How do you guys reconcile your faith with . .

[Dimmesdale]

As Pascal said: “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point”: the heart (faith) has its reasons that reason knows nothing of." Faith is not blind, but it should not be evaluated on the basis of ordinary human reason.

I am down with this interpretation. More and more especially. That human beings should find faith compelling in itself, seems to point to something ontologically buried within our essences. Faith then reflects a certain world of desire and longing which exists within the human heart. In that sense faith may be self-authenticating in a way other arguments are not. Skeptics dismiss this as sentimental though. It’s a hard thing to get across.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Most things that are good and true are hard to get across. That, however, should not deter the faithful.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Hi,

Thanks for all your replies. There’s just one thing I’d like to make clear before I address some of the posts here directly.

The original title of the thread was simply “How do you guys reconcile your faith with”

One of the forum moderators added the word “history” to the end of it, so now it reads “How do you guys reconcile your faith with history”. This gives it a pretty smug tone, the sort of thing you’d imagine a 13 year old atheist writing, lol. It’s also a little misleading. I understand it was changed to add clarity and I’m sure it was well intentioned but I’m coming at this from the point of view of an agnostic theist who actually wants to believe in many of the things that most of you do. I’m not trying to “pick fights”, just honestly wondering how the people on this forum (many of whom seem to be pretty well educated) grapple with this point. To me it’s one of the biggest challenges to believing in the Judeo-Christian God specifically.

The first sentence of my post: "the historical record, and what it reveals about how the concept of the Abrahamic God evolved’ was supposed to finish the incomplete sentence “How do you guys reconcile your faith with”, and would have given the title context. It was not supposed to imply that “history” as a whole undermined the Catholic faith, not in the slightest. There are places where it has challenged it, and places where it has validated it, but this to me seems to be one of the more serious challenges.

I’ll try and change the title to something a little clearer, that accurately reflects my views.

Thanks again for the replies!

 

[SevenSpirits]

Interesting. So you would say, from an apologetics point of view, revelation only begin in earnest after the exilic period? And the redactors of the Bible sort of used the old stories to flesh out teaching about God, just like there are traces of Sumerian and Akkadian mythology in the first part of Genesis?

It could work, but then it begs the question…where do you stop? Will Jesus eventually be revealed to just be “another stage” on the way to a more refined understanding of the ultimate reality?

Just to make it clearer, I did actually study this stuff in university; not as a specialization or anything, but I took more than one course that got pretty deep into the history of the Bible. Slightly before then I had also read Karen Armstrong and another book called “The Evolution of God”. I’m by no means an expert and it’s been a while but I’d be happy to get into it a little more deeply if you want to discuss it over PM.

 

[SevenSpirits]

I’m generally on board with the whole “progressive revelation” thing; that God/Ultimate Reality revealed himself in stages, depending on where the people he was addressing were at. Like I wrote in the other post the big challenge is where it stops.

To flesh out my own views a little further, I think it’s quite likely that the totality of all development in the universe (universes?), is necessarily an all-powerful and infinite being, stretching across time, and therefore to the beginning of our own world. It is almost certain that the ancient Israelites (and people in various other cultures around the world) caught glimpses of this reality, as we do today.

 

[gama232]

The Catechism states that God is the author of Scripture. Without believing that to be true, then speculation occurs. Whatever Babylonian or Sumerian mythology might say is not important, it’s a study of mythology. The God of the Bible is the one true God.

 

[SevenSpirits]

But the stories of the ancient Mesopotamians did influence the writers of Genesis did they not?

 

[Richard_White]

Well no, I wouldn’t necessarily say that revelation only began in earnest after the exilic period. I think that God was continuously revealing Himself to the Israelites from at least the time of Abraham. However, it wasn’t until the Exile that the redactors of the remnant community got together and compiled the Torah as we know it today. And as they went back through all of their traditions from of old (both their own and the traditions of other Ancient Near Eastern civilizations), they took those traditions and made them their own so that they would reflect the Israelite community’s experience of the Almighty extending across the centuries. And just like the Four Gospels provide similar but distinct pictures of Jesus from different slants, and thus provide an overall complete picture of who Jesus is, so too do the different accounts of much of the Torah provide different traditions circulating within the community, and all together create a cohesive whole that teaches theological truth. This is the so-called Documentary Hypothesis.

