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I'm not sure I understand the distinction you are drawing. [between the will and the intellect] Are you saying that, in this case, man's intellect is dominated to prevent error, but that leaves man's free will completely intact?

I am saying that there is a difference between the will and the intellect. The will is the ability to choose. The intellect is the ability to know something. Certainly, the two are interrelated. In both cases, God does not override man's knowledge or his will - we see this in the case of the Bible's knowledge of scientific theories, for example. In the case of dogma, though, God has promised to protect it from error - so that future generations could come to know the truth through His Church. Thus, when God forms the intellect, He is not tampering with the will. Man's intellect is formed by his senses, those men who teach him. Certainly, God has Divine Providence, and can ensure that men are taught correctly to maintain the Church as the pillar and foundation of the truth. Now how does this effect a man's free will decisions?

Paul seemed to be responding to questions and correcting error, so I wonder if "new" ways of dealing with issues came out in his writings for the first time

I can agree with a development in thought through Paul's life. Looking at Paul's earlier writings and comparing them to later ones, I see a logical development - they are not identical. Certainly, the Spirit was working in Paul gradually as Paul meditated on the mysteries of the faith. I don't think that the Apostles knew everything to know about God on day one, but was a gradual process. Case in point - the entrance of the Gentiles into the Church...

How can that be if we Protestants today approve of some of what you would call Augustine's error?

We believe that Calvinists misunderstand St. Augustine's writings, taking them out of context. I have posted over and over again the many times that St. Augustine's writings contradict the supposed idea that he believed man has no free will or man cannot choose good or man that man is totally corrupt. St. Augustine was arguing against one extreme, Pelagianism, and often used language in the other direction that Calvin took as approval for his own personal preconceived notion that man is totally corrupt. But reading St. Augustine outside of polemic language, one finds he was NOT a "proto-Protestant". You would be quite surprised to see how Roman Catholic he really was...

I realized that you think the Bible itself is infallible for EXACTLY the same reason that you think the writings of the Church Fathers are infallible

That's not true. Individual Church Fathers can be wrong about a particular doctrine - individual verses in the Bible can NEVER be wrong, as every word is inerrant. When the mind of the Church says that something is an Apostolic teaching, though, what reason will you give me that they are lying on this issue, but they are not lying on what IS Scriptures? Indeed, you rely on the Church to tell us the Table of Contents of Scriptures.

So anyone who disagrees with the Catholic interpretation on this is a "man of the flesh"? Wouldn't that mean that all of the rest of us are unregenerate and unjustified? How could this be when you recognize our baptisms? Perhaps your answer will be that when we were baptized we were fine, but then we grew up to be Protestants, which is a mortal sin? :)

Whew! Where is this going? No, the "rest" of you are not unregenerate. I cannot say anything about you being justified or not, we've had this discussion before. I don't know if you are righteous in God's eyes or not. Growing up as a Protestant is not a mortal sin in any sense of the word. Remember all of that talk about 2000 posts ago about being "invincibly ignorant"? A Protestant of good will is not condemned to hell BECAUSE he is Protestant - in reality, he may be more "Catholic" and just not know it. To the degree that you believe in the Nicean Creed, the Catholic Creed, you ARE Catholic! Because you are not in substantial union with Christ's Church does not automatically condemn you. Actually, even Muslims and Jews may have some tenuous link to the Church, in God's eyes. God desires all men to be saved through Christ's Body, through Love. Those who abide in Christ and Christ in them are part of the Church, His Body.

Therefore, if God did nothing else, and just sat back and watched, then all humans would wind up in hell. Would God be just in doing this? I suspect you would say "No", and I would say "Yes". What does God owe us? I don't think a thing at this point.

I would agree IF God hadn't made a promise with man IN THE GARDEN to send a redeemer... If God is just, then God will uphold His promises. If God is not just, then we can agree - God owes us nothing. He binds Himself to us out of love for us, not out of any "owing" anything to us.

No man ever has a right to say "What did you expect?" God would say "Where were you when I ..."

