As I understand it, the Church condemns hedonism on the grounds that hedonism does not lead to salvation.
But what about those of us who probably won't be saved anyway? Seeing as there is no road to salvation for us (the reprobate), and seeing as our damnation--if God wills it--is inevitable, why should we not spend our short lives doing whatever we want?
Should there not be a double standard?
As I understand it, the Church condemns hedonism on the grounds that hedonism does not lead to salvation.
But what about those of us who probably won't be saved anyway? Seeing as there is no road to salvation for us (the reprobate), and seeing as our damnation--if God wills it--is inevitable, why should we not spend our short lives doing whatever we want?
As I understand it, the Church condemns hedonism on the grounds that hedonism does not lead to salvation.
But what about those of us who probably won't be saved anyway? Seeing as there is no road to salvation for us (the reprobate), and seeing as our damnation--if God wills it--is inevitable, why should we not spend our short lives doing whatever we want?
have you readthe picture of dorian gray?
there is no such thing as "the reprobate" while a man lives; God wills the salvation of all men, and gives all men the graces necessary to come to know and love Him so that they may live with Him in eternal happiness in HeavenBut this is contrary to our everyday experience and also contrary to certain parts of scripture. We can only conclude that there are some men to whom God does not give grace, and that this "lack of giving" is God's own choice.
if you go by Catholic teaching, the increase of punishment in Hell.I suppose that could be a motive, but it's sort of a tradeoff. Experience no pleasure at all, or experience some pleasure now and greater pain forever.
Secondly, there is no such thing as "the reprobate" while a man lives
1. Concept and Realitv of Reprobation
By Reprobation is understood the eternal Resolve of God's Will to exclude certain rational creatures from eternal bliss. While God, by His grace, positively co-operates in the supernatural merits, which lead to beatification, He merely permits sin, which leads to eternal damnation. Regarding the content of the resolve of Reprobation, a distinction is made between positive and negative Reprobation, according as the Divine resolve of Reprobation has for its object condemnation to the eternal punishment of hell, or exclusion from the Beatific Vision. Having regard to the reason for Reprobation, a distinction is made between conditioned and unconditioned (absolute) Reprobation, in so far as the Divine resolve of Reprobation is depedent on, or independent of the prevision of future demerits.
GOD, BY AN ETERNAL RESOLVE OF HIS WILL, PREDESTINES CERTAIN MEN, ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR FORESEEN SINS, TO ETERNAL REJECTION. (DE FIDE.)
The reality of Reprobation is not formally defined, but it is the general teaching of the Church. The Synod of Valence (855) teaches: fatemur praedestinationem impiorum ad mortem (D 322). It is declared in Mt. 25, 41 : "Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels," and by Rom. 9, 22: "Vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction."
2. Positive Reprobation
a) Heretical Predestinationism in its various forms (the Southern Gallic priest Lucidus in the 5th century; the monk Gottschalk in the 9th century, according to reports of his opponents, which, however, find no confirmation in his recently re-discovered writings; Wycliffe, Huss, and especially Calvin), teaches a positive predetermination to sin, and an unconditional Predestination to the eternal punishment of hell, that is, without consideration of future demerits. This was rejected as false doctrine by the Particular Synods of Orange (D 200), Quiercy and Valence (D 316.322) and by the Council of Trent (D 827). Unconditioned positive Reprobation leads to a denial of the universality of the Divine Desire for salvation, and of the Redemption, and contradicts the Justice and Holiness of God as well as the freedom of man.
b) According to the teaching of the Church, there is a conditioned positive reprobation, that is, it occurs with consideration of foreseen future demerits (post et propter praevisa demerita).
The conditional nature of Positive Reprobation is demanded by the generality of the Divine Resolve of salvation. This excludes God's desiring in advance the damnation of certain men (cf. I Tim. 2, 4; Ez. 33, II ; 2 Peter 3, 9).
St. Augustine teaches: "God is good, God is just. He can save a person without good works, because He is good; but He cannot condemn anyone without evil works, because He is just" (Contra Jul. III 18, 35).
3. Negative Reprobation
In the question of Reprobation, the Thomist view favour not an absolute but only a negative Reprobation. This is conceived by most Thomists as non-election to eternal bliss (non-electio), together with the Divine resolve to permit some rational creatures to fall into sin, and thus by their own guilt to lose eternal salvation. In contrast to the absolute Positive Reprobation of the Predestinarians, Thomists insist on the universality of the Divine Resolve of Salvation and Redemption, the allocation of sufficient graces to the reprobate, and the freedom of man's will. However, it is difficult to find an intrinsic concordance between unconditioned non-election and the universality of the Divine Resolve of Salvation. In practice, the unconditioned negative Reprobation of the Thomists involves the same result as the unconditioned positive Reprobation of the heretical Predestinarians, since outside Heaven and Hell there is no third final state.
Properties of Reprobation
Like the Resolve of Predestination the Divine Resolve of Reprobation is immutable, but, without special revelation, its incidence is unknown to men.
In an absolute sense, yes, there is.And this is Ott's take on the "Thomistic" view of "negative reprobation":
Election and Reprobation are eternal decrees of God that play out in time. In Ludwig Ott's excellent manual Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Book 4, "The Doctrine of God the Sanctifier", Part I, "The Doctrine of Grace," Section 1, Chap. 3, concerning the Mystery of Reprobation, we read the following:
However, it is difficult to find an intrinsic concordance between unconditioned non-election and the universality of the Divine Resolve of Salvation. In practice, the unconditioned negative Reprobation of the Thomists involves the same result as the unconditioned positive Reprobation of the heretical Predestinarians, since outside Heaven and Hell there is no third final state.Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine. So in the temporal order (which is what we are discussing), there are no reprobates.
Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.
Then if God is condemning men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.
And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.
It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."
Then if God is condemning men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.
And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.
It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."
...with fear and trembling work out your salvation.As St. Paul goes on to say, it is God who works in you; but YOU are still working.
Then if God is condemning men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.
And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.
It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."
Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.
And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.
It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."
Then if God is condemning men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.
Exactly. Case closed.
Then if God is condemning men for their foreseen sins, ergo, He isn't predestining them before considering their sins, which is what "negative reprobation" holds. Therefore, God does not condemn any man to Hell except in view of their deliberate rejection of His graces, and not as the Thomists hold, because He withholds the necessary graces that would enable them to be saved.Of course, "negative reprobation" cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine of God's universal salvific will, so ultimately it must be rejected as untenable with said doctrine.
And yet it hasn't been rejected because you can't have election without reprobation.
It is a dogma of the faith that "God, by an eternal resolve of His will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection."
Exactly. Case closed.
God knows what will happen. Man chooses what he does. Man has free will, yet God already knows. Man will never be able to understand how this is possible.
The problem is that acceptance of grace is in itself a grace. If man can't do anything without God's grace, then he can't accept the graces necessary for salvation without receiving a grace of acceptance of these graces.
Therefore, saying "God condemns them for rejection of graces" is merely moving a problem one step back - if they rejected the graces, it means that God did not give them grace of acceptance of graces.
Unless you want to say that man is able to accept graces by his own power, apart from God's grace, which leads to semi-Pelagianism.
As I wrote numerous times here, no theological system accurately explains predestination, all of them taking to logical conclusion result in Calvinism or semi-Pelagianism.
We have to accept that predestination is a mystery which we cannot understand.
God knows what will happen. Man chooses what he does. Man has free will, yet God already knows. Man will never be able to understand how this is possible.
Why is this impossible to understand? It's quite simple. God knows the choices a man will make because God is not bound by time.
Free will, if it means anything at all, has to mean the freedom to choose evil. God knows which of us will choose evil because He can 'see' into the future, meaning He sees past, present and future as the eternal 'now'.
What's so difficult?
I'm certain that none of you can rigorously demonstrate, without hidden premises, how a subject's volitional freedom and foreknowledge of his choice are logically exclusive of one another.
You, to the contrary, implicitly assume that foreknowledge of an event is only possible if that event is predetermined by some causal chain that does not begin in the subject himself, confusing necessity and causation. It's the same prejudice that lies behind all rejection of middle knowledge.
One doesn't even need to appeal to transcendence. God's knowledge is not dependent upon him sitting outside of time seeing it all at once, nor upon his having mechanically predetermined everything, for God knows intimately the nature of everything, and of every spirit, free as they may be, and not all necessity is a causal necessity.
I'm certain that none of you can rigorously demonstrate, without hidden premises, how a subject's volitional freedom and foreknowledge of his choice are logically exclusive of one another.
The only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.
QuoteThe only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.
Do I freely choose to type this reply, did God force it, or does God merely already know about it (yet I freely chose the wording)?
QuoteThe only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.
Do I freely choose to type this reply, did God force it, or does God merely already know about it (yet I freely chose the wording)?
God has determined from all eternity whatsoever comes to pass. Everything. Every atom out there, every subatomic particle in the vacuum, everything, even my fingers as they type right now cannot type if not by the will of God. No creature can frustrate His will because every creature is a product of His eternal will. "And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" (Daniel 4:35)
All existence, including this very conversation, is a product of His will. Yes, we can try to discern the complexities and subtleties of the chain of causation, and all its tensions with the notion of personal accountability, but the bottom line is God's absolute sovereignty and freedom. Either that, or He is simply an impotent sky-god that is determined by His creatures, unable to accomplish that which He has determined that should come to pass. Not the God of Scripture. Or the God that became incarnate in Christ.
"There we have the problem. How is it to be solved? Only Catholic teaching provides a solution or, to be exact, the teaching of St Thomas, for I see in him the confluence of all the efforts made by the preceding centuries. The understanding of Scripture possessed by the Fathers has always been preserved in the Church; and their solutions are coordinated, rethought in depth by St Thomas.
The way to solve the problem is, before all else, to distinguish clearly the case of the good act and that of the evil act. All who fail to do this go astray. They say either that man is equally cause of his good and of his bad acts, or else that God is responsible for man's bad acts as well as his good ones. To adopt the same method of explaining good and bad acts is a fundamental mistake that renders the problem insoluble ...
This then is the structure of the good act. God produces through me my free act and, since he knows all that he does, he knows this act. If I perform an act of love tomorrow, it will be because God has given me the enveloping and sustaining impulse ... From his place of eternity God knows all the free acts his creatures have done, are doing, will do; he knows with a knowledge which does not precede these free acts, but is above them; he knows them not beforehand, but from all eternity. You see then, that when we say 'God knows beforehand', we are attributing to him a human manner of knowing. So God's knowledge is safeguarded in the case of the good act. It is certain that, from all eternity, God sees himself instigating in me this or that good action, making it come to fruition, and that without violating my free will, but rather creating it. God's prescience from all eternity—the prefix must be understood not as meaning 'beforehand', but as signifying knowledge 'of a higher mode ... So it is with the act which is bad. All the being (physical) of the bad act comes from God, but all the deviation (moral) of the bad act, everything that causes the deviation of the movement given by God for our good, all the sinfulness, comes from man alone.
In the good act, God has the first initiative, he is the first, enveloping cause of the act, and man the secondary cause. In the sinful act, man is first cause of the deviation, that is of the non-being, the disorder, the destruction. Homo prima causa mali: man is first cause of evil! But can he be first cause of anything? Yes, he can be first cause of whatever is not a thing; he can do what is no thing, he can destroy, annihilate the divine action that comes to visit him. Here man can take the first initiative; he is first cause of the annulling of the divine action. So, you see, it is a mystery of darkness. God is always knocking at the door of my heart. If I let him act, he makes me assent in a more and more excellent way. I cannot pride myself on this or pray like the Pharisee: 'Lord, I give the tithe of all I possess . . . while this publican is a sinner'. If I do something good, what I should say is, 'My God, I have so often refused you. Thank you for having helped me to consent this time. To you the glory, and not to me, worm of the earth.'
I can say 'No!' It is not that God has not helped me sufficiently. He was there, as I told you, knocking at the door of my heart. I have impeded his movement and in such wise that, if I continue to do so and death comes, it will be hell, separation from God. I shall not blame him, I shall never be able to blame him for not having helped me enough. It is I who willed to hinder the divine movement, I am to blame. None of the damned will arise at the last day to say, 'Lord, you did not help me enough.' They will all say, 'That is what 1 willed.' And they will go on maintaining that their choice was an excellent one. If a single one of the damned could say he was damned by God's fault, God would not be God.
So then, if I die in an act of love, it is God who will have enabled me to do this act, and I shall say, 'Lord, it is due to your infinite goodness that I am entering finally into your Light. You have sent me into Paradise, as an archer shoots his arrow at the mark. To you be the glory.' That is precisely what predestination is: the act by which God takes hold of me and causes me to give the ultimate assent to his love.
QuoteThe only free being in the universe, properly speaking, is God. He is the one that determines everything that comes to pass and the only one who can't be determined.
Do I freely choose to type this reply, did God force it, or does God merely already know about it (yet I freely chose the wording)?
God has determined from all eternity whatsoever comes to pass. Everything. Every atom out there, every subatomic particle in the vacuum, everything, even my fingers as they type right now cannot type if not by the will of God. No creature can frustrate His will because every creature is a product of His eternal will. "And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" (Daniel 4:35)
All existence, including this very conversation, is a product of His will. Yes, we can try to discern the complexities and subtleties of the chain of causation, and all its tensions with the notion of personal accountability, but the bottom line is God's absolute sovereignty and freedom. Either that, or He is simply an impotent sky-god that is determined by His creatures, unable to accomplish that which He has determined that should come to pass. Not the God of Scripture. Or the God that became incarnate in Christ.
The "complexities and subtleties of the chain of causation" can't be totally belittled or you end up denying the Catholic doctrine of free will.
Or does "hopeful fatalist" mean that you are not Catholic?
I think we are thinking anthromorphically when we interpret Scripture (or the true part of what you said) so as to turn God into a puppet master that destroys freedom in His creatures.
We can't "figure God out" satisfactorily in our own heads; we can't satisfactorily resolve all the complexities. At SOME point we have to admit mystery. But we have to accept two absolute truths: the absolute sovereignty of God and man's free will. We rush to the conclusion that there is a contradiction, but we don't understand God's causality.
Inshallah?
You do realize of course that St. Alphonsous challenged the Banezian understanding such that Garrigou-Lagrange countered him in, I believe, his work titled “Grace”, right?
St. Alphonsous did not follow the Banezian understanding unfortunately repopularized by GL in the 20th century, but was a Congruist.
God's absolute sovereignty and freedom. Either that, or He is simply an impotent sky-god that is determined by His creatures, unable to accomplish that which He has determined that should come to pass. Not the God of Scripture. Or the God that became incarnate in Christ.
QuoteGod's absolute sovereignty and freedom. Either that, or He is simply an impotent sky-god that is determined by His creatures, unable to accomplish that which He has determined that should come to pass. Not the God of Scripture. Or the God that became incarnate in Christ.
Sola scriptura and your personal reasoning led to this belief. I choose to come to God and learn of Him through the means He intended, which is through His Church. I welcome you to do so as well.
This post is supposed to compile early examples of support for the Catholic doctrine of free will. I [not Non Nobis] made this thread because some Protestants deny the reality of free will, and I think the Church Fathers can help show that it is real. BTW I’d love to add to this. Do any of you know of any other examples of support for free will
150 A.D. - St. Justin Martyr - "[It is not] by fate that men do what they do, or suffer what they suffer, but [rather] each man by free choice acts rightly or sins... [For] God in the beginning made the race of angels and men with free-will, [and] they will justly suffer in eternal fire the punishment of whatever sins they have committed. And this is the nature of all that is made, to be capable of vice and virtue. For neither would any of them be praiseworthy unless there were power to turn to both [virtue and vice]." (Second Apology Chapter 7) See also First Apology Chapter 43 and Dialog with Trypho Chapter 141.
170 A.D. - Tatian - “[E]ach of these two orders of creatures [men and angels] was made free to act as it pleased, not having the nature of good, which again is with God alone, but is brought to perfection in men through their freedom of choice... [T]he bad man [ is] justly punished, having become depraved through his own fault, but the just man [ is] deservedly praised...since [ by] his free choice he refrained from transgressing the will of God.” (Address to the Greeks Chapter 7)
And: “[T]he power of the Logos...foresee(s) future events, not as fated, but as taking place by the choice of free agents.” (ibid.)
177 A.D. - Athenagoras - “[M]en...have freedom of choice as to both virtue and vice...for you would not either honour the good or punish the bad, unless vice and virtue were in their own power... [ S]o is it among the angels [also].” (Plea for the Christians Chapter 24)
180 A.D. - St. Irenaeus writes a chapter about free will that is titled: "Men are possessed of free will, and endowed with the faculty of making a choice. It is not true, therefore, that some are by nature good, and others bad." (Against Heresies Book IV Chapter 37)
~195 A.D. - St. Clement of Alexandria - "[If] faith is not the rational assent of the soul exercising free-will, but an undefined beauty, belonging immediately to the creature—[then] the precepts both of the Old and of the New Testament are...superfluous." (Stromata Book 5 Chapter 1)
And: "[ S ]ince some are unbelieving, and some are disputatious, [therefore] all do not attain to the perfection of the good. For neither is it possible to attain it without the exercise of free choice; nor does the whole depend on our own purpose." (ibid.)
