Posted on 12/29/2001 1:02:06 PM PST by AndrewSshi
Interestingly, the "allein" is theologically correct in making Paul's point, even if it is not transliterally correct. Unfortunately, this paraphrastic approach by Luther was a tactical blunder on his part. He was irked at Rome's refusal to get Paul's point, but by using the "allein" to make Paul's point crystal clear, the RCs got to charge Luther with adding to the Scriptures.
Under this pretext, they got to ignore Luther's point--which really was Paul's point.
To appreciate what I am saying, see my #54.
I realized that you would take exception, so I tried to be gentle enough to lay much of the blame on the Catholic Encyclopedia. (I really was trying to be nice. Some of the stuff in your paper was pretty good, and all of it was eloquent!)
Having read the discussions of predestination in the Catholic Encyclopedia, I notice that they invariably make trite, often completely artificial distinctions between Augustinian predestination and Calvinistic predestination. They have to do this. Why? Because Luther and Calvin really did embarrass Rome over and over and over by citing Augustine. (Luther and Calvin understood Augustine very well. Sixteenth Century Rome did not.)
At the bottom line, there are no terribly important distinctions between Augustinian and Calvinistic predestination. They are both absolute, double-predestination positions.
Romanists almost invariably wind up trying to insinuate that Augustine didn't really assert predestination so much as he asserted God's foreknowledge. But Luther (an Augustinian monk) correctly pointed out the God's foreknowledge is fixative and not merely precognitive. And that was Augustine's position. God's foreknowledge is a planning faculty, a thing of awful deliberation.
To illustrate the implications of this, I would point out that Romanists and Arminians try to schmooze over the issues of God's will when they exalt man's will in the overall picture. They say God elects certain sinners only because He foresaw that they would freely believe the gospel. But Augustine specifically denied this. He maintained that foresight of faith cannot be the grounds of election, since the Bible clearly teaches that faith stems from being elect--not the other way around.
And the point you made about Augustine saying that Adam freely chose to sin in Eden is moot. The Calvinist also maintains that Adam freely chose to sin.
In fact, the thoughtful Calvinist actually believes that man does exercise true free will in all of his choices. The Romanists never understood this, because they were determined to define free will as the power of contrary choice (which is actually ludicrous, when you think about the will is). In the interests of steering well clear of that particular error (heck, even God does not have the power of contrary choice!), the Reformers were ultimately forced to re-define the terminology. They chose to speak of free agency rather than the badly misunderstood idea of free will.
But the Reformers' idea of free agency was nothing more than Augustine's idea of free will.
The whole controversy is very involved and occasionally very deep. And in my opinion there have been no RC theologians since Bishop Jansen who have really understood Augustine. (And as an Augustinian/Calvinistic/Biblical predestinarian myself, I actually think the whole thing is a bit funny. So, I urge you to appreciate where I am coming from. I am not trying to be cruel in my criticism.)
Oh, I very much understand. But then, when working with Augustine in the article, I was not using the Catholic Encyclopedia, since it is something of a biased source. What I got out of my reading of On the Predestination of the Saints and The Problem of Free Choice was that single predestination is in there, but double predestination is not. St. Augustine of Hippo sounds Calvinist in some places, but I think to call him such is presenting a bit less of the picture. As to what Augustine thought of predistination as foreknowledge, you have to distinguish between what he wrote earlier in his career and what he wrote later in his career. Earlier in his career, he did, in fact maintain that predestination came through foreknowledge. Later, under the influence of the Pauline letters, he came to the conclusion that predestination was, in fact, an active work of God (which I stated in the article). My only contention is that he was not a proponent of double predestination, and was much less willing to look at the ultimate cause of the Fall than Calvin would be.
Sorry, but man has free will to accept or reject God. God does not force himself on anyone.
You are missing an important point. You are missing everything in the discussion, in fact. You need to think again about what free will is and what it is not.
More to the point, perhaps, you need to think about what the will is. It is not something divorced from the person. It is an expression of the person himself. If we consider the will as a faculty, it is the choosing faculty. The person himself exercises his will. The will is actually the person's choosing.
This creates an enormous mess which you have overlooked, I think. The problem is, fallen sinners are EVIL.
***
Augustine first, then the Scholastic theologians, then Calvin--then all of the rest of the Reformers and the majority of the Anabaptists!--all correctly pointed out that the will is NOT SUSPENDED ABOVE THE PERSON.
The Jesuits argued this idea of "the suspension of the will" when they tried to defend the Papacy against the monumentally serious charges brought by the Protestants, but the Jesuit position is actually patently stupid.
My point is that the will is obviously not a neutral faculty. It is an expression of the sinner.
As I said earlier, fallen sinners are evil. They love darkness rather than light. Apart from supernatural regeneration, they will not receive Truth in a saving way. They will freely chose not to do so.
In other words, their free will is their disaster, because their free will, although free in obvious respect of responsible choosing, is a will bound to their natures. And they are by nature only evil.
