Post by DKleineckeI posted the following to my blog and then it occurred to me that SRC
and SRI might have something to say about the matter.
The point I am raising here is of supreme importance in both
Christianity and Islam because they both worship the same God
We have all now seen enough posts pointing out the risks of this
assumption, so I will not dwell on it here.
Post by DKleineckeand they both recognize that God has much the same attributes.
We do? A large party of Christians deny that the word 'attribute' is
even correct at ALL when applied to God, and insist on the technical
theological term, "name of God" instead.
Post by DKleineckeIn particular - God created the physical universe and his rule over
the universe is absolute.
'Absolute' sounds like a term that Moslems, Jansenists and Calvinists
would prefer. But I do hope that the Augustine and Aquinas citations
in this post make it clear: the Catholic Tradition does not apply this
word in the same way to the same notion.
Post by DKleineckeIt seems to me that in this matter at least some theologians are
denying that God's will is absolute.
That depends on what you mean when you say "such-and-such will is
'absolute'". Compare, for example, the use in the term "absolute
monarchy": Tsar Nicolas had one intepretation of 'absolute' here, the
famous revolutionary Democrat Shipov had a very different one.
This difference is even highly analogous to the required difference in
"absolute will of God".
Post by DKleinecke*****
LOURDES, France (AP) People must accept death at "the hour chosen by
God," Pope Benedict XVI told ailing pilgrims Monday in an anti-
euthanasia message at Lourdes, the shrine that draws the desperate,
sick and dying.
<comment>
This is the same argument that was used a couple of centuries ago
against vaccination.
It sounds alike, but the likeness is deceptive. To see through the
deceptive likeness, start by noting, as the AP article correctly
noted, that the message was NOT anti-healing, it is anti-euthanasia.
Post by DKleineckeOne would expect the Pope at least to get his theology right.
He did. It is you who got it wrong. You should be more careful to
assume he got it right, and you got it wrong, considering that he has
such a long track record of accurate understanding and teaching of
Roman Catholic theology. He was not only an approved theology teacher,
but even Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He
held this position for 20 years.
The Roman Church has a lot of problems, but allowing people who do not
know theology to be Prefect of CDF for so long is NOT one of them;)
Post by DKleineckePerhaps I do not understand Catholic theology correctly.
That is a much better assumption. You seem to be under the influence
of Calvinism more than Catholic theology.
Post by DKleineckeBut it seems to me that he is saying that a human being can
successfully avoid God's will.
Certainly not. He said no such thing.
Post by DKleineckeThat is not what I understand about God's relationship to the
physical world.
The world that God created includes time. Thus God is outside of
time. Everything that has ever happened in the past or will happen
in the future is what God willed would happen.
Wrong. You forgot the "escape clause": that He created intelligent
beings endowed with free will. This in turn necessitates the
distinction between "ex parte hominis" and "ex parte Deo" (see below).
In particular, St. Augustine precludes your position in the words:
Quis porro tam impie desipiat ut dicat Deum malas hominum voluntates,
quas voluerit quando voluerit ubi voluerit, in bonum non posse
convertere? Sed cum facit, per misericordiam facit; cum autem non
facit, per iudicium non facit, quoniam: "Cuius vult miseretur et quem
vult obdurat" [Ench 24.97]
or:
Who then so impiously and senselessly says that God does NOT want to
convert to good the evil wills of men, which wills He turns when He
want to turn? But when He does it, He does it according to mercy; but
when He does not, it is according to justice that He does not, since:
"He is merciful to whomever He wills, and He hardens the heart of
whomsoever He wills (rom 9:18)".
Post by DKleineckeThus if you wish to shoot yourself and succeed that was what God
willed you would do.
Wrong. As many Doctores Ecclesiae were so careful to point out, going
all the way back to Sts. Basil the Great and Augustine, God never
wills that anyone commit sin; but He allows free being to go against
His will and sin. But this in no way -defeats- the will of God, since
God will use our evils to work His good.
