To: HarleyD
All Bishop Minatios treatise states is that no one can understand predestination. 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.
To: annalex; HarleyD; Forest Keeper; ItsOurTimeNow; P-Marlowe; blue-duncan; Gamecock; zeeba neighba; ...
...we cannot fully comprehend the omnipotence of God who both foreknows and reflects our will. God "reflects our will"???
Astounding.
To: annalex
Bishop Minatios treatise on Jacob and Esau:
Jacob have I love, but Esau have I hated, (Romans 9:13) says God Himself. Just as a potter can make a worthy vessel or an unworthy one from the very same clay, likewise almighty God glorifies as valuable certain of His creatures, while rejecting others as unnecessary. Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth (Romans 9:18). God acts according to His own will. Who can contradict Him? Yet, is there then some sort of falsity in God? No, there is not! In our effort to understand this point, take as an example the teachings of St. Paul. His teachings are deep and exalted. The more we delve into them, the less we understand. But what of this? In the question of predestination, all is incomprehensible: everything which Holy Scripture says on this subject is unfathomable.
Augustine's treatise on Jacob and Esau:
"Also discussing, I say, 'what God could have chosen in him who was as yet unborn, whom He said that the elder should serve; and what in the same elder, equally as yet unborn, He could have rejected; concerning whom, on this account, the prophetic testimony is recorded, although declared long subsequently, "Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated,"' [Mal. 1.2,3. Cf. Rom. 9.13.] I carried out my reasoning to the point of saying: 'God did not therefore choose the works of any one in foreknowledge of what He Himself would give them, but he chose the faith, in the foreknowledge that He would choose that very person whom He foreknew would believe on Him,to whom He would give the Holy Spirit, so that by doing good works he might obtain eternal life also.'
As I stated, some don't wish to carry out the reasoning. Some do.
1,017 posted on
01/11/2006 11:27:23 AM PST by
HarleyD
("No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him..." John 6:44)
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