To: aruanan; Mr Rogers
If the choice is all God's then, by the same token, it will do no good to pray for the souls of others. ...You cannot have determinism and, at the same time, posit will and deliberate action by those who are determined. You may wish to take the matter up with our Lord for this is what He told us:
Mat 6:7-8 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Our Father knows what we're going to ask. That isn't determinism, that's predestination. That still doesn't mean that we shouldn't ask. Whether He says "Yes" or "No", it is only through pray that we can understand the will of God for our lives.
319 posted on
08/30/2011 5:42:40 PM PDT by
HarleyD
To: HarleyD; Mr Rogers
Our Father knows what we're going to ask. That isn't determinism, that's predestination. That still doesn't mean that we shouldn't ask. Whether He says "Yes" or "No", it is only through pray that we can understand the will of God for our lives.
This is Calvinism Lite. I'm surprised that you're overlooking so much of Calvin and of more latter day Calvinists that is thoroughgoing determinism that declares God as the one who directs each and every thing down to the motion of each atom and molecule in the entire universe. When they claim this type of determinism, it doesn't matter if they call it "predestination" and posit things contradictory to it in an effort to rescue their sensibilities from the true outcome of their logic.
Predestination is determinism. The only difference between materialistic determinism and theological determinism, called predestination, is that the latter claims that there is absolutely no possibility of anything happening any other way than it was planned and set into motion and directed irrevocably to a preordained end. With the latter there is not even the possibility of positing different outcomes based on a hypothetical alteration in an initial set of conditions.
327 posted on
08/30/2011 7:25:27 PM PDT by
aruanan
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