Theological Proofs of Christianity from the Goodness of Our Lord

[Xavier]

The most common means by which the supernatural origin of Christianity is said to be demonstrated in Scripture and Church writings is Miracles and Prophesies. This is the one mentioned in the Oath against Modernism: "I . . . . firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day. And first of all, I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (see Rom. 1:19), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated: Secondly, I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time." https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius10/p10moath.htm

This thread is to consider the question, is there a way to demonstrate and establish the Truth of Christianity from the Goodness of Our Lord and the Perfection of His Doctrine, to one who admits God is All-Good? That in Christianity God appears as Perfect Goodness, and Our Lord's Moral Teaching is Absolutely Pure, Pristine and Perfect is generally granted even by secularists and non-Christians.

Some possible ways in which the proposition could perhaps be constructed. Even the Bible's repeated emphasis on God's Love and Mercy - which it perhaps emphasizes more than any other Attribute of God - suggests that this argument is sound, and resounds in the depths of the human heart. Deep down, we all want to be loved by a Good God, as in fact the True God loves us. Deep down, our hearts know we were made to rest in God, and as St. Augustine says, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. There is a God-shaped hole in every heart, and nothing else in the whole world, except God's Sacred Heart's Love and His Divine Mercy alone can fill that hole. Now, the syllogism:

Syllogism I: From God's Love so clearly Manifested in Christianity:

Major: In Christianity more than in any other religion (as we read in Jn 3:16; 1 Jn 4:, God comes down from Heaven as Perfect Love.
Minor: As King Solomon once discerned (1 Kg 3:26) that the true mother was she who loved the child most, so God's Love in Christianity shows us where His Truth is fully present
Conclusion: Therefore, Christianity is the Full Truth of God, and Our Lord Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn 14:6), just as He said.

Syllogism II: From the Heroic Sacrifice of God for Man, performed by Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross in Calvary:

Major: It was always heard of and universally practiced that man should sacrifice for God. But never was it heard of nor even dreamed of that God Almighty Himself, in an excess of Infinite Goodness, should Sacrifice Himself for Love of man.
Minor: But it is only Almighty God Himself, being Perfect Goodness, Who could even dare to dream of such an amazing way of demonstrating and proving to the whole world, just as our conscience earlier had taught us, that He is indeed All Goodness and Love.
Conclusion: The God Who demonstrated His Love for us in such an amazing and unthinkable way is really the True Loving God.

Syllogism III: From the Amazing Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist for us Catholic Christians, 24*7*365 always:

Major: Even after the Amazing Sacrifice of the Cross, an even more Amazing Miracle of Love is His Perpetual Real Presence.
Minor: A God Who shows such Amazing Proofs of Love, and Who apparently never grows tired of Loving, must be the true God.
Conclusion: Therefore, the God Who tells us He remains among us always, loving us so much, is the One True Loving God.

Thoughts on this? Are such considerations likely to have an impact on the agnostic secularists of today? I ask because, imho, the sacred science of theology, when a fierce battle between good and evil, Truth and error, is ongoing, as it is today, must be utilized in an effective way in order to win the battle. It would be absurd for a scientist, in times of war, to discover something important or useful toward winning it, and then merely amuse himself with it in a laboratory. No, the purpose of scientific discoveries, when war is ongoing, is to unleash those discoveries as weapons in the battlefield, ot win the war, and bring peace quickly. In the same way imho, the purpose of theological proofs, whether of God's Goodness, or of Christianity's Truth, is for them to be properly formulated and then disseminated as widely as possible, so that more and more Christians equipped with them can successfully fight and overcome Atheism, Agnosticism, and other forms of Modernism.

[GBoldwater]

Where did you get this stuff but from your own head!

"Theological Proofs of Christianity" ????   

In logic that is what you call the fallacy of "circular reasoning" or "begging the question", because why would someone accept Christian theology in the first place!

Try philosophical or logical proofs.

You also made a mess of the structure and content of syllogisms.

Don't attempt to use this on agnostics.

[Daniel]

Reminds me of St. Anselm. I kind of like them, though I'm not sure many unbelievers would find these sorts of arguments very convincing.
(But as GBoldwater alluded to, you've reversed the major and minor for syllogisms i and iii. The major is supposed to be the general principle, whereas the minor is the concrete instance in the world. But verbally, the minor is sometimes given before the major.)

