Identifying Judas as not being given something others were given was not a "guess" or "probability". Notice, it was not ultimately because Judas didn't believe that he came to betray Jesus. It was because he was not "given" faith to apprehend, "This is the Messiah." He betrayed because he didn't believe and didn't believe because it was not given him. Judas did exactly what Jesus said He would do and could not have done otherwise. This is abundantly clear from the text.
AMEN!
Your entire post is rock-solid. I'm putting your Scriptural logic on my homepage.
Rather, the Scripture indicates His knowledge is perfect because He manages to accomplish all that occurs, Is. 45:6, 7, "That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no other besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity (literally "evil"); I am the Lord who does all these." I can find dozens of passages like this. Sorry Mark...He wins.
AMEN! They have no argument to challenge your post. At heart, RCs are inconsistent universalists. Period.
Pour a tall glass of this:
Who, then, can be saved?Add two heaping tablespoons of this:Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if they obey the commandments.
Other Christians can be saved if they submit their lives to Christ and join the community where they think he wills to be found.
Jews can be saved if they look forward in hope to the Messiah and try to ascertain whether God’s promise has been fulfilled.
Adherents of other religions can be saved if, with the help of grace, they sincerely seek God and strive to do his will.
Even atheists can be saved if they worship God under some other name and place their lives at the service of truth and justice.God’s saving grace, channeled through Christ the one Mediator, leaves no one unassisted. But that same grace brings obligations to all who receive it. They must not receive the grace of God in vain. Much will be demanded of those to whom much is given.
-- concluding paragraph [formatting mine] of Who Can Be Saved?,by Cardinal Avery Dulles, found at Catholic Education Resource Center.
And serve shaken, not stirred:No Salvation Outside the Church
The “Necessity” of Being Catholic (Ecumenical Caucus)
Can Non-Catholics Be Saved?
The Great Heresies [Open]
Why Can't Protestants Take Communion in a Catholic Church
THEOLOGICAL PLURALISM: The multiplicity of theological positions present within the Catholic Church. These positions vary according to which premises or postulates are used in reflecting on the sources of revelation, according to the methodology employed, and according to the cultural tradition within which theology does its speculation. On the first bases, the two principal philosophical premises are the Platonic, stressed in Augustinianaism; and the Aristotelian, emphasized in Thomism. On the second level, theologies differ in terms of their mainly biblical, or doctrinal, or historical, or pastoral methodology. And on the third basis, the culture of a people helps to shape the theology they develop, as between the more mystical East and the more practical West, or the more reflective Mediterranean and the more scientific Anglo-Saxon. The Church not only permits these diversities but encourages them, always assuming that theologians who are Catholic are also respectful of the rule of faith and obedient to the magisterium of the hierarchy under the Bishop of Rome.
-- from the thread Catholic Word of the Day: THEOLOGICAL PLURALISM, 11-10-09