Book V. Free will and God's foreknowledge.

AbstractThis article retraces the intra-Jesuit theological debates on the theology of salvation, including the relationship between the elements of predestination, God’s foreknowledge, Grace, and free will, in the delicate passage between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and within the debates on Augustine’s theological legacy. Specifically, it explores the Flemish Jesuit Leonard Lessius’ theology and the discussions raised by it within the Society of Jesus, in order to show how soteriology has been central in the process of self-definition of the Jesuit identity in the Early Modern Age. This is particularly clear from the internal debates developed between Lessius, on the one hand, and General Claudio Acquaviva and curial theologian Roberto Bellarmino, on the other hand. Not only does the article investigate little known aspects of intra-Catholic theological debate in the post Tridentine period, but it also shows how deep pastoral and moral concerns strongly contributed to the rise of Lessius’ open-minded theology of salvation, which seemed to deprive God’s sovereign authority in favour of humankind’s free will, and human agency in the process of salvation.

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Text I Augustine: God’s Foreknowledge and Human Free-Will

10.5040/9780567705150.0009 ◽

2014 ◽

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

God’S Foreknowledge

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A Tulip in the Roman Curia: Proposing Novel Acronyms for Arminian and Lutheran Theology

Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities ◽

10.34293/sijash.v8i1.3241 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 31-35

Author(s):

Sean Welsh

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Moral Agent ◽

Protestant Reformation ◽

Christian Church ◽

Lutheran Theology ◽

The World ◽

English Speaking ◽

English Speaking World ◽

The Relationship ◽

God’S Foreknowledge

The paradoxical relationships between free will, salvific grace, and human depravity have a perplexed man for thousands of years. In the early days of the Christian Church, Catholics affirmed the free will of man while emphasizing that God was not bound by time. This meant that, although the man was a free moral agent, God’s foreknowledge of past, present, and future allowed Him to know the “elect” before the foundation of the world. During the Protestant Reformation, new systems of theology were posited to explain the relationship between these concepts. The three most important of these theological systems are Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Arminianism. In the English-speaking world, Calvinism has become the best-known and most easily-grasped Protestant theological system due to the ingenious mnemonic TULIP, i.e., total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints, to describe the five points of Calvinism. The purpose of this paper is to propose two new mnemonics to describe the theological systems of Lutheranism and Arminianism. These mnemonics are couched in the language of Calvinism for simplicity. For Lutheran theology, the acronym TAURUS is proposed. For Arminian theology, the acronym CURIA is proposed.

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God in Martin Luther

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.325 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Jan-Olav Henriksen

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Human Life ◽

Personal Relationship ◽

Theology Of The Cross ◽

Human Being ◽

Doctrine Of God ◽

Last Judgment ◽

God’S Foreknowledge ◽

Focus Point ◽

Reliable Basis

Luther’s understanding of God saturates his oeuvre, and in turn, this understanding is saturated by his doctrine of the justification of the sinner. God is the sovereign source and origin of all that is, and Luther develops his understanding of God in a manner that tries to safeguard this position in such a way that the personal relationship to God becomes the focus point for all he says. The doctrine of God as creator and as savior is modeled in a parallel way in Luther, as he sees God as the source of everything positively in both contexts. God is the sole giver of the gifts that human life requires. As creator, God is omnipresent, omniscient, and sovereign. Nothing can determine God. God is accordingly also the only instance in reality that has free will. Everything else is dependent on God, God’s foreknowledge, and God’s predestination. It is possible to see Luther’s position as an attempt to offer the human being a reliable and trustworthy notion of God, someone he or she can cling to in times of despair and desolation. The only God who deserves to be God, who is trustworthy with regard to being able to provide a safe and reliable basis for human life, is the God who justifies the sinner because of God’s own righteousness. In contrast, a human who puts her trust in herself and her own works or merits makes herself a god and will not be able to stand justified coram deo in the last judgment. Luther develops the idea about God’s hiddenness in different ways, most notably in his ideas about the hidden God in De servo arbitrio. But also in his notion of the theology of the Cross in the Heidelberg Disputation, and in other places where he writes about the masks of God, behind which God hides in order to do God’s work, we can see related or similar ideas. Thus, Luther develops an ambiguous element in his understanding of God.

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Pelagius did not Invent Anything: All the Teachings in His Writings Had Already Been Widely Disseminated in Ascetic Paraenesis (Parts II and III)

The Myth of Pelagianism ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197266397.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 111-196

Author(s):

Ali Bonner

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Human Actions ◽

Pauline Epistles ◽

God’S Foreknowledge

This chapter examines the writings of Jerome, showing that he was a lifelong advocate of free will, that he interpreted predestination as God’s foreknowledge of autonomous human actions, that he stated that grace was given in accord with merit, and that he consistently referred to perfection as the goal of ascetic endeavour and as achievable. It analyses Jerome’s uncomfortable attempt to change his interpretation of Scripture in around AD 414 in order to meet accusations of heresy, since he had taught for decades the ideas now suddenly being labelled heretical. The chapter explores Ambrosiaster’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles and shows that it asserted free will and interpreted predestination as God’s foreknowledge of autonomous human actions, in order to preserve God’s justice.

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When Mother Earth Rises Up

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000112 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 44 (4) ◽

pp. 271-277 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Simona Sacchi ◽

Paolo Riva ◽

Marco Brambilla

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Natural Disasters ◽

Natural Disaster ◽

Mental States ◽

Disaster Victims ◽

Willingness To Help ◽

Mother Earth

Anthropomorphization is the tendency to ascribe humanlike features and mental states, such as free will and consciousness, to nonhuman beings or inanimate agents. Two studies investigated the consequences of the anthropomorphization of nature on people’s willingness to help victims of natural disasters. Study 1 (N = 96) showed that the humanization of nature correlated negatively with willingness to help natural disaster victims. Study 2 (N = 52) tested for causality, showing that the anthropomorphization of nature reduced participants’ intentions to help the victims. Overall, our findings suggest that humanizing nature undermines the tendency to support victims of natural disasters.

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