Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
Yes, and please note that it ends without a clear explanation. Pelagius believed that man could come to God without the help of God's grace. This is very similar to the Orthodox's view that man is capable of moving towards God.
But in the first Catechism that you've posted we saw man's inclination was towards sin. If man has this inclination towards sin, how is it possible for man to ever overcome it unless God gives man the power and ability to overcome it? And if God gives man the power and ability to overcome it, then won't they overcome? Thus the Reformers are more in keeping with this western doctrine.
“”But in the first Catechism that you’ve posted we saw man’s inclination was towards sin. If man has this inclination towards sin, how is it possible for man to ever overcome it unless God gives man the power and ability to overcome it? “”
By giving man a free will to choose ,not by eliminating free will like the reformers wrongfully thought.
More from the Catechism
1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”610 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.611 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”
Jews don't believe in Jesus as a savior.
To hell with them, per the Word.
I arrived back at home wondering how I should respond to all the idolatry that I have beheld in these last three weeks.
When the Pope moves, the media covers it.
I'm sure he's a nice guy, but let's not pray to a man, shall we?
This part of the Catechism I would agree with also. So would Calvin. Man is inclined to sin. Man in an unregenerate state cannot possibly freely choose to love God because, as the first part of the Cathecism stated, man's inclination is to sin. Thus God must change that nature to help man overcome this inclination.
Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren
And this is where works enter into the picture and a total misunderstanding of original sin. Man is inclined to sin. God must change that nature and that change includes caring for the poor, etc. Those are a part of the results and they have nothing to do with the Lord threatening us with hell if we refuse to do it. We want to serve the Lord. We become slaves to righteousness because He has made it so.
To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”
Ah, and now we see how much the Catholic Church has moved away from original sin. In the first part man's nature was inclined towards sin. Now man must make the free choice to be with God or not with God. Doesn't this sound exactly like Pelagius error? It does to me. Either God saves you or you save yourself.
No Harley , this is where love enters the picture with us freely cooperating with God's Grace!
“”Doesn't this sound exactly like Pelagius error?””
Not at all! It sounds like God gives us a choice to follow His will for us or resist it.
from the catechism
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell;618 for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance
Good Night ,Dear Brother.
I wish you a peaceful Blessed Evening!
What happens to a character in a movie is "predestined." Your will counts for nothing.
I don't think that necessarily follows.
Maybe I should say I don't FEEL that necessarily follows. I would hate to dignify my unease with the simple (and seemingly unassailable) opposition of free will and predestination with the word "think".
But we can chip away, I'd guess, one or two layers by realizing that, while acts of will (if they indeed exist) are mysterious, they are "events", and could be comprehended within the purview of things God predestines. We could say, if we wanted to resort to cartoons, that God predestined that I'd take a notion to go get a #2 Value Meal with a Sprite, that I would momentarily struggle with the notion of adding another 1/4 inch to the plaque in my carotids, that I'd say to myself, "Well, I MAY die from this food, but somebody is certainly going to die if I don't get some food," and then form the 'subjective principle of volition' "I'm driving to Mickey D's."
Look at Oedipus: He was doomed to kill his father and marry his mother and sue Freud for the breach of confidentiality, or at least the royalties.
He willed plenty of things (as did those who pierced his feet and exposed him, and the shepherd who took him home and reared him). He did not will to kill his Father, but he willed to kill the man old enough to be his father and to take to his bed the queen old enough to be his mother.
And while God's self-disclosure to the elect seems overwhelming, yet there seems to be a great big "YES!" arising in the heart of the saved to answer the "yes" which is said to be always with God.
It may be the the problem is that we think that our will is like God's or His like ours. When I have MY way, that may mean that others do not have THEIR way.
But as some of us have learned from being parents, it is possible for a person not to know what his real choice is, until the wily, perceptive, and patient parent helps him discover it. In that kind of situation, the parent gets his way, and so does the child.
Overarching the consideration of predestination and free will there must be, I dare to assert, the principle that man's will cannot come into its own until it is conformed to God's. We are taught by our Lord to pray that God's will be done on earth as in heaven. So formally (in the sense of 'on paper') we say at least daily that we "choose" God's will over our own.
This seems to me entirely in concert with Pauline mysticism, indeed with the teaching the askesis, of our Lord. My "own" , unregenerate will is a will toward death, a will of the flesh which dies. For my will to be united with God's there must be something like dying. That something, that divinely deadly poison is placed at the core of our flesh in our Baptism, and the rest of our days, this side of Heaven, are a pilgrimage to the Cross, an ever deeper descent into the valley of the shadow, AND also a resurrection in which we live, yet not us but Christ in us, as Paul says.
