Bible Question:
This to me is fundamental: Assumption:God is the creator of all that exists. The "buck stops here", he is all powerful, all knowing, and all present. My question is this: If God knows everything that is going to happen before it happens, then how are things not predestined? If, even in my own mind I am making my own choices (because I cannot see the future), how is that really true? If "God" already knows what choices I'm going to make, how is my life not already predetermined? Before I "accept and beleive" I need to have this and other questions answered to my satisfaction! Before I can study the content I must first accept the concept. |
Bible Answer: Iluvatar, With a nod to JRRT may I suggest that the mystery of predestination and free wil is no mor difficult or easy that the concept that God is perfectly both just and merciful. Exacly how that is worked out in prefection is know to God alone. We know only that both predestination and free will are asserted in Scripture. That being said let me offer a fee thoughts for consideration, which will not solve the mystery but may shed some light on it. "1742 Freedom and grace. The grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart. On the contrary, as Christian experience attests especially in prayer, the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world: Almighty and merciful God, in your goodness take away from us all that is harmful, so that, made ready both in mind and body, we may freely accomplish your will. 600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of "predestination", he includes in it each person's free response to his grace: "In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place."[Acts 4:27-28; cf Psalms 2:1-2] For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.[cf Matthew 25:54; John 18:36; 19:11; Acts 3:17-18] 1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance":[2 Peter 3:9]... 2012 "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him . . . For those whom he fore knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified."[Romans 8:28-30 2002 God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of "eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:.." If nothing else avails, pray that God willl greet you personally like Saint Paul by knowking you off your horse and convincing you in person. It has happened to me an innumerable others. It can happen to you too. The Catechism Emmaus |
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Questions and/or Subjects for Bible general Archive 2 | Author | ||
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AndyBTeresaB | ||
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churchladies101 | ||
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iluvatar | ||
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Emmaus | ||
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captaincrunch | ||
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Ray | ||
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Renovate Me | ||
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time2pray | ||
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biblesearcher | ||
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Remdo | ||
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Remdo | ||
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joyfulnjesus |