1
- Status
B
BRB
Guest
J
JRKH
Guest
C2M2C,
I dropped off this thread because it had gotten so argumentative then I saw you were back and with some very thoughtful posts.
I just want to say that I am glad to hear that you are attending RCIA. When I was returning to the Church, I wished I could have done the same, but family health issues prevent it.
I believe that based on what I have read here from you that you are well on your way home. The more you study and pray, the more clear and comfortable the teachings become. When I rejoined I too had many unanswered questions, yet in God’s good time I have received my answers and they all point to Christ through His Catholic Church.
I pray soon that you will be home in
“The Church of Jesus Christ of ALL the Days Saints”
Peace
James
H
hosemonkey
Guest
mfbukowski, for a self-proclaimed “educated man”, you are remarkably obtuse. This is a common trait among mormons, mass delusion and the deep need to reconcile the irreconcilable. You have remarkably little knowledge of that which you are attempting to refute and I could go on and on about the areas in which you have been glaringly wrong. Many posters have tried to provide you with knowledge from not only Catholic sources, but mormon sources as well. It only suffices to send you further into ever more confused arguments to try to bolster your erroneous positions. You could be afflicted with what we Catholics call “invincible ignorance.” The saving thing is that those who are “invincibly ignorant” may not be called to account for their errors, BUT, because you have willfully rejected the Truths taught by the Holy catholic church, AND because you were baptised and confirmed in the Church that Jesus Christ Himself founded, you are a Catholic for all eternity, you will probably be condemned to eternal hellfire (should you not repent) and burn up like a cheap bottle rocket. Too bad.
M
mfbukowski
Guest
I must say this is very interesting to me, and if indeed reflects a Catholic position, is much closer to a “Mormon position” than I had ever realized.No, not institutions, ideas. And not just human ideas, even divine ideas would necessarily be affected by the minds in which they reside. For better or worse.
No, I have not stated that it has changed, but that it has developed. As in the parable of the mustard seed, that which was in the beginning is smaller than what it later becomes.
Perhaps it is more precise to say, that doctrine has become “unfolded” over time. Indeed, all Revelation was contained in the person of Jesus Christ, but not all of Revelation is easily grasped by the human mind. That is what I mean by development - the faith grows; the Spirits leads us into all truth (of which the Church Christ instituted is the pillar and foundation).
Apostasy is rejecting the Faith.
Heresy is believing in un-natural (i.e. not according to the nature of the Christian revelation of Jesus Christ) developments. As in the human body, not all developments are for the good. Tumors are developments, but they are destructive and not good for the organism. But if no development took place at all, the Church would still be an infant.
The earliest Church may not have believed in the Trinity. But then again they certainly didn’t disbelieve in it either. The Trinity was implicitly contained in what they believed, but it had yet to be unfolded, to be explained and stated clearly.
Since someone else disagreed with me, that doctrines develop, I should like to note that I speak solely as a lay-person and present one of the traditions within the Church, namely that of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Some people do not agree that doctrines develop and indeed, I may be wrong here. I try to give our critics the benefit of the doubt, and play along…
I hadn’t jumped to that conclusion yet. I merely noted, that development is inevitable. Some development will be true to the original idea, some will not. Indeed, all development might be false, if we were left to ourselves.
I do not, however, think that God would give us his Revelation and then just leave it to decay.
That is the other way round… Catholicism is true only if the pope is infallible. I have at no point pre-supposed that Catholicism is true.
What I argue is, that an infallible interpreter is necessary, and that one is to be expected to arise after Christ ascended to Heaven. I then noted that Peter and the bishops of the NT act exactly the way I would expect an infallible guide to act, and this makes sense, since it is to those that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to guide in all truth. Unfortunately, eventually Peter died, leaving his office vacant. But an interpreter is still necessary. Now, I wonder if there are any likely candidates for his office in Church History, and lo and behold I find that from very early on, the bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, and the bishops who claim succession also from the apostles, are acting with extraordinary authority in exercising exactly this role in the Church. Condemning heresy, defining orthodoxy, protecting the sheep from the wolves and acting as the visible bond unity of the Church.
The pope is infallible because there really are no other candidates for infallibility. I never made your circular argument.
The Pope may hold a heretical doctrine, but he is by a special charism of the Holy Spirit unable to teach error. The Popes role is ultimately not about making the development, but judging the development. “What you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven…”
External meaning here that the “inner guidance of the Holy Spirit” is not sufficient as history shows us quite clearly. There must also be an external, that is a visible, authority.
Indeed if I made the same argument, I would laugh myself off the boards. But you misunderstood me on several points, and have been beating up a lot of strawmen. I hope I have made it a bit clearer now.