IF God establishes commandments to be obeyed, but doesn't give man the ability to obey them - then He is not just in any definition of the word. Even the Old Testament believed that God gave man the ability to choose to obey God or not. We have already discussed this when God gave Moses the commandments. Moses (and later Joshua) asked the people to choose between good and evil. It is silly to ask (much less command!) anyone to do something that they cannot possibly do.

I pointed out that this was an undecreed wish. God does, however, make some decreed wishes (promises) about His elect, does He not? I do believe that God has to come through on those, and my ASSURANCE is that He will do just that.

Of course. However, the Church has ALWAYS taught that we must persevere until the end because we don't KNOW we are of the elect. I ask you to consider what would be the point of Jesus telling the elect to persevere if they are infallibly saved? Or the non-elect to persevere if they cannot but sin? The whole idea of perseverance is lost on the Protestant theology of OSAS or TULIP.

There are not, there is only one side, God's. The accused have no "rights" of their own on Judgment Day, God gives rights to those whom He will. There is absolutely no room at all for any sense of human "fairness". God is far more "fair" than we could possibly imagine! :)

Then we can no longer call God "fair" if there is no possibility of a man pleasing God when God actively chooses to withhold from that man the ability to please God. We should stop kidding ourselves and stop calling God "fair" if this is your idea of what happens at Judgment. Let us come up with a new word for Him so we can understand what God's attributes are... As I said before, our ways and God's ways differ in degree, not in a totally different concept or definition. That is ridiculous.

Well, if I was the pastor of my own church, I certainly wouldn't have those rules, [women not speaking in Church] BUT, if some other Christian church wanted to observe them, I would not think less of them. Women would either show up or they wouldn't.

AH, but IF the Bible is the LITERAL word of God, you have gone against it! God's Word is independent of our own opinions. If God literally said that man should have 2 or more wives, or that woman should not speak in church, then who are you to go against God's Word? So in this example, you are merely showing that God's word found in the Bible is not His "literal" word, but His word through the medium of men. It is subject to interpretation.

I read what you said about the "sense of the faithful" being across time, but how can it be said to "lead" the hierarchy if it never means anything specific?

Our current leaders have a sense and knowledge of what has been taught before by the Church, "in all places, all times". The Church has said that this "sense" is the Spirit guiding the faith community through time and space. The Church tries to read this "mind", this body of teaching that have come before it and ask "what would the Apostles do", trying to maintain the intricate web of faith that holds other teachings in balance with each other. Again, this is the Spirit's work.

Regards

Thus, when God forms the intellect, He is not tampering with the will. Man's intellect is formed by his senses, those men who teach him. Certainly, God has Divine Providence, and can ensure that men are taught correctly to maintain the Church as the pillar and foundation of the truth. Now how does this effect a man's free will decisions?

In this case, how can God ENSURE that any one man's intellect is taught correctly without overriding the free will of the teachers? If a teacher has correct knowledge, what guarantee is there that he will faithfully pass along that knowledge based on his free will? There can be no guarantee without God's intervention. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. :)

FK: "I realized that you think the Bible itself is infallible for EXACTLY the same reason that you think the writings of the Church Fathers are infallible."

That's not true. Individual Church Fathers can be wrong about a particular doctrine - individual verses in the Bible can NEVER be wrong, as every word is inerrant.

I meant that your view is that the Bible is inerrant NOT because God says so, but because your hierarchy took a vote and declared it so. Likewise, the writings of any particular Father are declared infallible by a similar vote.

When the mind of the Church says that something is an Apostolic teaching, though, what reason will you give me that they are lying on this issue, but they are not lying on what IS Scriptures?

I'm not accusing anyone of lying, but I do think that when it came to the Bible, there was a different standard. Men are capable of error, and so I believe that the Bible was effectively taken out of the hands of man to ensure its inerrancy. I also believe that God gave a special grace to the compilers to ensure inerrancy. It is self-evident because no error appears. This does not apparently transfer over to the writings of the Fathers, because errors were made. Your case would be stronger if any of the true writings of the Apostles was rejected as uninspired. To my knowledge, that did not happen. Writings of Fathers were rejected many times.

