Map displaying counties and regions as used in the Oklahoma category of the Open Directory Project.

Map displaying counties and regions as used here in the Oklahoma category of the Open Directory Project.

Map displaying counties and regions as used in the Oklahoma category of the Open Directory Project.

In article <180.02.20.05.765783000@srcbs.org>, Bob Felts says...

>Matthew Johnson wrote:

>> In article <178.41.13.05.396198000@srcbs.org>, Bob Felts says...

>> >Matthew Johnson wrote:

>> [snip]

[snip]

>> > There are several places in Scripture which talks
>> >about God desiring/willing something that we know (at
>> >least, if we aren't universalists) doesn't happen in all
>> >cases.

>> True. That is why the Fathers -- and even the Scholastics
>> -- made the distinction between "antecedent will" and
>> "precedent will" of God.

>> If only you understood this distinction, you would then
>> also realize that no, it is NOT an "excellent reason" for
>> what you do and claim.

>I do understand the distinction.

No, you do not, as you make clear below:

> St. Thomas, for example, explains it this way,
>""Antecedent will is that by which God wills all to be
>saved; but when all the circumstances of this or that
>individual are considered, it is found to be good that all
>men should be saved; for it is good that he who prepares
>himself, and consents to it, should be saved; but not he
>who is unwilling and resists, etc. And this is called the
>consequent will, because it presupposes a foreknowledge of
>a man's deeds, not as a cause of the act of will, but as a
>reason for the thing willed and determined."

Why, thank you, Bob, for supplying the exact quote for
me. Pity you then _immediately_ proceeded to misunderstand
it.

>The problem with this is that it places the decision within
>man, which St. Paul plainly denies.

No, it does no such thing. Indeed: it sounds like you are
ignoring Aquinas's final sentence in your own citation! Let
me simplify it for you by breaking it up in to three and
making vague references specific: read it as:

This is called the 'consequent will'. It is not a cause
of the act of God's will. Instead, it is a reason for the
thing God willed and determined.

So you see, the decision is STILL within God, not within
man. Once more, Bob, you have failed to READ at the crucial
point, as if bound and determined to ignore all facts,
ignore all logic, when they threaten to turn you away from
your fantasy of Calvinism.

>And that's the reason why constructs like
>antecedent/precedent will of God aren't needed

No, even if it were true that "it places the decision within
man", even if it were that "Paul plainly denies" this, it
would NOT follow that the construct is not needed. It is
needed for the reason I already explained to you, for the