And: "Wisdom which is God-given...rouses indeed our free-will, and admits faith, and repays the application of the elect with its crowning fellowship." (Stromata Book 5 Chapter 13)
197 A.D. - Tertullian - “[You use] swords, and flames, and crosses, and wild beasts [against us]... [ but] all you can do to us [depends] upon our pleasure. It is assuredly a matter of my own inclination, being a Christian. ... [We] would far rather be condemned than apostatize from God…[therefore] our haters should be sorry rather than rejoice, [for] we have obtained [martyrdom] of our own choice.” (Apology Chapter 49)
216 A.D. - Tertullian - “[T]he vicious action [comes from] each individual free-will. ‘Behold,’ says [God], ‘I have set before you good and evil.’ Choose that which is good: if you cannot, [ it is] because you will not—for that you can if you will He has shown, because He has proposed each to your free-will.” (On Monogamy Chapter 14)
226 A.D. - Minucius Felix - “Neither let any one either take comfort from, or apologize for what happens from fate. Let what happens be of the disposition of fortune, yet the mind is free; and therefore man's doing, not his dignity, is judged.” (Octavius Chapter 36)
228 A.D. - St. Hippolytus - “Since man has free will, a law has been defined for his guidance by the Deity, not without answering a good purpose. For if man did not possess the power to will and not to will, why should a law be established?” (Refutation of All Heresies Book 10 Chapter 29)
248 A.D. - St. Cyprian - “That the liberty of believing or of not believing is placed in free choice [you may read in]...Deuteronomy: ‘Lo, I have set before your face life and death, good and evil. Choose for yourself life, that you may live.’ Also in Isaiah: ‘And if you be willing, and hear me, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you be unwilling, and will not hear me, the sword shall consume you. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.’ Also in the Gospel according to Luke: ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ ” (Testimonies Book 3 Chapter 52)
248 A.D. - Origen - “God, who preserves the free-will of each individual, may make use of the evil of the wicked for the administration of the world, so disposing them as to conduce to the benefit of the whole.” (Contra Celsus Book 4 Chapter 70)
251 A.D. - St. Cyprian - “But the Lord permits and suffers [heresies] to be, while the choice of one's own liberty remains.” (On the Unity of the Catholic Church 10)
~299 A.D. - Methodius - “[M]an was made with a free-will, not as if there were already evil in existence, which he had the power of choosing if he wished, but on account of his capacity of obeying or disobeying God.” (Concerning Free Will)
350 A.D. - St. Cyril of Jerusalem - “[Sin is] of a man's own choosing, an offspring of the will. For that we sin of our own free will the Prophet says plainly in a certain place: ‘Yet I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true: how are you turned to bitterness, [and become] the strange vine?’ (Jeremiah 2:21)” (Catechetical Lecture 2 Paragraph 1)
~ 402 A.D. - St. John Chrysostom - “[St. Paul] has guarded against that error of the unbelievers which takes away free will, by adding, with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. Thus much only, he says, did we contribute. We have believed that He is able to save us.” (Homily 3 on First Timothy 1:14)
~381 A.D. - St. Gregory Nazianzen - “[God] placed [Adam] in Paradise, whatever the Paradise may have been, having honoured him with the gift of Free Will...in order that God might belong to him as the result of his choice, no less than to Him who had implanted the seeds of it... Also He gave him a Law, as a material for his Free Will to act upon.” (Oration 38 Paragraph 12)
And: 381 A.D. - “Why wait for a fever to bring you this blessing [of getting baptized], and refuse it from God? Why will you have it through lapse of time, and not through reason? Why will you owe it to a plotting friend, and not to a saving desire? Why will you receive it of force and not of free will; of necessity rather than of liberty?” (Oration 40 Paragraph 12)
Before 378 A.D. - St. Ephraim the Syrian - “Not of compulsion is the doctrine; of free-will is the word of life. Whoso is willing to hear the doctrine, let him cleanse the field of his will that the good seed fall not among the thorns of vain enquirings.” (Homily on Admonition and Repentance Paragraph 1)
418 A.D. - St. Augustine - “[God] has revealed to us, through His Holy Scriptures, that there is in a man a free choice of will. But how He has revealed this I do not recount in human language, but in divine. There is, to begin with, the fact that God's precepts themselves would be of no use to a man unless he had free choice of will, so that by performing them he might obtain the promised rewards.” (On Grace and Free Will Chapter 2)
Before 461 A.D. - Pope St. Leo the Great - “[ S]ecure a peace with God that nothing can destroy, by accepting His gracious service, in order that we may not only surrender ourselves in obedience to our King but also be united to Him by our free-will.” (Sermon 26 Paragraph 4)
400 A.D. - Apostolic Constitutions - “For they that give gifts do not of their own head give them to the widows, but barely bring them in, calling them free-will offerings, that so you who know those that are in affliction may as a good steward give them their portion of the gift.” (Section 1)
221 A.D. - Clementine Homilies - “But, you say, God ought to have made us at first so that we should not have thought at all of [ sin]. You who say this do not know what is free-will, and how it is possible to be really good; that he who is good by his own choice is really good; but he who is made good by another under necessity is not really good, because he is not what he is by his own choice. Since therefore every one's freedom constitutes the true good, and shows the true evil, God has contrived that friendship or hostility should be in each man by occasions.” (Homily 11 Chapter 8)
Before 395 A.D. - Gregory of Nyssa - “Thus, then, man was created in the image of God. He could not therefore be without the gifts of freedom, independence, self-determination; and his participation in the Divine gifts was consequently made dependent on his virtue. Owing to this freedom he could decide in favour of evil, which cannot have its origin in the Divine will, but only in our inner selves, where it arises in the form of a deviation from good, and so a privation of it.” (The Great Catechism Chapters 5-6)
419 A.D. - African Code - “[N]or shall any Christian be compelled to witness [theatrical] spectacles, especially because in the performance of things contrary to the precepts of God there should be no persecution made by anyone, but (as is right) a man should exercise the free will given him by God.” (Canon 61)
~429 A.D. - John Cassian - “[In Scripture] there is a declaration of the grace of God and the freedom of our will, because even of his own motion a man can be led to the quest of virtue, but always stands in need of the help of the Lord.” (Conference 13 Chapter 9)
415 A.D. - St. Jerome - “It is in vain that you misrepresent me and try to convince the ignorant that I condemn free will. Let him who condemns it be himself condemned. We have been created endowed with free will; still it is not this which distinguishes us from the brutes. For human free will, as I have said before, depends upon the help of God and needs His aid moment by moment, a thing which you and yours do not choose to admit.” (Letter 133 Paragraph 10)
712 A.D. - St. John Damascene - “[The fact] that volition is implanted in man by nature is manifest from [the following.] Excluding the divine life, there are three forms of life: the vegetative, the sentient, and the intellectual. The properties of the vegetative life are the functions of nourishment, and growth, and production: that of the sentient life is impulse: and that of the rational and intellectual life is freedom of will. If, then, nourishment belongs by nature to the vegetative life and impulse to the sentient, freedom of will by nature belongs to the rational and intellectual life. But freedom of will is nothing else than volition.” (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith Book 3 Chapter 14)
Vatican II and its aftermath destroyed once and for all any pretense of infallibility.
QuoteGod's absolute sovereignty and freedom. Either that, or He is simply an impotent sky-god that is determined by His creatures, unable to accomplish that which He has determined that should come to pass. Not the God of Scripture. Or the God that became incarnate in Christ.
Sola scriptura and your personal reasoning led to this belief. I choose to come to God and learn of Him through the means He intended, which is through His Church. I welcome you to do so as well.
I'm afraid the Church is no more an infallible teacher on these things than you and me, Davis.
If she were, no such thing as Traditional Catholicism would even exist, would it? Vatican II and its aftermath destroyed once and for all any pretense of infallibility. Or the quarrel between Thomism and Molinism would have been decided centuries ago, instead of being embarrassingly postponed ad infinitum. Or the she wouldn't have made Geocentrism a matter of faith as she did when the Galileo affair erupted, only to quietly drop it later on. Or she wouldn't have flip-flopped on usury when the Modern European market economy started to boom from the Renaissance onwards, making easy access to credit a vital mechanism of growth. Etc.
It's clear the Church makes educated guesses as much as we do. Apparently, a lot of stuff isn't divinely revealed, nor there seems to be any divine guarantees preventing the educated guesses of popes, councils and theologians from being wrong every now and then. There's no need to point fingers at anyone, though. Only God knows all the answers. With a healthy dose of self-criticism, we can only hope to make better educated guesses with the data available to us as time goes by.
I note that the path you are on will most likely end where the gentleman whom has thanked your post is at, which I will call "thoughtful deism" - although PDR is welcome to correct me if I misunderstand his beliefs.
As I understand it, the Church condemns hedonism on the grounds that hedonism does not lead to salvation.
But what about those of us who probably won't be saved anyway? Seeing as there is no road to salvation for us (the reprobate), and seeing as our damnation--if God wills it--is inevitable, why should we not spend our short lives doing whatever we want?
Should there not be a double standard?
but at the same time I don't see a refutation to Aquinas' first way. The only other option would be pantheism: that the universe itself is uncaused and uncreated.Don't you mean his second way, about the uncaused cause?
but Plato had the audacity to ascribe goodness to the One, and I'm not sure how he arrived at that notion.Wasn't it an identification rather than an ascription? If the One isn't nothing then the One must be Existence i.e. Goodness.
[. . .] I recently read a very interesting short story called Nethescurial, by Thomas Ligotti, about a pantheistic cult in which the universal god was believed to be evil.
I could imagine an evil God and that this world was a nightmare and the meaning of life was to seek out our own annihilationThe fact that good things exist proves that God isn't evil. Because if God is evil, where do the good things come from? (We can account for evil/nonbeing as a privation of good/being, but we cannot account for good/being as a privation of evil/nonbeing.)
but Plato had the audacity to ascribe goodness to the One, and I'm not sure how he arrived at that notion.Wasn't it an identification rather than an ascription? If the One isn't nothing then the One must be Existence i.e. Goodness.
You do realize of course that St. Alphonsous challenged the Banezian understanding such that Garrigou-Lagrange countered him in, I believe, his work titled “Grace”, right?
St. Alphonsous did not follow the Banezian understanding unfortunately repopularized by GL in the 20th century, but was a Congruist.
Yes, St. Alphonsus did disagree with Banez. There are some questions that remain to be clarified, as Cardinal Journet says, which is why the final definition has not yet come. St. Alphonsus defends intrinsically efficacious grace against Molina. He also denies negative reprobation. I think both of those are right. "negative reprobation" is a totally wrong idea that confused the issue completely. St. Alphonsus lays great stress on the point that reprobation is always consequent to faults and thoroughly deserved - both in a sermon on "the number of sins beyond which God pardons no more", which St. Alphonsus repeats in his work, "the true spouse of Jesus Christ" warning those in religious life especially, not to listen to the devil when he says, "you can sin mortally now and repent later", that any mortal sin could be their last, and cause them to die in final impenitence. So, here we have consequent or "ppd" reprobation.
No Thomist is obliged to agree with Banez on these and a few other points. We are Thomists because of St. Thomas.
Summary from St. Alphonsus: "And the more, because divine grace, by which alone men can gain eternal life, is dispensed more or less abundantly by God entirely gratuitously, and without any regard to our merits. So that to save ourselves it will always be necessary for us to throw ourselves into the arms of the divine mercy, in order that he may assist us with his grace to obtain salvation, trusting always in his infallible promises to hear and save the man who prays to him."
+Journet: "There are two schools of thought on this. One is that of St Thomas Aquinas which, through St Augustine, derives from St Paul—the great traditionalist school.
The other arose in the age of the baroque and of humanism. It is that of Molina, a Portuguese Jesuit who, on account of certain unresolved difficulties, wanted to explain in a way hitherto untried the relation of grace and freedom. God and man, he said, act like two horses on the tow-path of a canal drawing a boat. The actions of God and of man are supplementary like those of the horses. Molina thought of them as simply added one to the other. His doctrine has not been condemned, since he said, as regards the good act, God and man, grace and freedom. But, as we see, he transposed to within the circle the preceding error and if he did not set them against each other, at any rate he juxtaposed the divine and the human action. He did not sufficiently grasp the difference in plane between divine and human action and stressed unduly, to an extreme degree, the power of the human will. Here, expressed in accepted Christian terminology, we find again the example just given: God holds out his hand, I take it.
5. The traditional doctrine, the only one rooted in Revelation, has not yet been defined because there still remain certain questions to elucidate. But the definition will come, already the general line is clear: human action is subordinated to the divine action. It is not only God and man, grace and freedom, but God through man, grace through freedom, that does the good act. Is the rose produced by the rose-tree? Or by God? Or else partly by God, partly by the rose-tree? We must say: the rose is produced wholly by the rose-tree as secondary cause, and wholly by God as first cause, the enveloping cause. God gives the rose-tree the ability to produce the rose. God, acting on the rose-tree to make it produce the rose, does not diminish, but rather enriches, it. The more he intervenes, the more excellent will be the rose-tree the more powerful its action ... We come to man, a free being with intelligence and will, with his immortal soul greater than all the world; when God touches his soul he enables it to act according to its nature, which is to rule over things of a lower order. Freedom is not independence in relation to God: if God does not touch me, am I then free? O no! If God does not touch me, I act no more, I exist no more, I fall into nothingness. Freedom is to be found within God himself, as in its infinite source; the nearer I draw to God and the more I share in his rule over lower beings, the more I am free. My freedom is a dependence in relation to God, a dependence that gives me a power over and freedom of choice in regard to the lower things ... My soul keeps its power and freedom of choice. Then God, when he touches me according to my nature, does not infringe my freedom but, on the contrary, exalts it: 'God who made this delicate machine of our free-will is the only one who can move it without breaking it.' He does not impair natures, but makes them flourish. Who was more dependent on God than St Francis of Assisi, and who was freer? You could place him in any condition you like, throw him into a concentration-camp, he would still be in command of all that was lower in the scale of being, he would still be St Francis."
Don't you mean his second way, about the uncaused cause?
Because St. Thomas's first way is that stuff about potency and act, and an unmoved mover, which is only a good argument if Aristotle's metaphysics is true. I'm personally hesitant to accept the first way at the moment, since I do not yet know whether or not Aristotle got it right.
St. Thomas's second way, however, appears to be irrefutable... though I haven't yet thoroughly gone through it to see if it can be disproven.
Wasn't it an identification rather than an ascription? If the One isn't nothing then the One must be Existence i.e. Goodness.
The fact that good things exist proves that God isn't evil. Because if God is evil, where do the good things come from? (We can account for evil/nonbeing as a privation of good/being, but we cannot account for good/being as a privation of evil/nonbeing.)
True, omnimalevolence runs into the same sort of problems as the claims for omnibenevolence. An omnimalelovent creator would not permit goodness, and an omnibenevolent creator would not permit evil. I guess an apologist for an evil deity could just say, "God allows goodness in order to bring about a greater evil," whatever that would entail. It makes about as much sense as the reverse claim. The only thing the observable world seems to prove is that God is neither; "impersonal" I guess would be the term.
That's not a problem. Your problem is insisting upon confusing the grace that makes this freely-willed acceptance possible with God magically making a man's will no longer his own, believing man must turned into a puppet on a string by the grace to accept grace, yet still actually will something."Possible". But an individual has to excercise his potency to accept God's grace. Because man can't do anything apart from God, this decision to accept God's grace must also be a grace, unless man can make a free choice apart from God's grace. Therefore, man must receive grace of decision to accept graces in order to be saved - his acceptace or lack of thereof still depends on God's grace. This is why an explanation "they were damned for rejecting graces" moves the problem only one step back - to accept graces necessary for salvation they would have needed graces to make this decision.
Receiving un-asked-for power to do something, even if that something is to exercise my will to make a particular choice, is not a violation of the freedom of my will in general or in that decision.I never argued against free will, just pointing out that Thomism taken to its logical conclusion denies it.
No, it doesn't. It just means they exercised their free will to refuse to cooperate.To choose to cooperate they would have to receive grace of making a decision to cooperate. They could not have chosen to cooperate without this grace, unless you say that man is capable of making the right decision by himself, apart from God's grace. Therefore, when people are condemned for rejecting graces, they are condemned for something they were incapable of doing.
Without God's grace, there's no grace to accept in the first place, leaving man lost, and without a prevenient grace, man's will, bogged down in sin, is not free to choose to accept it, and so has no way to salvation.True, but being offered graces is not enough to choose them - man must receive grace to make the right decision as well, since he can't do anything apart from God's grace. If he does not receive grace of making right decision, he can't choose to accept any graces he is offered.
That grace frees and empowers the will to be able choose God does not mean just its opposite.
Beliveing in man actually having a really real free will is not any kind of Pelagianism, regardless of your turn of phrase.I do believe in free will. Thomism leads to its effective denial - no matter how you slice it, at some point God did not give the damned graces to do something necessary for salvation, and they are condemned for doing something they were incapable of doing. Thomism taken to its logical conclusion does not differ much from Calvinism.
That doesn't resolve a contradiction. It leaves it there, and no appeal to a "mystery", that ubiquitous Latin copout, will ever make a logical contradiction possible. The proper response to a reductio ad absurdum is to get rid of a false premise that led one to it, not to declare the question of how a contradiction is possible a mystery so you can just stick with it.Some things just are a mystery which we cannot understand, and we have to accept it. If you dig to the bottom of the issue, God willing to save all and not predestining all is an apparent contradiction (but I know it is only apparent and that it is not a realy contradiction, and a solution must exist, since both of these truths are taught by the Church). No theological system succeeded in resolving it, I'm content with leaving it as a mystery.
To choose to cooperate they would have to receive grace of making a decision to cooperate. They could not have chosen to cooperate without this grace, unless you say that man is capable of making the right decision by himself, apart from God's grace. Therefore, when people are condemned for rejecting graces, they are condemned for something they were incapable of doing.
I do believe in free will. Thomism leads to its effective denial - no matter how you slice it, at some point God did not give the damned graces to do something necessary for salvation, and they are condemned for doing something they were incapable of doing. Thomism taken to its logical conclusion does not differ much from Calvinism.
Critics of Thomistic doctrine of grace (Bañezian Thomism if we accept Gardener's clarification) always deny that what it calls sufficient grace is really sufficient. Just because sufficient grace does not bear any fruit in the soul due to man's sinful resistance to it – does not mean that it is useless or powerless in itself, or that it would not bear fruit if man were not to resist it. Yes, intrinsically efficacious grace is required over and above merely sufficient grace in order to convert and save a sinner: that does not mean that a man given merely sufficient grace can't be converted or can't be saved, rather it means he won't be converted or won't be saved: because of his refusal to co-operate with the grace given to him which is really sufficient to convert and save him, he won't be – i.e. he wills not to be – converted and wills not to be saved. t once a man has hardened his heart towards God's grace, it is totally up to God's mercy to efficaciously move .You confuse possibility with potency. "Sufficient grace" is insufficient to convert a sinner and insufficient to bring any fruit in his life, by your own admition, and efficacious grace is necessary to save him. What is "suficient grace" sufficient for, then? It makes salvation a theoretical possibility, but without actual potency it is worthless, as it is metaphisically incapable of breaking man's resistance. In order to convert man has to receive efficacious grace, otherwise he is incapable of accepting sufficient grace. Therefore, if he does not receive efficaciois grace he is condemned for rejecting sufficient grace which he was incapable of accepting to begin with. Ergo, in Thomism God fails to provide graces necessary for salvation to some, which makes it little different from Calvinism.
God not existing renders the whole question void of any real meaning, so let's skip that one.
An omnimalevolent God, the seemingly logical counterpart to God, would face the problem of defect since evil is a defect and God cannot have defects.
Sufficient grace confers a real power or potency in the soul, is sufficient to convert and save a soul, and would bear this spiritual fruit if not resisted. Man is really capable of co-operating with merely sufficient grace, he simply chooses not to (hence, it is merely sufficient, as opposed to efficacious). God provides all men with the graces necessary for salvation in a conditional sense, i.e. on the condition that they do not refuse His grace. But after having refused His grace, absolutely speaking only some are given the grace necessary for salvation. Still, if some are damned that it is not because God refuses grace, but because man resists the sufficient grace which God gives to all men and which is sufficient to save them on the condition that they freely co-operate with it. Man is always free to co-operate with God's grace. God never leaves men in a situation where they "can't accept" or are "forced to reject" God's grace. The resistance of the reprobate to God's sufficient grace is a free resistance, a free denial to co-operate with sufficient grace for which they have the real power to co-operate. Sufficient grace itself gives men sufficient power to co-operate with it: otherwise it wouldn't be sufficient. Efficacious grace not only gives men the sufficient power to co-operate with grace, but in addition it actively moves them freely to co-operate. That God denies some men this efficacious grace is only because of their sinful resistance to sufficient grace, and He is perfectly just in this denial of utterly gratuitous grace; and that God gives some men efficacious grace despite their initial resistance to sufficient grace is due to His superabundant mercy.