- CB
I could quibble about a few points, but I think the overall sentiment describes adequately what we describe as “ongoing revelation” and explains much of what C2M2C has problems with in our church, as doctrines unfold and develop.
I like the organic model very much and think it is “right on the money”.
In fact, I know this will horrify many here, and I will get hoots and hollers, but I personally believe that God himself grows and develops through his creations. He creates the universe and in his interaction with it, actually changes and grows, somewhat as we do with our children. It’s like the Mississippi river, (assuming a river could be eternal!) It is eternal yet always changing from moment to moment.
I know you would not take it this far, but let me ask you, how do you handle the apparant conflict between having an eternal immutable God mixed with a doctrine that “develops”?
We don’t have that problem in Mormonism due to “eternal progression”. We have no problem with a God who changes.
Don’t know if you know the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, but our history would have been very different if Aquinas was an Heraclitian instead of an Aristotilian. Your view would be the dominant one in Catholicism, and perhaps there would be no need for a “restoration”.
M
mfbukowski
Guest
What rock have you been hiding under? Oh I know, the rock of Peter.
H
hosemonkey
Guest
Now you are starting to get it. The Church is anchored to the Rock of Peter, under the command of Jesus Christ Himself, unlike the mormon organization who is anchored to the person of Joseph Smith in the guise of Satan.
M
mfbukowski
Guest
Quoted from above:
*[55.] The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. **Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. *This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.
The more I think about this analogy, the more comfortable I am with it, but I am convinced that you should not be comforable at all with it.
I believe that we can “grow up” and become just as our Father in heaven is, and that we are like Him in “embryo”.
Furthermore when it comes to this idea of doctrine “developing” (and I know you like that word much better than “changing” – I could use either word without any problem) I think the analogy breaks down or gets difficult for you. There mere fact that you like the world “develop” better than “change” indicates that.
Your example of the trinity is relevant.
You say the doctrine “developed”, and I say it “changed”
But what people believed about the nature of God was different in say the fifth century than it was in the first century.
Very different. But you say it is ok because an infallible pope(s) guided the change.
I have no problem with the fact that changes in the doctrine were made by leadership, I just believe that those changes were incorrect and done without authority.
But I don’t see how you can say that they were not “changes”.
I guess the question is, at what point is a “development” a “change”? Don’t come back with the human growth analogy because it really doesn’t apply here to doctrine.
Again, I personally have no problem with your position, I am just kind of shocked that you would take this line of reasoning which seems so “non-catholic” to me. So I am asking how YOU square this with your doctrine.
The answer might just be “I don’t have a problem with it”.
If that is the case, we are closer than I thought.
M
mfbukowski
Guest
Sheltered? Not quite.
Let’s send a mob to kill and rape your family and see how you react.
Mormons have always believed in self-defense. There are many Mormons in the military.
If you want to use anti-mormon sites I can use anti-catholic sites. I don’t know how you can look at these and “not learn something”. (By the way, do you personally really believe in the Immaculate Conception and original sin? Mary never sinned in her whole life?)
Neither of us were there.
Remember the crusades were not exactly a bunch of missionaries defending Catholicism intellectually, for the pure love of Christ.
Even when I bring up burning heretics, the answer is “we didn’t do it, their government did it”.
That’s like saying the Jews didn’t kill Jesus, the Romans did.
Puhhh-leeessee.
M
mfbukowski
Guest
One more thing
If God personally appeared to you, and you wanted to tell the story to someone, would you tell them that God personally appeard to you or might you soften it to “I have seen an angel” or something like that?
C
C2M2C
Guest
If I saw God, I would tell people I saw God. God is not an angel so saying that I saw an angel would be untrue. If I was afraid of the fallout I may wait awhile. But JS says he didn’t wait awhile, he says he told everyone and that he stirred things up quite a bit with his story.
BTW- you quoted me earlier and stated"… see you in a couple hundred years". that wasn’t my quote.
Just to clarify, I have not decided to re-join the Catholic church, only that Mormonism is not for me. I have many questions and concerns still. I am going to RCIA to learn.
J
JRKH
Guest
:ehh:I’m sorry but this is just too funny.
If God appears to you - And you are sure it was God - How could you possibly consider saying it was anything other than God Himself?
To even consider this possiblility undercuts the very idea of JS being God’s Prophet.
What Kind of Prophet, sent of God to re-establish God’s Church, starts his ministry with a lie? What Kind of Prophet denies God’s visitation by substituting “Angel” for “God”.
Sad - Just Sad.
Peace
James
M
Mike_Cooksey
Guest
I see you have a lot of responses to your plea for help.
The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is the center of the Catholic Church.
Spend time there, before him in the tabernacle and put your dilemma there. He knows you and will respond. You have discovered truth and are open to correction. God can ask for nothing more.