Here is a quote from the article “What Really Happened at Mount Sinai” by Baruch J. Scwartz in Bible Review 13:5, October 1997:

We may never know when this extremely sophisticated literary process took place. Scholars differ on the origin and interrelationship of the separate documents. Many scholars suggest that they were combined into one around the time of the return from the Babylonian Exile (fifth century B.C.E.), when the imperial Persian authorities granted legal and religious autonomy to the Jews in Judea, allowing them—actually ordering them (Ezra 7:1–26)—to govern themselves according to their written teachings, perhaps requiring them to produce a single, authoritative version of their sacred law.

Whatever the precise circumstances may be, the composition of the Torah represents the crowning achievement in the process of collating, canonizing and codifying the aggregate of tradition, religious and legal practice, and historical memory that the First Temple period produced. What traditional interpretation saw as a single Mosaic text, critical analysis views as a mosaic of texts.

It is no less significant for this. In fact, some would argue, a collection consisting of four impressionistic paintings and one collage is actually a better record of an encounter with the ineffable than a single, one-dimensional photograph.

I hope this makes sense! Again, yes I am happy to continue discussing these topics over PM. I also am not an expert, it’s just something that I am deeply interested in.

 

[webmasterpdx]

There is a lot of BS written out there by people who have an agenda to discredit judaism and Christianity. However, the truth is that since God spoke with Abraham, the Jewish religion didn’t change much. It did get expanded and so forth…as Gods relationship with man evolved to the time of Jesus. When the israelites came in from the desert with Moses, they had a pretty formidable army after wandering for 40 years…and they displaced the caanonites. They had to kill most of the men and children to wipe out their religion…they were pretty harsh. The certainly did not mix religions…so that theory is bunk. There are some commonalities within religions. Carl Jung called them archetypes. The guy to read on comparative mythology is Joseph Campbell if this stuff interests you. I think there are some of his old lectures on youtube. Anyhow, I believe that these archetypes are put there by God so we recognize the truth when we see it. This theory was put into effect in the orignal Star Wars movie, and Joseph Campbell consulted…which is why it was so successful. What is interesting is there are only 2 religions that I’ve been able to find where the archetypes roll out in linear time. Zoroastrianism and Judeo-Christianity. I reject Zoroastrianism for other reasons, so that leaves Judea-Christianity…all the other relgions seem to be cyclical in nature…just my point of view…Happy Hunting…it took me 25 years of research to come to the catholic faith. Being a scientist actually got in my way. Read Immanuel Kant’s Critique of pure reason…in particular the part bout a priori and a posteriori knowledge…

 

[tafan2]

I have not read the responses to your question so far, but a couple of thoughts come to mind.

1. why would you think that man’s understanding if God would not have evolved over time? And does it not seem reasonable that God would have revealed himself to mankind gradually overtime?
2. wanting the history to make sense is perfectly reasonable. To that end, I highly recommend the first volume of Warren Carroll’s History of Christendom:. The Founding of Christendom. It covers the time if the Old Testament through the first 300 years if Christianity. It does not pretend to be an unbiased account. Carroll says right up front that he, like all historians, writes from s specific perspective, he just admits to it. But it us thoroughly researched and footnoted. And it is a great read to boot, none of this boring history textbook stuff. You will learn a lot, and it might help you on your quest.

 

[Rau]

Regarding the historical record specifically here, how do you address it?

If you struggle with historical issues, then put that aside for now. Consider what the church teaches about how we should live our life and do your best to conform.

 

[po18guy]

Historians are not theologians and are therefore out of their league. Historical events, sure - even that is hotly debated. But the spiritual aspect: strictly speaking, they are incompetent to judge.

As to the post by Patrick 457, I guess he did not make the transition.

Sad.

 

[billsherman]

How do you guys grapple with what seems to be a fairly broad consensus regarding the historical record and what it reveals about how the concept of the Abrahamic God evolved?