As Augustine explained again in the Enchridion:
Neque enim Deus omnipotens ... cum summe bonus sit, ullo modo sineret
mali esse aliquid in operibus suis nisi usque adeo esset omnipotens et
bonus ut bene faceret et de malo. [Ench 3.11]
or:
Nor then would the omnipotent God, as he is supremely good, allow evil
in any way to exist in His works unless at every point indeed that He
is omnipotent and good and makes good out of evil
and also:
Melius enim iudicavit de malis bene facere quam mala nulla esse
permittere...suamque indebitam misericordiam multo evidentius in
indignorum potius liberatione monstraret. [Ench. 8.27]
or:
For He has judged it better to make good out of evils than to not
allow evil to exist at all... showing his unearned mercy to be far
more evident in the liberation of the unworthy.
This "more evident mercy" is the good God produces out of the
sin of beings with free-will.
Now we know from experience that the good produced out of our evil is
not always more evident (as it is in this example). But we are not
promised that _we_ will always be able to see (in this life) the good
that God makes out of our evils. We are only promised that they do
exist.
Post by DKleineckeOf course what I just said applies to any kind of suicide - not just
euthanasia.
If, that is, it applies at all. But by now it should be clear that it
does not apply to either case.
Post by DKleineckeIt seems to me that to doubt the argument I just advanced means that
a person can do something against God's will. Surely that is
impossible and it is foolish to believe it might be possible.
I think you have been misled by a linguistic difference here, whether
between your own language and English, or between Biblical Greek and
English: the distinction you seem to have missed is that between
perfective and imperfective aspect.
That is, it is very possible for a man to oppose the will of God and
be very active in doing so. He can even 'achieve' many sins in this
effort. But all his efforts end in vain, since God has judged it
better to allow evils to exist and then make good things out of them;
the good will of God is what is accomplished in the end despite the
man's opposition.
The "achieve many sins" could be legitimately described as "doing
something against God's will", as long as "doing" is understood as
imperfective aspect. But since his efforts end in vain, you CANNOT use
a perfective aspect here. That is, I can use POIEI, but not EPOIHSE
(G4160).
Aquinas gives an excellent example of the two ways of speaking about
something being the will of God in:
Cum enim Deus nihil velit nisi bonum, non vult aliquem gratia privare,
nisi secundum quod est quoddam bonum. Sed quod aliquis careat gratia,
non est bonum simpliciter. Unde hoc absolute consideratum, non est
volitum a Deo. Est tamen bonum ut quis careat gratia, si eam habere
non vult, vel si negligenter ad eam habendam se praeparat: quia justum
est, et hoc modo est volitum a Deo. Patet ergo, quod hujusmodi
defectus absolute est causa prima ex parte hominis. Et per hunc modum
quandoque invenitur Deus dici causa excaecationis vel obdurationis,
non quidem immittendo malitiam, sed non impertiendo gratiam, sicut nec
digni sunt, ut dicit Augustinus. Si enim non necessario impertitur: in
ipso est impertiri, et non impertiri. Unde ejus quod est, non
impertiri, aliquo modo causa est. Obduratio igitur ex parte hominis
habet rationem culpae, sed ex parte Dei rationem justitiae. Similiter
finalis damnatio habet duplicem causam; scilicet ex parte hominis,
commissionem culpae, ex parte Dei, illationem poenae.
[[89164] Leonardus Pistoriensis, De praescientia, cap. 6 co. 2 ]
So we have two ways of calling something "willed by God" 1) absolute
consideratum volitum a Deo and 2) volitum a Deo quia justum est.
This distinction in turn is based on a distinction in causation, since
the stubbornness of the reprobate has the man himself as cause in the
sense "ex parte hominis", but from God for the sake of justice ex
parte Dei. But only the former, not the latter is ever the primary
cause (causa prima ex parte hominis).
For further reading on the Roman doctrine, see ST I q. 19 esp. article
6, e.g., at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1019.htm#article6
But be warned: it is difficult reading since he assumes you know the
Aristotelian theory of causation (e.g. "formal causes", "effects
conforming acc. to form"). But this is why the links at the New Advent
site are so valuable: you can use them to refine your understanding of
how Aquinas uses these key terms in unexpected (to us moderns) senses.