I’ll be praying for you and your family.
The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is the center of the Catholic Church.
Spend time there, before him in the tabernacle and put your dilemma there. He knows you and will respond. You have discovered truth and are open to correction. God can ask for nothing more.
I’ll be praying for you and your family.
C
Contrabass101
Guest
At least it is a Catholic position, I don’t know how widespread it is today.
But Newman has been called the father of the Second Vatican Concil, so that might be a hint on his importance…
I don’t know if there’s anything on it in the Cathechism, but you could take a look
Finding common ground is always interesting… I agree completely with the objections of Joseph Smith towards the sectarianism of 19th century - how thousands of Christians read the same book and reached different conclusions. I even agree with his immidiate reaction, that there ought to be an infallible, ongoing office to guide the Faithful. In a discussion with Protestant friends, I have even used him as an argument that an infallible interpreter is necessary - he shows the natural reaction to sectarianism.
However, I do think Joseph Smith overlooked one rather important detail… the office was already there!
The Church was already organic, it already had an infallible magisterium and an ongoing Tradition. Joseph mistook the Church for a sect.
Interestingly, John Henry Cardinal Newman was a *contemporary *of Joseph Smith, only 4 years older… He was an Anglican and lived in England, but he also felt the challenge of the 19th century sectarianism of the Protestant denominations on one hand, and the outward “unity” of Anglicanism on the other. He concluded, like Joseph that “sola scriptura” is insufficient, but he found that the answer to the riddle was in Rome.
After writing his book “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” he left the Church of England and became a Catholic - later a Cardinal. You may want to check out the book…
Indeed. Faith is not just belief in a determined set of facts, Faith is alive… alive and dangerous!
I wouldn’t use those words, because they seem to bind God to a temporal reality… which as we have known since Einstein (and believed much longer
) is only a relative reality. I do not believe the God is in time, rather I might say, that time is in God… whatever that may mean.God is greater than the spatio-temporal Universe… that is the point of believing in God in the first place.
His interaction changes, but not because He changes. They change because He is building a Kingdom. God is revealing slowly, beginning with the fact that He is the Creator (Genesis), then that He is a Covenant God (Genesis/Abraham), then that He is One (Exodus/Moses), that He is Saviour (Exodus), and so and so on. There is a clear development from e.g. Genesis to the Book of Wisdom. But the development is in the way that the Israelites understan God, not the way God is. It is like getting to know someone… it takes time, it comes gradually.
I do think, however, that I could agree with the image of the “Eternal River”. God is not static in the sense that he is “dead”. God is very much alive, and active.
Some of the Church Fathers described the Trinity as an “eternal dance”. A dynamic communion of persons, and not merely the static, isolated loneliness of Allah.
Eternal, it should be noted, meaning something *outside *of time, not merely something filling up time.
I handle it quite well, I think. But I didn’t as a Protestant
It should be noted, that I do not believe in an ongoing revelation per se, and that doing so would not be according to Catholic Faith.
What is God’s Word? It’s not a book, it’s a person - Jesus Christ. So we look at Jesus, and we’ll see what God has to say to the world. And that is what theologians and mystics have done for the past 2000 years: looked at Jesus. It is the unfolding in time of eternal truths.
Only know him (Heraclitus) by name.
By the way I consider St. Thomas Aquinas one of the greatest theologians of all times, and consider his writings some of the best theological developments in Church History. I love the scholastic approach to problems, and I especially love Thomas approach to reality - an approach that may truly be called Realism. 1) Things exist 2) Things are things. From these two common sense premises springs the breathtaking philosophy of one of Catholicism’s brightest minds.
I have yet to find a passage by St. Thomas that I do not agree with (many I don’t understand
). I don’t see a conflict between believing in a developing Church and an eternal God. But holding to the views of St. Thomas Aquinas and rejecting the theory of developing doctrine seems a bit odd to say the least - CB
M
mfbukowski
Guest
I did not mean that for you – I am not sure how it was I quoted you on that one. I will check it out and “return and report”
It was not meant for you, but for someone I think who quoted you and it got sent out differently than I intended
C
Contrabass101
Guest
Why not?
That is not really what Vincent is writing about, but there is some thruth in it… as one father said: “God became man, that man might become divine”.
Of course we mean something different with that, than you do. But we do believe, that God wills for man to parttake in divine nature… He invites us into the living communion of persons in the Trinity, and to have divine sonship. He wants us to join the dance.
We do not believe, that Divine Nature and Human Nature are one and the same, rather we believe that they were united in Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man.
I distinguish between change and development because I believe they are not the same.
Change would be if it was one day required that all the faithful should hold that Mary was a sinner like everybody else, and the next day that she was conceived without sin. Development is holding no particular beliefs about Mary at first, and then using thought on the Faith we already hold to conclude that she was conceived without sin. This would then be ratified by the Magisterium and there you go: Immaculate Conception.
