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Trishie
Guest
I think you’ll find we got past that. And we all should be “more learned”, about many things
In any case it wasn’t as simple as that.
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In any case it wasn’t as simple as that.
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Al_Moritz
Guest
Yes, we all should be.And we all should be “more learned”, about many things
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fhansen
Guest
Greek philosophy didn’t really come to play a significant role in Christan thought until the time of Aquinas or a little earlier. By then the basic doctrines were already hammered out. But Aquinas and others saw in that philosophy a reflection of the Christian God because the Christian God was understood to be one who created and acted out of order and reason, unlike the gods of, say, the pagan religions. With faith and reason as his guides he recognized the common ground between the teachings of Aristotle and those of Christianity and sought to synthesize them, using reason to help understand, clarify, and undergird the tenets of the faith.
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Al_Moritz
Guest
This is not quite true. The dogma of God’s immutability, for example, can be squarely traced back to St. Augustine who was influenced by Neo-Platonism:
God’s anger implies no perturbation of the divine mind. It is simply the divine judgment passing sentence on sin. And when God “thinks and then has second thoughts” this merely means that changeable realities come into relation with his immutable reason. For God cannot “repent” as human beings repent, of what he has done, since in regard to everything his judgment is fixed as his foreknowledge is clear … But it is only by the use of such human expressions that Scripture can make its many kinds of readers whom it wants to help to feel, as it were, at home. Only thus can Scripture frighten the proud and arouse the slothful, provoke inquiries and provide food for the convinced. This is possible only when Scripture gets right down to the level of the lowliest readers.
(St. Augustine, City of God, 15:25)
(This passage should also serve as a warning against a literal reading of the Bible; Augustine himself points out elsewhere that also the Genesis story is not to be taken literally [that was more than a millenium before the scientific revolution.])
See:
socrates58.blogspot.com/2009/01/catholic-dogmas-of-gods-immutability.html
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fhansen
Guest
Yes, I bypassed a few centuries there.
My main point was that Christianity doesn’t depend on Greek philosophy for its doctrines, rather it recognizes the way it compliments and can be utilized to understand the faith.
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Abba
Guest
This is incorrect. False premise as Trishie noted. The Christian Fathers did not withdraw theories and understandings from Greek philosophy which the Church later adopted and trusted under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is a serious misunderstanding. The Church Fathers expressed the authentic Traditions of the Church via philosophical understanding. The Church did not adopt dogmas based on philosophical deduction which it later presented to the Holy Spirit. I mean, really.
The knowledge of the immutability of God comes to us as revealed by God Himself. It is in the Bible. We did not come to adopt this as dogma based on deduction. Thank you.
I agree with the original positions of JHansen and Trishie. What I fail to understand is why they changed positions.
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Abba
Guest
Christ established His Church.
The Catholic Church is founded in Christ - not philosophy.
The Holy Spirit guides the Church. The Church does not guide the Holy Spirit.
The Pope does not have thousands of theologians/philosophers working arduously to come up with some deduction to propose to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not need our help.
It is God who reveals Himself and gives knowledge of Himself when He determines according to His Divine Wisdom in general and, in particular to who he wants and when he wants.
I can be the greatest genius that has ever lived but I cannot discover an attribute or anything about God unless God reveals it. I cannot come to know God in spite of God.
I mean, the picture in my mind of 300 monks in a monastery applying their intellectual prowess to discover something about God is absurd.
The Catholic Church is founded in Christ - not philosophy.
The Holy Spirit guides the Church. The Church does not guide the Holy Spirit.
The Pope does not have thousands of theologians/philosophers working arduously to come up with some deduction to propose to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not need our help.
It is God who reveals Himself and gives knowledge of Himself when He determines according to His Divine Wisdom in general and, in particular to who he wants and when he wants.
I can be the greatest genius that has ever lived but I cannot discover an attribute or anything about God unless God reveals it. I cannot come to know God in spite of God.
I mean, the picture in my mind of 300 monks in a monastery applying their intellectual prowess to discover something about God is absurd.
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Al_Moritz
Guest
I agree with all of this, but the Holy Spirit can also use guidance through the understanding of God from philosophy. God does not always lead through extraordinary means, but also through the ordinary means of natural human reason.
This is not true. St. Thomas Aquinas has affirmed that many attributes of God can be known through natural reason, such as His infinity, immutability, eternity, goodness, simplicity etc. He affirmed on the other hand that the Holy Trinity, for example, is only knowable through divine revelation, as is of course the divinity of Christ.