Here I think we go astray. When we say "God cannot have defects," we make a metaphysical assumption along the same lines as Plato and Aristotle made. The logic of cause and effect has only gotten us to: "the uncaused cause, eternal and uncreated, that from which all else proceeds" and, as Aquinas says, "we call this God." Well and good. That same logic, however, cannot get us to know the nature of this entity. How can we know whether it has no defects or not?
The only thing we can know is that an imperfect world has proceeded from it.
1. A potency is not "sufficient" for an act. It is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Thus "sufficient" grace is not sufficient in and of itself. Yes, I know you will say it is "sufficient" in the sense that efficacious grace will follow if it is not resisted.
2. Is resistance to sufficient grace an evil?
2a. If no, how is it just for God to deny the efficacious grace?
2b. If yes (which seems to be your opinion because you call resistance to sufficient grace "sinful"), then what is is the good to which this evil is opposed (e.g. is a defect of)? [Answer: Charity, which is the full or proper form of co-operation with God's grace.]
2b.1. And whatever this good is, is man expected to produce it all by himself?
2b.1a. If yes, then this is violation of the principle that God is First Cause of all good.
2b.1b. If no, then again God is punishing man for failing to bring about a good which he could not bring about on his own, and which He failed to cause. [Answer: God is not punishing man merely for failing to love Him, but for actively refusing to love Him despite God's giving him the grace to do so. God would not withdraw efficacious grace if sufficient grace were not initially resisted: the punishment follows the sin.]
Here I think we go astray. When we say "God cannot have defects," we make a metaphysical assumption along the same lines as Plato and Aristotle made. The logic of cause and effect has only gotten us to: "the uncaused cause, eternal and uncreated, that from which all else proceeds" and, as Aquinas says, "we call this God." Well and good. That same logic, however, cannot get us to know the nature of this entity. How can we know whether it has no defects or not?
Because included in this definition – "the uncaused cause, eternal and uncreated, that from which all else proceeds" – is the implicit understanding that this limitless & all-powerful Being is ipso facto the very Standard by which we measure all things, including goodness.
So yes, an imperfect world did proceed from God: but only through an intermediary.
Here I think we go astray. When we say "God cannot have defects," we make a metaphysical assumption along the same lines as Plato and Aristotle made. The logic of cause and effect has only gotten us to: "the uncaused cause, eternal and uncreated, that from which all else proceeds" and, as Aquinas says, "we call this God." Well and good. That same logic, however, cannot get us to know the nature of this entity. How can we know whether it has no defects or not?
Because included in this definition – "the uncaused cause, eternal and uncreated, that from which all else proceeds" – is the implicit understanding that this limitless & all-powerful Being is ipso facto the very Standard by which we measure all things, including goodness.
I would have to disagree, John Lamb. What you claim is implicit in that definition seems only implicit on your own say-so; the ipso facto in there is an assumption. Observably there are many people in existence who are completely ignorant of this "Standard by which we measure all things," and who instead measure things according to their own whims or self-gratification, or who in the past have measured things according to deities who were appeased by human sacrifice (and there still exist tribes in Papua New Guinea who practice cannibalism, as well as ritual sodomy upon children). Whatever things the uncaused cause has loaned to us, a universal standard does not appear to be among them, else we would all be in agreement on what is good.
Neither Moses nor Plato sufficiently resolves the problem. Whether the imperfection proceeds through Original Sin or the incompetence of a Demiurge, both intermediaries proceed from (or are permitted by) God or the One, who must therefore answer for them. As all things recede back into the uncaused cause, so too, ultimately, does all responsibility.
When the same Abba Anthony thought about the depth of the judgements of God, he asked, 'Lord, how is it that some die when they are young, while others drag on to extreme old age? Why are there those who are poor and those who are rich? Why do wicked men prosper and why are the just in need?' He heard a voice answering him, 'Anthony, keep your attention on yourself; these things are according to the judgement of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them.'
Still, that this notion of divine Standard or Supreme Good is implied in all our value judgements is something which is definitely true, although even this is one of those philosophical judgements which is difficult for us to grasp (it is Aquinas' fourth way and basically the whole of Plato's philosophy). But as much as you find ignorance of this principle among men, you also find a vague kind of knowledge of it. For example, in the understanding of so many primitive peoples that there is a God above who is going to judge their actions and who expects good and not evil from them. That their understanding of God and His laws might be imperfect does not take away from its general correctness. That there are some individuals or tribes that have fallen into the worse idolatry or most despairing atheism is really the exception to the rule and only shows just how corruptible and corrupt human nature is.
At the end of the world there will be people cursing God [...] for letting them live to old age.
Logic can only get us to the (unadulterated) uncaused cause. We can't know by the lights of logic whether this is Jehovah, Brahman, a Pythagorean monad, the One, or some mystery we will never know what.
Because included in this definition – "the uncaused cause, eternal and uncreated, that from which all else proceeds" – is the implicit understanding that this limitless & all-powerful Being is ipso facto the very Standard by which we measure all things, including goodness. That is, we wouldn't know what a "defect" is, ultimately, if not for this transcendent uncreated Good & First Cause of all created goods.This is what I don't get. If the standard is God, then it follows that the 'best' cat is whichever cat most closely resembles God. But this is false. Because cats are supposed to be catlike, not Godlike. They should be corporeal, not spiritual. Irrational, not rational. Cats are not supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. etc. So 'good' cats are not the cats which resemble God. Rather, the 'good' cats are those cats which more closely resemble the Form of Cat. And the 'best' cat is whichever cat most closely resembles the Form of Cat. Unless we admit that the Forms are God, then the standard is the Forms, not God. But I'm not sure how we can admit that the Forms are God, seeing as the Forms are complex and many and defined whereas God is simple and one and infinite.
Because included in this definition – "the uncaused cause, eternal and uncreated, that from which all else proceeds" – is the implicit understanding that this limitless & all-powerful Being is ipso facto the very Standard by which we measure all things, including goodness. That is, we wouldn't know what a "defect" is, ultimately, if not for this transcendent uncreated Good & First Cause of all created goods.This is what I don't get. If the standard is God, then it follows that the 'best' cat is whichever cat most closely resembles God. But this is false. Because cats are supposed to be catlike, not Godlike. They should be corporeal, not spiritual. Irrational, not rational. Cats are not supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. etc. So 'good' cats are not the cats which resemble God. Rather, the 'good' cats are those cats which more closely resemble the Form of Cat. And the 'best' cat is whichever cat most closely resembles the Form of Cat. Unless we admit that the Forms are God, then the standard is the Forms, not God.
But I'm not sure how we can admit that the Forms are God, seeing as the Forms are complex and many and defined whereas God is simple and one and infinite.
Who is the God Who consistently taught Israel and in time the whole world that that there was One Supreme Creator? It was only Jehovah, the God Who revealed Himself to Abraham and Moses Who did that. I don't think you will deny that for more than at least a 1000 years before some good Greek philosophers, at length and with difficulty, finally apprehended this truth and discovered philosophically the First Cause, historically speaking, the Lord God Jehovah had proclaimed it to His Prophets to be announced in His Name.
To put it as a syllogism,
1. All of us know some acts (killing innocents, rape and sexual abuse, torturing children etc) are objectively wrong and we are bound to avoid them.
2. Therefore, there is a law naturally discernible by our conscience that prescribes what we should avoid.
3. This law cannot be caused by any creature because it is unchanging and eternal
4. It can only come from our eternal Creator, Who consequently is known to be the source of the natural moral law, and so Goodness itself.
If we can know that some acts are always evil, we know there is a law that guides our actions toward seeking Good and avoiding evil. But this could not have arisen through blind forces, and thus conscience leads to God. The 4th way of St. Thomas proceeds along similar lines.
Your thoughts, Pon?
Hola, Xavier. It is true that the ancient Hebrews had a monotheism before the ancient Greeks, but let us not neglect the differences. We need only consider something which John Lamb mentioned earlier in the thread: that Plato would've benefited from reading Moses. I wonder what Plato would've made of the Torah. He would've found a form of monotheism, yes, but at the same time he would've noticed all the ways in which the God of the Jews resembled the anthropomorphic gods of the Greek pantheon, or what QMR aptly calls "a tantrums and thunderbolts god"—one who gets jealous and enraged, causes natural disasters, is pleased with animal sacrifices, and issues intricate legal decrees ranging from forbidding the consumption of pork and shellfish to stoning a bride to death if she is found not to be a virgin. I doubt if even the Greek gods were so peculiar as to make a covenant by the mark of a genital mutilation.
Essentially, Plato would've found in Moses the religion that would one day become Islam. Greek monotheism by comparison was much less coarse and primitive, and far more transcendent than anything in Moses, especially lacking the later Hellenistic-tinged wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Without the mediating influence of Christianity, Moses is unpersuasive. Marcion was probably right to jettison the whole thing. With apologies for this, but as the poet Ezra Pound (who carried the torch of Greco-Roman thought somewhat unapologetically) put it: "to hell wiff Abraham. Most of the constructive so-called Xtn ideas are out of the stoics. In fact, I should suggest that all Christian decency is sheer stoic. I doubt if any single ethical idea now honoured comes from Jewry." Ezra Pound was something of an anti-Semite, so we can allow for a bit of hyperbole, but his remarks contain a certain truth. It is not until you get to Philo of Alexandria and then to the Neoplatonist Church Fathers that the Hebrew conception of God finally begins to become credible, and then only by an immersion in Greek monotheism.
Not sufficient to produce it in the realm of facts, but sufficient to produce it in the realm of possibilities: and that's all we're talking about here, because we're demonstrating that God makes it at least conditionally possible for all men to be saved.
Granted that according to Thomism it is not absolutely possible for all men to be saved due to the infallibility of the eternal decrees; still, God does not decree anything in a way that takes away man's freedom or responsibility in choosing his everlasting destiny.
2b. If yes (which seems to be your opinion because you call resistance to sufficient grace "sinful"), then what is is the good to which this evil is opposed (e.g. is a defect of)? [Answer: Charity, which is the full or proper form of co-operation with God's grace.]
2b.1. And whatever this good is, is man expected to produce it all by himself?
2b.1a. If yes, then this is violation of the principle that God is First Cause of all good.
2b.1b. If no, then again God is punishing man for failing to bring about a good which he could not bring about on his own, and which He failed to cause. [Answer: God is not punishing man merely for failing to love Him, but for actively refusing to love Him despite God's giving him the grace to do so. God would not withdraw efficacious grace if sufficient grace were not initially resisted: the punishment follows the sin.]
De gustibus non est disputandum. Plato may've indeed envied Moses his ability to convict his people of the Law, and the Torah is not without its instances of poetry and beauty, but in most of the parts pertaining to theology I imagine he would've found so much of a painfully human imagining of God,I think you underestimate Plato's intelligence. He would have been able to discern the theology contained within unlike theologically bumbling modern readers who get caught up on the literary form so much they can't read it philosophically.
who in the Torah is a religious chauvinist who takes a preference to a single people;He honours a covenant He made with a godly man.
a martial deity like Ares who leads them into battle;He manifests His divine power over human society and history.
and even an animistic episode where a voice comes from a burning bush.He manifests His divine power over created substances.
Ever since Xenophanes, Greek philosophy had been striving to get as far away from this sort of thing as fast as it possibly could. Anthropomorphism was an embarrassment.The God of the Torah is not anthropomorphic. It only appears that way to modern readers who have been subjected to so much "demythologising" that they hear the words "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" and think it's a mere picturesque myth rather than a philosophically profound statement.
What was the conversion rate when the Romans interracted with the Jews? Surely the Roman intelligentsia were not so incurious that they wouldn't have made some kind of inquiry to the Hebrew scriptures. I don't think they were overwhelmingly persuaded of its theology.The Jews weren't trying to convert the gentiles, they were trying to keep themselves separate from them.
You are persuaded, because you are reading back into it through the ameliorative lens of Christianity.And you're reading it through the lens of pseudo-scientific modern scholarship with its relativistic bias. You might not see it that way, but once you've read the documents we have from Heraclitus all the way through to Schopenhauer you tend to pick up the quintessentially modern principle of relativism having read so many disparate works of geniuses.
Not sufficient to produce it in the realm of facts, but sufficient to produce it in the realm of possibilities: and that's all we're talking about here, because we're demonstrating that God makes it at least conditionally possible for all men to be saved.
No, it's not sufficient even in the realm of possibilities, for it cannot even possibly self-actualize.
And conditional on what?
QuoteGranted that according to Thomism it is not absolutely possible for all men to be saved due to the infallibility of the eternal decrees; still, God does not decree anything in a way that takes away man's freedom or responsibility in choosing his everlasting destiny.
So therefore God has made their salvation a metaphysical impossibility (since His decrees ontologically precede their actions and even their existence), and yet He expects them to obey Him and be saved.
You contradict yourself. Charity is the love of God; therefore the opposing evil is the lack of love of God, by definition. You distinguish this from an "active refusal" to love God; and if this is indeed a separate evil, it must be opposed to a different good than charity, or else must exist on its own, as an evil not a deprivation of good. This is in fact the case: an active refusal to love God is opposed to a willingness to love God. But the same question repeats: can man bring about this good on his own?
So, no matter how you slice it, somewhere down the line, either there is a good man can bring about on his own (such that he can be held responsible for not bringing it about), or there is an evil which is not the deprivation of a good (such that man can prevent this evil without needing to bring about a good on his own).
Otherwise, judgment will be a farce: God will "judge" mankind, who will then turn around and judge Him as unjust, for commanding what He made (given their circumstance) metaphysically impossible.
The Jews weren't trying to convert the gentiles, they were trying to keep themselves separate from them.
My thoughts are that this syllogism seems to fail on its first point. As the 17th-century French cat-burners proved (among a billion other examples that could be offered), it is not known to everyone that killing innocents is wrong. Presumably cat-burning originally emerged from Descartes' idea that animals were insensate automatons which could not feel pain, but once it took off I'm sure the average commoners in the village square were not at all versed in Cartesian philosophy, and instead were only crass and cruel human primates who thrilled to hear the anguished howls of cats being burned alive.
The members of NAMBLA, to take another example, do not believe that sodomizing children is wrong. Their whole mission statement is that they should be allowed to do it. They are not alone in history on this point. The Greeks and Romans tolerated it, and certain tribes of Papua New Guinea even ritualized a form of it. Whatever uncaused cause is at the source of all existence (and / or is existence itself), it isn't writing a proscription against this practice on everyone's heart. Who knows what it wants us to do? Hopefully it is as positively repulsed by this stuff as you and I, but the thunderbolts from the sky fall at random, killing the righteous and the wicked without discrimination. For all we know, the Papuan sodomy-and-cannibalism tribes think they're attuned to the Standard of all goodness. They might believe that the Great Goo-Goo has decreed these rites from the beginning of time, and that everywhere else the light of truth has been obscured in the eyes of the unbelievers. The intractable problem of claiming a specific divinely-given morality is that anyone with a claim to a god can simply say theirs is the standard. It all ends in subjectivity.
That people who trespass the natural law secretly know that what they are doing is wrong and shameful is proven by their passionate outrage whenever they are judged or exposed.That's not always true. Passionate outrage could be due to many things. e.g. We know that innocent men typically react passionately against unfair condemnation. As long as they don't go berserk, this sort of passion is a natural/normal response. But by the same psychology, the non-innocent man who sincerely believes himself to be innocent reacts in the exact same way, against what he sincerely believes is an unfair condemnation.
You are making an incorrect assumption that if someone does not believe in God's moral standards included in the Natural Law (or believes something contrary to them), he does not know them. God's moral law is indeed inscribed in everyone's heart, and those who believe something contrary to it also know it deep down in their heart, but they supress this knowledge in unrighteousness, as St. Paul explains in Romans 1 [ ... ]
Of course, you might argue that this claim is non-falsifiable, since anyone who believes something contrary to the Natural Law can be accussed of suppressing the knowledge of morality in unrighteousness, but as you can see this has strong New Testament basis.
St. Paul writes about people who have knowingly rejected and suppressed the knowledge of God (verse 28), and who know full well that all the vices which God condems are indeed evil, but they not only do them, but approve of others doing the same thing (verse 32). This is basis of St. Paul's argument about wickedness of all of mankind, and that nobody will have an excuse on the Judgment Day, which then leads to the necessity of the Cross and Christian faith which he explains in consecutive chapters.
You are making an incorrect assumption that if someone does not believe in God's moral standards included in the Natural Law (or believes something contrary to them), he does not know them. God's moral law is indeed inscribed in everyone's heart, and those who believe something contrary to it also know it deep down in their heart, but they supress this knowledge in unrighteousness, as St. Paul explains in Romans 1 [ ... ]
Of course, you might argue that this claim is non-falsifiable, since anyone who believes something contrary to the Natural Law can be accussed of suppressing the knowledge of morality in unrighteousness, but as you can see this has strong New Testament basis.
Correct, I would say it's non-falsifiable. It's a claim that anyone of any persuasion could make on behalf of their own law. A Muslim could just as easily say, "the knowledge of Shariah and its obvious righteousness rests innately in all, though many have blinded themselves to its truth." This is the imputing of a certain knowledge to everyone, including those who deny having it. Even if the claim were true, there would be no way to verify it, except I suppose by administering a lie detector test to everyone who says they don't feel like they have a knowledge written in their hearts of X, Y, or Z being morally wrong.St. Paul writes about people who have knowingly rejected and suppressed the knowledge of God (verse 28), and who know full well that all the vices which God condems are indeed evil, but they not only do them, but approve of others doing the same thing (verse 32). This is basis of St. Paul's argument about wickedness of all of mankind, and that nobody will have an excuse on the Judgment Day, which then leads to the necessity of the Cross and Christian faith which he explains in consecutive chapters.
Speaking for myself, I can offer anecdotally that there is about 20% of Catholic morality I no longer accept. But I don't feel as if I'm in denial of a moral law written in my heart. I guess it must be something like grace: according to Catholic theology, I must not be cooperating with the grace to revert, yet I don't feel any spiritual promptings to do so (at times I can still be moved by certain forms of piety and principle, but most traditional Catholics would say these feelings are from the devil, since it is usually the piety of the "Professor Plinio Cathars," "anti-Americanists," or "Japanese holdout Jansenists" that impresses me).
The same goes for natural law, because I can't report feeling guilt for disobeying an innate morality. When I believed Catholic morality issued from a divine authority, I accepted it all; even if I had a doubt about something, I assumed the fault must naturally be mine and not God's. But without that belief, the best I can do is take it piece by piece based on how much practical and ethical sense it makes. I know the things God condemns according to the Catholic Church, but lacking faith that the Catholic Church is divinely mandated and protected, I can no longer know whether the Catholic conception of God is correct.
