Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!ubc-cs!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!rex!ukma!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jhpb@garage.att.com Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Mormons against the Bible! Message-ID: Date: 12 Dec 90 03:40:33 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Labs (Liberty Corner) Lines: 67 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu David Wagner wrote: > Predestination is explicity taught in the Bible. If you say you don't > believe in predestination, then you don't beleive the explicit words of > Scripture. We might discuss what sort of predestination there is, > but if you reject any kind of predestination, you reject the word of God. The interrelationship between predestination, grace, and free will is complex, and I don't think it is completely understandable to us on this earth. Given the above comments of David's, I thought I would take this opportunity to air St. Augustine's explanation of predestination. God grants grace to all men, that they may be saved. Some are, some are not. The reason lies in free will: some men make ill use of their free will, and resist God's grace. That's a key concept to this: the ability for man to resist grace. Now, God, being God, knows all things. In particular, He knows a man's response to any particular grace that He might give. Further, He knows EXACTLY which graces will cause any particular man to become a model of sanctity and virtue (like St. Francis of Assisi). That's where predestination comes in. By choosing the right set of graces, God can infallibly send anyone to heaven. (That's Augustine's primary contribution to the problem, if I understand correctly.) That's what predestination is in Catholic theology: predestination to Heaven (but not to Hell). What about those who end in Hell, you say? What about them? It isn't fair! God could have chosen them too! Well, remember, men have the ability to resist grace. The fact that the series of graces God gave to someone did not end in their salvation is due to one thing and one thing only: their abuse of grace. It is thus not God's fault, but the man's fault, that he is in Hell. God certainly knew what would happen, but the fault lies in the man's evil will. St. Augustine calls this choice on God's part "mystery of mysteries," and says it is vain to ask why He has chosen some and not others. There's no answer to that; it's the mystery of iniquity. Why are some people wicked and others good? There's no real explanation of that. All this leads to the following analogy about life: A man (God, in this analogy) wants to buy an apple from a little boy (a human being). He offers $100 (for an apple!). The boy says no. He comes back the next day and wants to buy an apple. The boy still says no. He comes back the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the boy, who is gradually getting older, *still* says NO. Finally, the boy has become an old man, and he dies. He can't ever sell that apple to that man, now. That's what life is like. For every human being, God has basically set a limit as to how much nonsense He will put up with. The limit isn't a stingy one ($100 for an apple!), but it's there. At some point, God lets a man die and stick to his decision for all eternity. Thus the importance of resisting God's grace as little as possible. Joe Buehler