kelcca: Got to remember this is a Catholic forum. ‘Sola scriptura’, which is what you’re requiring here, has always been repudiated in the Catholic Church.
So, why in the world did you let yourself be dragged into a discussion that, to some, became so fractious and unnerving? Seems like you could have clarified much more quickly. Was it the thrill of the dialogue, or the clashing and melding of ideas, or what? I find both of these somewhat addicting but I tend to become unsettled when the wonderful folks in these forums become really irked and unforgiving of one another. But…come to think of it; I can’t think of too many other brothers and sisters who don’t, quite regularly, get on each others’ nerves! :slapfight: May God Bless Us All.
Marrying “unbelievers”
rolleyes:To show the Athenians that they actually worship the same God as Paul - a Jew - does without knowing it and to prove that God inspired parts of Athenian religion as preparation for the Gospel of Jesus, Paul quotes from two of their poets Aratus and Epimenides. These inspired men taught that:
Of Plato Justin wrote:
Yes, Plato is described as being inspired by God. From his writings we learn also that Clement of Alexandria came to faith after a personal search for philosophical truth that had led him on a good many travels. Clement led the catechetical school and many believe his writings were used in the training. It is clear that Clement followed in the philosophical mindset of Philo. He quotes or alludes to Plato hundreds of times. For Clement, Plato was the Moses of the Greek world, revealing the truth of God through his philsophical insights.
…Such are the doctrines of the power and presence of an invisible God, of His moral law and governance, of the obligation of duty, and the certainty of a just judgment, and of reward and punishment, as eventually dispensed to individuals; so that Revelation, properly speaking, is an universal, not a local gift; and the distinction between the state of Israelites formerly and Christians now, and that of the pagan [non-Judeo-Christian], is, not that we can, and they cannot attain to future blessedness, but that the Church of God ever has had, and the rest of mankind never have had, authoritative documents of truth, and appointed channels of communication with Him. The word and the Sacraments are the characteristic of the elect people of God; but all men have had more or less the guidance of Tradition, in addition to those internal notions of right and wrong which the Spirit has put into the heart of each individual. This vague and uncertain family of religious truths, originally from God, but sojourning without the sanction of miracle, or a definite home, as pilgrims up and down the world, and discernible and separable from the corrupt legends with which they are mixed, by the spiritual mind alone, may be called the Dispensation of Paganism, after the example of the learned Father already quoted. And further, Scripture gives us reason to believe that the traditions, thus originally delivered to mankind at large, have been secretly re-animated and enforced by new communications from the unseen world; though these were not of such a nature as to be produced as evidence, or used as criteria and tests, and roused the attention rather than informed the understandings of the heathen. The book of Genesis contains a record of the Dispensation of Natural Religion, or Paganism, as well as of the patriarchal. The dreams of Pharaoh and Abimelech, as of Nebuchadnezzar afterwards, are instances of the dealings of God with those to whom He did not vouchsafe a written revelation. Or should it be said, that these particular cases merely come within the range of the Divine supernatural Governance which was in their neighbourhood,—an assertion which requires proof,—let the book of Job be taken as a less suspicious instance of the dealings of God with the heathen. Job was a pagan in the same sense in which the Eastern nations are Pagans in the present day. He lived among idolaters, yet he and his friends had cleared themselves from the superstitions with which the true creed was beset; and while one of them was divinely instructed by dreams, he himself at length heard the voice of God out of the whirlwind, in recompense for his long trial and his faithfulness under it…"
Thanks Vouthon! You are a human search engine!! How do you find all these?
Why should Sufjon listen to an apologist on this site? What authority does such an apologist have?
I simply believe the apologist’s on this site have studied and done their homework a lot more than me and maybe the average layman. I know atleast one on this site is a Priest so he has authority.
Hi Contarini; You’re right that my understanding is rather simplified. But it’s actually just a bit simpler than what you explained. Rather than God being present to some degree in all things, He is the beginning, the middle and the end of all things. He is the fabric, the thread and the needle that weaves the endless patterns of individual experience. In short, in all of creation, I believe there is only He. Now, some on this forum are quick to say that I am a pantheist, but I think they are missing the point, because they think of pantheism as me being God for instance. Actually, there is no “me.” These bodies we wear are instruments of sentient experience. What we mistake for consciousness is really only sentience - sensory (name removed by moderator)ut from our sense organs fed to a brain that processes the (name removed by moderator)ut as experience of one sort or another, but that is again only sentience. It is how He who creates experiences what He creates. Consciousness is much deeper than that, and in all of creation there is but One consciousness that is trans-personal, shared and is the inmost self of every being. The illusion of “self” is an epiphenomenon of the nervous system, the main engine of which is the mind. This false sense of self is the ego, which is why Christ demands that you die to yourself to find Him. Without the realization of the false sense of self, the death of the “self” cannot occur, and as long as a separate self is perceived, one cannot know Jesus. He simply echoed that idea at the Last Supper (or so I believe), by inviting those around Him to consider that He was the Bread and Wine, which He truly was. One who knows that He is the Bread and Wine in fact knows that He is all things. He is part and parcel all that is. One who sees this is the knower of things. One who knows this is freed from the illusion of “self” and hence lives forever. One who who does not know this is fooled by the “self” and is bound to suffer death because the false “self” is only the mind and sense organs, and these will without fail die. That which we truly are does not. That is why he who eats this bread never dies. That is also how we too are One with the Father as Jesus was and as Jesus Himself said. In fact, if you look at most of what He said in this light, one has a lot to rethink.I think that Sufjon’s religious views are considerably simpler than orthodox Christianity. Insofar as I disagree with him, I disagree with him because I think he oversimplifies things.
Sufjon says: Christ is really present in the Eucharist because all creation is in some sense “part” of God.
St. Thomas Aquinas says: God created the world from nothing (and yet everything can also be said to proceed from God) and entered His own creation by assuming human nature, together with a body under its natural dimensions; this body under its natural dimensions now exists in heaven, but is present in multiple places at once not locally but by way of substance.
That’s actually if anything an oversimplification of Aquinas’s Eucharistic theology, by the way. . . .
Now we can argue over whether Sufjon or Aquinas is right, or whether perhaps neither of them is quite right. But there can surely be no doubt that Sufjon’s view is a lot simpler
I love Chesterton, but he had no clue what he was talking about when he wrote about Eastern religions. He seems to have judged them all by his experiences with English theosophists (and Bellocs frankly Eurocentric view of the Christian Faith was certainly an influence as well). So much in Chesterton is similar to various Eastern philosophies, yet he never seems to have realized that. I thought he was profound on these matters as well when I first encountered him, but now that I’ve learned more about Eastern religions I no longer think this. (Note: I am not claiming to know more about Eastern religions than you do–possibly you know more than I do and have solid reasons for thinking Chesterton was right–I can only speak to my own experience.)
Edwin