I'm not suppressing my knowledge of God in order to do wickedness. I don't think the Papuan tribes are either. I imagine there was probably a homo shaman somewhere far back in their history who appeared to make it rain during a drought, and he successfully awed enough of them into believing that the Great Goo-Goo would always send rain if they took up ritual sodomy. These were primitive and credulous people, and the successive generations got raised with the belief and didn't question the tradition. So too for all the early religions which believed the gods were propitiated or stayed by sacrifice: virgins, children, animals, &c. "And Noe built an altar unto the Lord: and taking of all cattle and fowls that were clean, offered holocausts upon the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and said: I will no more curse the earth for the sake of man."
"to hell wiff Abraham. Most of the constructive so-called Xtn ideas are out of the stoics. In fact, I should suggest that all Christian decency is sheer stoic. I doubt if any single ethical idea now honoured comes from Jewry." Ezra Pound was something of an anti-Semite, so we can allow for a bit of hyperbole, but his remarks contain a certain truth.
It is not until you get to Philo of Alexandria and then to the Neoplatonist Church Fathers that the Hebrew conception of God finally begins to become credible, and then only by an immersion in Greek monotheism.
So, really, I don't care about intellectualised debates over ethics and morality, much less about what is good or evil when definitions of these have not even been agreed upon. All I do is pick my side.
Correct, I would say it's non-falsifiable. It's a claim that anyone of any persuasion could make on behalf of their own law. A Muslim could just as easily say, "the knowledge of Shariah and its obvious righteousness rests innately in all, though many have blinded themselves to its truth." This is the imputing of a certain knowledge to everyone, including those who deny having it. Even if the claim were true, there would be no way to verify it, except I suppose by administering a lie detector test to everyone who says they don't feel like they have a knowledge written in their hearts of X, Y, or Z being morally wrong.
Hola, Xavier. It is true that the ancient Hebrews had a monotheism before the ancient Greeks, but let us not neglect the differences. We need only consider something which John Lamb mentioned earlier in the thread: that Plato would've benefited from reading Moses. I wonder what Plato would've made of the Torah.
Yes, ultimately it is true that member of any religion can make this claim and take his religion presuppositionally as true. That is the epistemological barrier which cannot be overcome so long as one truly believes his religion to be true and believes that all arguments against it must be wrong a priori. I addressed that in one of my discussins with QMR - this argument ignores that faith is a gift from God, and God will provide the faith to those who search for truth, no matter what epistemological limitations there are. We have to recognize that rational apologetic arguments and proper epistemology are insufficient in themselves to arrive to true faith, since it is a gift from God. Therefore, demanding to demonstrate truthfulness of Christianity in the real of apologetics and epistemology (like you and QMR do) is ultimately futile, even though excellent arguments can be made and have been made in these areas - simply because arriving to Christian faith does not depend on apologetics and epistemology, but on God's grace.
2) Yes, ultimately it is true that member of any religion can make this claim and take his religion presuppositionally as true. That is the epistemological barrier which cannot be overcome so long as one truly believes his religion to be true and believes that all arguments against it must be wrong a priori. I addressed that in one of my discussins with QMR - this argument ignores that faith is a gift from God, and God will provide the faith to those who search for truth, no matter what epistemological limitations there are. We have to recognize that rational apologetic arguments and proper epistemology are insufficient in themselves to arrive to true faith, since it is a gift from God. Therefore, demanding to demonstrate truthfulness of Christianity in the real of apologetics and epistemology (like you and QMR do) is ultimately futile, even though excellent arguments can be made and have been made in these areas - simply because arriving to Christian faith does not depend on apologetics and epistemology, but on God's grace.
In defense of QMR, though, he himself appears to believe that apologetics can only go so far. For as much as he trashes Thomism, Western theology, and pious argumentation, he offers at the same time an apologetics scheme of his own (theistic evolution, apophatic theology, and development of doctrine to the point of extreme revision or outright reversal). So far as I read him, however, he would say that this kind of thing can only get an unbeliever to something like, "Christianity has a reasonable claim to truth." But in order to get to his "certainty of faith," he emphasizes the need for a mystical illumination (or, as you would say, God's grace). I agree with the both of you on that count. Clearly there has to be something meta-rational that gets a person past Greek monotheism to the God of the Hebrews.
The problem with grace is that it still seems to require a personal assent. Unless, that is, grace is irresistible, but then that would negate free will. You and I happen to agree here: that there is no earthly way to resolve the paradox of Pelagianism and determinism.
Another problem with grace, though, is that, like the claim to a natural law, it is yet another non-verifiable claim that any person of any religion could make. "By the grace of God I believe in (X) and know with an absolute and mystical certainty that is (X) is true." This is what I try to stress to QMR.
QuoteAnother problem with grace, though, is that, like the claim to a natural law, it is yet another non-verifiable claim that any person of any religion could make. "By the grace of God I believe in (X) and know with an absolute and mystical certainty that is (X) is true." This is what I try to stress to QMR.
Objectively non-verifiable, admitted; subjectively non-verifiable, denied.
If you ask me, in the year 2019, I am going to say Eastern Orthodox or Buddhist.
If you ask me, in the year 2019, I am going to say Eastern Orthodox or Buddhist.
Really?
I hadn't realized you were somehow attracted to the musings of Siddhartha.
QuoteAnother problem with grace, though, is that, like the claim to a natural law, it is yet another non-verifiable claim that any person of any religion could make. "By the grace of God I believe in (X) and know with an absolute and mystical certainty that is (X) is true." This is what I try to stress to QMR.
Objectively non-verifiable, admitted; subjectively non-verifiable, denied.
Agreed. For the person who has the experience, it is the most verifiable and certain thing in the world.
But the fact that various people claim mystical experiences in favor of different religions is where the problem comes in: this is like a conference of solipsists arguing over which one of them actually exists. Everyone is certain of their own mystical certainty.
If an unbeliever is presented with claims of mystical certainty from a Catholic, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Mennonite, a Mormon, and an Eastern Orthodox, and must choose from this set based on which is the most reasonable, how would they know which one to choose? If you ask me, in the year 2019, I am going to say Eastern Orthodox or Buddhist. "
If you ask me, in the year 2019, I am going to say Eastern Orthodox or Buddhist.
Really?
I hadn't realized you were somehow attracted to the musings of Siddhartha.
Only mildly. What Buddhism has going for it is that it begins with the brute fact of suffering: every sentient being suffers, it acknowledges, with no God to account for it. Suffering just is (which is a fine description of the world as we find it) and Buddhism proposes a liberation. It does have massive problems, though. The single baseline supernatural belief you have to take on to be a Buddhist, of course, is a belief in reincarnation, which is not very credible, even though the Greeks themselves had it in their doctrine of the transmigration of souls. It makes more sense, though, than a Catholicism that can reinvent itself to the extent that, say, the death penalty can be proclaimed a moral wrong after two thousand years. I am not planning on becoming a Buddhist, but when QMR proposes with mystical certainty that Novus Ordo Catholicism is viable, I am going to prefer the mystical certainty of a Buddhist proposing reincarnation—if we're talking about what's reasonable, that is.
Does Buddhism rely on doctrinal coherence throughout the ages, though?
I reckon they have a few different denominations and schools of thought.
This is a little off topic, but...
I'm wondering, does Buddhism claim that everyone is morally obliged to become Buddhist? Or does it only claim that Buddhism is useful (necessary?) insofar as we want to escape from suffering?
Suppose I don't care about suffering. (I'll take the suffering or I'll leave it... doesn't matter one way or the other. That sort of attitude.) Is there any reason for me to become a Buddhist?
I can say "it is only by the grace of God" that I don't, immediately, right now, take an Uzi (assuming I owned one) into the nearest shopping mall and start mowing down people, and it might sound really pious, but it fails the reality test. This would be simply extra, gratuitous evil on my part.
If an unbeliever is presented with claims of mystical certainty from a Catholic, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Mennonite, a Mormon, and an Eastern Orthodox, and must choose from this set based on which is the most reasonable, how would they know which one to choose?
If you ask me, in the year 2019, I am going to say Eastern Orthodox or Buddhist. You will rightly contend that the Orthodox have a faulty epistemology, but as we've discussed before, the allegedly perfect epistemology ends in Vatican II, annulments-as-divorce, the NOM, St. John Paul II, and Francis reversing the death penalty. That might be acceptable to you who have had a mystical experience, but for me, there goes Christianity. It would then only remain for someone to decide whether they want to spend their time sitting on a yoga mat in the lotus position waiting on a promised enlightenment. "I don't believe in mantra."
Kreuzritter - Could you clarify: What you seem to be saying is that the reason philosophers/ethicists have never been able to explain why people are morally obliged to do the good is because people simply aren't morally obliged to do the good?
In other words, you're saying that nobody is obliged to follow God's rules?
That is, God could care less whether or not we follow His rules?
If we ignore heaven and hell, the man who chooses to do evil is not any worse a man than the man who chooses to do good?
But because of the reality of heaven and hell, it's a good idea to do good.
The man who chooses to do evil is a more foolish man than the man who chooses to do good, but not a worse man?
edit - Or maybe he is a worse man, but that's not a bad thing, since there's no objective reason for him to be good?
As I understand it, the Church condemns hedonism on the grounds that hedonism does not lead to salvation.
But what about those of us who probably won't be saved anyway? Seeing as there is no road to salvation for us (the reprobate), and seeing as our damnation--if God wills it--is inevitable, why should we not spend our short lives doing whatever we want?
Should there not be a double standard?
Sorry Kreuzritter, I didn't intend to read any of that stuff into your post. I am just trying to better understand your position.
Thanks for the reply. I guess I now see what you're saying. All men are obliged to obey God by the very fact that God commands obedience.
And this obedience must be done out of supernatural love for God rather than out of an intellectual submission to duty. Those who do this are defined as 'good' and are consequently worthy of heaven; those who fail to do this are defined as 'evil' and are consequently worthy of hell.
I suppose I'm still having a somewhat difficult time grasping this though, since in my experience love is intellectual. But I suppose supernatural love might not be. Also, in my experience, even men who lack grace/charity still have the capacity to love. Though I suppose they have no capacity for supernatural love.
Would you say that God commands the impossible? Those who have no supernatural love cannot correctly love God yet nevertheless are obliged to do so?
But there's a difference between having a generic desire to follow God's rules and actually following God's rules.Would you say that God commands the impossible? Those who have no supernatural love cannot correctly love God yet nevertheless are obliged to do so?
No, I don't think so. One just has to desire it and open oneself. Even just wanting it is an inkling of love.
If, as many Catholic theologians seem to hold, God "does not command us to do the impossible", then why should I, who do not know whether or not the Catholic Church has any sort of God-given legal authority, continue obeying the Catholic Church?
God's laws are secret and hidden.
Since I personally don't have the knowledge
Nevertheless, Catholic theologians hold that "every baptized person is bound to obey the Catholic Church's laws and to believe in the Catholic Church's dogmas" while simultaneously holding the contradictory claim that "nobody is bound to obey God's laws when it is impossible to do so".
It can't be known. Even the Catholic Church doesn't claim to have any external proofs of its own authority. The Catholic Church merely says that people who have faith know "the Church has authority" and "the Catholic Church is the Church" to be true propositions and that people without faith don't know this and can't know this.Quote from: DanielIf, as many Catholic theologians seem to hold, God "does not command us to do the impossible", then why should I, who do not know whether or not the Catholic Church has any sort of God-given legal authority, continue obeying the Catholic Church?
::) Why don't you know? You can know if you want to know. No? You will not know if you do not want to know.
This is assuming that the Decalogue came from God. But I don't know whether or not it did. For all I know, somebody may have made it all up and then attributed it to God.QuoteGod's laws are secret and hidden.
Not at all. His Commandments are crystal clear in the Decalogue, and the natural law is known through conscience to all who seek Truth.
I'll read it over, but I don't see how 'miracles' can qualify as a source of true knowledge. Nobody, not even the expert scientist, is in the position judge whether or not these 'happenings' actually happened, and, if they happened, whether or not they're really miracles (as opposed to natural occurrences and/or deliberate fraud). Science doesn't know everything, so even if 100% of all scientists agreed that this cannot be explained by science, then that doesn't mean it's a 'miracle'... it just means it's unexplainable.QuoteSince I personally don't have the knowledge
Please read this to see some of the great things Jesus has done in the history of His Church, which could help you, if you are really willing and desirous to acquire that salvific knowledge: "The analyses were conducted with absolute and unquestionable scientific precision and they were documented with a series of microscopic photographs.
These analyses sustained the following conclusions: The Flesh is real Flesh. The Blood is real Blood. The Flesh and the Blood belong to the human species ... (see the link for more)" http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html
And Fr. Michael Mueller, as posted in another thread, documents umpteen other well-documented Eucharistic Miracles. Atheistic scientists have converted upon seeing these.
It can't be known. Even the Catholic Church doesn't claim to have any external proofs of its own authority.
The Catholic Church merely says that people who have faith know "the Church has authority" and "the Catholic Church is the Church" to be true propositions and that people without faith don't know this and can't know this.
I'll read it over, but I don't see how 'miracles' can qualify as a source of true knowledge. Nobody, not even the expert scientist, is in the position judge whether or not these 'happenings' actually happened, and, if they happened, whether or not they're really miracles (as opposed to natural occurrences and/or deliberate fraud). Science doesn't know everything, so even if 100% of all scientists agreed that this cannot be explained by science
Daniel, I have the highest respect for you. You are clearly trying to do the right thing.
If Catholicism is true, and yet, you believed, in your heart of hearts, that it would be irrational to practice the faith whilst not having certainty, then you are listening to and obeying your conscience. At worst, you will not be damned, since you (a) do not have knowledge that what you are doing is sinful, and (b) you are invincibly ignorant. At best, God will crown you with many crowns, and give you the grace of salvation, since (a) you were validly baptized and (b) have committed no mortal sin by not practicing the faith, since you do not have knowledge of the sinfulness of not practicing the faith under the circumstances you find yourself in. Besides, you have the ardent desire for truth.
All of this hinges on absolute certainty. Does the natural law prohibit the practice of a faith unless, and until, one is absolutely certain of it's veracity? I don't know, to be honest.
I can totally relate to your predicament Daniel. I consider you the most honest person on this forum (not to mention abundant humility and intelligence). I cannot fathom, for the life of me, how God could possibly reject someone who so much wants to please Him and do what is right. I HIGHLY suspect that God will grant you one of the highest places in Heaven, after He reveals His truth to you.
Be at peace friend.
You are in my lowly prayers.
Since the Catholic Church commands me to do all sorts of stuff which hurts me in one way or another,..What sort of things does the Church command you to do which is hurtful?
As I understand it, the Church condemns hedonism on the grounds that hedonism does not lead to salvation.
But what about those of us who probably won't be saved anyway? Seeing as there is no road to salvation for us (the reprobate), and seeing as our damnation--if God wills it--is inevitable, why should we not spend our short lives doing whatever we want?
Even the Catholic Church doesn't claim to have any external proofs of its own authority.Depends on what you mean by "eternal proofs". You don't have an "external proof" that you existed 1 second ago.
The problem there is you have four claimants to who actually compiled the New Testament: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and The Assyrian Church of the East.QuoteEven the Catholic Church doesn't claim to have any external proofs of its own authority.
But proofs exist. The fact that the whole Christian world accepts the Catholic compiled New Testament is one such proof.
What sort of things does the Church command you to do which is hurtful?1. The law obliging me to physically attend Mass on Sundays, which causes me to suffer hatred and sadness and, at times, the desire for suicide.
Your question is strange. To ask this question shows a Faith in God. It is very likely that the majority of Catholics go to heaven, at least it is a sane belief for one to place Hope in. So I don't get the "probably won't be saved" part. If I remember correctly, you are the dude with scruples. You really need to get that fixed dude.Well my views have probably changed somewhat since I posted that. But if I recall, I think what I meant was that my experience has led me to believe that God probably isn't going to save me. Or, if things continue as they are now, then God isn't going to save me. I guess I'll rephrase that: God might save me, or God might not save me, and there's nothing I can do but to accept my fate. And, in the meantime, I can live my life only in darkness, completely blind to the moral law (which I suspect is something knowable only through revelation and faith, not through reason).
Depends on what you mean by "external proofs". You don't have an "external proof" that you existed 1 second ago.Well, I believe that I existed 1 second ago, but I don't know that I existed 1 second ago. I admit that maybe I didn't exist 1 second ago.
But if I recall, I think what I meant was that my experience has led me to believe that God probably isn't going to save me. Or, if things continue as they are now, then God isn't going to save me. I guess I'll rephrase that: God might save me, or God might not save me, and there's nothing I can do but to accept my fate. And, in the meantime, I can live my life only in darkness, completely blind to the moral law (which I suspect is something knowable only through revelation and faith, not through reason).
...
Well, I believe that I existed 1 second ago, but I don't know that I existed 1 second ago. I admit that maybe I didn't exist 1 second ago.
The concepts of "God saving you" are concepts generally exclusive to Christianity and Islam, which implies a belief in either Christian or Islamic Monotheism, and from there, you just have to look at the claims of each of those religions to see if it makes logical sense.I haven't extensively researched any of them, but from what I can tell none of them are illogical. Some might be unscientific, but not illogical. Some seem more probable than others, but probabilities cannot give us certainty. Only faith gives certainty, as far as I know.
There are a lot of denominations of Christianity, but you can group Evangelical Christianity / most of Protestant Christianity together insofar as they have shared concepts - Sola Scriptura, that Churches can be created from the Bible's authority, Sola Fida.
You ought to talk with your priest to figure what's going on and to find the best course for you.I've tried with two different priests, but it didn't work either time unfortunately.
You do believe in God? Pray to him for humility in the face of the knowledge He does give you. Pray to Him for peace, because I don't think you have it. (I know I am being repetitive (and hypocritical; I may say "pray" more than I do it) - but it is still true) :pray2:I can't pray to God. That's too risky, because for all I know God might be like a human king. And as we know, a random guy off the street does not just barge into the king's chamber and start talking to the king. If he did that, he'd surely offend the king's majesty, and the king would rightly have him beheaded. So if God is like a king, then prayer is not an option. Rather, I would need to find some extremely holy intercessor, whom God favours, who could deliver the message on my behalf. But without assuming any one religion to be right, I know of no such intercessor. So I'm in no position to be praying to God, much less demanding that He reveal Himself to me or do anything else for me.
1. The law obliging me to physically attend Mass on Sundays, which causes me to suffer hatred and sadness and, at times, the desire for suicide.
2. The teaching forbidding me from engaging in commerce and servile labor on Sundays, which completely disrupts my workflow and my enjoyment and my life in general. (Further, if this teaching is wrong and if God actually forbids work on Saturday rather than Sunday, then this teaching is indirectly causing me to sin against the sabbath. Because naturally if I can't do stuff on Sunday then I do it on Saturday instead.)
