HOW COULD A GOOD GOD PREDESTINE ANYONE TO AN ETERNAL HELL?


How could a good God predestine anyone to an eternal Hell? Does not this divine decree do away with our freedom of choice? If God foreknew that I was to be lost forever, why then did He create men The Catholic Church has never taught that God predestined anyone to Hell. On the contrary the Council of Trent (Sess. vi., can. 17) condemned the heresy of Calvin (Inst.,iii.,chs.xxi.,xxiii., xxiv.), who held that an absolute divine decree predestined part of mankind to Hell, and, in order to attain that end effectually, to sin. No intelligent man could worship a God who was the Author of evil, or a God who did away with our free will, thus making all merit or guilt on our part impossible. Such a repulsive doctrine explains why Puritan New England to-day is in great part Unitarian. Calvin's teaching, which many of his followers to-day reject as unreasonable, is plainly against the Scriptures, which insist upon God's mercy being ever ready to pardon the most hardened sinners (Rom. ii. 4; 2 Peter iii. 9), and which teach that Jesus Christ died for all men (2 Cor. v. 15; John i. 29; 1 John ii. 2), and that "God wills all men to be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4). God is the Eternal Present, the "I am who Am" (Exod. iii. 14); with Him there is no past, and no future. Omniscient, He must know all things. He knows the future even, therefore, before it happens; it does not happen because He foreknows it. He knows what we will do freely; His foreknowledge in no way affects our freedom of action. In human affairs, we can easily realize that our foreknowledge is in no way the cause of another s tree action. For example warn a poor swimmer not to venture on a mile swim to a near-by island, or I warn a feeble old man not to cross a city street, until the signal lights order the autos to stop. If they refuse to heed my warning, I certainly do not feel in any way responsible for their deaths, although I foresaw them. In like manner God warns the sinner not to venture on the sea of grievous sin, and not to court the danger of temptation, for "he that loveth danger shall perish therein." Is God responsible for the sinner's eternal death, if he freely and deliberately choose to disobey His knows commands? You may tell me that the comparison is faulty all comparisons are. You could not help your stubborn friends, whereas God could help the sinner by giving him more grace, so that has must needs repent. Why does He not do so? We cannot answer that question, for the distribution of God's graces is an impenetrable mystery. We are certain, however, that God give every sinner sufficient grace for him to enter heaven, and that no one is lost save by his own fault. The problem is well stated by Father Martindale, who writes "This problem of God's having created such a world, despite His knowledge that man could and would, in it, misuse his opportunities and nature, concerns two liberties and their interaction; ours and God's. But not even our own liberty can we true analyze. Of it we have a direct intuition, which is basic and cannot be set aside. Deny it, and every step forward in life denies your own denial. But it eludes adequate analysis. Still less is the liberty of God to be grasped by human intellect. It is in our liberty we most resemble God; and continue --baffling paradox-- so to resemble Him precisely when and because we freely defy Him.... False is the problem that arises for us from a contradiction between two terms neither of which we fully understand, and, indeed, between those elements in them, precisely which are those we do not understand. It may then be said that so terribly does God respect this transcendent fact of liberty that His esteem for it outstrips His desire even for our happiness " (God and the Supernatural, 328). Suppose for an instant that God could not create a soul whom He foresaw would be lost by the abuse of his free will and his stubborn resisting of God's grace. It would follow the that every man, by the very fact of his creation and without any effort or striving on his part, would be infallibly certain of heaven. Virtue and vice then would be on a par. The moral law would then be without any sanction.



Excerpt from The Question Box, 2nd ed., by Fr. Bertrand L. Conway, CSP. Published by the Paulist Press, New York, 1929. Permissu Superiorum: John B. Harney, C.S.P. Superior General Nihil Obstat: Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D. Censor Librorum Imprimatur: Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Archbishop, New York







