Divine Will And Pride And Predjudice...

[truthfinder]

While not getting into a discussion on predestination - the one thing that can be said of novels is that, particularly in P&P, there is a omnipotence as well as hindsight that we are afforded as readers that we do not get in our own (real) lives.

[ClemensBruno]

As I suspected, St. Augustine doesn't mention predestination in any definitive manner in his "Confessions." Also, I was also under the false impression that St. Augustine wrote less than a handful of books. I was soooo wrong; he was a very prolific writer!

It would be irresponsible of me to let our predestination discussion hang in its current fuzzy state. And since theology is woefully scant in my advanced education, I took a shortcut by consulting The Catholic Encyclopedia.

For the purposes of this discussion, I think we only need a summary. I extracted the following from The Catholic Encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/

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SUMMARY OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE ON PREDESTINATION

"God infallibly foresees and immutably preordains from eternity all future events, all fatalistic necessity, however, being barred and human liberty remaining intact. Consequently man is free whether he accepts grace and does good or whether he rejects it and does evil. Just as it is God's true and sincere Will that all men, no one excepted, shall obtain eternal happiness, so, too, Christ has died for all, not only for the predestined, or for the faithful, though it is true that in reality not all avail themselves of the benefits of redemption.

"Though God preordained both eternal happiness and the good works of the elect, yet, on the other hand, He predestined no one positively to hell, much less to sin. Consequently, just as no one is saved against his Will, so the reprobate perish solely on account of their wickedness. God foresaw the everlasting pains of the impious from all eternity, and preordained this punishment on account of their sins, though He does not fail therefore to hold out the grace of conversion to sinners, or pass over those who are not predestined.

"As long as the reprobate live on earth, they may be accounted true Christians and members of the Church, just as on the other hand the predestined may be outside the pale of Christianity and of the Church. Without special revelation no one can know with certainty that he belongs to the number of the elect."
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Apparently, the notion of predestination is an ongoing controversy among theologians. The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes the dogmatic parameters to help Catholic theologians avoid wandering into heresy:

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"Owing to the infallible decisions laid down by the Church, every orthodox theory on predestination and reprobation must keep within the limits marked out by the following theses:

"(a) At least in the order of execution in time (in ordine executionis) the meritorious works of the predestined are the partial cause of their eternal happiness;

"(b) hell cannot even in the order of intention (in ordine intentionis) have been positively decreed to the damned, even though it is inflicted on them in time as the just punishment of their misdeeds;

"(c) there is absolutely no predestination to sin as a means to eternal damnation."
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Hope this helps explain what I previously referred to as "predestination with caveats" ...very important caveats indeed.

[blazeingstar]

I think there is a bit of trouble comparing real life, to that of a fictional work.

 

The characters are don't have free will, as they are beholden to that of the author.