Where did you get this stuff but from your own head!

"Theological Proofs of Christianity" ????   

In logic that is what you call the fallacy of "circular reasoning" or "begging the question", because why would someone accept Christian theology in the first place!

Try philosophical or logical proofs.

You also made a mess of the structure and content of syllogisms.

Don't attempt to use this on agnostics.

While I somewhat agree with your objection, I'll point out that pure logic itself is just as circular. I mean, why would someone accept a logical argument unless he first accepts logic? If you start with no beliefs whatsoever then you can reach no conclusions at all. Most agnostics believe in logic, but this doesn't make logic any less circular.

[GBoldwater]

Reminds me of St. Anselm. I kind of like them, though I'm not sure many unbelievers would find these sorts of arguments very convincing.
(But as GBoldwater alluded to, you've reversed the major and minor for syllogisms i and iii. The major is supposed to be the general principle, whereas the minor is the concrete instance in the world. But verbally, the minor is sometimes given before the major.)

Where did you get this stuff but from your own head!

"Theological Proofs of Christianity" ????   

In logic that is what you call the fallacy of "circular reasoning" or "begging the question", because why would someone accept Christian theology in the first place!

Try philosophical or logical proofs.

You also made a mess of the structure and content of syllogisms.

Don't attempt to use this on agnostics.

While I somewhat agree with your objection, I'll point out that pure logic itself is just as circular. I mean, why would someone accept a logical argument unless he first accepts logic? If you start with no beliefs whatsoever then you can reach no conclusions at all. Most agnostics believe in logic, but this doesn't make logic any less circular.

It's always assumed people accept logic and reasoning. I have never encountered someone who has professed to rejecting them. Agnostics particularly extol reason practically as their god.

[Kreuzritter]

Reminds me of St. Anselm. I kind of like them, though I'm not sure many unbelievers would find these sorts of arguments very convincing.
(But as GBoldwater alluded to, you've reversed the major and minor for syllogisms i and iii. The major is supposed to be the general principle, whereas the minor is the concrete instance in the world. But verbally, the minor is sometimes given before the major.)

Where did you get this stuff but from your own head!

"Theological Proofs of Christianity" ????   

In logic that is what you call the fallacy of "circular reasoning" or "begging the question", because why would someone accept Christian theology in the first place!

Try philosophical or logical proofs.

You also made a mess of the structure and content of syllogisms.

Don't attempt to use this on agnostics.

While I somewhat agree with your objection, I'll point out that pure logic itself is just as circular. I mean, why would someone accept a logical argument unless he first accepts logic? If you start with no beliefs whatsoever then you can reach no conclusions at all. Most agnostics believe in logic, but this doesn't make logic any less circular.

Relativistic rubbish. Logic is not circular. The rules of inference are definitional of the logical signs and connectives. All deduction does is explicate the meaning of the premises. Deductive conclusions are absolutely true given the truth of their premises, and this is not dependent upon any unprovable ro circular presuppositions.

Example:

Suppose

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.

Then

Socrates is mortal.

"All men are mortal" means precisely that for all x, if x is a man, then x is mortal, and the conclusion is what we get when x is Socrates, a man. there's nothing "circular" at work here. P -> Q means precisely that if P is the case, we can infer Q.

why would someone accept a logical argument unless he first accepts logic

He doesn't have to accept anything and won't if he's an idiot. That doesn't make "logic" any less valid or its inferences from true premises any less true. All "accepting logic" means is accepting a convention of meaning for the purposes of discourse.

[Daniel]

The 'circularity' (rather, I should have said 'question-begging') is in the definitions themselves.

"All men are mortal. Socrates is a man."

If the law of implication exists, and if we have a perfect understanding of it, then "Socrates is mortal" must be true. But there is no way, using logic alone, to prove that the law of implication exists, or that we have a perfect understanding of it. This is why Descartes failed miserably when trying to establish his own existence whilst suspending all belief.

Now the reason we all believe in the law of implication is not because it's been proven, but only because it makes sense. Some things are just so obviously true that you can't deny them.

