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Friday, November 27, 2015

"I've been becoming a bit more Reformed of late, and I blame that on the Catholics"

http://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/thomas_aquinas_on_predestination

1 comment:

  1. Steve was this article written by a catholic? I know a Roman Catholic Thomist who is pretty close to Reformed doctrine when it comes to predestination and election. This is what he told me through a blog:

    You can hold everything Augustine says on Mass damnata. There are aspects of massa damnata that the Church leaves as free opinion, but numerous local synods of take up that language in the past. Certainly not condemned, though not the only opinion allowed

    As far as predestination... well that is Catholic dogma. Dumb protestants who misrepresent Catholicism aren't great on judging Augustine's catholicity now, are they?

    The entire paragraph is laughably ignorant... it is ignorant of Augustine, Reformed theology, and Catholic theology. He has obvious misunderstanding of the whole kit and kaboodle

    1. Reformed do not deny free will

    2. Augustine does not deny free will

    3. Catholics also hold that predestined=elect= by definition all those that are saved. We pray to be number among the flock of the elect. If you are not elect (meaning chosen) you are reprobate (meaning rejected). There really isn't a middle term there. If you are not elect, that means you are not numbered among those that will be with Christ. Your final destination will be hell, not because you could not have done otherwise, but because you did as you did, and God foreknew your wickedness and passed judgment. It isn't that you couldn't do X, it is that you didn't/will not.

    4. Christ said many are called, few are chosen. Leaving aside how few few is, those are Christ's words

    5. If you are among the elect, you will make it to heaven. Again, that is kind of what the word signifies. This doesn't mean you can sin all you want, it means in the end you will be penitent, should you have fallen.

    6. The reformed do think that once you come to grace you will not fall. Catholics disagree. Hence we distinguish those predestined to grace from those predestined to glory. Some come to grace but fall away and do not persevere. But they had the ability to perservere

    7. Anyone who says Augustine didn't believing in the salvific powers of the sacraments is either an extremely presumptious ignoramus, talking about matters he is utterly incompetent to have an opinion on, or a lying heretic trying to falsely claim an authority. Augustine very famously opposes the idea of the "middle place" between heaven and hell for unbaptized babies, and uses the example of baptized and unbaptized babies to illustrate the absolute gratuity of predestination. That baby A is baptized but not B has nothing to do with their actions or merits, but is given or not given without any respect of persons. Auustine, of course, recognizes God as the providential actor behind the human agency of administering the sacraments.

    8. When I say there are aspects of mass damnata that one can (but certainly need not) disagree with, I have in mind something like the number of the elect being very small.

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