Article XVII, the longest article, has given me much comfort when it comes to the doctrine of predestination. I therefore treat it as one that I should not try to meditate upon as it is, much like the Trinity, incomprehensible to our minds bound to space and time. I believe it was St. Ignatius who said "pray like it all depends on God, work like it all depends on you". This thought has been sufficient for me.
I'm not sure. I think the trinity is something we can and should meditate upon and the same with predestination - that doesn’t mean we will understand them because of-course the very idea of an infinite God is not indescribable with finite thought or words.
Perhaps meditate wasn't the right word to use. I meant that we shouldn't try to understand it fully, and that we should live accepting a reality we won't be able to comprehend. The article does indeed say that predestination should be a comfort to believers, but it can lead to all sorts of weird places if you were to try and dig deeper in a rational kind of way. I appreciate that Anglicanism leaves it at that.
Yes your probably right. Like I said in my post my thinking is basically vibes based "I think I have free will because I feel like I have free will" - I think this is a rational way to think, but to say much more I would need to study the corpus of Christian (and non Christian) writers who have thought about the topic a great deal.
Article XVII, the longest article, has given me much comfort when it comes to the doctrine of predestination. I therefore treat it as one that I should not try to meditate upon as it is, much like the Trinity, incomprehensible to our minds bound to space and time. I believe it was St. Ignatius who said "pray like it all depends on God, work like it all depends on you". This thought has been sufficient for me.
I'm not sure. I think the trinity is something we can and should meditate upon and the same with predestination - that doesn’t mean we will understand them because of-course the very idea of an infinite God is not indescribable with finite thought or words.
sorry: "is indescribable " not "is not indescribable"
Perhaps meditate wasn't the right word to use. I meant that we shouldn't try to understand it fully, and that we should live accepting a reality we won't be able to comprehend. The article does indeed say that predestination should be a comfort to believers, but it can lead to all sorts of weird places if you were to try and dig deeper in a rational kind of way. I appreciate that Anglicanism leaves it at that.
Yes your probably right. Like I said in my post my thinking is basically vibes based "I think I have free will because I feel like I have free will" - I think this is a rational way to think, but to say much more I would need to study the corpus of Christian (and non Christian) writers who have thought about the topic a great deal.