Why not hedonism?

[Kreuzritter]

Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.

And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.

It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."

Then if God is condemning  men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.

Exactly. Case closed.

[Vetus Ordo]

Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.

And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.

It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."

Then if God is condemning  men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.

Exactly. Case closed.

If it were that simple, it would have been closed ages ago.

[Gardener]

And also the same if the answer was to be found in Augustine et al.

[Non Nobis]

God could close the case (not in the manner of men). We just muddle around trying to make sense of it (some better than others, I think).  I can't believe that Fr. Most has closed it either.

[Arvinger]

Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.

And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.

It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."

Then if God is condemning  men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.

Exactly. Case closed.

The problem is that acceptance of grace is in itself a grace. If man can't do anything without God's grace, then he can't accept the graces necessary for salvation without receiving a grace of acceptance of these graces.

Therefore, saying "God condemns them for rejection of graces" is merely moving a problem one step back - if they rejected the graces, it means that God did not give them grace of acceptance of graces. Unless you want to say that man is able to accept graces by his own power, apart from God's grace, which leads to semi-Pelagianism.

As I wrote numerous times here, no theological system accurately explains predestination, all of them taking to logical conclusion result in Calvinism or semi-Pelagianism. We have to accept that predestination is a mystery which we cannot understand.

[awkwardcustomer]

God knows what will happen.  Man chooses what he does.  Man has free will, yet God already knows.  Man will never be able to understand how this is possible.

Why is this impossible to understand? It's quite simple.  God knows the choices a man will make because God is not bound by time. 

Free will, if it means anything at all, has to mean the freedom to choose evil.  God knows which of us will choose evil because He can 'see' into the future, meaning He sees past, present and future as the eternal 'now'.

What's so difficult?


 

[Kreuzritter]

The problem is that acceptance of grace is in itself a grace. If man can't do anything without God's grace, then he can't accept the graces necessary for salvation without receiving a grace of acceptance of these graces.

That's not a problem. Your problem is insisting upon confusing the grace that makes this freely-willed acceptance possible with God magically making a man's will no longer his own, believing man must turned into a puppet on a string by the grace to accept grace, yet still actually will something.

Receiving un-asked-for power to do something, even if that something is to exercise my will to make a particular choice, is not a violation of the freedom of my will in general or in that decision.

Therefore, saying "God condemns them for rejection of graces" is merely moving a problem one step back - if they rejected the graces, it means that God did not give them grace of acceptance of graces.

No, it doesn't. It just means they exercised their free will to refuse to cooperate.

Unless you want to say that man is able to accept graces by his own power, apart from God's grace, which leads to semi-Pelagianism.

You're just not getting it. Without God's grace, there's no grace to accept in the first place, leaving man lost, and without a prevenient grace, man's will, bogged down in sin, is not free to choose to accept it, and so has no way to salvation. That grace frees and empowers the will to be able choose God does not mean just its opposite.

Beliveing in man actually having a really real free will is not any kind of Pelagianism, regardless of your turn of phrase.

As I wrote numerous times here, no theological system accurately explains predestination, all of them taking to logical conclusion result in Calvinism or semi-Pelagianism.

Moot. We don't care. Even your idea of "semi-Pelagianism", straw man alternative that it is, has never been condemned by the Church, and we therefore have no reason to even reject it, as you've formulated it, as some would-be "semi-heresy".

We have to accept that predestination is a mystery which we cannot understand.

That doesn't resolve a contradiction. It leaves it there, and no appeal to a "mystery", that ubiquitous Latin copout, will ever make a logical contradiction possible. The proper response to a reductio ad absurdum is to get rid of a false premise that led one to it, not to declare the question of how a contradiction is possible a mystery so you can just stick with it.

[Kreuzritter]

God knows what will happen.  Man chooses what he does.  Man has free will, yet God already knows.  Man will never be able to understand how this is possible.

Why is this impossible to understand? It's quite simple.  God knows the choices a man will make because God is not bound by time. 

Free will, if it means anything at all, has to mean the freedom to choose evil.  God knows which of us will choose evil because He can 'see' into the future, meaning He sees past, present and future as the eternal 'now'.

What's so difficult?

I'm certain that none of you can rigorously demonstrate, without hidden premises, how a subject's volitional freedom and foreknowledge of his choice are logically exclusive of one another.

People in general are labouring under a fundamental misunderstanding of the freedom of the subject and ingrained mechanistic thinking. A subject is intrinsically free, and in that sense his will is free, namely, a subject's freely willed choices ultimately originate out of himself as first cause, but his will is never free of himself, and so what is chosen may originate in a free will but that choice may nevertheless necessarily occur. But if it is necessary, it can be foreknown with certainty. You, to the contrary, implicitly assume that foreknowledge of an event is only possible if that event is predetermined by some causal chain that does not begin in the subject himself, confusing necessity and causation. It's the same prejudice that lies behind all rejection of middle knowledge.

One doesn't even need to appeal to transcendence. God's knowledge is not dependent upon him sitting outside of time seeing it all at once, nor upon his having mechanically predetermined everything, for God knows intimately the nature of everything, and of every spirit, free as they may be, and not all necessity is a causal necessity.

[awkwardcustomer]

I'm certain that none of you can rigorously demonstrate, without hidden premises, how a subject's volitional freedom and foreknowledge of his choice are logically exclusive of one another.

I'm certain too.

You, to the contrary, implicitly assume that foreknowledge of an event is only possible if that event is predetermined by some causal chain that does not begin in the subject himself, confusing necessity and causation. It's the same prejudice that lies behind all rejection of middle knowledge.

I'm not.  My assumption is that free will necessarily includes the freedom to choose evil, and the choice to reject God comes entirely from the individual who makes that choice.  It is his choice in every sense of the word.