3. The teaching preventing me from getting married. I am now in my thirties and would like to get married but cannot because the Catholic Church says it would be a sacrilege. If the Catholic Church is wrong, then I'm going to be unmarried for my entire life for no reason at all. Not to mention that my family's bloodline will die out since I am the only male this generation.
4. The law that says we must give money to the Catholic Church. I've been setting the money aside in a locked box in my closet, but it's a considerable amount of money, and I don't have a lot of money, so I'm not about to give it to the Catholic Church or to anyone else until I know for sure that I have to.
5. The teaching that says that we must assent to Catholicism and that we must reject all of the explicitly non-Catholic religious and philosophical views. (I pretty much disregard this teaching since it is impossible for me to follow it without turning my back on Truth.)
Things would be a whole lot easier if I didn't have to obey these sorts of things. And for all I know, maybe I don't have to obey any of it. Nevertheless, I cannot disprove the Catholic Church's authority, and to disobey the Catholic Church without proof would probably be rash.
If, however, I knew that the Catholic Church's laws and teachings were in fact God's laws and teachings, then I would gladly do all of these things. Because I'd then be obeying God, and I'd know that what I am doing is not in vain.
I haven't extensively researched any of them, but from what I can tell none of them are illogical. Some might be unscientific, but not illogical. Some seem more probable than others, but probabilities cannot give us certainty. Only faith gives certainty, as far as I know.
You ought to talk with your priest to figure what's going on and to find the best course for you. I've tried with two different priests, but it didn't work either time unfortunately.Have you tried visiting another rite? And you don't have to listen to me, but what about visiting an Orthodox Priest - Eastern or Oriental?
I can't pray to God. That's too risky, because for all I know God might be like a human king. And as we know, a random guy off the street does not just barge into the king's chamber and start talking to the king. If he did that, he'd surely offend the king's majesty, and the king would rightly have him beheaded. So if God is like a king, then prayer is not an option. Rather, I would need to find some extremely holy intercessor, whom God favours, who could deliver the message on my behalf. But without assuming any one religion to be right, I know of no such intercessor. So I'm in no position to be praying to God, much less demanding that He reveal Himself to me or do anything else for me.
That man always resists merely sufficient grace is not a defect in the grace but a defect in man.
The problem there is you have four claimants to who actually compiled the New Testament: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and The Assyrian Church of the East.
What about Islam - is it logical that in the Old Testament, a Prophet could never give theological falsehood, yet the Prophet Muhammad literally contradicted himself when he first accepted the Three Pagan Goddesses as legitimately from God, but then later said "Oops, the Devil was whispering to me?"
Is it logical that the entire point of one's spiritual life on Earth is acetic denial of the flesh, but for Islam, Eternal Life would be drinking wine and orgies with virgins?
Is it logical that Jesus as a Prophet would reject divorce as immoral, yet the Prophet Muhammad re-enabled divorce for literally any reason?
Is it logical that the Prophet Muhammad ordered people to follow some elements of Kosher and the Old Law as mandated by God, because they were absolutely mandated by God and never abolished, but other parts can be arbitrarily ignored?
Is it logical that God would send Jesus to have Disciples to create communities, knowing full well they would apostatize immediately in such a short amount of time that there can be no evidence of such an apostasy ever occurring, and would wait for another Prophet 750 years later to fix things?
Is it logical that God would demand witnesses for every occasion of Testimony, yet the Quran appears in a dream with no witnesses to confirm it's legitimacy, so God no longer actually demands witnesses?
Lastly, I can only offer that suicidal thoughts are something you probably ought to discuss with your confessor if they arise from your attendance at Mass. Perhaps you have already done that. Xavier has termed your thought process a "dogmatic agnosticism," but I think it might be worse than that. It seems to be more of a "paralyzing agnosticism," where your uncertainty is manifesting in a kind of existential vertigo. You are between Scylla and Charybdis at every turn: damned if you do, and damned if you don't. If you're in your early thirties and would like to get married and have children, then this sort of thing could intellectually bog you down for years on end at a crucial time in your life. In your situation, you would probably be best to plump with a "Pascal's Wager" type of faith. Granted, if you bet on Catholicism and it turns out Islam was true, then yes, you would've wagered wrong. But we still take a hit on twelve. Whether cruelly or not, life demands that we assess the religions and go all in on the one that looks most likely to be true. It might not be (God could be a trickster, offering a more plausible religion, Christianity, while placing salvation in the wild-eyed Arabian madness of Islam). You just never know, but "that's life." Pascal admitted it's a gamble. But one has to do something, otherwise a person stagnates.That might be true, but, if it is, then I have no choice but to reject the Catholic Church in favour of something like deism. Because my experience and the scientific evidence both tell me that the Catholic Church is probably a false religion, and that God has probably never revealed Himself to man. Certainly deism is the most probable religious framework, to my current knowledge.
In 382 they were all Catholic under the Pope. And it was the Pope that took the final table of contents and sent St. Jerome to compile a proper translation into the common tongue.But how is that a 'proof'? For all any of us know, nothing existed before "last Thursday". But even without going to that extreme, I still don't see how the biblical canon proves that the Catholic Church is really a divinely-appointed authority. Maybe everyone was duped and accepted the Catholic Church's canon despite the fact that the Catholic Church never had any authority. Here's a possibility: maybe the true Church went invisible before there ever was a biblical canon. And the so-called 'Catholic Church' later filled the void. Or here's another possibility: maybe Jesus founded the Catholic Church, but maybe Jesus isn't God and his church never had any real authority to begin with. The existence of a widely-accepted biblical canon doesn't seem to prove anything, unless I completely misunderstand your argument.
This is an external proof of the authority of the Catholic Church. There are many others. The claim that there is no external proof was absurd.
Which is why the Book of Hebrews is absent from the Pope Saint Damasus’s “definitive” list.QuoteThe problem there is you have four claimants to who actually compiled the New Testament: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and The Assyrian Church of the East.
In 382 they were all Catholic under the Pope. And it was the Pope that took the final table of contents and sent St. Jerome to compile a proper translation into the common tongue.
Which is why the Book of Hebrews is absent from the Pope Saint Damasus’s “definitive” list.QuoteThe problem there is you have four claimants to who actually compiled the New Testament: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and The Assyrian Church of the East.
In 382 they were all Catholic under the Pope. And it was the Pope that took the final table of contents and sent St. Jerome to compile a proper translation into the common tongue.
Again, this is just an assertion.
You do believe in God? Pray to him for humility in the face of the knowledge He does give you. Pray to Him for peace, because I don't think you have it. (I know I am being repetitive (and hypocritical; I may say "pray" more than I do it) - but it is still true) :pray2:I can't pray to God. That's too risky, because for all I know God might be like a human king. And as we know, a random guy off the street does not just barge into the king's chamber and start talking to the king. If he did that, he'd surely offend the king's majesty, and the king would rightly have him beheaded. So if God is like a king, then prayer is not an option. Rather, I would need to find some extremely holy intercessor, whom God favours, who could deliver the message on my behalf. But without assuming any one religion to be right, I know of no such intercessor. So I'm in no position to be praying to God, much less demanding that He reveal Himself to me or do anything else for me.
...
I cannot fathom, for the life of me, how God could possibly reject someone who so much wants to please Him and do what is right.
A RED ROSE: FOR SINNERS
POOR MEN AND WOMEN who are sinners, I, a greater sinner than you, wish to give to you this rose----a crimson one, because the Precious Blood of Our Lord has fallen upon it. Please God that it will bring true fragrance into your lives----but above all may it save you from the danger that you are in. Every day unbelievers and unrepentant sinners cry: "Let us crown ourselves with roses." [1] But our cry should be: "Let us crown ourselves with roses of the Most Holy Rosary."... On the contrary, sinners' roses only look like roses, while in point of fact they are cruel thorns which prick them during life by giving them pangs of conscience, at their death they pierce them with bitter regret and, still worse, in eternity, they turn to burning shafts of anger and despair. But if our roses have thorns, they are the thorns of Jesus Christ Who changes them into roses. If our roses prick us, it is only for a short time----and only in order to cure the illness of sin and to save our souls.
So by all means we should eagerly crown ourselves with these roses from Heaven, and recite the entire Rosary every day, that is to say three Rosaries each of five decades which are like three little wreaths or crowns of flowers: and there are two reasons for doing this: First of all to honor the three crowns of Jesus and Mary----Jesus' crown of grace at the time of His incarnation, His crown of thorns during His passion and His crown of glory in Heaven, and of course the three-fold crown which the Most Blessed Trinity gave Mary in Heaven.
Secondly, we should do this so that we ourselves may receive three crowns from Jesus and Mary. The first is a crown of merit during our lifetime, the second, a crown of peace at our death, and the third, a crown of glory in Heaven.
If you say the Rosary faithfully until death, I do assure you that, in spite of the gravity of your sins "you shall receive a never fading crown of glory." [2] Even if you are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in Hell, even if you have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practise black magic, and even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be converted and will amend your life and save your soul, if----and mark well what I say----if you say the Holy Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon for your sins.
In this book there are several stories of great sinners who were converted through the power of the Holy Rosary. Please read and meditate upon them ... TWENTY-FIFTH ROSE: THE WEALTH OF SANCTIFICATION
NEVER WILL ANYONE really be able to understand the marvelous riches of sanctification which are contained in the prayers and mysteries of the Holy Rosary. This meditation on the mysteries of the life and death of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the source of the most wonderful fruits for those who use it.
Today people want things that strike and move and that leave deep impressions on the soul. Nor has there ever been anything in the whole history of the world more moving than the wonderful story of the life, death and glory of Our Savior which is contained in the Holy Rosary. In the fifteen tableaux the chief scenes or mysteries of His life unfold before our eyes. How could there ever be any prayers more wonderful and sublime than the Lord's Prayer and the Salutation of the Angel? All our desires and all our needs are found expressed in these two prayers ...
For never will anyone who says his Rosary every day become a formal heretic or be led astray by the devil. This is a statement that I would gladly sign with my blood. "
That might be true, but, if it is, then I have no choice but to reject the Catholic Church in favour of something like deism. Because my experience and the scientific evidence both tell me that the Catholic Church is probably a false religion, and that God has probably never revealed Himself to man. Certainly deism is the most probable religious framework, to my current knowledge.
Still, I won't willingly abandon Catholicism or become a deist, because that would be dishonest and unreasonable. The best I can say is that I honestly don't know, and leave it at that. (Though I still can't help but wonder why I should submit to the Catholic Church, when, in my mind, it probably doesn't hold any authority anyway...)
Well, Pascal's Wager only applies to religions that threaten an afterlife of hell. Otherwise there's nothing to be risked and no point in making a wager. Even if we say that deism is the most probable case, the deist God is wholly impartial to whether anyone is a deist or not, and does not threaten non-deists with eternal punishment.I guess. But this is why I don't agree with Pascal.
The only two left to consider, then, are Christianity and Islam. (Judaism is covered with whichever one a person a chooses, since the Noahide Laws would be kept under both systems).I don't think you can eliminate Judaism that easily. Because if rabbinical Judaism is right, and Jesus is not God, then Christians violate the Noahide law forbidding the worship of idols.
Pascal places the emphasis on the subjective rather than on the objective: on knowledge and happiness rather than on truth and goodness. Pascal says that we can't obtain knowledge so we're free to gamble, and that we can obtain happiness but only through the gamble... from which it follows that agnosticism is out, and that there's also no point in ever gambling on any religion which does not promise to be able to give us happiness.
But this all seems backwards. The emphasis should probably be placed on the objective: we should be committed to truth even if there is no hope of ever knowing the truth, and we should serve goodness even if it does not bring us happiness. If we can obtain knowledge of truth then that's great, but if we can't then that doesn't mean that we are free to hold to things which aren't true. And if our service to goodness brings us happiness then that's great. But if it doesn't bring us happiness, then that doesn't mean we needn't serve.
I don't think you can eliminate Judaism that easily. Because if rabbinical Judaism is right, and Jesus is not God, then Christians violate the Noahide law forbidding the worship of idols.
And not to get off topic, but, do you happen to know, what exactly makes a person a 'Jew'? Is it purely genetic? Suppose there is some Muslim who keeps the Noahide laws, but it turns out that this Muslim has some Jewish DNA. Would Jews say that it's ok for him to continue being a Muslim? Or would they say that he needs to obey the Mosaic law?
No, I disagree. The only thing we can be absolutely certain of—the only thing we can truly know for sure—is consciousness. Specifically, our own consciousness. There is really no refuting solipsism. Even if this material world is an artifice or a deception (a brain in a vat, Last Thursdayism, a simulation, or maya) we still have consciousness to perceive it. The brute fact of our own consciousness seems the only irrefutable fact. Others report consciousness, of course, and we have no known reason not to believe them, but at best we can only assign extremely high odds to their claims. Everything besides our own consciousness must be handled on the basis of probability and likelihood; the quest for absolute certainty is the greatest wild goose chase of them all. To be "committed to truth even if there is no hope of ever knowing the truth" is an exercise in futility.Although I cannot conceive of the non-existence of my own consciousness, I am not entirely certain that the existence of my consciousness is irrefutable. But for the sake of the argument, I'll grant that it is.
Further, faith is a gift from God. And it seems that God only gives it to some people and not to other people.
Although I cannot conceive of the non-existence of my own consciousness, I am not entirely certain that the existence of my consciousness is irrefutable. But for the sake of the argument, I'll grant that it is.
I would disagree that this is the only thing we can know with certainty. Because by knowing my own consciousness, I can also know at least one other thing: that true statements exist. Because from the very fact that 'at least one consciousness exists' is true, it follows that 'at least one true statements exists' is a true statement. And from 'at least one consciousness exists' and 'at least one true statement exists' both being true statements, it follows that 'at least two true statements exist'. And so on, ad infinitum. But I suppose all of these truths are trivial.
However, if there is such a thing as 'faith', then people who have faith also possess all sorts of other, non-trivial knowledge. They somehow know that the statements 'God exists', 'Jesus is God', 'the crucifixion actually happened', 'the Catholic Church [or Orthodox Church, or whatever] is the true Church', 'the world was not created last Thursday', 'I am not a brain in a vat', 'other people exist', 'Pope Francis is [or isn't] the pope', etc., etc., are all true statements. And perhaps most fundamentally of all, they know that 'faith exists' is a true statement. Nobody else knows that 'faith exists' is a true statement, but they know that it's true.
Moreover, if the Catholic Church is right, then faith is necessary for salvation. A person without faith, even if he gambles and guesses correctly, will not be saved.
Further, faith is a gift from God. And it seems that God only gives it to some people and not to other people. Those unfortunate men who don't receive it can know nothing of value. Still, that doesn't mean they should wager. They should probably just wait around trying their best to remain agnostic, until God chooses to give faith to them. Because if God wants to save that person, surely God will give that person the means to salvation. But if God does not give that person the means to salvation, it only proves that God does not want to save that person. God's will (i.e. goodness) is the only thing that matters, not any man's personal happiness. Those who do not receive faith should not wager... they will be miserable and damned, but their damnation is what God wants, and so they should submit to goodness and accept their damnation. I think.
Further, faith is a gift from God. And it seems that God only gives it to some people and not to other people. Those unfortunate men who don't receive it can know nothing of value. Still, that doesn't mean they should wager. They should probably just wait around trying their best to remain agnostic, until God chooses to give faith to them. Because if God wants to save that person, surely God will give that person the means to salvation. But if God does not give that person the means to salvation, it only proves that God does not want to save that person. God's will (i.e. goodness) is the only thing that matters, not any man's personal happiness. Those who do not receive faith should not wager... they will be miserable and damned, but their damnation is what God wants, and so they should submit to goodness and accept their damnation. I think.
1. Granted that everyone is bound to believe something explicitly, no untenable conclusion follows even if someone is brought up in the forest or among wild beasts. For it pertains to divine providence to furnish everyone with what is necessary for salvation, provided that on his part there is no hindrance. Thus, if someone so brought up followed the direction of natural reason in seeking good and avoiding evil, we must most certainly hold that God would either reveal to him through internal inspiration what had to be believed, or would send some preacher of the faith to him as he sent Peter to Cornelius (Acts 10:20)..De Veritate, Q. 14, Art. 11, Answers.
2. Although it is not within our power to know matters of faith by ourselves alone, still, if we do what we can, that is, follow the guidance of natural reason, God will not withhold from us that which we need.
Calvinist BS: "Further, faith is a gift from God. And it seems that God only gives it to some people and not to other people."
Properly rephrased, IAW St. Thomas:
"Further, faith is a gift from God. And it seems that only some people accept it and not other people."
So stop rejecting it.
I'm not sure whether what St. Thomas is saying here can be applied to situations like mine. Because St. Thomas is speaking of situations in which you wrongly believe something to be evil, and you do it anyway. In my case, however, I don't believe that it's wrong to obey the Catholic Church.
My concern is that I have no idea whether it's right or wrong. If I do it anyway, I am not doing something which I believe is wrong... I am doing something which I believe might be wrong. Still, there is the point which St. Columba raised, about whether or not it is morally permissible to do something which you believe might be wrong. I, too, have no idea.
If I knew that the Catholic Church is in fact God's true spokesman, then I would gladly obey the Catholic Church without question. But I don't know that much.
If then reason or conscience err with an error that is voluntary, either directly, or through negligence, so that one errs about what one ought to know; then such an error of reason or conscience does not excuse the will, that abides by that erring reason or conscience, from being evil. But if the error arise from ignorance of some circumstance, and without any negligence, so that it cause the act to be involuntary, then that error of reason or conscience excuses the will, that abides by that erring reason, from being evil.
Is it possible that there could be a little pride in thinking that one can't believe anything unless his mind is humanly 100% satisfied before he assents to it as a matter of faith? Think of St. Thomas the Apostle; he couldn't humanly understand that a man could rise from the dead, but Christ told him he was less blessed than one who believed without seeing. I think there is a kind of intellectual humility in faith.
"Lord I do believe; help my unbelief". To me this quote means that faith is not totally incompatible with a little uncertainty, although we cannot deliberately dwell on this uncertainty. The uncertainty makes the faith less perfect; it does not mean that we ought not to believe.
Is it possible that there could be a little pride in thinking that one can't believe anything unless his mind is humanly 100% satisfied before he assents to it as a matter of faith? Think of St. Thomas the Apostle; he couldn't humanly understand that a man could rise from the dead, but Christ told him he was less blessed than one who believed without seeing. I think there is a kind of intellectual humility in faith.
"Lord I do believe; help my unbelief". To me this quote means that faith is not totally incompatible with a little uncertainty, although we cannot deliberately dwell on this uncertainty. The uncertainty makes the faith less perfect; it does not mean that we ought not to believe.
