Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bcsaic!carroll@cs.washington.edu (Jeff Carroll) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Mormons against the Bible! Message-ID: Date: 19 Dec 90 09:49:23 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle Lines: 91 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article jhpb@garage.att.com writes: >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. Whether I believe the explicit words of Scripture is another question, but I'd be interested to know where predestination is explicitly (and unambiguously) taught. >The interrelationship between predestination, grace, and free will is >complex, and I don't think it is completely understandable to us on this >earth. I thought I'd offer a followup (though netnews is quite a bit behind at my site) from an essentially Wesleyan perspective enlightened by some understanding of 20th century physics. Obviously an omnipotent God resides outside the 4D space-time continuum. He is thus omniscient (as an external observer of the system), as well as eternal (being the same for all time, since he exists independent of time). His omniscience ensures that he knows, at all times (or, equally validly, at no particular time), the ultimate disposition of all humanity. (I ignore for the purposes of the argument the possibilities that an omnipotent God can be non-omniscient, which seems paradoxical, and that of a God who could know but doesn't care to, which is the favorite belief of a friend of mine.) If we further postulate that God created everything, then we can say that every man is predestined, in that his Creator knows at the time of his creation what his ultimate destiny will be. >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). I take issue with the implicit assertion that a man who is a model of sanctity and virtue (absent a definition of "sanctity") will automatically go to Heaven, and that others will go to Hell. Any man, regardless of the relative depravity of his life, may choose to avail himself of God's free gift of grace. But that's just the old sanctification by faith/works argument. >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. As a Wesleyan, I assert that the saved (I was going to say "elect", but I realized that that would be a capitulation to the Calvinists) are assured of their salvation by virtue of their faith in the redeeming sacrifice of Christ. >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. The question of how a creature can have a free will independent of the creator is indeed a mystery which I won't attempt to tackle (Episcopalians are good at letting mysteries remain mysterious), except to note that recent writers have suggested that whatever punishment man suffers is also chosen by free will. (C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce" has become the classic example here; see also Leslie Weatherhead's "The Christian Agnostic", which is a mistitled book if there ever was one.) >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. Umm... this argument is skating on thin ice. I assume that the limit is somewhere above seventy times seven. Jeff Carroll carroll@atc.boeing.com