On Election and Free-will

[The Squalid Wanderer]

I would be grateful for any opinions on the following:

In the realm of grace, election does not interfere with man's exercise of his own free will. It is by his voluntary decision that man receives or rejects Jesus Christ offered to him in the gospel. It is true that in the case of the believer he comes to recognise that, all unknown to him, God's purpose of love lay behind it all, giving point to Augustine's confession; 'We had not sought thee, if Thou hadst not first found us'. When God made man in His own image, moral spiritual freedom was involved in that relationship and God respects the freedom of action conferred on His creation. He decrees not to hinder even the sinful acts of free moral agents, even when He has decreed to regulate and control their results. He invested man with the Power not to sin as well as with the capacity to sin, and man must accept the responsibility for the exercise of his free choice. For this reason God sustains man's free-will, and freedom to sin if he chooses, and He sustains his free will even in sinning. This freedom of choice is inherent in the very constitution of man's spiritual nature. Free-will is thus as much a mark of man's created dignity as sovereignty is a mark of God's deity. Hence Augustine's dictum: 'Remove free will and there is nothing to save; remove sovereign grace and there is nothing to save with'. Thus in all our spiritual experience, though it is God that draws, it is man that comes.

 

[Reformationist]

Two questions:

First, do you only want comments by Catholic members?

Second, who said this?

Thanks,

God bless

 

[VOW]

To Reformationist:

You are ALWAYS welcome here!

/me brushes off the "Welcome Mat" at the front door


Peace,
~VOW

 

[The Squalid Wanderer]

Dear Reformationist,

Both of your questions are good, but I believe I'll only answer the first one at this time as I am hoping for an unprejudiced review of the material.

The reason I placed the question here was to see if such a statement was acceptable to Catholic theological sensibilities. I would welcome your reply as well though, should you see fit to give it.

 

[Reformationist]

Originally posted by VOW
To Reformationist:

You are ALWAYS welcome here!

*VOW brushes off the "Welcome Mat" at the front door


Peace,
~VOW

Thank you m'dear.  You're such a sweetie.  Wait...is that a trap door under the "welcome mat?"

God bless

 

[Reformationist]

Originally posted by The Squalid Wanderer
Dear Reformationist,

Both of your questions are good, but I believe I'll only answer the first one at this time as I am hoping for an unprejudiced review of the material.

The reason I placed the question here was to see if such a statement was acceptable to Catholic theological sensibilities. I would welcome your reply as well though, should you see fit to give it.

Good enough bro.  I'll wait to respond until you get some Catholic responses.  Good luck with this thread.

God bless,

Don

 

[VOW]

/me looks in the mirror to perfect wide-eyed innocent look.

/me turns and bats eyelashes at Ref

Trapdoor? I don't know nuthin' about no trapdoor!


Peace,
~VOW

 

[The Squalid Wanderer]

O.K., I have a second statement I was wanting to pass by you folks also:

God controls his creatures and their actions, and effects his purposes through them, in perfect consistency with consistent with their natures and mode of action so determined. It is in the execution of the same unchangeable plan that God first created everything, endowed it with its properties, determined its mode of action and its mutual relations to all other things, and ever afterward continues to preserve it in the possession of its properties and to guide it in the exercise of them.

The same fact is proved by our uniform experience and observation. We are conscious of acting freely according to the law of our constitution as free agents. Even in the writings of the prophets and apostles, who wrote under the control of a specific divine influence, rendering even their selection of words infallibly accurate, we can plainly see that the spontaneous exercise of the faculties of the writers was neither superseded nor coerced. In perfect consistency with this, we see everywhere in the material world, in the lives of individual men, and in all human history, plain evidences of adjustments and combinations of elements and agents in the order of contrivance to effect purpose.

Even the human soul, in the exercise of free agency, acts according to a law of its own, excluding necessity, but not excluding certainty. The springs of free action are within the soul itself. And yet, as these are modified without interfering with the liberty of the agent by the influence of other men, they certainly cannot lie beyond the control of the Infinite Intelligence who created the soul itself, and has determined all the conditions under which its character has been formed and its activities exercised.