Ask Quare. He is the one that exposed me to this whole faith-requires-absolute-certainty thing, and it has been bothering me for about a year now. From what I can tell, Newman struggled with this for decades, and dare I say it, I don't think he came up with a totally satisfactory answer. If Newman couldn't, what chance do I have?
But I have chosen different from Daniel. I have chosen to practice the faith, even if I do not possess 100% absolute intellectual certitude. I have more than enough evidence to proceed, and I would feel guilty, knowing what I know, if I turned my back on Catholicism.
Fr. Mike Schmitz
https://bulldogcatholic.org/in-your-last-column-you-said-you-believe-everything-the-church-teaches-what-if-i-struggle-with-believing-where-does-that-put-me/
Q: In your last column, you said you believe everything the Church teaches. What if I struggle with believing? Where does that put me?
A: We are sometimes under the impression that believing or having faith means that we simply accept a teaching or the situations of our lives with no questions. If that is the case, then I need to clarify what I mean by having faith. It certainly does mean assenting to all of the truths of the Catholic Church, but it does not necessarily mean the absence of struggling with belief.
We know that faith is not mere belief. Faith is when we submit our intellect and will to God, who has revealed himself to us through Scripture and tradition. It involves both our minds and our lives. Because of this, faith is not the absence of a struggle. The life of faith is by its very nature a battle to place our entire selves under Christ’s lordship. If you struggle to do this, it is not failure, it is engaging the call.
The great figures of the Old and New Testaments demonstrate that faith involves struggle. Think of Abraham struggling to walk in faith as he is called from his homeland. Consider the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel through the night. (As a result of his struggle, he is rewarded with the new name Israel.) Even Jesus, in a mysterious way, struggled when faced with doing his Father’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane. Think of the great saints who asked the deepest and most difficult questions about the existence and nature of God, suffering and salvation.
The difference between these examples and someone who rejects God is the difference between having doubts and having difficulties. Not only are doubts and difficulties not the same thing, they are not even the same kind of thing. Doubt is a decision. A difficulty is a dilemma.
Every sin is essentially a decision. No one sins accidentally. A sin is not a mistake. Sin is essentially about relationship. It involves knowing what God wants and refusing to obey God in love. It isn’t an error; it is saying “no.”
Sin looks like this: “God, I know what you want me to do. I don’t care. I want to do what I want to do.”
Therefore, when it comes to doubt, this also involves full knowledge and full consent of the will. It is saying, “I know what the Church teaches, and I know why the Church teaches this. I refuse to submit to it.”
That may be you. You may find yourself in rebellion against God or against the Church. But it may be that you have difficulties with belief. Many times, we think that we are doubting when we are actually merely struggling to understand or to live up to our call to be holy.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls this struggle “involuntary doubt.” It refers to “hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity” (CCC 2088). This is vastly different from “voluntary doubt,” which “disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief.”
The difference between difficulties and doubts is so profound that Blessed John Henry Newman once stated that “10,000 difficulties do not make one doubt.”
And yet, we have to be a person who is not content with difficulties or anxieties. We may say things like “I struggle with some teachings of the Church” with a sly look in our eyes. That contentedness with difficulty is neither noble nor harmless. It is one thing to struggle to know and love God and something quite else to have “difficulties” and not care to resolve them. That attitude can often lead to a spiritual blindness and an inability to hear God when He speaks. There is very little that God can do with the cool and indifferent.
Even if people have a difficult time with faith, if they struggle to seek after and follow God, they are light years ahead of one who does not believe and does not care. If we seek, knock and ask, we have Jesus’ word: We will find.
You do believe in God? Pray to him for humility in the face of the knowledge He does give you. Pray to Him for peace, because I don't think you have it. (I know I am being repetitive (and hypocritical; I may say "pray" more than I do it) - but it is still true) :pray2:I can't pray to God. That's too risky, because for all I know God might be like a human king. And as we know, a random guy off the street does not just barge into the king's chamber and start talking to the king. If he did that, he'd surely offend the king's majesty, and the king would rightly have him beheaded. So if God is like a king, then prayer is not an option. Rather, I would need to find some extremely holy intercessor, whom God favours, who could deliver the message on my behalf. But without assuming any one religion to be right, I know of no such intercessor. So I'm in no position to be praying to God, much less demanding that He reveal Himself to me or do anything else for me.
Since you are posting on a Catholic forum, why not first consider a God who (as the Catholic Church teaches) does hear prayers. If there is such a God, He may help you. If there is no God or no God who cares one way or the other, no harm will be done. If there is a "cruel king" God such as you conjecture, He's going to be very angry with you for being so unsure of Him - pray or not you are going to be in big trouble if not beheaded. Pray "if there is a God who will listen...". Why should it matter if you feel silly?
You're in no position to NOT be praying. I worry for you if you are really resisting prayer.
St. Columba said:...
I cannot fathom, for the life of me, how God could possibly reject someone who so much wants to please Him and do what is right.
If you are trying to please Him why don't you pray?
I'm totally amazed at all of y'all's replies to Daniel; my head just spins around and around when I read his posts full of systematic doubt. He is in such a bad state spiritually and mentally that I all I can do is pray for him. :pray2:
Daniel, I took a long walk on a cold day yesterday and thought about Pascal's Wager, and I would like to retract my posts in favor of it. Were the editing window still open, I would make them into "lone dot" posts. Although I still think Pascal saw the problem with exceptional clarity, I can see why you disagree with his proposed resolution...
I can't pray to God. That's too risky, because for all I know God might be like a human king. And as we know, a random guy off the street does not just barge into the king's chamber and start talking to the king. If he did that, he'd surely offend the king's majesty, and the king would rightly have him beheaded. So if God is like a king, then prayer is not an option. Rather, I would need to find some extremely holy intercessor, whom God favours, who could deliver the message on my behalf. But without assuming any one religion to be right, I know of no such intercessor. So I'm in no position to be praying to God, much less demanding that He reveal Himself to me or do anything else for me.
I think Daniel and now you are right about Pascal's wager. But is the argument that praying to God is wise if you DO believe in Him (and believe that He HEARS you, whatever He does about it; even if He MAY be angry ) a form of Pascal's Wager? It doesn't say that you should actually believe because it is useful to do so. It proposes a possible solution and then lets you test it. It is like calling out to someone for desperately needed help even though you think he may be angry at you for doing so. It is rational.
Or, what do YOU think about Daniel's reasoning here:Quote from: DanielI can't pray to God. That's too risky, because for all I know God might be like a human king. And as we know, a random guy off the street does not just barge into the king's chamber and start talking to the king. If he did that, he'd surely offend the king's majesty, and the king would rightly have him beheaded. So if God is like a king, then prayer is not an option. Rather, I would need to find some extremely holy intercessor, whom God favours, who could deliver the message on my behalf. But without assuming any one religion to be right, I know of no such intercessor. So I'm in no position to be praying to God, much less demanding that He reveal Himself to me or do anything else for me.
But there's a difference between having a generic desire to follow God's rules and actually following God's rules.
The former is easy: granted that you always acknowledge God to be most sovereign, you can never fail to want to follow all of His rules. Just keep your mind always on God's sovereignty in all your actions, and all your actions will be done with the desire to follow all of God's rules.
The latter, however, is oftentimes impossible: it pretty much requires that we have knowledge of God's rules... yet God doesn't give faith to everybody.
And it's impractical (perhaps impossible) to attempt to follow God's rules without knowing what those rules are, since all the religions seem to be contradicting one another, not to mention that it's also possible that none of the religions have knowledge of God's rules.
Nevertheless, God damns people who fail to follow His rules.
That leaves us with the missionary religions: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Buddhism can be excluded from Pascal's Wager because the penalty for not taking up Buddhism is simply rebirth, but since we don't remember our past lives (or at least I can't), this is a penalty without a sting, as rebirth is no different from birth. Some schools of Buddhism, such as the Tibetan form, do posit hells, but these can be dismissed as syncretisms where the Buddhist message was overmingled with the local paganism.
The Buddha was a Hindu, and his preoccupation was liberation. Samsara alone was enough endless suffering for him.
You might argue are that there are myriad cult religions to be considered, such as Scientology, Mormonism, Raëlism, &c., but these were all founded recently enough in history that we can see clearly the obvious fabrications by their founders. Weighing them for probability, they come up far short of the major established monotheisms.
Hell is just a part of samsara.
...
... loving God and neighbour out of vital necessity by the divinity dwelling within and ones ever-deepening union with it.
You're always thinking in terms of obedience demanded by authority, lists of rules, and the knowledge of the intellect. This is Satanism, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Law that cannot save.
QuoteNevertheless, God damns people who fail to follow His rules.
God "damns" people who don't have goodness in their heart and refuse to act on the work of the law that is written onto it; because that's what damnation is. This is why there's no such thing as "ingorance" of what is moral, "ignorance" of what the good "demands"; because people know the nature of their actions, and they choose those which are after their heart.
Although I still think Pascal saw the problem with exceptional clarity, I can see why you disagree with his proposed resolution. He took far too much for granted.
To properly game out every last claim by every last religion and alleged oracle of heaven, you would need a supercomputer algorithm and a search engine that could suss out all the world's prophetesses, Messiahs, and cult leaders to the person. That's the reason why Pascal's Wager fails, not because it's "bullcrap" as you say. Pascal was incisive and saw the issue clearly, save for a single blinding bias.
You can lament the movement "from the language of myth and living ritual into that of theology" and of course that's your right. I don't think you'd get much criticism from Pascal, who placed a premium on mystical conversion over proofs.
But that ship has sailed and it's not coming back. Some years ago, I was right where you are.
I have a shelf of books by Mircea Eliade, Julius Evola, René Guénon, &c.. Myth and ritual and transcendence. Yap, yap. I don't put much stock in myths anymore. I think they're nostalgically overrated. Modern confusion tends us to hype the ancients. I think in a lot of cases mythology was, no offense, the ongoing work of a succession of ignorant yahoos and mystical goo-goos who wanted people to "pay, pray, and obey," and now it seems profound because it comes to us so foreign. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions. But nowadays if I want "the wisdom of the ancients" I'll mainly stick with Seneca or Epicurus. Speaks a language I can comprehend. To each their own, of course.
Kreuzritter,
This is about what you've just said to Daniel, but also other things you've said in the past.
Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I sometimes get the idea that you don't think much about reasoning about morality and "understanding the rules". Or are you only saying that DANIEL (and others like him) wrongly focus on these things as though they were the most important thing, or even all that mattered?
So you are just saying that thinking EXCLUSIVELY of these things, or leaving out Charity (union of love with God) is Satanic? (This always makes me think of the cruel Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, always acting in the name of "justice". Sorry if you've never heard of him!)
God's rules include the 10 commandments (deriving from the two great commandments), and Christ says "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). Keeping the 10 commandments only materially (without love) can break them, because we are meant to follow the spirit of the law (and must follow the 2 great commandments, love of God and neighbor). Not following God's rules (mortal sin) MEANS that you don't have goodness in your heart.
People are never excused from following the natural law written into their heart; it is never entirely erased. But it is dirtied, hushed, blurred, ignored. SIN itself makes it easier to break the natural law in the future. Original sin brought concupiscence and ignorance to us, so our passions rise up against the natural law and our intellect ignores or is confused about it.
God wrote the natural law on our hearts; but then He ALSO saw fit to give us His laws written on two tablets. I speculate that that would not have been necessary had Adam and Eve not sinned. Perhaps God would only have needed to give them His "positive" law explicitly e.g. "of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat" (Genesis 2:17).
Given our weakened intellect and the EFFECTS of original sin and past personal sin in us, what ought to be obvious (e.g. that contraception is immoral) is not (even if that is our own fault). Having the 10 commandments and the Catholic Church (and the study of moral law) explicitly point out and explain what is wrong forces our minds to "pay attention" and recognize and admit the evil it should have already seen.
And there are positive laws, such as the laws of the Church. We owe God OBEDIENCE, because He is God, even if a law is not "on our heart". True obedience IS love, not done only out of fear.
The study of moral theology and natural law also focus on the "objective good", which is not explicitly covered by the "divinity dwelling within and ones ever-deepening union with it". God's commands tell US (subjects) to do some objective good. We could focus only on the subject, and find true union with God and love, what finally matters. But God commands us to do some specific, concrete, good-in-itself thing. Love of God requires us to care about, and so to think about, that objective thing. Natural law and moral theology consider the objective good. If the objective good is unknown or misunderstood, the subject can still be holy if his intention is holy and his ignorance is blameless. But the intent of the subject must be to do the objective thing that God had in mind (without that intent there is no love). I think we need to use our intellects to study these things.
ETA: Having said all that, I agree with you (and others) that people (e.g. Daniel) can sometimes get hung up on intellectualizing and fail to act as a simple Catholic out of love for God based on what they do know already. I just don't think the study of natural law and moral theology should be pooh poohed in general. It can affect the teachings/explanations of the Church which do matter to every Catholic, and can help fight philosophers whose ideas filter down into society at large, even if not immediately impacting any given individual. And it is a GOOD THING to understand morality (which is from God) better, even if it does not impact our current lives. It is GOOD but if done to excess can tire and confuse our minds, and interfere with our "duties of state" (e.g. caring for our families).
As you probably know, dear Pon, what is called "Pascal's wager" is in reality only a small part of his Pensees. I think Pascal was a very good scientist, mathematician, philosopher and theologian on the whole, though I don't necessarily agree with each and everything he wrote; here is the part that deals with has been called his Wager, "We know that there is an infinite, but are ignorant of its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it must therefore be true that there is an infinity in number, but what this is we know not. It can neither be odd nor even, for the addition of an unit can make no change in the nature of number; yet it is a number, and every number is either odd or even, at least this is understood of every finite number. Thus we may well know that there is a God, without knowing what he is ... Since there is an equal chance of gain and loss, if you had only to gain two lives for one, you might still wager. But were there three of them to gain, you would have to play, since needs must that you play, and you would be imprudent, since you must play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where the chances of loss or gain are even. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And that being so, were there an infinity of chances of which one only would be for you, you would still be right to stake one to win two, and you would act foolishly, being obliged to play, did you refuse to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there be one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to win. But there is here an infinity [98] of an infinitely happy life to win, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite; that is decided. Wherever the infinite exists and there is not an infinity of chances of loss against that of gain, there is no room for hesitation, you must risk the whole." https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/pascal-the-thoughts-of-blaise-pascal
Pascal uses an argument of the form derived from the mathematical concept of expected value, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value a simple idea. Suppose someone offers $10 in a coin toss for every time you land a head, and you pay nothing if you land a tail. Here, the expected value from the experiment is $5 (=0.5*10+0.5*0). In practice, nobody would offer that, and expected value would be set to zero. E.g. you pay $10 if its heads, you receive 10 if its tails etc. Pascal argues, and this much is agreed by almost everyone (math textbooks would say the same on what rational actors would do), that in such a case, everyone should go forward and toss the coin, because given the stakes, there is a fairly assured probability of return (or, in this case, a certain payoff), and a very unlikely probability (or in this case, nil probability) of loss. He then argues that the promised gain here is infinite, namely eternal life, and is therefore worth risking a lot etc.
Some critics point out that it assumes the likelihood of God and Heaven existing is equal to it not existing etc. Strictly speaking, it does not assume that. Others say it would be useful only if deciding between Christianity and atheism were the only two alternatives. That is a better objection. So personally, I prefer the Thomistic Ways that show us God's Nature and Attributes to that of Blaise Pascal. Some of the other things in the link are quite good, though, particularly the section on prophesies.
QuoteBut that ship has sailed and it's not coming back. Some years ago, I was right where you are.
No, I don't think you were. I'm not a hoarder of books and armchair pontificator. I've done. I've found. I've beheld. I've had experience after experience that destroyed the conventional understanding of eality I'd been implcitly and explicitly force-fed by the institutions of society and state and shattered my world and my self. Asking me if God, Jesus, spirit, angels, demons, heavens, hells, spheres, aeons, magic, the cosmic powers of myth and my transcendent self are real is like asking me if the morning sunlight streaming through my windows is real. You can call it make-believe, delusion and illusion, but I don't think you or anyone else possesses a criterion of "reality" that would make your position meaningful as anything more than a blind and tendentious clinging to the value of one small corner of existence.
But the teaching is "ye shall know the truth," not "you can be reasonably certain you know the truth, but there's a chance you may not." No. Certainty seems required.
We do not require it of anything else we do in our lives, we did not require it when we chose our spouses, picked our careers, decided where to live. But now we require it of faith?
Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
If you do X, then Y (and then Z).
Love God with all your heart, and then you will know the truth. Of course if one never comes to know the truth then its a bit true-scotsman, but such is life. Restating what I noted before, be a good friend and then know what a good friend is.
Does this verse exclude the interpretation that the truth is known (with this certainty you all demand) only in the beatific vision?
We do not require it of anything else we do in our lives, we did not require it when we chose our spouses, picked our careers, decided where to live. But now we require it of faith?
Hi Davis Blank...it is a pleasure to interact with you friend...
I am curious how you would answer the following question: if your Catholic faith is not absolutely certain, then why is it a sin to doubt it?
...anticipating one possible answer, "well, because God has revealed it and therefore to doubt is sinful" is begging the question, of course.
I am not asking in order to be contentious...I would just like a satisfactory answer, since I am more or less stumped on it myself...
...
Believing Catholics are like the Apostles who heard Christ say " "Except you eat the Flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you.". They do not understand what he is saying (think how much of more of a shock it was for them hearing it for the first time, unlike us). But they do not walk away like some disciples, saying "This saying is hard, and who can hear it?". Instead, Simon Peter speaks for them "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. [70] And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.". Catholics should believe the same thing about the Catholic Church.
Next, here is a quote from someone who is not a traditionalist or scholar but rather a popular Catholic priest on youtube; he quotes the CCC. I'd be glad to hear any criticism anyone reading this has of what he has to say:Quote from: Struggling to Believe is Not the Same Thing as Doubting
Fr. Mike Schmitz
https://bulldogcatholic.org/in-your-last-column-you-said-you-believe-everything-the-church-teaches-what-if-i-struggle-with-believing-where-does-that-put-me/
Q: In your last column, you said you believe everything the Church teaches. What if I struggle with believing? Where does that put me?
A: We are sometimes under the impression that believing or having faith means that we simply accept a teaching or the situations of our lives with no questions. If that is the case, then I need to clarify what I mean by having faith. It certainly does mean assenting to all of the truths of the Catholic Church, but it does not necessarily mean the absence of struggling with belief.
We know that faith is not mere belief. Faith is when we submit our intellect and will to God, who has revealed himself to us through Scripture and tradition. It involves both our minds and our lives. Because of this, faith is not the absence of a struggle. The life of faith is by its very nature a battle to place our entire selves under Christ’s lordship. If you struggle to do this, it is not failure, it is engaging the call.
