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To: Aquinasfan; Charles Henrickson
Unaided reason tells us that God is Good.

Yes, but the Calvinist unaided reason tells us that God is omnipotent and omniscient, therefore if X is eternally damned, then God made him. Charles Henrickson's point (really, the Lutheran Synod's position as I understood it) was that these two views that humans have of God,-- God of love and God of power, are not reconcilable under pure reason.

This may not be a proper thread to discuss this at length.

Pastor, why do you think the Muslims persist in their faith?

44 posted on 11/02/2001 7:53:18 AM PST by annalex
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To: annalex
If you proceed from certain passages in the Bible then the argument has a certain logical validity. You're right.

But if you begin from unaided reason, the double-predestination doctrine can be seen to be unreasonable.

So there is a paradox. The conclusion derived from First Principles of natural reason apparently contradicts the conclusion derived from certain Scriptural passages. Where does a Christian go from here? The Catholic would defer to unaided reason, since conclusions derived from First Principles are known with certainty. Therefore, the Catholic would conclude (based on the belief that the Bible is inspired) that the Scriptural contradiction is an apparent contradiction or paradox, since Reason cannot contradict Faith (since God is the author of both).

The Catholic would then look to the Church's teaching on the matter or the Church's infallible interpretation of Scripture. With regard to the passages frequently cited by Calvinists which say that "God hated..." the explanation is that the phrase "God hated..." is a Jewish idiom with a different meaning than what we would ascribe to the phrase.

65 posted on 11/02/2001 10:08:17 AM PST by Aquinasfan
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