restricting the sacrament of baptism to those whose faith is showing fruit is definitional donatism, in the case of baptists compounded by elimination of priesthood.
Donatists were more than just an opposition movement. They also had a distinctive worship style, emphasizing ‘mystical union of the righteous inspired by the Holy Spirit and instructed by the Bible.1 Anabaptists and other radical church traditions have looked to Donatists as historical predecessors because of their opposition to the union of state and church, their emphasis on discipleship and, in some cases, their commitment to nonviolence and social justice. Like those in the Radical Reformation in the 16th century, the Donatists saw the Catholics as impure and corrupted.[...]
Augustine campaigned against this heterodox belief throughout his tenure as bishop of Hippo, and through his efforts the Church gained the upper hand. His view, which was also the majority view within the Church, was that it was the office of priest, not the personal character of the incumbent, that gave validity to the celebration of the sacraments.
Also see Catholic Encyclopedia: Donatists
There are three things here. First, God does not choose the sins we commit in the sense of causing them to happen by giving us a booster shot of evil toward a particular purpose. That is not His nature. God, already knowing our nature, allows sin to take place for His purposes. The sin act comes just from us.
Second, God created us allowing for our fallen nature through Adam. Our nature is to sin. No man except Jesus has not sinned. (For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.) If you are referring to a particular sin at a particular time, then God may or may not open certain doors He already knows the sinner will enter (e.g., Judas). But, God does not cause the sin, He allows it.
Third, we are "condemned to sin" from the moment of our conception. That's Adam's fault, not God's. Of course, that's just the bad news. The Good News is ... (well, you know :)
I was mocking your view, obviously. That's how the Protestants understand God: setting people up and then pulling some out of trouble while letting others suffer. To a Protestant God people are but toys in God's workshop. And if your label does not say "elect" -- oh well!
I will write in simpler terms from now on lest I be misunderstood.
I have nothing but utter and complete sympathy for your position on this because it was mine until just recently. :) I believe that you can know for sure that God sees all the possibilities. I believe that God knew that Judas was going to sin from before the earth was formed. He also knew exactly how it was going to happen, and for exactly what price.
If God is perfect, and if God already knows these (above) things, and if God could not leave anything to chance (i.e. outside His knowledge), ... then did God allow or "cause" it? Yes.
You [Kosta] said: "Jesus said that He came to save many (not all), not because God would not will all men saved, but because some shall not find the path..."
Okay, I will do this one more time (trying to be simpler): although the NT makes it clear that God would have all man saved, not all man shall be saved. Any father would want all his children happy and successful. But, if we love our children we must set them free, and by setting them free we allow them to make choices, some of which may not be good for them, some of which may be their perdition. Otherwise we will keep them captive and that's no love.
God can either put a tractor beam on us and control our every move, lead us into temptation and error (how does that square with our Lord's Parayer, because the way you guys see things why bother!), or He can give us the freedom to choose and help us make the right choices knowing that not all will follow.
Thus Jesus says "few shall find the path." Finding is something that is not controlled. Clearly, God gives us a choice to seek and find or to reject his overtures and remain lost.
Nothing we do can threaten God's sovereignty as you call it. Our freedom is His gift. Nothing we do can diminish God either, who exists because of Himself, and because of Himself only, Who is the only true Existence. God exists ourside of His creation. God's sovereignty, as everything of God, is love. Love can only give, never take. Love can only bless, not condemn. If you don't know that, you don't know love. I am sorry if that is so.
The only "things" which can become evil are people and angels and certainly both have and will become evil (because they have free will). Animals, rocks, the ocean, books, movies, a bottle of booze etc cannot become evil in and of themselves but as we all know, they can become destructive or provide what the Latins call the "near occassions of sin" because all creation has been distorted by sin.
The Foreknowledge possessed by God has always been posited by The Church on account of the transcendant nature of God. What exactly that means, when we accept that God "exists" in a way which assuredly isn't anything like what we understand as "existence", we of course don't know. The best we can say is God is "O WN"
"We also have to distinguish between an evil nature and evil acts. When we are created, we have an evil nature even though we have not yet done any evil."
FK, if we are created with an evil nature, then God is indeed the author of evil, and yet neither you nor I nor many of the people here believe that, so how can this be?
Jo Kus in #478 presents the Latin view of the state of Man after the Fall as Kosta has of the Orthodox theology earlier on. Neither, at base, speak of man as being born with an evil nature. As Kosta points out, The Church believes that man is born with a "propensity" to sin, a propensity to do evil but not with an inherently sinful nature. God created man with the propensity to become like Him, in other words, with the potential for theosis. Adam, through an exercise of his free will, sinned and that sin, and the sins which multiplied thereafter, so distorted the nature of man that he was no longer in a state of potential theosis, which is the true Life, but rather a captive of death. Man in that situation could do nothing for himself. God did not create this, man did. Man screwed and screws up. God is perfect; He never screws up. Think, when you look out over the world, how our sins and our sins alone have distorted all creation, what we have done to God's perfect work!
When the Word became Flesh by the Incarnation, lived, died, broke down the gates of hades and "annihilated death", preaching Life to those in the tombs, He restored to us the possibility of regaining our pre Fall state and fulfilling our created purpose which is theosis, not death. For this reason The Church has called Christ the "New Adam".
The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"Restricting church membership to an elect group is donatism, regardless of the outreach to the nonmembers. Specifically, restricting the sacrament of baptism to those whose faith is showing fruit is definitional donatism, in the case of baptists compounded by elimination of priesthood."
Its also a form of Novatianism.
2) God knew man would fall;
3) God created hell;
HD, does this not then require a belief that God is the author of evil?
"For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur." Acts 4:27-28
Would you say that God's plan for killing His only Son makes God the author of evil?
I hold that it squares perfectly. That someone is to be passed over is only known to God. We humans cannot possibly know who is to be saved and who is not. From our perspective, scripture teaches us to go out into the fields and evangelize as if all were the elect. This is God's will and we are to obey.
Certainly our witnessing is not useless, it just does not achieve the actual salvation. God does that. It is part of God's perfect plan that we Christians go out and spread the Good News. That's what Jesus did.
The beauty of this view is that we have a burden lifted from us. Have you ever witnessed to a person and nothing happened? Did you ever feel guilty, like maybe if you had said something differently or better that maybe a soul could have been won for Christ? I have, but no more. Now I know that my job isn't to win souls, it is to spread the Word. God saves the souls. In this context, I am an instrument for His use, nothing more.
" Would you say that God's plan for killing His only Son makes God the author of evil?"
Christ's death on the Cross lead to the triumph of the Resurrection and the destruction of death. No, despite the way you framed the question, "God's plan for killing His only Son" does not make God evil.
This coming from a Catholic whose Church policy from the Council of Trent and Vatican I states there is no salvation outside the Church.
And there you have the answer to whether God's plan makes Him the author of evil. Don't bring it up again. :O)
Cronos-Yes, but that's a free will choice not an imposition.
You are not FREE until the Son set you FREE. Once the Son sets you FREE you will be FREE indeed.
There is no FREE choice until you are born again. You are a slave to sin. After that you are FREE.
Do we see a pattern here?
Hmmmm...let me post my scriptures side by side...
Isa 6:8-12 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!" He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.' Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed." Then I said, "Lord, how long?" And He answered, "Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, Houses are without people And the land is utterly desolate, The LORD has removed men far away, And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land."
New Testament (as Jesus would read them)
"Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, 'YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE;FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.' Matthew 13:13-15
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