The great figures of the Old and New Testaments demonstrate that faith involves struggle. Think of Abraham struggling to walk in faith as he is called from his homeland. Consider the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel through the night. (As a result of his struggle, he is rewarded with the new name Israel.) Even Jesus, in a mysterious way, struggled when faced with doing his Father’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane. Think of the great saints who asked the deepest and most difficult questions about the existence and nature of God, suffering and salvation.
The difference between these examples and someone who rejects God is the difference between having doubts and having difficulties. Not only are doubts and difficulties not the same thing, they are not even the same kind of thing. Doubt is a decision. A difficulty is a dilemma.
Every sin is essentially a decision. No one sins accidentally. A sin is not a mistake. Sin is essentially about relationship. It involves knowing what God wants and refusing to obey God in love. It isn’t an error; it is saying “no.”
Sin looks like this: “God, I know what you want me to do. I don’t care. I want to do what I want to do.”
Therefore, when it comes to doubt, this also involves full knowledge and full consent of the will. It is saying, “I know what the Church teaches, and I know why the Church teaches this. I refuse to submit to it.”
That may be you. You may find yourself in rebellion against God or against the Church. But it may be that you have difficulties with belief. Many times, we think that we are doubting when we are actually merely struggling to understand or to live up to our call to be holy.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls this struggle “involuntary doubt.” It refers to “hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity” (CCC 2088). This is vastly different from “voluntary doubt,” which “disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief.”
The difference between difficulties and doubts is so profound that Blessed John Henry Newman once stated that “10,000 difficulties do not make one doubt.”
And yet, we have to be a person who is not content with difficulties or anxieties. We may say things like “I struggle with some teachings of the Church” with a sly look in our eyes. That contentedness with difficulty is neither noble nor harmless. It is one thing to struggle to know and love God and something quite else to have “difficulties” and not care to resolve them. That attitude can often lead to a spiritual blindness and an inability to hear God when He speaks. There is very little that God can do with the cool and indifferent.
Even if people have a difficult time with faith, if they struggle to seek after and follow God, they are light years ahead of one who does not believe and does not care. If we seek, knock and ask, we have Jesus’ word: We will find.
We do not require it of anything else we do in our lives, we did not require it when we chose our spouses, picked our careers, decided where to live. But now we require it of faith?
Hi Davis Blank...it is a pleasure to interact with you friend...
I am curious how you would answer the following question: if your Catholic faith is not absolutely certain, then why is it a sin to doubt it?
...anticipating one possible answer, "well, because God has revealed it and therefore to doubt is sinful" is begging the question, of course.
I am not asking in order to be contentious...I would just like a satisfactory answer, since I am more or less stumped on it myself...
No, I don't think it excludes that interpretation at all. But doesn't that only push the problem back a step? If there is a promise that the truth will be known in the afterlife, then still it seems that the faithful must able to be certain of that promise in this life. The faith, however minimalist it might be, would have to contain at least a single absolute certainty somewhere upon which all else would depend, otherwise the original problem would persist: that what God has revealed to his creatures is only potentially true—and thereby potentially false. It would have to be "true that ye shall know the truth."
Or maybe the chemicals in my brain provided me with an experience of profundity. I do not know.
I'll disagree with you that Pascal had an understanding of religion which was bullcrap. He was a Jansenist. "GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob—not of the philosophers and of the learned." The piety and commitment of the Jansenists was lived, not declared, and my criteria is "by their fruits you will know them," so I rate them highly.
Anyone can declare, from the unkempt preacher on the street corner with his placards and microphone to the clean-cut Mormon boys on the doorstep. They all claim certainty. I'd rather be shown than declared to. "Come and see."
Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
If you do X, then Y (and then Z).
Love God with all your heart, and then you will know the truth. Of course if one never comes to know the truth then its a bit true-scotsman, but such is life. Restating what I noted before, be a good friend and then know what a good friend is.
Does this verse exclude the interpretation that the truth is known (with this certainty you all demand) only in the beatific vision?
No, I don't think it excludes that interpretation at all. But doesn't that only push the problem back a step? If there is a promise that the truth will be known in the afterlife, then still it seems that the faithful must able to be certain of that promise in this life. The faith, however minimalist it might be, would have to contain at least a single absolute certainty somewhere upon which all else would depend, otherwise the original problem would persist: that what God has revealed to his creatures is only potentially true—and thereby potentially false. It would have to be "true that ye shall know the truth."
I do not follow. Hypothetically, if Jesus makes a promise of certainty in the afterlife, why does it thus entail that He also provides certainty in this life? If He promises it only in Y, then why must it also be in X?
I would also ask the same question I just posed our friend. What do we mean by certain? What does this certainty you seek look and feel like? Does it come in the form of a mathematical proof, a contract written in blood, an over abundance of evidence, a very strong emotion, or what?
I may not've formulated it well. But you had offered that the truth being spoken of in John 8:32 was the Beatific Vision. That would entail something like a "fullness of truth." In order for the promise to have been divinely issued, however, there would have to be at least one kernel of truth that could be known here on earth: the promise itself would have to be absolutely true. One truth now, every truth later. Otherwise it would be no better than a promise any mortal human could make, and in that case I'm not sure how we can say Christianity has been revealed by God. It could've been revealed by a person claiming to be God. As I understand it, this is why it's said, in Catholicism, of things like paradoxes and theological mysteries that we won't ever understand them unless and until we make it to heaven. But in terms of what we can know, things like the dogmas of the faith can be known with certainty. That much is implicit in the claim that whatever the Church solemnly teaches, she teaches infallibly.A truth can be given and yet not be believed to be true. Is that the fault of the truth teller or the receiver? If the former then I again ask in what form such certainty must come. If people doubt their own personal perceptions then what can possibly be done here by the truth teller to overcome the capability of the receiver to doubt seemingly everything?
In terms of being absolutely certain of the faith, Davis, I am not sure. I wish I could answer you here, but since I've never had absolute certainty of the faith, I can't imagine quite what form it would come in. The only thing I have absolute certainty of is my own consciousness, but I can't even say what that "looks and feels like," since consciousness is the thing that looks and feels. It's an interesting question, though. QMR and, as far as I read him, our friend Kreuzritter, have absolute certainty so maybe they can offer a description. Then again, they both aver mystical perception, so there might be a quality of "beyond telling" that gets lost in translation, as would be expected of divine communication.
I think the divine communication aspect is where we have our disagreement. Take the analogy you gave of your wife. You have certainty that your wife loves you. However, if you were an 82-yr-old billionaire and your wife was a 21-yr-old Playboy model, I would have to wonder whether your certainty was justified. Obviously that's an extreme example, but you take my point. Beyond the superficial, it's more difficult to know. What I don't think we can say is that the Catholic faith is akin to the love of a spouse. It seems there would be a certain heresy, outside of romantic poetry perhaps, to suppose that a wife communicates her love infallibly. There have been husbands certain of their wives' love where the marriage one day ended with her leaving. "I'm sorry, Jimmy, but I don't love you. I don't know if I ever did. I guess I thought I did, but I don't." That's just a factual circumstance in life. And there have also been many excellent wives who loved unto the death, and that is a beautiful thing. But we can't say that the Church's professions are subject to even the possibility of deceit—which is necessarily a possibility in the human realm (the Blessed Virgin Mary excepted, of course, being sinless).
I've spoken with atheists before about whether or not a personal visitation from Jesus would convince them - unsurprisingly, the answer is usually no.I probably wouldn't either. Because what good is an apparition if you don't already have faith? Without faith there's no way to know that this Jesus you're seeing is in fact God or a saint, as opposed to a devil, somebody trying to trick you, or even a hallucination.
You believe, or you do not. This is not to say that both sides do not have reasonable explanations for their stance, but it is to reject the idea of some absolute provable certainty, this magical 100%-its-true-you-cannot-deny-it-here's-the-proof-read-it-and-weep type argument / evidence. Searching for this is absolutely futile, its kicking against the goads, Jesus never promised it, the Church never promised it, and you cannot even absolutely refute the ridiculous brain-in-vat hypothesis. We do not require it of anything else we do in our lives, we did not require it when we chose our spouses, picked our careers, decided where to live. But now we require it of faith?There are some major differences between "faith" and the life decisions you've mentioned.
It's not electing to follow God's "rules" because you intellectually acknowledge him as sovereign, which isn't even a logical necessity of that acknowledgment. Just ask Lucifer. It's loving God and neighbour out of vital necessity by the divinity dwelling within and ones ever-deepening union with it.Sorry if I'm just not understanding, or if you've already covered this, but how does this work exactly? Would you agree with my paraphrase?:
You're always thinking in terms of obedience demanded by authority, lists of rules, and the knowledge of the intellect. This is Satanism, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Law that cannot save.
God "damns" people who don't have goodness in their heart and refuse to act on the work of the law that is written onto it; because that's what damnation is. This is why there's no such thing as "ingorance" of what is moral, "ignorance" of what the good "demands"; because people know the nature of their actions, and they choose those which are after their heart.I'm not sure I follow. What exactly do you mean by "people know the nature of their actions"?
A truth can be given and yet not be believed to be true. Is that the fault of the truth teller or the receiver? If the former then I again ask in what form such certainty must come. If people doubt their own personal perceptions then what can possibly be done here by the truth teller to overcome the capability of the receiver to doubt seemingly everything?
A man can be certain of something and yet still be wrong. That he was wrong does not negate his certainty. I do not see a problem here.
I probably wouldn't either. Because what good is an apparition if you don't already have faith? Without faith there's no way to know that this Jesus you're seeing is in fact God or a saint, as opposed to a devil, somebody trying to trick you, or even a hallucination.And how do you propose to know that your "faith" is not in fact the faith of the devil and he's yet tricked you again?
if the truth-teller in question here is also the omnipotent creator, then presumably there is no way in which he can fail to provide his creatures of certainty should he desire to. Possibly he wanted it to be a different way, more like a shell game: the truth is contained in a particular religion just as the ball is under a particular mug, and let the apologists do the convincing. But in that case we have uncertainty.
Even though in the Pensées Pascal does argue, as you often do, that things like Scripture and miracles ought to be persuasive, in the portion concerning the wager he seems to be putting that aside
It's not electing to follow God's "rules" because you intellectually acknowledge him as sovereign, which isn't even a logical necessity of that acknowledgment. Just ask Lucifer. It's loving God and neighbour out of vital necessity by the divinity dwelling within and ones ever-deepening union with it.Sorry if I'm just not understanding, or if you've already covered this, but how does this work exactly? Would you agree with my paraphrase?:
You're always thinking in terms of obedience demanded by authority, lists of rules, and the knowledge of the intellect. This is Satanism, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Law that cannot save.
Knowledge is irrelevant. Man cannot know right from wrong. So each man ought to do (or, each man is compelled to do?) whatever he desires to do. If his desires are good then he will live a good life, but if his desires are bad then he will live a bad life. Man's natural desires are always bad, so men typically live bad lives offensive to God. But God chooses some people and replaces their bad desires with good desires. Consequently, those men do what they desire to do, and live good lives which are pleasing to God.
Knowledge is irrelevant.
Man cannot know right from wrong.
So each man ought to do (or, each man is compelled to do?) whatever he desires to do.
If his desires are good then he will live a good life, but if his desires are bad then he will live a bad life.
Man's natural desires are always bad, so men typically live bad lives offensive to God.
But God chooses some people and replaces their bad desires with good desires.
Consequently, those men do what they desire to do, and live good lives which are pleasing to God.
QuoteGod "damns" people who don't have goodness in their heart and refuse to act on the work of the law that is written onto it; because that's what damnation is. This is why there's no such thing as "ingorance" of what is moral, "ignorance" of what the good "demands"; because people know the nature of their actions, and they choose those which are after their heart.I'm not sure I follow. What exactly do you mean by "people know the nature of their actions"?
Not that the Orthodox don't have plenty of confusion themselves, just considerably less is all. Even were I to accept Orthodoxy, however, I would always be picked up by a tsunami of doubt and tossed squarely back to agnosticism whenever I consider the problems of evolution and theodicy.
Intelligent design, in which I include evolution by intelligent design, needn't imply the divinity or goodness of the designer. You seemed to agree with my conclusion from some time back that the truth of "theistic" evolution implied an evil "theos". We know the following propositions of gnostics are heretical: the material is intrinsically evil and the creation of an evil demiurge, and Yahweh is that evil demiurge. However, if evolution is true, we needn't go as far as the gnostics to akcnowledge there may be a kernel of truth in the ideas, when the Devil deal is half truths not just to make them more believable but to obscure the true part. It is enough to propose that this physical reality of law-bound materiality was formed by a malevolent intelligence and identify that intelligence with the one that rebelled against Yahweh and tempted Adam into to his expulsion from Eden and fall into this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). One could go further and identify a false "Yawheh" in the deity of the Pharisees, Muslims, etc. and make sense of John 8:44-45. This is rather heterodox and assigns a greater role to Satan in cosmology than usual, but it's nowhere near as "heterodox" as the theistic evolutionist reading of scripture.
No. I'm distinguishing betweent he immediate knowledge of the heart and the intellectual knowledge of concepts that is arrived at through deriving it by a process of reason.What do you mean by "immediate knowledge of the heart"? Are you referring to some sort of innate knowledge? Or are you referring to grace/faith? Or to something else?
I mean that things are what they are, that actions and the phenomena they involve have an essential nature and and intrinsic meaning. A person in possession of his wits knows what it means to torture and kill a child; he knows the spirit of the act, and he will encounter and know the demonic evil that will be invoked in committing it, from which he will either recoil in aborrence or revel in if he is wicked. That is an extreme example, but it is no less true of other evils. It's totally inconsequential to whether I am acting in good or bad will, when it comes to something that is intrinsically evil in nature, that I know whether or not some authority I call "God" forbids it. Someone who chooses what is evil has evil in his heart, and that's that.Even in your extreme example, I wouldn't say that I know that it's wrong to torture innocent children. It does seem quite wrong to do to, and so I would say that I think it's wrong to do so. (If I did say that I 'know' that it's wrong, I'd have been using 'know' in a looser sense.) And if somebody tortured my child, I'd probably be pretty angry. Still, it's conceivable that I'd be mistaken in thinking that it's wrong to torture innocent children, and it's conceivable that my anger would then be out of line.
No. I'm distinguishing betweent he immediate knowledge of the heart and the intellectual knowledge of concepts that is arrived at through deriving it by a process of reason.What do you mean by "immediate knowledge of the heart"? Are you referring to some sort of innate knowledge? Or are you referring to grace/faith? Or to something else?
QuoteI mean that things are what they are, that actions and the phenomena they involve have an essential nature and and intrinsic meaning. A person in possession of his wits knows what it means to torture and kill a child; he knows the spirit of the act, and he will encounter and know the demonic evil that will be invoked in committing it, from which he will either recoil in aborrence or revel in if he is wicked. That is an extreme example, but it is no less true of other evils. It's totally inconsequential to whether I am acting in good or bad will, when it comes to something that is intrinsically evil in nature, that I know whether or not some authority I call "God" forbids it. Someone who chooses what is evil has evil in his heart, and that's that.Even in your extreme example, I wouldn't say that I know that it's wrong to torture innocent children. It does seem quite wrong to do to, and so I would say that I think it's wrong to do so. (If I did say that I 'know' that it's wrong, I'd have been using 'know' in a looser sense.) And if somebody tortured my child, I'd probably be pretty angry. Still, it's conceivable that I'd be mistaken in thinking that it's wrong to torture innocent children, and it's conceivable that my anger would then be out of line.
Even in your extreme example, I wouldn't say that I know that it's wrong to torture innocent children. It does seem quite wrong to do to, and so I would say that I think it's wrong to do so. (If I did say that I 'know' that it's wrong, I'd have been using 'know' in a looser sense.) And if somebody tortured my child, I'd probably be pretty angry. Still, it's conceivable that I'd be mistaken in thinking that it's wrong to torture innocent children, and it's conceivable that my anger would then be out of line.
Picture a man standing before God at his judgment.
God: You wilfully tortured and murdered a little child.
Man: But I didn't know it was forbidden by you.
God: But you know what torture and murder are.
Man: But nobody ever told me they are wrong.
God: But you, knowing what torture and murder are, wilfully tortured and murdered a little child. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.
I am referring to the work of the law that is written on the heart. The heart knows what it is doing and the nature of its acts.I'm sorry, but I honestly still don't understand.
[. . .]
I don't know how many more times I have to repeat myself if you still don't get it after that explication and return to talking about an ill-defined "right" and "wrong". What part of this are you not getting? Every act, as phenomenon, is something; it has a nature, an essence, an energy, a spirit, or whatever else one likes to call it. I couldn't care less whether a person knows that torturing children is "right" or "wrong" by whatever sense of those words one intends; a person who wills to torture children wills to torture children; he wants to do what he is doing. The torture of children is something, not just an abstract concept or a string of words, and the person who wills it and experiences it knows what that something is; he knows what it means to torture children and he wills to do that. And that is really, truly, categorically distinct from an act like loving a child, caring for a child, or saving a child's life and proceeds from a differently disposed heart. And knowing or not knowing that it is "forbidden" will not change what a heart that is so disposed is, namely cold, demonic, hateful, vindictive, perverse or a host of other things we associate with the nature we call evil.
Picture a man standing before God at his judgment.
God: You wilfully tortured and murdered a little child.
Man: But I didn't know it was forbidden by you.
God: But you know what torture and murder are.
Man: But nobody ever told me they are wrong.
God: But you, knowing what torture and murder are, wilfully tortured and murdered a little child. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.
At risk of sounding like a hysterical nut, I will use all caps. You must LIVE the faith, not intellectualize about it. You know it by living it! I know what love is because I love my family. If I were to "know" love through philosophical treatises, or even the catechism, then I know it not. A man can know drugs are bad from seeing the lives they destroy. A man can know the sexual sins wrong by becoming bondaged to them and seeing other deviants in chains as well.What you speak of is not "knowledge". Or, at least not "knowledge" as I use the word. Because our experiences can be wrong. And even if they aren't wrong, they can still only bring us so far.
Living it is the reality check against the insane nonsense we craft with our logic. In physics we have theoretical and experimental physicists. The theorist uses pure mathematics to craft a theory about how nature functions, then he calls up his colleague the experimentalist to see if his purely logical theory, which works on paper and makes great sense, is actually real or not.
And it goes vice versa too. The experimentalist discovers something, say that iron filings form rings around a current. Then perhaps he'd pass it off to a theorist to turn this knowkedge into logic (math). The theorist will come up with something that beautifully explains it, but that does not guarantee that its actually true. It is merely a model, one that to the best of our knowledge works - yet we cannot say this is definitively how reality is. But knowing it is not in the field theory model (intellectualization) but in seeing the iron filings form rings (living it, if you will).
What I now hear you saying is that each man has, in his heart (which I guess is distinct from the intellect), an idea about the essence of some particular action (e.g. all men know what comprises the act of "torturing children").
Each man also has his own preferences with regard to that idea: some men take pleasure in torturing children, while other men find torturing children to be repulsive. Then there is God who hates the torturing of children.