You might find the interview below with Msg. John Meier useful. He also happens to be among the most significant historians writing about the life of Jesus right now. It’s an older interview, but he addresses the same issues in the more recent preface to “A Marginal Jew, Vol. IV: Probing the Authenticity of the Parables.” A book, like all his books, that has received the imprimatur - so its orthodoxy is not in question.

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/finding-the-historical-jesus-an-interview-with-john-p-meier/

 

[Maximian]

I started out as an unbeliever from much the same point of departure as you. It was only after my intellectual questions had been satisfied that I found it possible to love God, which came about due to a personal crisis.

Looking back I think the things that helped me most were: extensive reading (which obviously you are doing); regular prayer, especially the rosary and attending Mass where the liturgy was well done in the most traditional way, and reflection on certain verses of the Bible that made a strong impression.

Among the latter were the opening verses of Genesis and John. The creation narrative Genesis is not only about the beginning, it is also among the earliest texts to be written down. And what impressed me was the discovery that the Trinitarian doctrine is present already in the earliest of texts: Genesis doesn’t only mention the Father-Creator but also His Word (God SAID…) and His Spirit (moving over the face of the waters).
So for those who had eyes to see, the doctrine was all there from the start.

Another verse which helped me in my transition from a dry intellectual approach to a faith-based approach was Proverbs 9:10 - the beginning of Wisdom is the fear of the Lord. What does it mean to “fear the Lord?” And why should wisdom start there? If you meditate on those two questions you may find some answers that help you.

 

[Maximian]

I did actually study this stuff in university; not as a specialization or anything, but I took more than one course that got pretty deep into the history of the Bible. Slightly before then I had also read Karen Armstrong

Yes I also studied this at University. I found that heavyweight theologians actually helped even when they were , from a Catholic perspective, way off the mark (the Tubingen School and their successors), more than lightweights like Dr Armstrong whose academic qualifications seem to have been awarded not solely in recognition of her academic rigour…

 

[Maximian]

Very well put. I like the collage analogy.

 

[EricPH]

Is faith then blind? Is it rational?

The creation of the universe is history, and you can’t change the truth about that history. God the creator of the universe either exists fully and totally, or there is no god. You could be a hundred percent right or wrong on the toss of a coin, there is no middle ground.

The same God hears all our prayers, despite our differences and despite the many names we might know him by. We can’t change God because of our poor understanding of who he is.

In order to find God you have to do something.

 

[BartholomewB]

I’ll try and change the title to something a little clearer, that accurately reflects my views.

The thread title, as it stands at this moment, ends with the words, … what historians think about the “evolution of God”? Is that what you intend it to be? If so, I’d better go back and delete my post #3 on this thread. I have never read any book by any historian who uses the expression “the evolution of God”, which is wholly new to me. I am not qualified to comment on that.

 

[Wesrock]

Your question needs a follow-up. What is your point? To merely ask that question has no meaning or context.

The Bible itself shows the Israelites adopting the Canaanite religion and pantheon repeatedly for long stretches, and that it was only King Hezekiah’s reforms in the early 7th century BC that made it legal law that the LORD would have sole worship in Judea (the southern kingdom). My point is it’s not surprising even under a Biblical account that we would find historical evidence of syncretism and worship of the Canaanite pantheon in Israel by Israelites between 1500 BC to 700 BCish, if not even a little later. The notion that the Israelites in their popular culture worshipped just one God is itself unBiblical.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Will Jesus eventually be revealed to just be “another stage” on the way to a more refined understanding of the ultimate reality?

Doesn’t this question hinge on whether or not we believe Jesus is God? If he is God, then why wouldn’t God have made His message through Jesus to be crystal clear for all time? Why all the questions about the gospels being an accretion of culture, bias, agendas, and the linguistic styles of everyone who contributed to them. Why does Jesus seem like just another prophet to so many people?

Or does your question just highlight that the truth of Jesus is veiled, and that God intentionality veiled His truths? Or have the veiled truths been so muddied by people that something more is required?