Of course not, but God’s revelation does not work against natural reason either.
It’s not absurd, see above. But again, of course only through divine revelation can we know God fully – as much as this possible in our earthly life.
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mro
Guest
You want to know how Catholics first treated the native americans? We enslaved them and put them to the sword…
Most of these men were Jesuits too… How Christian of us
Most of these men were Jesuits too… How Christian of us
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Abba
Your basic point is right.
As to morals and what we need to know about God and our human destiny, it’s all there in the Bible and in the teachings of the Church. If we had never drawn upon Greek philosophy to flesh things out, we would still have all the essentials from Christ, preserved for us intact by Holy Mother Church. If Augustine had never drawn from Plato, and Aquinas had never drawn from Aristotle, the Catholic Church would still be a beacon of wisdom for the world.
Your basic point is right.
As to morals and what we need to know about God and our human destiny, it’s all there in the Bible and in the teachings of the Church. If we had never drawn upon Greek philosophy to flesh things out, we would still have all the essentials from Christ, preserved for us intact by Holy Mother Church. If Augustine had never drawn from Plato, and Aquinas had never drawn from Aristotle, the Catholic Church would still be a beacon of wisdom for the world.
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fhansen
Guest
Yes, and I like what Al is getting at, too, though. God doesn’t want us to turn off our brains, developing an anti-intellectual viewpoint like some fundamentalists seem to have. He knew that Catholic thinkers would dovetail philosophy/reason with our faith and that we could not only support but also more completely define and explain doctrines by the use of reason. After all, our faith, while supernatural, is nonetheless reasonable as well. It could also be argued that the timing of Jesus’ advent was due in part to the fact that, by then, mankind had arrived at a kind of faith in God using reason alone-we wouldn’t have to be backtracking and playing catch-up in that department.Abba
Your basic point is right.
As to morals and what we need to know about God and our human destiny, it’s all there in the Bible and in the teachings of the Church. If we had never drawn upon Greek philosophy to flesh things out, we would still have all the essentials from Christ, preserved for us intact by Holy Mother Church. If Augustine had never drawn from Plato, and Aquinas had never drawn from Aristotle, the Catholic Church would still be a beacon of wisdom for the world.
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Trishie
Guest
Gave up positions perhaps, lacked the energy at the time to further pursue the issue, and displeased that though I said what I perceived at the time, I was too abrupt. I don’t like being careless of others.
I couldn’t sleep though, thinking about this issue. I understand what Bruce wishes to do. He tries valiantly, time and time again to reconcile Christianity with Indigenous North American culture and spirituality, as I understand it. I did make the presumption that this thread was somehow in the service of that intent…prove the relation of other pagan philosophy with Christianity as opening the way to the reasonable nature of his stated agenda. Perhaps it was unjust of me to presume thus.
However he seems to drifts into error at times. And different members have alerted him to this. He has an engaging persistence.
However he needs to be fully and completely catechized as a Catholic before he can even consider any kind of reconciliation between his culture and Christianity…if that can be done. I know he didn’t make that the specific for this particular thread but it is his stated passion and intent.
I have said to him previously that what he is trying to do may not be possible, because sometimes it is the case that truth is truth and cannot be anything else or masquerade as anything else.
My ancestry was Celtic, but amid the heather since the 1100s. However my long ago ancestors may have felt about reconciling pagan Celtic myths etc into Catholic spirituality, I’m not conscious that it has remained. My ancestors had to relinquish what was untrue, what was superstition, what was human invention. Bruce’s people may need to do the same. Bruce’s hope is that to reconcile Christianity with North American Indigenous spirituality will draw his people into the Church into active participation. This is a presumption that might not be realized anyway, even if he succeeded.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
fhansen
**Yes, and I like what Al is getting at, too, though. God doesn’t want us to turn off our brains, developing an anti-intellectual viewpoint like some fundamentalists seem to have. He knew that Catholic thinkers would dovetail philosophy/reason with our faith and that we could not only support but also more completely define and explain doctrines by the use of reason. After all, our faith, while supernatural, is nonetheless reasonable as well. **
But here’s the point: the reasonable parts of our faith are just as reasonable with or without Plato and Aristotle. In the realm of morals, what is reasonable that Plato and Aristotle produced that wasn’t explicit or implicit in the New Testament? I know of no catechism that has ever cited the moral contribution of Plato and Aristotle.