Lucifer and the angels who rebelled with him weren't fallen when they made that choice.  Adam and Eve weren't fallen when they chose to eat the apple.  Give angels and men free will and a fair number of each will choose evil, even without the stain of Original Sin on them.  There is no causation of events beginning outside the individual angel or man which determines the decision to reject God.

One doesn't even need to appeal to transcendence. God's knowledge is not dependent upon him sitting outside of time seeing it all at once, nor upon his having mechanically predetermined everything, for God knows intimately the nature of everything, and of every spirit, free as they may be, and not all necessity is a causal necessity.

Excellent point.

God knows who will turn to evil in their innermost wills, or should it be hearts?  I'm not sure where we disagree.  What I was asking was - if God's favourite angel can rebel and a third of the angels follow him, and if Adam and Eve can also choose to rebel before they fell, why is anyone surprised that a sizeable portion of fallen human beings should make the same choice, and would have made that same choice even if they had not suffered the effects of Original Sin.

This is the question I'm trying to get at.  Those who rebel against God - would they have made that choice even before the Fall, just like Adam, Eve and the fallen angels?  If so, then their rejection of God's grace makes perfect sense.  God knows this, and let's them get on with it. 

Doesn't that mean that the only way to prevent evil is to prevent a sizeable portion of angels and men from freely choosing evil.  And the only way to do that was for God not to create rational beings in the first place.   

[awkwardcustomer]

Do those who complain about the existence of evil think that God should not have created rational creatures with free will?

[Davis Blank - EG]

I'm certain that none of you can rigorously demonstrate, without hidden premises, how a subject's volitional freedom and foreknowledge of his choice are logically exclusive of one another.

What we know is our human experience.  We can hypothesize all sorts of ways around what appears to violate our human experience and show that they are not excluded by logic, but that does not thus make it any less of a head-scratcher.  We can hypothesize the timeless vs. timed and explain it that way, or we can hypothesize that choice might yet still necessarily come.  Similarly physicists can hypothesize the fifth dimension, tell you some properties about it, but when asked to close your eyes and visualize the fifth dimension is it any more clear than before?  These are still boggling to us as they are alien to our experience.

Given that I already accept that man has free will and that God knows our future, it matters not to me that this appears to be impossible as per our human experience.  I am certain that somehow this works out via unknown unknowns.  That I cannot grasp the ways of the infinite God is not a shock.

As the blind man can believe that color exists, yet utterly be incapable of even imagining what this means, so too can I believe that freewill and predestination do not exclude each other, despite being unable to internalize what this looks like.

Given what else we accept, that to our human experience makes no sense, I do not know why people get hung up over freewill + predestination.  Bodiless living creatures, souls / spirits, timelessness, the Trinity, and the list goes on and on.  This is just another part of divine revelation and its odd that this one time and time again receives so much hyper-focus out of a pack of other beliefs which could easily be doubted under such scrutiny as well.  This is also why I think the hyper-focus on logic leads to eventual apostasy across society over the long run.

[Vetus Ordo]

The only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.

Mankind is but a result of God's will, nothing more.

Everything else is just the result of humanist delirium or hubris.

[Davis Blank - EG]

The only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.

Do I freely choose to type this reply, did God force it, or does God merely already know about it (yet I freely chose the wording)?

[Vetus Ordo]

The only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.

Do I freely choose to type this reply, did God force it, or does God merely already know about it (yet I freely chose the wording)?

God has determined from all eternity whatsoever comes to pass. Everything. Every atom out there, every subatomic particle in the vacuum, everything, even my fingers as they type right now cannot type if not by the will of God. No creature can frustrate His will because every creature is a product of His eternal will. "And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" (Daniel 4:35)

All existence, including this very conversation, is a product of His will. Yes, we can try to discern the complexities and subtleties of the chain of causation, and all its tensions with the notion of personal accountability, but the bottom line is God's absolute sovereignty and freedom. Either that, or He is simply an impotent sky-god that is determined by His creatures, unable to accomplish that which He has determined that should come to pass. Not the God of Scripture. Or the God that became incarnate in Christ.

[Non Nobis]

The only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.

Do I freely choose to type this reply, did God force it, or does God merely already know about it (yet I freely chose the wording)?

God has determined from all eternity whatsoever comes to pass. Everything. Every atom out there, every subatomic particle in the vacuum, everything, even my fingers as they type right now cannot type if not by the will of God. No creature can frustrate His will because every creature is a product of His eternal will. "And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" (Daniel 4:35)

All existence, including this very conversation, is a product of His will. Yes, we can try to discern the complexities and subtleties of the chain of causation, and all its tensions with the notion of personal accountability, but the bottom line is God's absolute sovereignty and freedom. Either that, or He is simply an impotent sky-god that is determined by His creatures, unable to accomplish that which He has determined that should come to pass. Not the God of Scripture. Or the God that became incarnate in Christ.

The "complexities and subtleties of the chain of causation" can't be totally belittled or you end up denying the Catholic doctrine of free will.

Or does "hopeful fatalist" mean that you are not Catholic?

I think we are thinking anthromorphically when we interpret Scripture (or the true part of what you said) so as to turn God into a  puppet master that destroys freedom in His creatures.

We can't "figure God out" satisfactorily in our own heads; we can't satisfactorily resolve all the complexities. At SOME point we  have to admit Divine mystery.  But we have to accept two absolute truths: the absolute sovereignty of God and man's free will.   We rush to the conclusion that there is a contradiction, but we don't understand God's causality. 

Absolutely sovereign, God didn't have to create man. Absolutely sovereign, He created man in His own image and likeness, with a will free like (an image of) His own. Man wills  freely, but does not (can not) escape God's sovereignty.