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Trurl
Guest
I read it, and it was interesting, even though unconvincing.
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fhansen
Guest
You seem to have missed or dismissed my point. The CC doesn’t necessarily accept a literalistic interpretation of every part of the bible. The Catholic faith isn’t based on scripture to begin with, as with most other Christian groups. Her faith was received via the advent of Jesus Christ and the NT writings were a product of that same event. All scripture -NT and OT-supports and informs her teachings rather than directly causing them. IOW, as I mentioned before, it’s the role of the Church to determine and proclaim the nature and will of God. So an accusation of her believing in a God that slaughters doesn’t necessarily coincide with her teachings. More on the Church’s teachings regarding the role scripture plays can be found starting here:
scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a3.htm
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Trurl
Guest
I am aware of that. Yet, there is no offical, authoritative writ, called: “Catholic Annotated Bible” which would (at the very least) seprate the “literal” part from the “allegorical” part (even if the meanings of the allegories - which could be multi-fold, would be left out for further clarification). As such I see a continuous “hide-and-seek” game, where any verse can be declared “literal” or “allegorical” as the necessity to defend some position arises. By making a careful selection of certain parts, any position and its opposite can be “substantiated”. Since there is NO “Catholic Annotated Bible”, all the interprepations are “equal”.
Of course the FINAL support is the bible, which has no outside texts to support it. So, when push comes to shove, yes, the final authority is always the bible - where the NT was selected and compiled by the catholic church (from among many texts, and the method to include or exclude certain texts was decided by majority vote). As such we are confronted by a **self-authenticated **“authority”. What you call “sacred tradition” or the “magisterium” are addendums - also declared to be authoritative by the church.
I am also aware that the orthodox believers are supposed to accept unconditionally certain seleced dogmas and declarations. Yet these dogmas have no authority outside this group. As I said, I call them as I see them. And I see absolutely no sign of God, and must less that God is “loving”. Also, I see the arguments as futile attempts to “explain away” the obvious lack of “love”.
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fhansen
Guest
Where should the impetus to interpret every verse of the bible come from if the Church’s faith isn’t even based on it? The teachings of the Church can be found in the catechism.
No, the final support is not always the bible. When support is offered in the Catechism or other works references are made to scripture, ECFs and later thinkers: Aquinas, various saints, Newman, etc, concilliar decrees, Tradition, and so on.
The Church can only point us to God. We must make the effort to find Him.
Here are some examples from the catechism of the differences between the old and new laws, old and new covenants, and how the NC seeks to work in us.
**1965 The New Law or the Law of the Gospel is the perfection here on earth of the divine law, natural and revealed. It is the work of Christ and is expressed particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. It is also the work of the Holy Spirit and through him it becomes the interior law of charity [love]: "I will establish a New Covenant with the house of Israel. . . . I will put my laws into their hands, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."19
1968 The Law of the Gospel fulfills the commandments of the Law. The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, far from abolishing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands arise from them: it reveals their entire divine and human truth. It does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to reform the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure,22 where faith, hope, and charity are formed and with them the other virtues. The Gospel thus brings the Law to its fullness through imitation of the perfection of the heavenly Father, through forgiveness of enemies and prayer for persecutors, in emulation of the divine generosity.23
1972 The New Law is called a law of love because it makes us act out of the love infused by the Holy Spirit, rather than from fear; a law of grace, because it confers the strength of grace to act, by means of faith and the sacraments; a law of freedom, because it sets us free from the ritual and juridical observances of the Old Law, inclines us to act spontaneously by the prompting of charity and, finally, lets us pass from the condition of a servant who “does not know what his master is doing” to that of a friend of Christ - “For all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” - or even to the status of son and heir.31
**
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PJM
Guest
AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT SAME “COIN” IS…You know Catholic teaching on such things. But you disagree with this teaching and put the blame on God. So you either hate God because he didn’t create the world to suit you or deny his existence. Let’s take your position. Say God does not exist. Now what? Now who are you going to blame for the evil in the world?
