To several posters:
Dear Ones,
A) '56, we are very much on the same page. Your realization is of a different order of experience than the ordinary ways of faith, no matter how strong or by what means. What differences we might have in expressing it, I feel are for the most part intrinsic in the English language, it not encompassing certain modes of perception, knowledge, and reasoning. What remains is perhaps an encultured difference in manner of expression. So, short answer, yes. If you are up to it, David Bohm treats of these linguistic deficiencies in his
Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
B) “
Wrong, wrong, wrong. But I don’t blame you, because you probably heard something like this from someone who didn’t know what he was talking about.”~~Areo
Really? Like myself? Please see
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=5346239#post5346239 (sorry, don’t know that neat trick for compressing urls. Help?) I guess, if you read that, you might see that I’m being blamed for having integrity with my experience. But here you open one of the biggest can of Worms (that’s a pun) about faith ever. Simply put, it is that in our desire to be right in our own eyes we use our ability to “behave as if” to construct a world view we then label “knowledge.” It is the old self-verification syndrom, even if a degree of the data used for the construction are accurate to fact. 2+2 is verifiabe knoledge, if we are calculating in a base-10 system. I have been to Montreal is knowledge by expereince that may not encomass a large base of factual knowledge. Though I “know” facts about China, I have not been there and can claim only limited intellectual knowledge and no knowledge by experience. If I have faith, I might have reason by trust to act on it by reason of experience of the one I trust, but those reasons may not be accurate, useful or even true, despite good intentions all around. Faith in a system or world view may be, again, based on reason, but that reason is internal in most cases to that system, therefoer perhaps entirely valid, but not necessarily true. And there is yet another sort of knowledge, nnot commonly invoked, that is knowledge by realization. Big catagory, we won’t parse it here.
Ultimately we have to agree with MBE, that “False premise is false conclusion.” I submit that “knowledge” by faith, it being based on contrivertible premises, even Catholicism, is not knowledge. protestations about scripture and tradition notwithstanding. It is an adult verson of “let’s pretend.” There is nothing wrong with that, in fact, it is a grandly useful tool we use to get along within ourselves and with others. Unfortunately, agian, those very useful and practiacal “pretends” are to often too parochial. Here I invoke the rule of commonality, but won’t go into it here or yet.
So, as wonderrful and useful as faith might be, it is distinctly not knowledge proper. It is for sure not even remotely in the catagory of knowledge by Identity as pointed to by '56, myself, One, and perhaps a few others on these fora. That is only reportage of experience by Catholics and others of something called in some circles “radical understanding.” In this case, I strongly urge you to look up the etymological root of “radical.”
Areo, your
"…someone said that “we are saved by love and not by faith” or something like that" is actually "
We are saved by what we love (our will) … not by what we know (our intellect)."~~'56. It appears in the post exactly before yours, and I trust that in other academic proofs, especially your deep understanding of your faith, you are somewhat more dilligent in persuing facts than this example. I trust this is especially true of your working knowledge of how people, including Catholcs, acquire and hold their faiths.
"* (and this is one of the most useful, unclouding thing I ever learned in theology … maybe) …* by far most operative word: “maybe.” Both your following statement and dynamic are at least incomplete in significant ways. In stating that in order to love something you must know about it, “about” includes neither complete nor even competent knowledge of the object. Same hold for “know,” as knowing is often userped, as we see on these fora, by faith or belief. Two strikes against.
As for not needing love in order to “know,” it would be useful to recognize then that such a dynamic is excluive of the Foundational Love that has us even here. My guess? '56 is engaging the latter, FL.
As for hope, I guess what you said works. When I start to sculpt, I don’t know what will come. However, I do know that Answer IS, so I listen very carefully.
What is difficult about your idea of “the chase” is such prolific usage of words like “about, of, toward,” and especially “about.” So, I have to conclude from the nature of your language as compared to '56, you only think you are playing on the same feild. The kind of “proof” of God you might serve up is for those who already believe by means of your theo-logical virtues. Some may not need such thought proof and speak of virtues as extensions rather than means. Perhaps you are dealing with one of them?
C) Same thing goes about my favorite Saint’s five proofs, DG. They work for the faithful. As for "
…Aquinas applied his own brilliant, brilliant, thoughts, and we see God is clearly provable by reason only led to his dismissal by relaization of his works “as straw.” Hmmmm. Realization? or Brilliant, Brilliant thughts? I would guess that the thoughts were his scaffolding to his pinacle realization. At least he left his stage fot the ascent of others, but they seem to get stuck playing on the steps, if you get my drift. And yet, you say:
“*(Notice you can’t know different “parts” of God because he has no “parts!” ).
*” Halejalooya, Brother. THAT “part” is absolutely True. Thanks for saying it so clearly.
).