Faith.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pete_1
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Pete_1

Guest
Why did God give us faith? God could have made everything we can understand about him readily knowable to us from birth, why faith?

Reasons other than ‘without faith it impossible to please God’ would be helpfull.
 
I think it is because this creation has to do with gradual change, in the development of universe, nature, plants, animals, environments and mankind. Things aren’t just suddenly there but grow, originate, gradually. That’s the story of the universe. And that’s maybe God’s only way to create a universe.

But an inborn knowledge of God would mean something that suddenly is there, something fixed, highly a discrepancy to all this gradual change.

Besides, the notion of God always was and is in development. Abraham was the first to come up with the notion of one God. We know a Hebrew God, we know a Christian God, a Catholic and Protestant God. And also the God of Islam and Hinduism is quite different. Not to speak of something like the Tao.

Things grow, and that’s probably the only way this creation can be and become and develop. And it seems nothing therein is fixed, except maybe - I think at least - the initial Idea and Creativity and laws and constants that were already there from the beginning. The Greeks used a word here: the Logos. Later adapted by St. John.
 
Apparantly it was not enough for the angelic hosts to have first hand experiential knowledge of God, because a third of them still rejected Him. Faith in God seems to me to be the natural result of a free agent desiring and willing that which is good (of God). There are many who have been well informed about God and yet still reject Him, why? because of a maleformed will.
Faith is neccessarily of the temporal, for there is an end looked to, good will however is not. So weather angelic or human beings I would say ‘without good will, it is impossible to please God.’
 
Hello Pete, I’m currently reading a book called the Glories of Divine Grace by Fr. Matthias Scheeben. In a chapter on faith, he argues that the requirement for faith is imposed on us because God wants us to sacrifice our reason so that our whole being is offered to Him.

When I get a chance, I’ll summarize the salient points in the chapter and post it here.

God bless,
Noel.
 
Faith is a means in which we can come to know God but our failures and falls can be forgiven us. If we were to know God as a fact and could see his face but still offended him how then could we be extended the grace of forgivness…I have read that sometimes God does not increase our knowledge of Him because to do so would place our souls in even greater danger, because we would commit even greater sins against Him with knowledge and consent because ignorance would no longer be an acceptable excuse.
 
Pete said:
Why did God give us faith? God could have made everything we can understand about him readily knowable to us from birth, why faith?

Reasons other than ‘without faith it impossible to please God’ would be helpfull.
Click to expand...
Man was created without the need for faith. Adam/Eve walked with God, intimately.

When was faith “needed” (created)? It was needed when we asked to learn about the consequences of sin (by being given a fallen nature in a fallen world and having to “deal with it”).

When we wanted to separate ourselves from God, God gave us our wish, and we (Adam’s/Eve’s progeny) had to simply BELIEVE (the ACT of faith) our first parents when they told us what God had told them as “the rules to live by”.

Faith is simply the natural consequence of our situation in this world, which we asked for, and which God grants us by NOT making Himself “utterly provable” by any means of “naturalistic science”.
 
nkelly said:
Hello Pete, I’m currently reading a book called the Glories of Divine Grace by Fr. Matthias Scheeben. In a chapter on faith, he argues that the requirement for faith is imposed on us because God wants us to sacrifice our reason so that our whole being is offered to Him.

When I get a chance, I’ll summarize the salient points in the chapter and post it here.

God bless,
Noel.
Click to expand...
Great, thanks.
 
‘Sacrifice of reason’ …
What nonsense!
Are you sure you’re on the right track?
My impression is Rome thinks differently.
Reason is something to use.
Read for instance the speech of pope Benedict he held in Regensburg.
Allthough somewhat faded away from catholicism, my overall impression is that meanwhile science is taken very serious by catholicism, at least in Rome.
 
Here’s my shot:

Faith is required as a proof of love of God.

Faith was not required of Adam, who clearly communed with God, and yet love was required of him.

The relationship between God and man is one of love, not slavery or subservience. But love requires that one give oneself to the needs of the other. (It is not a feeling,since we cannot be commanded to feel and yet we are commanded to love.) God has no need to be filled. Without some tangible evidence, man could not be credibly understood to love God. God, therefore, gave man a means of demonstrating his love.

In the Garden, the existence of the untouched tree of life (in other words, the refraining of committing a specific, insignificant act) was proof of the existence of love between God and Adam. Eating the fruit of the tree was unnecessary in the abundance of Eden. Complying with the command not to eat that one fruit by virtue of its insignificance demonstrated a willing desire on the part of Adam to please God, and demonstrated nothing else.

But Adam consumed the fruit, and it was hence impossible to prove or to know by virtue of refraining from an act his was a love of God and not subservience to him. It is not enough to say he would not do it again, since refraining from all future acts would not repair the one, demonstrating only a fear of consequence but no longer love. The test was destroyed for all time.

Once the refraining from an insignificant act lost its demonstrative power, God is left to require of man an affirmative act - faith.
 
I was reading the Encyclical Fides et Ratio and found this interesting:
  1. In believing, we entrust ourselves to the knowledge acquired by other people. This suggests an important tension. On the one hand, the knowledge acquired through belief can seem an imperfect form of knowledge, to be perfected gradually through personal accumulation of evidence; on the other hand, belief is often humanly richer than mere evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings into play not only a person’s capacity to know but also the deeper capacity to entrust oneself to others, to enter into a relationship with them which is intimate and enduring.
    It should be stressed that the truths sought in this interpersonal relationship are not primarily empirical or philosophical. Rather, what is sought is the truth of the person—what the person is and what the person reveals from deep within. Human perfection, then, consists not simply in acquiring an abstract knowledge of the truth, but in a dynamic relationship of faithful self-giving with others. It is in this faithful self-giving that a person finds a fullness of certainty and security. At the same time, however, knowledge through belief, grounded as it is on trust between persons, is linked to truth: in the act of believing, men and women entrust themselves to the truth which the other declares to them.
Click to expand...
 