When our redemption is complete, then, just as now when we don't know how to pray, the Spirit Himself of God prays in us, we will will not with our on will, but with Christ's.
Which is why, I dare say, Augustine says (I am told) of God that His service is perfect freedom.
What good is this will of mine anyway? It leads, it must always lead, to sorrow and death -- maybe not unalloyed, maybe in the black soot some diamonds will gleam with reflected light, but sorrow and death nonetheless. Let it die, then, and let the Spirit of God will in and through me. There never happened anything that was to God's glory that did not benefit me also. So let me be forgotten and despised, and let His glory shine in my darkness, and His will swallow up mine.
Thank you, Brother.We agree that man is wounded, or sick (lacking in grae), and in need of a Physician. But he is not dead.
[B]ut human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence”. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle [Cath. Catechism]
Might as well call it Orthodox Catechism. :)
Here are some excerpts from one such Orthodox Catechism
Out of His love for humans God did not want to interfere in their freedom and forcibly avert sin. But neither could the devil force them to do evil. The sole responsibility for the Fall is borne by humans themselves, for they misused the freedom given to them. ["The Fall]
Important point is: man cannot resist God's will, but God does not impose Himself out of love. The other is: we can resist Satan's will. Therefore, we can use God's freedom to resist the devil and come to God. Until Christ freed us to do so, because after Adam's Fall all mankind was held captive by death, we could not choose. Salvation, therefore, came on the cross: it set us free to come to God and follow in the footsteps of our Savior. He provided the light, the way and the truth for us to be able to do so. But, a loving God will only offer, not force.
What constitutes ancestral sin? Harley D continues to claim that the Orthodox "deny" it. We don't deny it, we simply teach what the Church taught before St. Augustine came along (and he is OUR Saint as well!). Here is what the Orthodox Church teaches, Harley D, so please remember:
The consequence of this was tragic. Everything collapsed. The Catechism continues:
We are ashamed of God and try to hid from him. This is what people do to this day!
Thus, pride is what sealed their fall form grace; it does to this day.
In sinning they fell away from their natural condition and entered an unnatural state of being. All elements of their spiritual and corporeal make-up were damaged: their spirit, instead of striving for God, became engrossed in the passions; their soul entered the sphere of bodily instincts; while their body lost its original lightness and was transformed into heavy sinful flesh.
After the Fall the human person ‘became deaf, blind, naked, insensitive to the good things from which he had fallen away, and above all became mortal, corruptible and without sense of purpose’ (St Symeon the New Theologian). Disease, suffering and pain entered human life. Humans became mortal for they had lost the opportunity of tasting from the tree of life.
Not only humanity but also the entire world changed as a result of the Fall. The original harmony between people and nature had been broken; the elements had become hostile; storms, earthquakes and floods could destroy life. The earth would no longer provide everything of its own accord; it would have to be tilled ‘in the sweat of your face’, and would produce ‘thorns and thistles’.
Even the animals would become the human being’s enemy: the serpent would ‘bruise his heel’ and other predators would attack him (Gen.3:14-19). All of creation would be subject to the ‘bondage of decay’.
Together with humans it would now ‘wait for freedom’ from this bondage, since it did not submit to vanity voluntarily but through the fault of humanity (Rom.8:19-21). ["The Fall"]
So, this is what the Orthodox Church teaches about the original sin, HD. Please remember it.
The East does not teach Pelagian heresy, as you allege, namely that man does not need grace. You will be hard pressed to find that in any Orthodox teachings!
The Orthodox Church does not agree with Blessed Augustine's reason for the Fall. Man abused his freedom and, as a consequence of that, lost it. Adam and Eve fell into a deep pit for which no one could come out. It was Christ who pulled us out of that spiritual grave and set us free. But, having our free will, nothing short of clinging to God stops us from jumping into it again all on our own, just as Adam and Eve did.
Amen, Brother SFA; this is the catholic and orthodox faith.
No, because man needs grace and grace is obtained through Baptism. Grace restores us to the state where we are free to come to God. It was, indeed, impossible for anyone to come to God on his own until Christ's sacrifice on the Cross.
It is God who saves. But we must come to Him. He doesn't force us to sin and He doesn't force us to come to Him.
What I wrote was: "What happens to a character in a movie is 'predestined.' Your will counts for nothing."
