Posted on 07/02/2010 6:56:08 PM PDT by Desdemona
Since getting into all this Calvinist stuff, I've realized if I'm supposed to win it's only necessary to buy one lottery ticket.
It hasn't helped.
God must not want me in Paris, but I'm pretty sure He's wrong.
They did exactly what they wanted to do. Judas was unredeemed and therefore he loved money and not God.
Paul was redeemed and he loved God alone.
They both did exactly what they wanted to do, according to the spirit within them.
But at some point, even if you really want to stay up, you will fall asleep.
And that sleep will be against your will because something is acting upon you that is stronger than your will, namely exhaustion.
LOL. Me, too.
My math teacher wife says something about approaching zero equaling zero, and wasting money therefore, and I point out that no one without a ticket has yet won.
At this rate, she'll be proven right. :>)
There really is no good argument against the idea that the only sufficient cause of moral self-awareness is an eternal prior moral self-awareness.
And that logic is why you get the big bucks. 8~)
It would be fun to have the last laugh, wouldn't it? Somebody has to win.
Agreed. They do pull the name out of the hat, and someone does win.
Now, “fairness” and lack of manipulation are entirely different subjects. I’ve seen nothing yet to make me worry about those areas, but it does cross my mind. It would be impossible to prove, of course.
What do these verses teach that the Catohlic Church does not teach?
That is why Protestantism is not merely scripturally wrong, but socially harmful.
For God, there is no time. He sees your past, present and future all at once. Hence, predestination coexists with free will.
For about a tenth time on this thread someone quotes to me Eph 2 trying to stop at verse 9. But verse 10 is what I was alluding to in my post: "we are [God's] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them".
Ephesians 2:8-10 teaches salvation by grace alone; grace is not by our works; faith and works both are product of grace and both are necessary for salvation, and God alone gets the glory.
... and it will cause a man to walk in the good works prepared for him. We are saved by grace alone through faith and works and not by faith alone, Eph. 2:8-10, glory be to God.
My current take on how both determinism and free will can co-exist has to do with the timing the fall and a decree from God to fix it. What if God permitted an exercise in self-determination for a purpose, and then stepped in with a pre-plan He had to repair it when the damage was evident?
This is simply a rehash no doubt of other arguments about the timing of the decree, but it's where I'm looking at the present time.
Beyond that, I see no way to avoid admitting to determinism. Dr E and B-D have done a decent job of getting me in touch with the argument on their side.
I remain, though, a firm advocate of Christian Unity for I do not believe the church will fail. That ties me very closely with historic Christian orthodoxy, and I consider orthodox independents, orthodox orthodox, and orthodox catholics to be my brothers and sisters. (With some doctrinal reservations about certain doctrines that are not part and parcel of historic orthodoxy.)
"That is probably because as mortals we are merely observers "in" space/time, traveling along a short worldline from our physical birth to our physical death.That is our observer problem as mortals.
But of a truth, God has no such limitation.
And there may be more than one dimension of time. What we consider as a line could be a plane or volume."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
AHA! Dear Sister: you just "tickled my 'universal now' antennae..." '-)
Rest assured, I am "still working on it" -- and am trending toward volumetric time. But trying to illustrate multidimensional concepts on a two-dimensional computer screen is, to say the least, proving to be "challenging". ;-}
Hint: Despite the vanities of all our "centrisms", it is most unlikely that we are precisely "on" -- or, even, anywhere near -- the "most direct arrow of time" between creation and the present state of the Universe!
Suffice it to say that I may have to take us all the way back to the "ultra-centrism" of an infant in the womb to finally extend our vision out to how our all-dimensional Creator might perceive -- or be able to describe to us -- an event like this one: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2552720/posts via His 'universal now'!
Did you read the scriptures I listed for you? Because if you did, and you read the above scripture, you will see that we aren't going through the tribulation. We will be raptured before the tribulation begins. God has not appointed us to wrath.
Does the Catholic Church believe and teach this?
Okay. I'll go with the teachings of Jesus, Paul, and the rest of the Apostles.
It appears you may be interested in my exploration of the concept of "His 'universal time''". (See my #854...)
But there is no "free" will (a free-standing, sui-generis desire), because desire, by definition, arises by the perceived lack of something (hence, why would God have a will?) , and our chocies are not without influence because choices, by definition, cannot be equal. How does that translate into "life matters" and 'life, therefore, has meaning?"
I suppose by "matters" you are saying it is consequential and by "meaning" that it has purpose; but "consequential" is to say importance, and "purpose" is to say a goal. So, then, it seems like you are saying the purpose of life is to make decisions that are of consequence to us. That's like saying the purpose of life is to live. Pretty circular.
And then we have a problem with those individuals whose life was decided by someone else, such as Judas and Paul. :)
WRONG TO THE MAX
AGAIN.
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