Comments for The Plan at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Wed, 22 May 2013 14:48:52 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-plan.html#comment-10741 Grump, Dorothy Sayers is illuminative on this question of free will of the creatures. Successful authors are those whose characters are alive and seem to be imbued with a self-will. Authors feel that such characters develop on their own. God is the Perfect Author and his creations finds no difficulty in reconciling free will with the plan. - Gian Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:21:56 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-plan.html#comment-10739 Throughout Holy Scripture the Lord makes it clear that He loves us, that He created us to share in his goodness, freedom, and love, and that we have real choice in the matter: "I set before you life and death: choose life, that you may live"; "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"' the warning at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; the constant calls to repentance throughout the Prophets; and finally, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, laying the matter out so clearly in the Gospels that he offers peace and wholeness but on condition of our acceptance of Him, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life: so clearly, that those who refused to accept his offer and his clarity accused him of blasphemy and put him to death. As He created our first parents, and each soul, in his image and likeness, he bestows upon each soul some share in his own sovereignty, in its power to choose. Then he gives us the natural law. Then he gives us divine revelation. Then he gives us himself; and to those of us baptized into the fulness of the Faith, he gives himself in the Holy Eucharist each and every day. The one thing he does not do, however, is coerce us. And so it is not so much the case that one is sent to heaven or hell as it is one sends oneself to heaven or hell through one's own free choice, and God has mightily stacked the decks in our favor that we might find the road to him and freely choose it. I'll take that Plan. - Dave Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:49:56 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-plan.html#comment-10738 Providentially I'm reading Pinckaers' _Source of Christian Ethics_, throughout which he lays out the very significant differences between a "freedom of indifference" and a "freedom for excellence." The nature of free will was not Father Schall's only concern in this excellent article, but the point must be grasped. - Bill McCormick Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:26:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-plan.html#comment-10736 Thomas, I'll have to ponder that for awhile but my first reaction is that since He is the Potter and we are the clay He can create whatever serves His purpose (the Pharoah, i.e.), which case "free will" cannot be exercised. "I will bless Whom I bless and Curse Whom I curse." - Grump Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:20:44 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-plan.html#comment-10735 Grump - is Free Will only such if God were to allow the risk that Evil prevails in the end? To expect Him to create an adversary of equal power is absurd, since He would be self-negating His Will. And as for his created ones, we indeed have the freedom to choose good over evil (God-centeredness over selfishness) with each temporal step we make - and His omniscience neither contradicts the ultimate Plan (which, granted, is a mystery to us), nor relegates us humans to a sort of presdestination either. Peace. - Thomas a Beckon Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:11:05 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-plan.html#comment-10731 God's Plan as framed by Basil seems to amount to a my-way-or-the-highway design that destroys any notion of free will. If "Father Knows Best," as the Plan implies, then aren't we humans nothing more than "automata" since rejection sends one to hell, no quarter given. In the final analysis, this take-it-or-leave it Hobson's choice is no choice at all. - Grump Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:26:21 +0100