re serbian genocide work of god in article may athos rutgers edu db n andrew cmu edu d andrew byler writes does he believe in predestination of course i believe in predestination it s a very biblical doctrine as romans shows among other passages furthermore the church has always taught predestination from the very beginning really you may be right but i d like proof as far as i know and i am not a div school student the catholic church does not seem to accept predestination my chaplain told me beware of greeks bearing gifts with reference to this doctrine it seems to have the curious result that human beings are not held responsible for their own actions i ll answer how you deal with this in a minute but to say that i believe in predestination does not mean i do not believe in free will men freely choose the course of their life which is also affected by the grace of god however unlike the calvinists and jansenists i hold that grace is resistable otherwise you end up with the idiocy of denying the universal saving will of god timothy right that doesn t really seem like predestination to me but i ll continue with what you re saying for god must give enough grace to all to be saved but only the elect who he foreknew are predestined and receive the grace of final perserverance which guarantees heaven this does not mean that those without that grace can t be saved it just means that god foreknew their obstinacy and chose not to give it to them knowing they would not need it as they had freely chosen hell this is really confusing to me especially since i still believe that christ jesus died for all of us preknowledge of obstinacy seems like an awfully convoluted way to account for a couple of verses but then i am not really biblically supported in this opinion or am i others people who are saved are saved by the grace of god and not by their own effort for it was god who disposed them to himself and predestined them to become saints but those who perish in everlasting fire perish because they hardened their heart and chose to perish thus they were deserving of god s punishment as they had rejected their creator and sinned against the working of the holy spirit so god uses grace like margarine he only spreads it where it s needed and not where it isn t and so there are the saved and the not saved and nothing in between hmmmm yes it is up to god to judge but he will only mete out that punishment at the last judgement well i would hold that as god most certainly gives everybody some blessing for what good they have done even if it was only a little for those he can t bless in the next life he blesses in this one although i realize this doctrine was not originally intended to cause social problems it ends up doing just that if there is supposed to be some sort of sign that someone is elect like lots of children or success at work then those who have a good life on earth will go around thinking that those who don t are doomed to hell in a way though this sounds like the opposite idea those doomed to hell will have a great life on earth that s almost like the converse of what i believe responsibility for what we do now will be punished after we die you re saying what we get after we die has a direct bearing on how we live now strange and those he will not punish in the next life will be chastised in this one or in purgatory for their sins every sin incurs some temporal punishment thus god will punish it unless satisfaction is made for it cf samuel david s sin of adultery and murder were forgiven but he was still punished with the death of his child and i need not point out the idea of punishment because of god s judgement is quite prevelant in the bible sodom and gommorrah moses barred from the holy land the slaughter of the cannanites annias and saphira jerusalem in ad etc so sin is either punished now or later and not both what if it s sort of half punished are there any grey areas in this doctrine my stuff deleted we should stop the slaughter of the innocent cf proverbs but does that mean that christians should support a war in bosnia with the u s or even the u n involved i do not think so but i am an isolationist and disagree with foreign adventures in general but in the case of bosnia i frankly see no excuse for us getting militarily involved it would not be a just war blessed after all are the peacemakers was what our lord said not the interventionists our actions in bosnia must be for peace and not for a war which is unrelated to anything to justify it for us the idea well my idea would be that you would intervene to establish peace and stop the atrocities i m not suggesting wwiii i don t really understand what you mean by a just war of course i am not an isolationist although i see some merit in not jumping in at the first opportunity can you say kuwait we happen to be a big country with a lot of resources as well as a lot of debt and this gives us some responsibility in the world whether we like it or not flashbacks of wwii as well as vietnam should be haunting us yet another difference of opinion so be it andy byler thank you for answering i hope you don t take any of my comments as flames but instead as expressions of interest vera i am your clock i bind unto myself today vera noyes i am your religion the strong name of the noye midway uchicago edu i own you trinity no disclaimer what lard st patrick s breastplate is there to disclaim
