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From: tomault+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Galen Ault)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Catholic doctrine of predestination
Message-ID: <May.20.05.02.06.1993.22853@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 20 May 93 09:02:06 GMT
Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
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Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

In article <May.13.02.28.48.1993.1471@geneva.rutgers.edu> creps@lateran.ucs.indiana.edu (Stephen A. Creps) writes:
>In article <May.11.02.37.03.1993.28114@athos.rutgers.edu> noye@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>
>   The Catholic doctrine of predestination does not exclude free will in
>any way.  Since God knows everything, He therefore knows everything that
>is going to happen to us.  We have free will, and are able to change
>what happens to us.  However, since God knows everything, He knows all
>the choices we will make "in advance" (God is not subject to time).  Too
>often arguments pit predestination against free will.  We believe in
>both.

Curiously enough, this subject has occupied a good bit of my prayer life
recently.  God's experience of time is so completely different from our own,
since He is both within and without it.  Using words like "foreknowledge"
and "predestination" are semantically incorrect when it comes to describing
God's perception of our action, because, for God, the beginning, living, and
ending of our lives are all the same.  Sort of.  For God, there is no "before"
when He did not know, so he could not have "foreknowledge" of our lives or
a time when he could have "predestined" our actions.  In fact, since our
understanding of things is so tied to our linear experience of time, I
would say that it is impossible for us to understand completely how our
free will interacts with God's control of the universe.

Tom Ault