WHO GET’S CREDIT FOR ALL OF THE GOOD IN THE WORLD:shrug:
I think I can prove that God exist: LOOK INTO A MIRROR and then let me know what YOU see. *
God Bless,
Pat*
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Trurl
Guest
And the catechism has many logical errors and fallacies in it. Nevertheless, the church is a self-proclaimed authority, and not even all catholics accept what it says.
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fhansen
Guest
True-and whether or not it’s accepted has no bearing on it’s validity.
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davidv
Guest
Baseless assertion. Sounds like denial without evidence.
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Trurl
Guest
Read the second dogma from here jloughnan.tripod.com/dogma.htm : “God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty, by the natural light of reason from created things. (De fide.)” or the first one from here theworkofgod.org/dogmas.htm, which is incorporated in the catechism. The logical error stares right at you.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Fire away!
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
First of all, thank you for the links, Ott’s book is awfully expensive these days.
And just where are the logical errors you speak of? They are not apparant.
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Trurl
Guest
Very well. The phrase “from created things” presupposes that God created those “things”. As such, it is a circular argument. One cannot presuppose that things were “created”, and then happily declare: “since those things were created by God, therefore one can deduct reaonably, that God must exist”.First of all, thank you for the links, Ott’s book is awfully expensive these days.
And just where are the logical errors you speak of? They are not apparant.
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fred_conty
Guest
Trul, you said,
"Also, I see the arguments as futile attempts to “explain away” the obvious lack of “love”.
As I understand your position as you see it, God is not loving or good if he allows suffering or severe evil.
The answer is that we look to Jesus who suffered, and showed us that suffering is not necessarily evil. By it he opened up the gates of paradise to all mankind. By it he showed to us what real love is.
The following is an extract from Crossing the Threshold of Hope by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II:
God is always on the side of the suffering. His omnipotence is manifested precisely in the fact that He freely accepted suffering. He could have chosen not to do so. He could have chosen to demonstrate His omnipotence even at the moment of the Crucifixion. In fact, it was proposed to Him: “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (Mk 15:32). But He did not accept that challenge. The fact that He stayed on the Cross until the end, the fact that on the Cross He could say, as do all who suffer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34), has remained in human history the strongest argument. If the agony on the Cross had not happened, the truth that God is Love would have been unfounded. Yes! God is Love and precisely for this He gave His Son, to reveal Himself completely as Love. Christ is the One who “loved to the end” (Jn 13:1). “To the end” means to the last breath. “To the end” means accepting all the consequences of man’s sin, taking it upon Himself. This happened exactly as prophet Isaiah affirmed: “It was our infirmities that he bore, /We had all gone astray like sheep, / each following his own way; / But the Lord laid upon him / the guilt of us all” (Is 53:4-6).
Some thoughts.
"Also, I see the arguments as futile attempts to “explain away” the obvious lack of “love”.
As I understand your position as you see it, God is not loving or good if he allows suffering or severe evil.
The answer is that we look to Jesus who suffered, and showed us that suffering is not necessarily evil. By it he opened up the gates of paradise to all mankind. By it he showed to us what real love is.
The following is an extract from Crossing the Threshold of Hope by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II:
God is always on the side of the suffering. His omnipotence is manifested precisely in the fact that He freely accepted suffering. He could have chosen not to do so. He could have chosen to demonstrate His omnipotence even at the moment of the Crucifixion. In fact, it was proposed to Him: “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (Mk 15:32). But He did not accept that challenge. The fact that He stayed on the Cross until the end, the fact that on the Cross He could say, as do all who suffer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34), has remained in human history the strongest argument. If the agony on the Cross had not happened, the truth that God is Love would have been unfounded. Yes! God is Love and precisely for this He gave His Son, to reveal Himself completely as Love. Christ is the One who “loved to the end” (Jn 13:1). “To the end” means to the last breath. “To the end” means accepting all the consequences of man’s sin, taking it upon Himself. This happened exactly as prophet Isaiah affirmed: “It was our infirmities that he bore, /We had all gone astray like sheep, / each following his own way; / But the Lord laid upon him / the guilt of us all” (Is 53:4-6).
Some thoughts.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
The argument is patently not: "Because those things were created by God, therefore God exists. That is your less than fair treatment of the proposed argument.