Although you disagree with me, the essence of what you wrote (in more words) can be summarized as: What happens to a character in a movie is "predestined." Your will counts for nothing.
You write "I dare to assert, the principle that man's will cannot come into its own until it is conformed to God's." In other words, it is set in stone, just as the actions of the charactere in a movie.
And you write "What good is this will of mine anyway?" Which is as good as saying it counts for nothing.
I must say I am a little surprised that you, a Catholic, find no value (and grace!) in our free will, and that it is only because of God's love that he gives us the freedom, even though absuing freedom can lead to its loss. But, then, forced love is no love, is it?
Sin has to be committed. What sins have infants committed?
One of the child of Jeroboam found favor with the Lord. The others did not
LOL, that's Judaism, HD. Where does Christ teach that! We are Christians, right?
And while you are at it, please show where is Chirst in the Kings (of all the books!).
If anything, the NT tells us that Christ considers children perfectly innocent.
In my theological study I have studied about 250 pages of his material so far (across three books). I have nary a hint of militantism anywhere. He is NOT a bomb-thrower from anything I have read. In fact, of those 250 pages of theological analysis, he has spent less than 2 pages (combined) criticizing the Roman Catholic Church "by name". Instead, among other things he laments the beliefs that I think are consistent with Apostolic beliefs and explores ways to reach these people. He does NOT call them un-Christian, but he does explain why their beliefs cannot hold water, as any writer would who does what he did. He spends much more time on reaching the non-believer.
There is no chance there that Schaeffer might have twisted and cherry-picked things just a wee bit, is there?
I cannot be certain, as I am no authority on Schaeffer. However, I would doubt it. From the context, I don't think Schaeffer "needed" Heidegger to make his point. He was using Heidegger as an example of the emergence (or development) of a thought pattern that we all see prominently today.
As an aside, you might be interested to know that Schaeffer's son, Frank, an author and film maker, converted to Orthodoxy within a few years of his father's death. If you search his name on the Greek Orthodox website you will get several hits. He's on a bunch of councils and boards and such. THE PRODIGAL SON. :)
Heidegger was a Nazi.
Now THAT I did not know. :) Schaeffer makes no mention of it, presumably because he thought it irrelevant to the philosophy enunciated. But in any case, NO ONE is making any comparisons along the Nazi front. :)
If anything, being Protestant would be much more conducive to such extremism than being Orthodox.
Thanks a lot! That means you're scrambling. :)
Look at the universe and ask yourself if you can even imagine the logic which made it!
The universe is a work of art beyond human comprehension. It is logical to me that an omnipotent God would create such a place.
Just as we by necessity apply anthropomorphism to our pets, we are forced to do the same with God, because natures are not exchangeable. Most of our "understanding" of God is projecting human feelings and ideas onto that which is not human.
Then the Bible is just a tease. Of course we are not going to have FULL understanding, but that does not mean we can have NO understanding. Why would God give us so many analogies in the Bible that relate directly to us in our daily lives if He did not want us to have a partial understanding of how it is between us and Him?
The Bible reminds us that God's thoughts and ways are not ours—just as our thoughts and ways are not those of our pets, or better yet, ants and flatworms.
No. God TELLS us His ways to the extent He wants us to understand them. It is not exhaustive, but it is much more than nothing, which is what ants know of our ways.
Bad things happen to good people, FK. Good things happen to bad people. When faced with such dilemmas, we simply resign ourselves to not knowing God and his ways. But when we try to push our views of God on others, then we claim that we know God personally and with certainty.
There's that all or nothing thing again. That's just not right. Think of this, you know your wife better than anyone else on the planet knows her. Now, imagine that a team of scientists took her away and put her through a series of 100 experiments, all provoking her to make a choice, or no choice at all. Afterward, they told you the premise of each test and what her options were, and asked you to say what she did. I believe you would have gotten a very good grade, but I doubt it would have been a 100. By your reasoning, you would say that therefore you know nothing of your wife. :)
Orthodoxy is clear that God is Mystery revealed to us in fullness through Jesus Christ. That's the beginning and the end of Orthodox "heideggerianism." What's revealed in the Old Testament is not Christ. For, if Christ's revelation were clear and unambiguous in the Old Testament there would have been no need for the New Testament. There is no way for us to know Christ through the Old Testament. We can only "see dimly" in some instances the foreshadowing of Christ in it.
Wouldn't that be the CHURCH'S way, and not necessarily God's way? Christ said He came to fulfill. If the OT does not reveal Christ, then what does it reveal?