Let’s see if a chronological list helps

GOD Is
God made rules
God made universe / heaven / earth according to certain rules
God made angels
1/3 broke the rules
God punished disobdient angels
God made man
Man broke the one rule He gave man after being tempted by Serpent. Man then learns to blame others 🙂
God punishes man, while providing a way out, still the punishment was death, not only for man but ALL of man’s decendents.

Faith and Hope are just rules.So logically, God could make rules that allow different ways to come to Him. And He logically could impose His penalties / punishment as He sees fit.

As for faith, it is a rule, just like love. It’s disobdience requires a penalty. Following the rule has a reward.

Think of the humility of Faith. To get down on your knees in order to ask for forgiveness and beg for help. To go before the Creator of Everything to praise His name for the Good things He has done for us. It really is a beautiful thing.

However, some people look at “the rule” with pride and stubborness. We should be thankful for the gift of life and nature and be thankful in all things.

Some people will say Faith is given. I remember when I was going through RCIA, I had to stand up in front of the Church and ask for it. I sincerely believe it is a gift from God. But where does the desire to ask come from and is that Faith? So does God give us a desire for faith, that all we need to do is ask?
 
Concerning reason, the concluding words of Pope Benedict in the speech at Regensburg:
“The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.”
 
With respect to this logos and reason, this will mean of course, or refer to, a process of study and invention, and of integrating what is there, as the whole body of thought humanity generated from up the early hunter-gatherer.

May I, by way of a first proposal, ask your attention for something that could be this logos, this complete reason. See my website: aosbenm.nl/
 
Biggie said:
Here’s my shot:

Faith is required as a proof of love of God.

Faith was not required of Adam, who clearly communed with God, and yet love was required of him.

The relationship between God and man is one of love, not slavery or subservience. But love requires that one give oneself to the needs of the other. (It is not a feeling,since we cannot be commanded to feel and yet we are commanded to love.) God has no need to be filled. Without some tangible evidence, man could not be credibly understood to love God. God, therefore, gave man a means of demonstrating his love.

In the Garden, the existence of the untouched tree of life (in other words, the refraining of committing a specific, insignificant act) was proof of the existence of love between God and Adam. Eating the fruit of the tree was unnecessary in the abundance of Eden. Complying with the command not to eat that one fruit by virtue of its insignificance demonstrated a willing desire on the part of Adam to please God, and demonstrated nothing else.

But Adam consumed the fruit, and it was hence impossible to prove or to know by virtue of refraining from an act his was a love of God and not subservience to him. It is not enough to say he would not do it again, since refraining from all future acts would not repair the one, demonstrating only a fear of consequence but no longer love. The test was destroyed for all time.

Once the refraining from an insignificant act lost its demonstrative power, God is left to require of man an affirmative act - faith.
Click to expand...
YES!

Excellently put! Touché!
 
I think faith is there, because we don’t have an absolute view on reality, we don’t have a Gods eye view on reality. We look at the world, we look at what traditionally Biblically is said on the world, we look at what the most important mystics say on the world, and we look at what science says on the world, but out of all this we cannot conclude with certainty, objectively, for everyone: God. Therefore: faith.

And these days fundamentalism is the most important enemy of faith. Putting aside the church as a kind of irrational, obsolete and authoritarian anachronism. And this while the heart of the church allready is heading for a much wider view on things, including science, including dialogue with other religions, including world view all together.

The question rises: do we want to cling on the absolute truth’s of the past, or do we want to engage in what is there, presenting itself, growing, as reality, as new story, on what God might be, all about.
 
Faith is knowing that God is much more then we Comprehend, hence, the Fear of God. But, Faith confirms that God is Love through what little we know. This is why we ‘ask, seek, knock’… we want to know more fully.

It’s a matter of percentage. If God is 100%, and I only know 5%, it is Faith that seeks to know the other 95%.

I look at my life. When I was 10, what did I think of the world that I knew then. And when I was 20, it had changed some while remaining the same. At 30, it had GREW more, but the more answers I had, the more questions there were. Like a tree, the trunk is singular, then each branch has it’s own branches with their own branches… and on it grows. And then, that is only on the surface, what about the roots? We can know what the roots are by what they show us above the surface, but why they do it is where Faith is. Why the interest to know? Where does it come from? What root is feeding that? To make full circle, God is.

Doesn’t Love seek to know the loved? In marriage the couple grows in Love by knowing the other more, so they Love them in more ways, and on it ‘grows’. As God knows us, with a return of that Love, we seek to know Him. An act of Faith… in that what we find will be more Love. And our comprehension gains another %, and we also are able to Love Him more.

So, at 40, has any of it actually changed? Or has our comprehension of it Grew? The Earth does go around the Sun… it didn’t always. The Earth is round, it wasn’t always. It did not change, only our understanding of it did. Same Growth will be for our comprehension of God, He is the same, we are just Growing more in who He is. The change is in us, not Him… as we, through Faith get to know Him better.
 
Very well said, very good metaphor.

As we mature we will understand more of what it is we are part of and live in, this Life, we call God.

And that’s my belief, my faith I think.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top