The quoted statement (it seems to be more a concoction of yours) more feasibly functions as a summary. Something like: “It can be reasonably proven from the order and contingency of created things that God exists.”
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Trurl
Guest
Not exactly. Because most of the suffering and evil are not necessary, and no amount to twisting the facts can make them “necessary”. Did you forget the teaching: “if someone is hungry, who would feed him pebbles?” (not a verbatim quote). There are many hungry people, whose lack of nourishment is due to a lack of rain! There is no special need to perform some wonderful miracle to help them: a little rain would be sufficient. There are lots of sufferings which could be alleviated without invoking “miracles”.
The usual counter-“argument” (using the most sarcastic tone) is that in heaven those people will be “compensated”. There is no compensation. Whatever suffering happens here and now, must be explained here and now. If you do not feed the hungry today, but postpone for a week, that is NOT love. There is a great old proverb: “bis dat, qui cito dat”
Even if one takes it seriously (which only christians do), it does exlain away the lack of obvious caring and help, HERE and NOW.
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The_Bucket
Guest
Why? And how can it not be explained by simply saying that the world is fallen because man is fallen? Suffering exists in this world because man brought suffering into the world through his sin.
Sin has both a spiritual effect and a temporal effect. It turned a perfectly good world into one that contains suffering. It eats away at our minds and hearts. It’s the source of many addictions which lead to the destruction of lives.
When we were in perfect harmony with God, so was the world. Because we chose to break that perfect harmony, suffering came into the world. And it was through suffering that God redeemed us all through His Son.
You can use all the semantics you want and dredge up every logical argument you wish from 200-level philosophy courses, but your basic argument remains the same: “God can’t be real or I can’t acknowledge His reality because there is suffering in the world. And if God is both all-powerful and all-loving, why do bad things happen?!”
You do realize that this is not a novel argument, right? It’s basically the same question that man has asked for millennia. God’s nature is not subject to our laws of logical argument, no matter how sophisticated they may be.
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Trurl
Guest
And for those 2 millenia, not one rational (or even logical) answer was ever presented.
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davidv
Guest
How are the arguments not rational? I have not seen any more evidence for this other that your sayso.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
I guess that depends on what the definition if " is " is. The Church is defining a Dogma, it is not teaching philosophy. But it is true that it is based on Thomas’ philosophy ( I assume). Thomas shows the beings of the universe are dependent on a First Cause for their existence, their motion/change, for their ordered activity. This First Cause, itself, is Unmoved and Unmoveable, Uncaused, Necessarily Existent, the Final Cause and thus is Pure Act. And this we call God. You may disagree of course but it is not circular reasoning.
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Trurl
Guest
First, there is no offical “philosophy” endorsed by the church (Thomist, Molinist, Aristotelian, whatever…). Second, the quoted sentence explicitly declares that faith is not needed, rational thinking (philosophy) is “enough”. Even if one would accept the Thomistic arguments seriously (and they have been refuted zillions of times) they would never lead to the the christian God, at best they could lead to a faceless “first cause” (or whatever…).I guess that depends on what the definition if " is " is. The Church is defining a Dogma, it is not teaching philosophy. But it is true that it is based on Thomas’ philosophy ( I assume). Thomas shows the beings of the universe are dependent on a First Cause for their existence, their motion/change, for their ordered activity. This First Cause, itself, is Unmoved and Unmoveable, Uncaused, Necessarily Existent, the Final Cause and thus is Pure Act. And this we call God. You may disagree of course but it is not circular reasoning.
The only rational way would be this: “the starting assumption is that the universe is self-sufficient, it needs no external ‘anything’ - this is the null-hypothesis”. Starting from here you need to use reason and logic, and arrive at a contradiction. If there would be a contradiction, then you could come to the conclusion that there “needs to be something” to resolve that contradiction. But that would not be the christian God, with its peculiar “attributes”.
But the quoted sentence does not do that. It simply “pre-asserts” that the “things” are “created”, and that somehow points to God. The circularity is obvious. If you could prove that God exists, and that God actually created everything, then and ONLY then could you assert that all those “things” were created. However, if you could do it, then there would be no reason for the whole dogma.
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