As to our human destiny, what did Plato and Aristotle have to offer? As to the nature of God, or even the existence of God, what contribution did Plato and Aristotle make that was essential to Christian theology, other than armchair reflections that may or may not be true since Plato and Aristotle had no personal revelation that we know of from the true God?
**Yes, and I like what Al is getting at, too, though. God doesn’t want us to turn off our brains, developing an anti-intellectual viewpoint like some fundamentalists seem to have. He knew that Catholic thinkers would dovetail philosophy/reason with our faith and that we could not only support but also more completely define and explain doctrines by the use of reason. After all, our faith, while supernatural, is nonetheless reasonable as well. **
But here’s the point: the reasonable parts of our faith are just as reasonable with or without Plato and Aristotle. In the realm of morals, what is reasonable that Plato and Aristotle produced that wasn’t explicit or implicit in the New Testament? I know of no catechism that has ever cited the moral contribution of Plato and Aristotle.
As to our human destiny, what did Plato and Aristotle have to offer? As to the nature of God, or even the existence of God, what contribution did Plato and Aristotle make that was essential to Christian theology, other than armchair reflections that may or may not be true since Plato and Aristotle had no personal revelation that we know of from the true God?
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Al_Moritz
Guest
- While obviously not all the attributes of the Christian God are contained in those of the God of the philosophers, the other way around is true: the characteristics of the God of the philosophers are contained in the characteristics of the true God. Ask St. Thomas Aquinas.
- As I said before, many attributes of God can be understood from natural reason, without divine revelation. Ask St. Thomas Aquinas. The Catholic Church emphatically affirms that the existence of God can be recognized by natural reason, so be careful with claiming that all we know of God solely comes from direct divine revelation.
31 Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.
35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.
- “Armchair reflections”? Be careful with such denigrations. These “armchair reflections” saved me from becoming an atheist a few years ago. Here is my story:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8447074&postcount=13
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UnityofTrinity
Guest
How do you explain something such as Virgin Birth, Salvation, Christ lamb of God, or even monotheism to a group of pagan worshipers? How do you explain a loving God to a group of people who worship drunken incestuous and murderous gods? It tuns out that the only thing ever come close to the truth of God preached by the Church were these philosophies, and so we were eager to use them to formulate doctrines and to evangelize the Gospel. Similarly when Matteo Ricci came to China he studied Confucian philosophies to preach the Gospel.
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Abba
Guest
What I am trying to clarify here is that the Catholic Church did not derive/formulate its doctrines or Truths of God from Greek philosophy nor from Confucian philosophy.
The Church works to evangelize and bring the Gospel to all people. In doing so it tries to express the Truth of the Gospel via reason and to people with their different cultures and beliefs and through and to the changing generations.
The truths declared in the doctrines declared by the early ecumenicals councils do not have their origin in the heresies they were a reaction to. There existed already a Truth that need to be kept clear, unconfused, untainted etc… The Truth was already there, it did not have its origin in heresies, philosophy, culture, etc…
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Al
**As I said before, many attributes of God can be understood from natural reason, without divine revelation. Ask St. Thomas Aquinas. The Catholic Church emphatically affirms that the existence of God can be recognized by natural reason, so be careful with claiming that all we know of God solely comes from direct divine revelation. **
Be careful about reading into what I say something I did not say. I said Plato and Aristotle did not produce much philosophy that helps our Christian theology, which was vibrant and hugely productive long before Augustine heard of Plato or Aquinas heard of Aristotle.
I did not say reason by itself cannot understand certain things about God, or that reason cannot be used to bring others to God. I doubt very much that Plato and Aristotle brought you to God.
If they did, what were the great passages of inspiration that made you a convert?
I also think that reason can wrongly be used to bring us away from God, especially when it is used by others to deceive us, or by us to deceive ourselves. This is how I became an atheist in my youth, reading too much Bertrand Russell and such. I’m not sure it was reason that brought be back … certainly not the reasoning of Plato and Aristotle.
It was need that brought me back … more than anything else.
**As I said before, many attributes of God can be understood from natural reason, without divine revelation. Ask St. Thomas Aquinas. The Catholic Church emphatically affirms that the existence of God can be recognized by natural reason, so be careful with claiming that all we know of God solely comes from direct divine revelation. **
Be careful about reading into what I say something I did not say. I said Plato and Aristotle did not produce much philosophy that helps our Christian theology, which was vibrant and hugely productive long before Augustine heard of Plato or Aquinas heard of Aristotle.