Sure enough. When the compost hit the air-conditioner he proved to be a coward. I am told that Jacob Klein, one of the "gods" at my college, said that as far as he knew Heidegger was the only great philosopher who was a bad man. (He also didn't think much of the US, but I think that was just continental snobbery and ignorance.)
But he WAS a GREAT philosopher. This is not the same thing as saying that he was right, and certainly not the same thing as saying he was right about everything.
In absence of credible evidence, doubt is justified. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Credible evidence is crucial, FK.
And you have already testified that there IS no credible evidence for you, which leaves only, naturally, the extra-Biblical Church as your sole basis of faith.
We see evidence of all sorts of things; it is the cause-and-effect relationship that is crucial. Primitive man saw lightening and heard thunder and attributed it to God's anger. Others interpreted rumbling of a volcano to be of divine origin.
I'm not sure what your point is. If you believe in evolution, then presumably primitive man did not have ANY sort of revelation comparable to the scriptures. And even after the scriptures did begin with Moses, many misinterpreted them too. What has any of that to do with us?
FK: "However, I give the presumption to God's word instead of 21st century scientists."
Presumption is the word, FK. Yet that presumption turned out to be false on many an occasion. It doesn't mean it proves God wrong; it only puts in question what men wrote about God, claiming God spoke to them and through them!
Well, if ANYONE had ever credibly proved the Bible false, then I think there would be far fewer Christians on earth than there are. Of course there have always been critics of it since it was written, even part by part. However, by God's grace and truth none of them have been able to defeat it.
Simple logic also suggest that the Old Testament might contain some truth or less truth than the New Testament, not that all of it is untrue.
But Jesus speaks of the OT being true, so we would have to throw that statement out. Logic fails here because who would be in a position to say which parts of the OT are true (and the NT) and which parts are false? The hierarchy of the Church?
[On the first Passover:] Those who trusted that God would save them would have been saved with or without physical markers, FK!
Not if God said THIS is how it's going to work, which He DID! :) As the OT proves a million times, when God says something, He MEANS it.
The Egyptians were not given Moses' instructions to mark their homes; but if they did God would have known they were false markers.
Then maybe that's why God didn't bother notifying them. :)
We don't know if some Egyptians would have believed or not.
Yes, we do, by inference. God does not forsake the elect.
The early Church had difficulties reconciling the OT with the Gospels, for obvious reasons.
If the early Church was basically the same as the current Church, then that makes perfect sense. :) Yet, from the general Orthodox readings I have been showed, I would still say that there are many Orthodox who probably think to this day that the OT is very important to Christianity. It's just an impression.
Your will counts for nothing.
Do we need to wonder what the will's "counting for something" might be? What do we "want" from our will, or what is outraged by the concepts of predestination and election, so Biblically attested (I would say) that we cannot simply blip them out?
I may be disagreeing with you (or maybe not), but I am not asserting the contrary. I am wondering about the posing of the question, about the irreconcilability of predestination and election. If there is "thesis" of predestination and "antithesis" of freewill, then I am searching for the reconciling aufgehebung (is that a word?).
-- Heck, when, as happens with increasing rarity, my wife and I waltz, one might say she has no will, since I (being, as I am, a very manly man) "lead". But I always try to be rich in praise for her, since I think following must be harder than leading.
-- Also, I have served as acolyte in a variety of Episcopal churches, from basement level, low-church Virginia parishes to the Cathedral in San Francisco (in the early '70s when they, or some of them, still believed in God there.) I tried to conform my demeanor, my 'style' to that of the parish where I served, to anticipate the needs of the celebrant, and to be alert to any unusual situations that might arise.
-- As an acolyte and as a priest, my desire was for invisibility, transparency. A service where anyone but the priest noticed my 'work' was one in which I had failed. A service where a parishioner said, "You celebrate beautifully (or clumsily)," or "You preach well (or poorly)," rather than "Alleluia, God is great!" was one in which I had failed.
Does that shed some new or useful light on the question?
When we "fall" in love, it is not clear, to me, whether the impetus is endogenous or exogenous. Maybe I jumped in the torrent, maybe the torrent threw up a wave which swept me in. It is not clear, it is also not important.
Similarly, since my childhood I have longed for God. I do not think I 'chose' this. (The longing did not get in the way of my spending some years in lotus land, but the delights there could not make the longing go away -- and, besides, they all turned to "dirt and hair" after a while anyway.)
