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To: MarkBsnr; HarleyD; wmfights; 1000 silverlings; Forest Keeper; Alamo-Girl; suzyjaruki; irishtenor; ..
I suppose that if you believe that God has created a clockwork universe for His mysterious ends that He programs and runs the program through to completion, then that would kinda fit.

While I realize you're writing in hyperbole, what would be wrong with a world where God is in control?

Do you not trust God to resolve everything to His good pleasure?

Do you doubt that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28)?

Do you really imagine the maker of heaven and earth is going to end up disappointed and lacking what He desires?

If you believe that God wishes all men to freely love Him, as the purpose of creating the universe, then it wouldn't.

No man can "freely" love God of his own ability or else what was Adam's fall? Just a stumble? Or a true change in man's nature from innocent to sinner?

Why did God permit the fall if it wasn't to illustrate a great truth about His creation -- that all men are fallen and none seeks God unless and until God quickens his conscience and renews his mind and regenerates his heart, and gives him new eyes and new ears -- all by the work of the Holy Spirit alone because of Christ's atoning work alone according to the will of God alone.

"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins...

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)" -- Eph. 2:1;4-5


7,338 posted on 09/27/2007 10:37:23 AM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: Dr. Eckleburg

I’m curious about how you would answer:

What decisions that you make are you responsible for?


7,346 posted on 09/27/2007 11:32:49 AM PDT by D-fendr (Deus non alligatur sacramentis sed nos alligamur.)
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To: Dr. Eckleburg

I believe that it was touched on before. The whole Adam and Eve scenario is the mechanism whereby we are powerfully instructed and shown what it is that we are and why. Adam and Eve freely wounded and diminished their natures and passed that wounded nature on to us. It is up to us to accept God’s grace and allow Him to pull us up into everlasting life with Him.

In yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state … original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed”—a state and not an act” (404). This “state of deprivation of the original holiness and justice … transmitted to the descendants of Adam along with human nature” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 76) involves no personal responsibility or personal guilt on their part (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 405). Personal responsibility and guilt were Adam’s, who because of his sin, was unable to pass on to his descendants a human nature with the holiness with which it would otherwise have been endowed, in this way implicating them in his sin.

Though Adam’s sinful act is not the responsibility of his descendants, the state of human nature that has resulted from that sinful act has consequences that plague them: “Human nature, without being entirely corrupted, has been harmed in its natural powers, is subject to ignorance, suffering and the power of death, and has a tendency to sin. This tendency is called concupiscence” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 77), but is distinct from original sin itself.

The Church has always held baptism to be “for the remission of sins”, and, as mentioned in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 403, infants too have traditionally been baptized, though not guilty of any actual personal sin. The sin that through baptism was remitted for them could only be original sin, with which they were connected by the very fact of being human beings. Based largely on this practice, Saint Augustine of Hippo articulated the teaching in reaction to Pelagianism, which insisted that human beings have of themselves, without the necessary help of God’s grace, the ability to lead a morally good life, and thus denied both the importance of baptism and the teaching that God is the giver of all that is good.


We do not and have never believed that man is capable of reaching Heaven on his own.


7,476 posted on 09/28/2007 6:29:25 AM PDT by MarkBsnr (V. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae. R. Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.)
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