LOVE IMPLIES FREEDOM

God does not pronounce itself explicitly before us to respect our freedom. Many doubt this asseveration. But if God is love, and the love is God, as it explained Saint Paul, I ask: it is possible to love somebody without respecting the freedom of that person? Can exist authentic love between the boss of a plantation and its slave? The freedom necessity, of our freedom is explained by the infinite love that God feels by us. And that infinite love implies, in addition to freedom, goodness and justice. A kind Entity would not be God if he did not respect our freedom. Do not be a loving Creator if he did not respect justice. Justice towards the fellow is an inescapable premise of the love. Can a judge feel true love by a criminal to whom she finishes judging with prevarication? Single I want that it is left well clear the inescapable necessity of the freedom of the man like indispensable condition to corroborate the infinite love that God feels by us. And this freedom only can be authentic if we can apostatize of God. We have the freedom " to forget " God, since many atheists do. And we have that freedom because God does not pronounce itself. If it were pronounced, we would have to accept it to the force, by the evidence of the facts. And then we would not have freedom. And the love, if he is not free, cannot in any case be true. In order to understand this subject we do not have to forget the fundamental thing: GOD IS LOVE

The Christians have two tendencies. Those that they have felt to build to God with being able in his lives (with a treatment, a conversion, a powerful fact, some miracle, etc...) say that God is evident, or very visible. Other Christians, however, think that that occurs only in cases very counted and that even so it does not make it evident: we defend that God is a hidden God. It always gives light to believe and to marvel... but the just also to doubt. It requests an " Act of acceptance ", or as the inventor of the calculation of probabilities would say, the brilliant Pascal mathematician, " a bet ". [ Pascal bet by yes to God, but remembering whenever it is a reasonable bet, although nonevident ].

On the other hand, the silence of God could be interpreted of several forms:

1-God is not shut up, but it is necessary to listen to it, to know his languages.

2-God is not shut up, but without an act of confidence by your part you will not be able to listen to him.

3-God is not shut up, but it does not shout to us either limiting our freedom.

4-God is not shut up: it speaks through our resemblances.


This does not mean that God bes not worried of us. The case is that we are not children babies. We are adolescent children. Our Father has left food, tools, the house us, etc... entrusts itself in us so that we throw ahead. In addition, our Brother Greater wine to explain to us that Our Father has prepared a still better house for us, that yes, only will leave enter the adults, the mature ones, and also those that they love to Him crazy. But many sluggish adolescents crying and in fact not even want to enter, want that they are engaged in it here, to mark their own rules of the game, protest, etc... Some even killed our Older Brother: " with which it costs to maintain this house, to what it comes to speak from the Other Best one? And from where east Older Brother has left "

The case is that the Older Brother organized a few adolescents to prepare his trips, that begin to love the new house of the Father without letting work in the old one, that follows our position. The followers of the Older Brother are the Church, and they are convinced of which he teaches its founder because they saw him die and revive and taught therefore to photos and planes to them of the new house (the body glorified of the Revived one is primicy of which they will be our bodies although... in what sense? The Church, when something does not know, is shut up.)

In aim: that the Father does not clean all the corners of the house (and we do not know how many clean privily) does not mean abandonment of domicile absolutely: he has left to many things and people who help us to grow and to nourish to us. For example, he leaves to the Bread and Wine us from the Eucharisty, but it is freedom ours to accept it or no.

In any case, our home is not this. The old ones get tired of the life. All the things bore to us when a little are repeated. Nothing contents to us. When we obtained something that we wished, we let give value him. The time it seems to us something strange: we always spoke of if it exceeds to me or I need. It is evident that we are not done for this world, that we did not fit absolutely, that the matter bores to us and the time is strange to us.

Our house is another one, the true House of the Father. We will say only there: " finally I am in house ".

Said of another form: the four given arguments are valid, but it is necessary to accept them. The abandonment accusations that some attribute to Him, are not coherent for the Christians, since it has not left us, but whom all the necessary one has left us to arrive at Him. God, like good father, must dedicate itself to undo or fix everything what we make bad, all the damage that we caused to others? And with the responsibility what we do? We would learn someday that our acts have consequences? On the other hand see in which many people who have suffered some disease or displease sensitize more towards the other peoples suffering.

In summary: GOD DOES NOT PRONOUNCE ITSELF TO RESPECT OUR FREEDOM. So simple. If you want to have the option of the faith, is essential that God does not pronounce itself. Of this form, always you will have left the resource to deny Him. Because He does not dominate himself anybody. All one that it wants to apostatize of, it can do it, and, will respect its decision. Single those that freely decide to accept it like Father, as God and Mesias can choose to be in Their presence. Because God, gave the freedom us for something, does not want marionettes nor robots, but free men who freely decide their destiny.










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