Do you disbelieve the changes because you think the authority is invalid, or do you think the authority is invalid because it reached wrong conclusions?
May come down to semantics…
But the way I use the words, change is when something becomes something else, while development is something becoming more fully itself.
Yes it does… that’s how I used the analogy, and that’s how Vincent used the analogy… none of us ever argued that God develops.
I honestly don’t have a problem with it. Of course, I may have been unclear on some points, making you misunderstand me, but all in all, I believe my position to be an orthodox one.
- CB
M
mfbukowski
Guest
To C2M2C
Yes I am not sure how it happened but the confused post was number 405 which was intended to be a reply to BRB, number 399on page 27. If I wasn’t such a ditz, I would know how to link directly to it, but I don’t.
I think somehow it happened because number 405 erroneously shows the quote attributed to you, which it was not.
Or something like that!
M
mfbukowski
Guest
Great stuff – I am shocked that we are so close!At least it is a Catholic position, I don’t know how widespread it is today.
Interestingly, John Henry Cardinal Newman was a *contemporary *of Joseph Smith, only 4 years older… He was an Anglican and lived in England, but he also felt the challenge of the 19th century sectarianism of the Protestant denominations on one hand, and the outward “unity” of Anglicanism on the other. He concluded, like Joseph that “sola scriptura” is insufficient, but he found that the answer to the riddle was in Rome.
Indeed. Faith is not just belief in a determined set of facts, Faith is alive… alive and dangerous!
I wouldn’t use those words, because they seem to bind God to a temporal reality… which as we have known since Einstein (and believed much longer
God is greater than the spatio-temporal Universe… that is the point of believing in God in the first place.
His interaction changes, but not because He changes. They change because He is building a Kingdom. God is revealing slowly, beginning with the fact that He is the Creator (Genesis), then that He is a Covenant God (Genesis/Abraham), then that He is One (Exodus/Moses), that He is Saviour (Exodus), and so and so on. There is a clear development from e.g. Genesis to the Book of Wisdom. But the development is in the way that the Israelites understan God, not the way God is. It is like getting to know someone… it takes time, it comes gradually.
I do think, however, that I could agree with the image of the “Eternal River”. God is not static in the sense that he is “dead”. God is very much alive, and active.
Some of the Church Fathers described the Trinity as an “eternal dance”. A dynamic communion of persons, and not merely the static, isolated loneliness of Allah.
Eternal, it should be noted, meaning something *outside *of time, not merely something filling up time.
I have yet to find a passage by St. Thomas that I do not agree with (many I don’t understand
- CB
I even agree with you about Aquinas – the problem is that coming from a post-modern perspective, I don’t understand a word he says. I mean I understand what “being” means in some sense, or “substance”, but the way he uses them, I can’t figure out if he is right or wrong. But no question that the guy was a genius genius. He could hold a bunch of different propositions in his brain and juggle them all, and have it come out perfectly. You can’t fault his logic, just whether or not his word usage is ambiguous. But that is what linguistic analysis is about. I don’t know if it’s progress or not
The other problem is his epistemology. How are you supposed to know what is “out there” beyond appearances? But that is for another thread I guess, if anyone is interested in it. Don’t know that I am.
So I guess you like Teilhard de Chardin? If you haven’t read him you ought to. But I think he got excommunicated?
I also agree with your view on time, and I think we get into linguistic paradoxes by talking about “being out side of time” in temporal language. I mentioned once before somewhere on these posts that I taught a lesson on this once about a “time before time” and one of the students years later did the cartoon movie “The Land Before Time” about some dinosaur characters.
Wish I made a single dollar on that one!
But I think this is the key to understanding the Mormon view that “God was once as we are now”. He is outside of OUR time, but in some sense in his own time context which is different from ours, and so to us he is both “eternal” AND “progressing”.
I’d like to say He is totally outside of time, but then he could not be different at T1 than he is at T2, and so could not change. I don’t know. What time is it inside a black hole, where space/time itself is fractured? And yet black holes, I think the theory goes, change over “time” as they get bigger and perhaps explode into a “big bang”. So are they “outside time” too? A physical entity that exists outside time? Ahhh… there is so much to learn!
I’m working on a blog that is not yet “ready for prime time” about these questions, but will send you a link when I get some of the sawdust picked up.
Interesting stuff!
But I have a bone to pick with you!
What do you have against bass fishing?
(stupid joke!)
One last question – you remind me of a Catholic guy I knew at UCLA - If you went there in the late 60’s and your name is Jim, you should send me a private message! I have been looking for this guy for a while. He owes me $5.
- Status