That is unless man's choice is ALWAYS against God. If that is the case, as scriptures teaches, then man and God is at enmity with one another. Man will never do the things of God. God is good and wishes to reconcile this relationship no matter how poorly treated He is by man. And since God is so good and so perfect, He cannot look upon imperfection.
Everything you see around you, all the millions of Christians who have been saved throughout the ages, are simply God calling a people out for Himself by His grace. Man, who strives with God, will NOT come to Him unless God calls Him. So in one aspect you're correct, EVERYTHING that is done is done by God for good-to achieve His end purpose of calling His people.
But you're assuming that God would not be good unless He called EVERYONE equally. I believe that is a wrong assumption. If that were the case everyone on the Damascus Road would have seen and heard the same thing Paul saw. God choose who He wants to reveal Himself to.
Foreknowledge to God does not mean thinking and than creating in succession,it means knowing all at once,thus knowledge of evil is not a created predestined evil or God would be moved from good to evil having both evil and good in His essence. This is a Zeus God,not Christ
And this statement proves my point. You believe that if something REALLY bad happens then it certainly can't be God because God is "good". Yet the scriptures tells us that ALL things work together for good with those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.
Thus if something really bad happens to us you may chalk it up to fate, bad luck, ying-yang, or something else. Scripture on the other hand teaches that all things are meant to benefit us, including the bad things.
Consider the following in Amos:
Amo 4:7 "I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither;
Amo 4:8 so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Amo 4:9 "I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Amo 4:10 "I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, [fn] and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Amo 4:11 "I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand [fn] plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Blessed Augustine did not consider.....Saint Thomas Aquinas rightfully points out
This article isn't about Aquinas. It is about Augustine. And it makes an untrue claim that Augustine believed in free will. He may have in his earlier days but as he grew in his faith he understood this to be heretical doctrine-so much that he destroy many of his life's works. And he learned this to be a heretical doctrine from Cyprian, one of the great pillars of the early church. As Augustine correctly points out, we are saved NOT because we believe in God. Rather, as the scriptures and Augustine teaches, we are saved to believe in God and foster good works. If Aquinas believed otherwise, then he was simply a heretic and Augustine would have told him so.
Dear brother , wrap your mind around the fact that God is unchanging and immovable and God is love according to Scriptures along with being the first cause- which has to always be love because that is His essence
Anything that differs from love can NOT be from God or God would be moved and changed
Every one of us was willed Love by God from eternity,it is man who freely wills against that “first cause” love ,not God- who does not change.
The fullness of Scripture revealed through Christ bears out God of love, and many things in the Old Testament are “anti types” of what God is NOT that was revealed in Christ that points to unchanging love-Which IS the essence of God
That God is His own Essence*- Saint Thomas Aquinas
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/etext/gc1_21.htm
IN everything that is not its own essence, quiddity, or nature, there must be some composition. For since in everything its own essence is contained, — if in anything there were contained nothing but its essence, the whole of that thing would be its essence, and so itself would be its own essence. If then anything is not its own essence, there must be something in that thing besides its essence, and so there must be in it composition. Hence also the essence in compound things is spoken of as a part, as humanity in man. But it has been shown that in God there is no composition. God therefore is His own essence.
2. That alone is reckoned to be beyond the essence of a thing, which does not enter into its definition: for the definition declares what the thing essentially is. But the accidents of a thing are the only points about it which fall not within the definition: therefore the accidents are the only points about a thing besides its essence. But in God there are no accidents, as will be shown (Chap. XXIII): therefore there is nothing in Him besides His essence.
3. The forms that are not predicable of subsistent things, whether in the universal or in the singular, are forms that do not of themselves subsist singly, individualised in themselves. It is not said that Socrates or man or animal is whiteness; because whiteness is not anything subsisting singly in itself, but is individualised by the substance in which it exists. Also the essences or quiddities of genera or species are individualised according to the definite matter of this or that individual, although the generic or specific quiddity includes form and matter in general: hence it is not said that Socrates or man is humanity. But the Divine Essence is something existing singly by itself, and individualised in itself, as will be shown (Chap. XLII). The Divine Essence therefore is predicated of God in such a way that it can be said: ‘God is His own essence