I did not say reason by itself cannot understand certain things about God, or that reason cannot be used to bring others to God. I doubt very much that Plato and Aristotle brought you to God.
If they did, what were the great passages of inspiration that made you a convert?
I also think that reason can wrongly be used to bring us away from God, especially when it is used by others to deceive us, or by us to deceive ourselves. This is how I became an atheist in my youth, reading too much Bertrand Russell and such. I’m not sure it was reason that brought be back … certainly not the reasoning of Plato and Aristotle.
It was need that brought me back … more than anything else.
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Abba
Guest
Dear trickster,
I appreciate your concern and care for the preservation of the culture, language and spirituality of you people. I really do. I understand. I am also all for the preservation of culture. I appreciate the diversity not only in music, food, language, dress, mannerisms, etc… but also in the different outlooks and perception of reality. It can be painful to see ones culture or mother tongue disappearing or unappreciated. The desires to save the culture and traditions are only natural and I would say a noble duty.
However, we want to progress and let natural social life take its course. Cultures are not stagnant and neither are languages which in turn encapsulate cultures. We cannot freeeze time out of melancholy for a time gone by. If we live long enough as you and I have, we see changes in our culture and languages within our own time. There are natural healthy things that we can do to keep our people’s culture and identity and languages alive and in my personal estimation this objective is a noble one.
Part of the appreciation of our own culture can come from seeing it under the light of the world. We can appreciate how our culture is distinct from other, better here and there than another etc…This we do when we separate our view of our people from other peoples. It’s nice to get a distant perception. But, also, we need to appreciate that our people are part of the human race. A race that had an origin (Adam and Eve). No matter where people spread out to live in this vast world and no matter how long people were isolated from other civilizations or peoples if you prefer - they once all knew each other.
Then you can consider, that God is the Father of all human beings. Not just of the people of my race, culture, nor of your race, or their race or culture etc… but of all human beings. God created all human beings and we originated from the same family. So, if you go back enough…there was probably a time where your ancestors knew some things about the revelations of the Old Testament. If knowledge is not passed down it can be lost.
You would not want to trade a Truth for a lie, right? I would think that you would want your people to know the Truth about God. Given their condition and lack of knowledge about the one and only God, your ancestors did their best in trying to understand the world they were living in and believed there was no after life. They arrived at the understanding they did given their knowledge. One thing is to not have knowledge and do the best with what you have and another is to be intentionally deprived of knowledge or misguided on account of some sentimentality of some ancient culture.
As a Catholic who believe the Nicene Creed, this is the faith you want your people to know - the Truth. You can see what truths there may be in the spirituality of your people that is expressed in Catholic teachings and preserve that and emphasize it and the rest in regards to the spirituality that is contrary to the teachings of the Church can be discard and noted in the history books. Sometimes things need to be put in there rightful place. Your ancestors did the best they could to explain natural phenomenon they did not quite understood - but now there is something much greater than all that.
You can bring to them the Good News! The Truth about the one and only creator of the universe. It’s beautiful. You should be singing with joy that your people can now know the Truth. Not being melancholic and trying to find a way to syncritize the two spiritual understandings. Syncretism would created an obstacle for your people and I am sure this is not what you want.Definately, in order to properly determine what can be preserved and encouraged in the spirituality of your people, you want to be clear about what the Church teaches.
I actually have various books on North American Indians and the spread of Christianity in North and South America and the Carribean. If you do not have The Indians of Canada by Diamond Jenness and would like a copy, I can send anonimously the one I have to you.
Best wishes,
Abba
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Pfaffenhoffen
Guest
thanks. sorry, I did not catch this one, my english made and effort but could not reach it:Well said, I agree Pfaffenhoffen…by the way, how did you decide on that handle…I don’t think I have ever spelled it right to this day
Bruce
trickster
!!!
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trickster
Guest
Hi Kismetjl…interesting note…I don’t think God needs to decieve, but in an aboriginal understanding Jesus is seen as trickster not because of deception but of playing with the dynamics of opposites…sabbath is for humans, humans are not for sabbath and all his other sayings that pissed off the Hebrew establishment of his day…Jesus himself re-assigned meanings to the way people understood reality, so I like your concept, but I don’t think it necessarily be based on deception…that obviously would go over well in the Catholic world
Bruce
Trickster
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