The men who happen to have all the same preferences as God (e.g. the men who don't like to torture children) are saved, while the men who happen to prefer what God does not prefer (viz. the ones who like to torture children) are damned. Is that pretty much it, or am I still way off?
What you speak of is not "knowledge". Or, at least not "knowledge" as I use the word. Because our experiences can be wrong. And even if they aren't wrong, they can still only bring us so far.
I wanted only to express that "ignorance" of the "wrongness" of intrinsic evils does not change what is in the heart of the man who commits them. Evil does as evil is, and what is evil cannot unite with God.
I probably don't need as much convincing as it might seem, Xavier, in order to be persuaded that Christianity is the most likely of the theistic religions on offer.
But seeing as how Vatican II happened, I find Eastern Orthodoxy (should a form of Christianity be true) the more palatable form over Catholicism.
I am aware of the miracles. All I can say is that the amount of reasonable doubt I have from evolution and theodicy is more than sufficient to overcome the miracle claims.
What do you mean by 'immediate'?What I now hear you saying is that each man has, in his heart (which I guess is distinct from the intellect), an idea about the essence of some particular action (e.g. all men know what comprises the act of "torturing children").
Not an idea. The knowledge is not that of a system of signs somehow corresponding to reality like that of the rational intellect, nor even a verbally unexpressed idea, but is immediate; the heart knows its own acts, what it wills and what it does.
I think I get what you're saying. Good deeds follow from good people, and evil deeds follow from evil people. Each man is either good or evil, and there's nothing he can do about it (he can't even know whether or not he is evil). But didn't the Catholic Church condemn all this?QuoteEach man also has his own preferences with regard to that idea: some men take pleasure in torturing children, while other men find torturing children to be repulsive. Then there is God who hates the torturing of children.
The "preference" is only an expression of the nature of a man's heart. I point to the Bible calling David a "man after God's own heart". That nature is either fundamentally open to God and to being a conduit for the divine energies or it is shut off and reprobate.QuoteThe men who happen to have all the same preferences as God (e.g. the men who don't like to torture children) are saved, while the men who happen to prefer what God does not prefer (viz. the ones who like to torture children) are damned. Is that pretty much it, or am I still way off?
My intention was to present it as a economy of salvation. I wanted only to express that "ignorance" of the "wrongness" of intrinsic evils does not change what is in the heart of the man who commits them. Evil does as evil is, and what is evil cannot unite with God.
Good point. But regardless, if our judgements can be wrong then our experiences still cannot bring us knowledge.QuoteWhat you speak of is not "knowledge". Or, at least not "knowledge" as I use the word. Because our experiences can be wrong. And even if they aren't wrong, they can still only bring us so far.
No. Experiences can't be right or wrong; they are only what they are. Only judgments of possible statements about experience can be right or wrong.
What do you mean by 'immediate'?What I now hear you saying is that each man has, in his heart (which I guess is distinct from the intellect), an idea about the essence of some particular action (e.g. all men know what comprises the act of "torturing children").
Not an idea. The knowledge is not that of a system of signs somehow corresponding to reality like that of the rational intellect, nor even a verbally unexpressed idea, but is immediate; the heart knows its own acts, what it wills and what it does.
Because our experiences can be wrong.
But anyway, even if the answer is to be found in "living the faith", how does the man without faith "live the faith"? Seems impossible.
And in what does "living the faith" consist? Do you just mean living a life in obedience to the Catholic Church, or do you mean something else? If the former, I'm not seeing how that's reconcilable to the more-intuitive idea that we ought to live our lives out of love for God. If the Catholic Church is not from God, but rather is blasphemous, deceptive, and oppressive, then common sense would tell us to disregard whatever the Catholic Church is saying.
QuoteBut anyway, even if the answer is to be found in "living the faith", how does the man without faith "live the faith"? Seems impossible.
How does a baby learn English when he has it not? By listening and doing. He receives and lives it. The Church teaches that everyone has access to the graces of God.QuoteAnd in what does "living the faith" consist? Do you just mean living a life in obedience to the Catholic Church, or do you mean something else? If the former, I'm not seeing how that's reconcilable to the more-intuitive idea that we ought to live our lives out of love for God. If the Catholic Church is not from God, but rather is blasphemous, deceptive, and oppressive, then common sense would tell us to disregard whatever the Catholic Church is saying.
You either follow an organized religion, make it up as you go, take no stance on it, or reject it all. Starting from nothing, how is it more intuitive to live our lives out of love for God than anything else?
Do you just mean living a life in obedience to the Catholic Church, or do you mean something else? If the former, I'm not seeing how that's reconcilable to the more-intuitive idea that we ought to live our lives out of love for God
I don't see how most of this couldn't be said for a Muslim. He follows an organized religion by listening and doing, and receiving and living it. Are you just saying "by God's grace YOU happen to be following the right religion, so stop thinking about it"?
QuoteNot an idea. The knowledge is not that of a system of signs somehow corresponding to reality like that of the rational intellect, nor even a verbally unexpressed idea, but is immediate; the heart knows its own acts, what it wills and what it does.What do you mean by 'immediate'?
Quote]My intention was to present it as a economy of salvation. I wanted only to express that "ignorance" of the "wrongness" of intrinsic evils does not change what is in the heart of the man who commits them. Evil does as evil is, and what is evil cannot unite with God.I think I get what you're saying. Good deeds follow from good people, and evil deeds follow from evil people. Each man is either good or evil, and there's nothing he can do about it (he can't even know whether or not he is evil). But didn't the Catholic Church condemn all this?
But regardless, if our judgements can be wrong then our experiences still cannot bring us knowledge.
I wanted only to express that "ignorance" of the "wrongness" of intrinsic evils does not change what is in the heart of the man who commits them. Evil does as evil is, and what is evil cannot unite with God.
If I KNOW the intrinsic evil of abortion, and don't do it (or wish it), I have no evil in my heart (regarding that matter). If I claim I don't KNOW the intrinsic evil of abortion, and do it, then because it is in fact intrinsic the heart really "knows" in its way what I am doing, and "evil does as evil is" and cannot unite with God.
But if I DON'T know that abortion is intrinsically evil (or claim I don't), I still may not do it at all, but also I don't condemn others for doing it, or protest them, or stay away from occasions that would tempt me (sex outside of marriage), or pray for help for myself or others.
At the actual moment of an intrinsically evil act, intellectual knowledge of its objective evil is too late, but the heart knows the evil it is doing as it is done. That seems reasonable. But intellectual knowledge (or a forceful reminder) that an act is intrinsically evil can help you not to get to that moment. I think this is one reason why God tells us "Thou shalt not kill".
Does this make some sense?
I mean knowledge isn't always in the form of true propositions about reality. What the rational intellect does in dealing with the world, to be brief, is form concepts among concepts which it then imposes upon it as a system, and then in relation to the internal rules of that system and how it relates to reality, it judges if some particular statements made within that system "apply", "correspond" or "are the case". When we're judging the truth of statements involving concepts, we're not judging or dealing directly with reality. Rather, we're judging a representation of a conceptual scheme and thus only mediately dealing with reality.So basically, 'immediate knowledge' is raw sense data? But if that's the case, how are we to gain access to it? As soon as we make any sort of judgement, the pure knowledge becomes corrupted by our judgement and ceases to be knowledge.
It's somewhat analagous to how abstract musical notation relates to an actual piece of music; the "sheet music" may, according to the rules of musical notation, "correctly" denote the piece of music and allow for others who understand these rules and have experience of the phenomena the signs point to to find and reproduce it; but the sheet music is not the actual music somehow "once again", and to one who hears the music, he has actual, immediate knowledge of that music in itself, a knowledge that doesn't involve any statements or judgments of their truth.
[. . .]
Experiences constitute knowledge in themselves. Just not knowledge that can necessarily be expressed in a language or fitted into a system.
But you're taking what I've said out of the context of grace. Men without God are lost, and all of us are wicked, by degree. God, through an act of prevenient grace, announces himself to the spirit and frees the human subject to make a choice in favour of or against him. "Good" here means one who, by grace, chooses God, and begin to be transformed by him, because despite his sins, despite his evil desires, he embraces a love for God, good, truth, beauty and tries to fight against his fallen nature. It's not that the reprobate can't, due to a deficiency of power, change his ways and choose good; it's that he won't.How can the evil man change his character and his actions if he does not first know that he's evil? If 'good' is defined as conformity with God, and if God is unknowable, then it's basically hit or miss. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.
Or consider me, as an example. I profess to love God. My love for God is the very reason that I am unwilling to submit to the Catholic Church, because for all I know the Catholic Church may not be from God
With regard to my baptism (assuming there is such a thing as baptism), I am a Christian.QuoteOr consider me, as an example. I profess to love God. My love for God is the very reason that I am unwilling to submit to the Catholic Church, because for all I know the Catholic Church may not be from God
Are you a Christian whom doubts the Church or just a deist?
Daniel's wall of analysis paralysis
QuoteI don't see how most of this couldn't be said for a Muslim. He follows an organized religion by listening and doing, and receiving and living it. Are you just saying "by God's grace YOU happen to be following the right religion, so stop thinking about it"?
I am talking with a man whom is so deeply, deeply mired in his thoughts that he cannot see the obvious realities around him, such as that torturing children is wrong. He has to get outside of his mind before he's ever going to leave the quagmire he's put himself into. I am not much discussing theology with him, for it only feeds his problem. I see obviously where your comment is coming from, but its misplaced.
Daniel's problem is not going to be fixed by more detailed theological discussion. This dance has been ongoing for years and it seems to only get worse (again, we've now reached the point where he doesn't know that torturing children is wrong. Last month he asked if cannibalism is wrong. At this rate, during Lent he'll want to discuss the morality of eating children). Shall we discuss theology with him some more, or is it time to change tact?
I used to discuss politics with leftists for a good long while before finally realizing how fruitless it is. Their problems will not be fixed head-on with more debate and argument. They will only come to sense once they live it - let them fail in their leftism or let them mature out of it via cummulative life experiences. But talk is pointless. If Daniel cannot think his way out of the hole of intense skepticism he's dug himself into, then he needs to try something radically different. By the way, I give this example not to say that Daniel is a leftist.
Greg's analysis for the flat-earthers was correct - and his solution to their problem was not to construct better arguments fo convince them.
Daniel would be far better served by putting the energy he puts into thinking about theology into doing something else. For most men that would entail forming a family, working hard as a father, praying hard and working in the community. Magically then one is not so concerned about dotting every i and crossing every t in Christian theology. He'd be free to live the Christian life without this endless and debilitating theological scrupulosity he's stuck in.
:pray1:
QuoteDaniel's wall of analysis paralysis
Allow me to paralyze you further.
How do you know that your hypothetical god does not equally care about the seemingly mundane actions of the day? You assume he's greatly offended by worshipping idols and the like, but why do you not also assume he's just as offended when you wear that blue shirt instead of the green one he planned for you from all eternity? Perhaps this offends him even more.
Do you hold this standard for all areas of your life? You do not even know if your hypothetical god or afterlife even exist, but there are other things you do know. You know you will die one day (or is this in doubt too?). Why not then require similar standards of certainty towards the actions of the day which, perhaps, could result in death. For example, that midnight McDonalds run might result in death, do you know for certain it will not? Death is far more certain to you than this hypothetical god of which you speak, yet you do not let uncertainty over life-or-death decisions prevent you from making them. Why do you carve out a needless exception for God which paralyzes you?
God prepared the Jews for the coming of His Son. He held their hands for thousands of years to prepare them. When He came, most did not know it was Him, at least not to the standards of certainty that you require of this knowledge. Why do you expect higher certainty now then when Jesus Himself walked amongst the Jews?Maybe most of them were damned. Or maybe many of them knew more than you think they knew.
Even though I trod tortuous byways, God sought me out. I prepared the way for grace by means of works of natural charity I often did by the natural inclination of my character. At times, too, God beckoned me to a church. When, despite work at the office during the day, I took care of my sick mother, no small sacrifice for me, I strongly felt these attractions of God ... The pleasures of the world, however, flowed over this grace like a torrent. The thorns choked out the wheat. Rationalizing that religion is sentimentalism, according to the manner it was discussed in the office, I cast this grace to the ground, like so many others ... Once you reprimanded me because in church, rather than genuflecting, I made only a hasty nod of my head ... I already no longer believed in the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. I now believe it, though only naturally, in the manner that one believes in a storm, the signs and effects of which one perceives ... In the interim, I had arranged a religion for myself. The general opinion in the office, that after death souls would return to this world in other beings and would pass through yet other beings in an endless succession, pleased me. With this, I banished the distressing problem of the hereafter to the point that it no longer troubled me. Why did you not remind me of the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus, in which the narrator, Christ, immediately after their deaths, sent one to Hell and the other to Paradise? But, what would this reminder have accomplished? Nothing more than your pious advice ... Bit by bit I found a god, one privileged enough to be called a god, and distant enough that I didn’t have to deal with him ... Strange! On that very [final] morning, the idea that I could, after all, go to Mass again came to me unexpectedly. It sounded to me like a supplication. Clear and determined, my “No!” nipped the thought in the bud. I must finish with this once and for all, and I assumed all the consequences."
I don't know... maybe those trivial things do offend God.
But what's the solution? Seems to me that this is reason to just give up on God altogether. Just do whatever we want, and we'd probably also want to hate God, because He's a monster.
But you have something else in mind?
If you think this all looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck... then believe its a duck. Then LIVE the faith, not THINK the faith, and see how that fits you.But this is the problem: it doesn't look like a duck. I don't find miracles to be all that convincing, and I see all sorts of other pieces of evidence indicating that the Catholic religion is probably just a manmade religion, not from God. If I were to just treat my religious beliefs like anything else then I'd have already abandoned the Catholic Church long ago, as soon as it started looking false. Maybe I'd become a Neoplatonist or something, or maybe I'd just give up on religion altogether. And maybe I'd return to the Catholic Church some day, if new evidence were to come to my attention to make me reconsider. But in the meantime there'd be no reason for me to take the Catholic Church seriously, and there'd be no sense in me allowing the Catholic Church to constantly disrupt my life with all its burdensome laws.
It sounds like you have no belief in Catholicism. Why are you interested in it then? Are there some aspects that are still valuable to you, or is it just your paranoia of "what-ifs" that keeps you loosely attached? If the former then let's discuss that. If the latter then that's another animal.It's probably some mix of both, but primarily the latter. As I said before, I find some aspects to be appealing. But I highly suspect that Catholicism is not true. I have no definitive proof against Catholicism, but I do have a lot of evidence against Catholicism; I think it's morally wrong for a person to ignore the evidence and pretend that Catholicism is true, yet I also think it's morally wrong for a person to claim that the Catholicism is false without any proof.
Daniel, if you do not wish to take even simple 15 minutes to pray 5 decades of the Rosary every day, which you should try to do, at least wear the Scapular, say an Our Father, 3 Hail Marys, the Glory Be, and some other short and simple prayers (even in your own words) whenever we can. It may well be a start and help you save your soul. We're discussing these things here only to help you save your soul in charity, and so we hope you will at least begin to do that. Jesus and Mary have shown a million times that they accept all who come to Them. God will give you His grace, blessings and help, if you call on the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary often, with love and reverence.
So to say praying to God is too risky and such things is a trap. A trap for your soul laid by the enemy. Pray, always pray. Even in simple words. Whenever you can. Speak to God as if He were your Father. Yes, God's Majesty is great and He is our King, but He is also our Most Loving Father. And so, in spite of our sins, God loves us and waits for us to call on Him, and if we do in sincere love, He comes to us. Jesus is our great High Priest and atoned for our sins; Mother Mary intercedes powerfully. Call on Jesus and Mary and you will know. Make one good confession and everything will be all right. Don't wait till it may be too late. Love God, do good, pray, and seek the Truth.
You're basically saying that we should believe in whichever philosophy/religion we see to be good... And, having chosen a side, we then commit ourselves to it.
The problem I see is that this still seems to disregard truth. Because how do you know that you're on the right side? Is it not conceivable that, despite the appeal of the Catholic Church, and all the good that the Catholic Church has done, that the Catholic Church might still be wrong? But if truth is God, and if you are choosing the Catholic Church even at the expense of truth, then what you're doing is disregarding God... choosing the Catholic Church (which could possibly be evil) over God. That's how I'm seeing it at the moment, anyway.
But a deeper question is in the whole idea of vocal prayer and especially "prayers of petition". The fact is, if God's will is unchangeable then no amount of prayer is going to cause God to will anything which He does not already will. So why pray?. That doesn’t follow. You’re confusing temporal mutability with cause. It’s entirely conceivable that my prayer serves as a reason for God willing something, absent which he would will otherwise, without any change implied (just as reprobates are willed to damnation on account of their sins, for the Quares among you who think this somehow violates God's nature via divine simplicity).
But Xavier, how do you know that any of what you said is true? The subjective evidence that I've personally experienced suggests otherwise. A few months ago, before I had sufficiently reasoned things through, a priest succeeded in getting me to pray to God. So I once prayed to God, more or less commanding God to reveal Himself to me. (In hindsight this was an evil prayer ...
Following St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas writes: Temporal goods appear desirable when we do not have them; but when we do have them, we see their poverty, which cannot meet our desire and which therefore produces disillusion, lassitude, and often repugnance. In spiritual goods the inverse is true. They do not seem desirable to those who do not have them and who desire especially sensible good. But the more we possess them the more we know their value and the more we love them.4 For the same reason, material goods, the same house, the same field, cannot belong simultaneously and integrally to many persons. Spiritual goods, on the contrary, one and the same truth, one and the same virtue, can belong simultaneously and completely to all. And the more perfectly we possess these goods, the better we can communicate them to others.5 This is especially true of the sovereign good.See also SCG III qq. 26 (https://isidore.co/aquinas/ContraGentiles3a.htm#26)-44, where he addresses questions like "That human felicity does not consist in pleasures of the flesh," "That ultimate felicity does not lie in the act of prudence," "That felicity does not consist in the operation of art," ending with (q. 37) "That the ultimate felicity of man consists in the contemplation of God." But he goes further, arguing "That human felicity does not consist in the knowledge of God gained through demonstration" and even that "Human felicity does not [even] consist in the knowledge of God which is through faith"!
- Ia IIae, q.31, a.5 (https://isidore.co/aquinas/summa/FS/FS031.html#FSQ31A5THEP1); q.32, a.2 (https://isidore.co/aquinas/summa/FS/FS032.html#FSQ32A2THEP1); q.33, a.2 (https://isidore.co/aquinas/summa/FS/FS033.html#FSQ33A2THEP1).
- Ia IIae, q. 28, a.4 (https://isidore.co/aquinas/summa/FS/FS028.html#FSQ28A4THEP1) ad 2; IIIa, q. 23, a. 1 (https://isidore.co/aquinas/summa/TP/TP023.html#TPQ23A1THEP1) ad 3.