Apart from sovereign regeneration by the Spirit, their free will is oddly but necessarily enslaved in their own evil. Apart from supernatural regeneration, they are doomed in unbelief. The problem is, they prefer unbelief. They are hardened idolaters. They are under Satanic power.
What is even more important, the Lord Jesus Himself clearly condemns the notion that evil folks can/will chose the good in a saving way. He says that they WON'T.
So, the idea that man has free will is true. A man will always do as he pleases. But an unregenerate sinner will never be pleased to choose from the heart that which is contrary to his Christ-hating, Creator-hating, Truth-hating heart!
The sinner has to be supernaturally given a new nature before he will repent and believe the gospel. Thus, regeneration has to precede conversion, not follow conversion.
(This is why we pray to the Lord for the conversion of sinners!)
Check me out on this. This historic Protestant perspective is taught practically everywhere in the Bible.
In other words, the will of man is not free in the sense which people thoughtlessly assume for it!
I am going to have to drop off the thread for now, but I would hereby invite OrthoxPresbyterian to share any thoughts he might have concerning Augustine.
The traditional Christian doctrine derived from Augustine is taught nowhere in the Bible.
The underlying doctrinal error of all Augustinian teaching is an incorrect understanding of sin. Sin is not a substance, it is a quality that pertains to only one thing, choice. Wrong choices are sin, right choice are righteousness. If the ability to choose does not exist, because of inability, ingnorance, or any other limitation, there is no moral responsibility and sin becomes an impossiblity.
Check it out. This is taught everywhere in the Bible.
Hank
I don't get my position from Augustine.
I don't get my position from Augustine.
I don't believe anyone needs to "figure out" how bad sin is. It is pretty clearly taught, what it is, and what its consequences are.
One thing for sure, you can't know how bad a thing is, until you know what it is, and if your beliefs are from a church that is Calvinistic, or from the Bible misinterpreted by them, you believe it is something that happens to you, not something you do. You believe sin is a condition you inherited and excuse your sin on the basis of, you can't help it, because you were born that way.
When you learn that sin is what you do, by your own choice, and not something foisted on you by your parents, or great-great-great...grandparents (such as Adam and Eve), you will begin to understand how terrible sin is.
Hank
This is exactly true! Thanks for all your insightful comments in this post. They're "right on"!!
Another "right on" post! I've looked for something I could add, but it appears that you've already nailed everything of importance (that I can think of) down.:D
It is what you ARE that results in what you *will* do.
Have you never read the Scripture that shows that it is the bad "tree" that is the problem ... the fruit is only the "natural result" (or effect) of the problem.
This is not some doctrine, it is life to a dead man, you can't just sit and "discuss" something that you have not experienced.
Well speak for yourself, I'm not a fruit.
Organic fruit is the involuntary product of a plants reproductive funtion. The mataphor our Lord uses, (you seem to have forgotten the reference) are as follows:
Matthew 7:17-19 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Luke 6:43 For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Of course these teach exactly the opposite of what you think they teach. Jesus is not talking about the cause of the fruit, but how to determine a good tree from a corrupt tree. No matter what one believes, or how stronly they believe it, how many times they've been baptized, confessed their sins, or prayed, if they continue to sin, they are corrupt. It does not matter if they are a preacher, priest, theologian, or Bible teacher, if they sin, they are corrupt.
If you think Jesus was teaching that sinners sin because their nature makes them sin, you have no idea what sin is. Do you think sin is something that happens to you, and that God judges people for what happens to them? Find a good concordance and find out how many times the Bible says people will be judged according to their works. Do you just throw those verses out out?
Then compare these words of Jesus:
John 5:28&29 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
Hank
That would be funny, if it wasn't a serious matter. Do you know that you're misrepresenting the Scriptural teachings of Calvin by claiming he taught that sin is just something that "happens to you"?
I'm sure you didn't mean to do that, did you?
This is not my position. It's not even close. I do not maintain that sin is merely "an inherited condition." My position is that so long as you remain unregenerate, you are a veritable demon deserving damnation.
That is much more severe than your position. Think about it some more.
I don't know if you realize it, but your whole post just proved my point about the "tree" being responsible for the fruit. I equated you (and all human beings) to "trees" ... not "fruits" and you just turned it totally around. How does that happen?
Here is your above quote with "trees" substituted for "they":
".... trees that have done good (bore good fruit), unto the resurrection of life; and trees that have done evil (bore bad fruit), unto the resurrection of damnation...".
And as you plainly showed from the Scriptures a corrupt tree cannot bear "good fruit". A corrupt unregenerate sinner (tree) cannot choose to "do good" (bear good fruit). It is IMPOSSIBLE.
The corrupt is corrupt. It cannot be anything different from what it is.
That is, unless the Sovereign God bestows His saving grace on it and redeems it from corruption and makes it Holy. Only then can it bear good fruit.
To say it another way, unless God imputes the goodness (holiness) of Jesus to the corrupt sinner (tree) it is impossible for that sinner (tree) to bear good fruit.
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