FK: "So anyone who disagrees with the Catholic interpretation on this is a "man of the flesh"? Wouldn't that mean that all of the rest of us are unregenerate and unjustified? "

Whew! Where is this going? No, the "rest" of you are not unregenerate.

When we were talking about the literal sense of the sacramental flesh, I was responding to your statement:

FK, this is something that ONLY the Spirit can enable us to comprehend. It is not something that can be explained and understood with the man of the flesh: ...

Since this is a Catholic belief, I thought you were saying that all others are "men of the flesh", thus, unregenerate.

FK: "Therefore, if God did nothing else, and just sat back and watched, then all humans would wind up in hell. Would God be just in doing this? I suspect you would say "No", and I would say "Yes". What does God owe us? I don't think a thing at this point."

In our system of justice a unilateral promise is not necessarily binding, especially if there is no reliance. So, say I promise to pay you $1,000 one year from now and ask nothing in return. A year passes and you ask for payment. I say I was just kidding. If you can't show that you altered your life significantly based on the expectation of that payment, then you can't sue me. Even if you did alter your life, it would be a very difficult case to win.

But since God's system of justice is not like man's, His unilateral promises are always binding on Him. This is not in the sense that God "owes" us, it is in the sense that God owes His own nature, since it is axiomatic that God is not a liar. He can't say "just kidding" because it isn't true to His nature.

IF God establishes commandments to be obeyed, but doesn't give man the ability to obey them - then He is not just in any definition of the word.

That would be true only if your definition of justice was the only one. God's justice is different. You place many more duties and obligations upon God based on your interpretation of scripture. You even place duties upon Him for non-decreed wishes. Your above makes me wonder what you think the purpose of the Commandments was. Was it salvation to you in the OT? If you believe that all men were given the ability to obey all the Commandments flawlessly through life, and if you believe that only two in all of human history ever did it, one being Jesus, then what kind of ability do you think God gave all men? If the score is 2 wins and 20 billion losses, then God must not really have given everyone something of value, did He?

I ask you to consider what would be the point of Jesus telling the elect to persevere if they are infallibly saved? Or the non-elect to persevere if they cannot but sin? The whole idea of perseverance is lost on the Protestant theology of OSAS or TULIP.

He tells them to persevere because that is part of the salvation model revealed in scripture, and that is part of the human experience. (We all experience choosing to persevere.) He also tells them that none of His sheep will be lost. Jesus knows that everyone of the elect will still sin to some degree, even after salvation. He wants to minimize that amount as much as possible, so He says encouraging things like this. Paul follows up with his series of "By no means" statements. We are told what a saved man looks like. That helps us to sin less often. A person of the elect, though, will nevertheless be saved, even if he is unaware of these teachings explicitly.

The idea of perseverance is not lost on Protestants. We just give God all the glory and credit for it. Others believe that man should get partial glory and credit. The principle that it must/will happen for the elect is the same for both of us, right?

Again you impose a human sense of fairness on God. You truly are the saucer who complains to the potter that he did not make you into a vase. God never promises us that He will make all of us into vases. God makes some people who are born with horrible genetic deformities. Is God fair with that? God makes some people with severe mental handicaps, who, during life on earth, will never have any kind of understanding about Him that we enjoy. Is that fair of God? Many humans would say "No", that's not fair. God's sense of fairness is different, AND better.

FK: "Well, if I was the pastor of my own church, I certainly wouldn't have those rules, [women not speaking in Church] ..."

AH, but IF the Bible is the LITERAL word of God, you have gone against it! God's Word is independent of our own opinions.

The Bible is the literal word of God and should be interpreted as it was intended to be. This includes allegory and context. Jesus Himself interprets the Sabbath Commandment as something other than the literal letter. That doesn't mean we are free to interpret everything in any way we want, it just proves that there are examples of the phenomenon. It seems logical to me that whatever verse says that women should not speak in church is of this kind. I don't see other evidence in the Bible that shows that it serves God to have women be silent in Church, so I don't take that as a literal command written in stone, as it were. :)