I won't say that longing was my choice, something I willed. But certainly my "will", such as it was, endorsed it. I also long for donuts, but that longing is against my will, and I resist it - with greater or lesser success.
I also, in some sense, make war against my own longing for God: I think about other things, I am distracted, I may even seek distractions, or, say, lose myself in anger and resentment or some other earthly and fleshly delight.
When I resist my longing for donuts, sooner or later (like the next time I weigh the corpse) I feel that resisting my longing was freedom. When I resist (with, as it seems, an alien resistance) my longing for God, I don't feel free.
Deus omnipotens, cui servire regnare est
FK, presuppositional approach, a method used by Schaffer, is a militant appraoch.
Well, and to a follower of Shintoism it is equally "logical" that all this work of art is God Himself!
I think you posited recently that we see the word "personal" very differently in relation to God. I think that's right. :) I don't use "personal" in any way to mean "private" as opposed to others.
FK: "If God is mostly unknowable mystery, and He doesn't have personal relationships with His children (as you recently said and argued that Jesus did not), then it follows that you do not see God as personal."
What abut the Reformed God who has preordained everyone according to his will to either go to heaven or hell? How personal is that?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe about as personal as it gets. :)
If God is impartial ("no respecter of persons" is what the Bible says!), then how can he also be personal?
Simple, the same way we are. Whether or not God is a personal Being has nothing to do with to whom He wishes to have a personal relationship ... WITH. You are a personal being, yet you do not have a personal relationship with all men. Same with God. ......... God is impartial in that there are not different rules for different people when it comes to being saved. Everyone, OT and NT is saved in exactly the same way. Wouldn't you agree? :)
FK: "Since when have YOU EVER followed anything called the Orthodox Catechism."
I do all the time, FK. I defer to the Church no matter what my opinion is. I do not presume to have the collective wisdom and knowledge of the Church.
Well, if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, but I have a memory of your saying a long time ago that there IS NO official Orthodox Catechism put out by the Church. The Latins have theirs, but I remember the Orthodox view being that you did not get into that stuff. If there is a Catechism that you take as authoritative in a similar way the Latins do theirs, would you mind giving the link for it again?
FK: "Again, another of our current discussions has you saying the Jesus did NOT have personal relationships with His own disciples!"
No he didn't. He was their master; they were his disciples.
But in this very post that I am responding to you are arguing that the only way we can know God personally is through the humanity of Christ, ........... WHICH YOU DENY He showed to those CLOSEST TO HIM on earth. :) What's the deal? If Christ wasn't personal with His closest brethren, then how do you say that we can know Him personally?
You, on the other hand, fantasize about them socializing together. Where in the Bible does it says God socialized with anyone?
Plenty of places. Here is one example:
Matt 9:10-13 : 10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Obviously, Jesus socialized with those who were not His disciples, since He notes that they needed Him. No teacher-pupil relationship there. Another example would be the wedding at Cana, as social an event as it gets. Do we suppose that Jesus went and just sat in a corner? No, He was a guest and talked with people just like anyone else. And again, what do you suppose all the thousands of meals that Jesus shared with His disciples were like? Were they silent, or only filled with "shop-talk"? Does that make sense to you?
Even when Christ washes his disciples' feet, it is a duty and obedience, not personal favor or an expression of affection.
You put yourself in the stinky feet of those disciples when Jesus did that for them, and then tell me with a straight face that it was a pro forma ceremony. :)
That is a big problem in western Christianity: the absolute drop-on-your-knees-face-to-the-ground reverence you see in Orthodoxy is lacking. Oh no, in the west we have "Daddy," we accept the Eucharist in the hand, etc. God is our Lord and Master, not our peer or buddy or fellow.
There is no issue about whether GOD is a "buddy" or a peer or an equal. The issue is in HOW God chooses to relate to us. Is it mechanical or is it personal?
Like I said, even ants have some "understanding" of us. They try to avoid us, if possible (within their means) for reasons only an ant will know.
The primitive man "understood" that the rumbling volcano was an "angry" god and that some serependitious act of people would "satisfy" him—on occasion. Sometime, their "prayers" were "answered," and sometimes they weren't.
No, FK, it's not the fact. The fact is that the men who wrote the books of the Binble tell us what they believed God told them, and we believe that it is true.
Of course, there is no proof that God told us anything. It is based on our belief that He did.
If what you say were a fact, then everyone would be on the same sheet of music. No one is arguing whether gravity exists because gravity is a fact that affects us all.
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