Posted on 01/03/2010 10:30:30 PM PST by Gamecock
Just to tie it up rhetorically, since God has "all the power that is" therefore we can see that the ability to lie is not, strictly speaking a "power."
To me, this has important, what, resonances with the whole question of free will and the rest.
As I've said before, SOMETIMES Calvinists and the "irresistible grace" crew appear to be denying freedom, but I'm not sure that's right. When God shows even the slightest hint of His love and glory, it is freedom to affirm, and slavery to reject. Whether and how one can "freely" chose slavery is another question. But similarly, when we feelthy papists insist on "free will" WE are the ones who appear to be put in the position of saying that it's an exercise of freedom to choose fornication over enjoying the Truth.
My latest infatuation is with a very nice but difficult book, very Catholic I have to say, which looks at this question in terms of Nominalism and "Scholastic Realism". The book is by Servais Pinckaers, O.P. (he's Belgian) and it's title is The Sources of Christian Ethics. It's a slog, but an interesting slog.
The relevance is that Pinckaers argues that the "Freedom from what?" idea of freedom comes from Nominalism, and that Nominalism is pretty much the focus of evil in the late medieval (intellectual) world.
He suggests, following Aquinas, that instead the will is directed to "the good" (which is more than moral good) and to be attracted to what is not good is a defect of the will, and therefore a compromise of freedom. Try this:
The ability of free will to choose between various things in conformity with the end ['end' as in 'that for the sake of which', man was created with the 'end' of the vision of God] shows the perfection of freedom; but to choose something not ordered to the end, that is, to sin, evinces a defect of freedom. Therefore the angels, who cannot sin, enjoy greater freedom of choice than do we, who can.But to make a LONG, LONG argument short, Pinckaers proposes (following Aquinas) that freedom is "Freedom FOR excellence" before it is freedom FROM anything. I would add that it is because we are sinners and everything we see is affected by that, it is quite understandable that our first thought of freedom would be "freedom from." But as we live, pray, think the Gospel, we see that freedom is really freedom TOWARD.Summa, First Part, question 62, article 8, reply to objection 3
FWIW.
Turning to other news: Go directly to your library and pick up Edward Feser's The Last Superstition for a rollicking good time refuting atheism. The guy is trained as a philosopher and writes like Ann Coulter. It is more fun than you can imagine.
Have a great day.
Your list of the various orders of priests and nuns has nothing at all to do with denominations, whose differences are based on dogma and doctrine. Comparing Catholic religious orders as if their Catholic doctrine was not the same is like suggesting that because the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines or Coast Guard do things differently that one of them was somehow not under the Commander in Chief.
The comparison of discipline to doctrine simply falls flat on its face, although it's nice to see the various orders in one list.
Baptists, Presbyterians et al are under one Commander in Chief. Someone we like to call God.
Roman Catholics have added beaurocracy.
I'll take bureaucracy over mutiny.
Jesus Christ is the head of the Catholic Church.
No matter what you like to call him, Jean Calvin is NOT God.
Please be specific on the "shoddy research", it seems you would rather call names than deal with what he writes
We don’t see Calvin as God.
But I can see your confusion, seeing that you are from a faith group that worships Mary and a host of other idols.
They will NEVER understand this. They are actually proud of the statement below:
"Calvinism is the gospel" (Charles Spurgeon)
That's not true.
I'm Catholic.
Sure it is:
Is the first one Ho CHi Minh? And who are the gentlemen with former Father Calvin?
LOL, why? Simply look at the replies others have made exposing same. I have no need to repeat what many others have shown here in this thread.
Yes, the first one is Ho Chi Minh.
The others shown with Calvin are William Farel, Theodore Beza, and John Knox. As an aside, Calvin was NEVER an ordained Catholic priest, his training was as a lawyer.
Thanks for the correction on Calvin.
Not at all.
What matters is the intent of the individual, and you don't get to decide that.
There's a biblical passage about that very thing. ( ^: }
“The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God.... “
Please provide scriptural warrant for this statement.
That dates from the 18th Century Synod that defined the Westminster Confession. Interesting that he quotes a human defined document from 1700+ years AFTER the Crucifiction as the last and authoritative word on the subject of The Word.
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