I often hear Protestants that I know talk about how God has a plan for their life. What does Orthodoxy say about this? Does God have plan for each of our lives? And if He does, doesn't it somewhat negate our own free will?
Does God have a plan?
Does God have a plan?
Last edited by Logos on Wed 7 January 2004 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My soul is lonely dark and afraid.
Good question. I do not think that we Orthodox believe in such a predetermined plan. I am not the best person to answer this-I am sure another poster can further elaborate and cite theological references to this question. However, I just wanted to mention that I think this is something that can be misleading to the Orthodox living in America, because these Protestant beliefs become a part of the overall American culture, and it can be very confusing, even dangerous.
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romiosini
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Justin Kissel
Logos,
Free-will and predestination and such always end in chaos if you take them too far. Dwelling on such issues can literally drive a man mad. The reason is that it's a mystery--a paradox. God's will will be done. Yet, so will ours. As G.K. Chesterton (while he was an Anglican) said of the Christian man: "He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also." As it puts it elsewhere, "Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both." (Orthodoxy).
I'm not sure if God has a "plan" for us. I think that he does, though at every moment he leaves us free to choose rejection of his plan. If you want to read about a clear example of God "planning" things, read about the marriage in the book of Tobit. Maybe there really are "marriages made in heaven"?