With regard to theology, the point isn't to prove the truths through logic. The point is only to present them in such a way that their truth (=goodness=beauty) is so obvious that it cannot be denied. (As I take it, the syllogistic form is here employed only to make the reasoning easier to follow. It's not intended to be a strictly logical "proof".)

[GBoldwater]

The 'circularity' (rather, I should have said 'question-begging') is in the definitions themselves.

"All men are mortal. Socrates is a man."

If the law of implication exists, and if we have a perfect understanding of it, then "Socrates is mortal" must be true. But there is no way, using logic alone, to prove that the law of implication exists, or that we have a perfect understanding of it. This is why Descartes failed miserably when trying to establish his own existence whilst suspending all belief.

Now the reason we all believe in the law of implication is not because it's been proven, but only because it makes sense. Some things are just so obviously true that you can't deny them.

With regard to theology, the point isn't to prove the truths through logic. The point is only to present them in such a way that their truth (=goodness=beauty) is so obvious that it cannot be denied. (As I take it, the syllogistic form is here employed only to make the reasoning easier to follow. It's not intended to be a strictly logical "proof".)

Sound like you have a problem with: "if a=b, and b=c, then a=c"

[Kreuzritter]

The 'circularity' (rather, I should have said 'question-begging') is in the definitions themselves.

No it's not. The rules of logical inference, as definitions of the logical connectives, are not propositions and do not have truth values. They are just conventions. They merely indicate possible linguistic constructions and what these mean by function, that is, what the logical symbols mean in how they are used in the context of a language game, and they do so directly and successfully.

If the law of implication exists, and if we have a perfect understanding of it, then "Socrates is mortal" must be true. But there is no way, using logic alone, to prove that the law of implication exists, or that we have a perfect understanding of it.

This is palpable nonsense. The law of implication is the definition of the implication sign and linguistic construction. It gives the logical sense of a sentence constructed with it. It's utter stupidity to call this "quation begging" or to think something is being assumed here. The rule of inference relating to the implication sign is no more an assumption than the word "red" pointing to the colours its used to poitn to. Logical signs have conventional meanings, and those meanings are given by the rules governing their use. There are no assumptions here, and this is how any language has to work. It's so painfully obvious, yet people have such a convoluted understanding of what's going on they are utter idiots when it comes to seeing this.

I don't know who you imbibed this rubbish from, but it's demonstrable bullcrap.

This is why Descartes failed miserably when trying to establish his own existence whilst suspending all belief.

No he didn't.

Now the reason we all believe in the law of implication is not because it's been proven, but only because it makes sense.

Just stop it. I "believe" the law of implication because that's what the words ?x(P(x)->Q(x)), "All A's are B's", etc MEAN when I state them: given an x that has predicate P, it has predicate Q. There's absolutely nothing to prove here.

[Daniel]

Thanks for the explanation Kreuzritter. I think I get what you're saying, so I take back what I said.

But my point still stands about the argument's content. I'm pretty sure that Xavier's arguments, strictly speaking, are logically valid. (You just need to add in all the implicit premises.) So I'm not seeing how they're much worse off than "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; Therefore, Socrates is mortal". With any logically-valid argument, you end up with the same problem: you can't accept the conclusion as certain unless you are certain of all the premises. (The form "Socrates is a man; All men are mortal; Therefore, Socrates is mortal" assumes a number of things in the premises: that Socrates exists, that men exist, that Socrates is a man, and that all men are mortal. If any of these things be wrong, then "Socrates is mortal" could be false. And the form "For every individual x, if x is a man then x is mortal; There exists some individual Socrates such that Socrates is a man; Therefore, Socrates is mortal" is not much better. It still has all the same assumptions built in. (Why suppose that all men are mortal? Why suppose that Socrates even exists? These premises are concrete facts, not stuff built into the argument or even the language.)) Yet the premises cannot be proved, as that would require an infinite regress of premises. The agnostic might reject the premises in a theological argument while accepting the premises in the "Socrates is mortal" argument, but his rejection/acceptance of the conclusion is ultimately dependent on his acceptance/rejection of the premises, not on the argument's logic.

But it still seems to me that these sorts of arguments (theological) are most effective when not construed as rigorous logical proofs in the first place.