My Cardinal Difficulties with Christianity

[IvanKaramozov]

I began to have my doubts about my religion in middle school, and at the age of 15 I considered myself an atheist/agnostic. However when I was 15 I was exposed to the works of the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas. His works convinced me that reason and faith were compatiable. I found his five proofs of God compelling, I became a (beleiving) Catholic, Pope John Paul II was a huge (name removed by moderator)act on me, watching his death on TV I saw a true demonstration of faith for the first time I can remember. As I saw my firm holding of Aquinas’s arguments began to slip away I found refuge in the existentalist Christian thought of Soren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The genius works of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger helped me tramendously.

However despite Pope Benedict’s Genius I still feel like my faith is almost wholely eaten away. It seems like my adherance to Christianity has been almost wholely reduced to the beauty of Christ. I feel like deneying Christ’s reality would almost be unbeariable, while I respect Islam and Judaism I feel like they are pale comparisons to Christianity.

My troubles rest on three cheif problems, listed in seriousness

1-Suffering before Adam. I understand that Pope John Paul II said that Darwinism was “more than a hypothesis” and that Catholics may beleive in evolution so long as we maintain that Adam’s soul was given to him by God and did not come about by naturalistic processes. However I am still haunted by the scientific fact that pain, suffering, and imperfection existed long before the first man came to be on the earth. Long before the first humans, and Adam’s sin dinasaurs and water life ripped each other to pieces for food, long before the firs man became self aware millions of creatures became extinct, starved to death, lived in pain.

I don’t see how this can be compatiable with Church Dogma, unless I just misunderstand the teaching.

2-Christ’s Second coming. I believe the Catholic Theologian Scott Hahn’s wife attempted to get around this by saying that Christs second coming is present in the Eucharist, however I feel this is dubious. Reading the Bible it seems clear that Christ believed he was coming soon(As Bertrand Russell points out in “Why I am not a Christian”

" For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come.” Then he says, “There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom”; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, “Take no thought for the morrow,” and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise."

3-“Why doesn’t God Heal Amputees” I must admit it’s a good point. People are cured from cancer though they had a 1% chance of survival, and doctors cannot understand how, yet cures that defey the laws of matter seem to be missing. I have never heard of a limb regenerating through prayer.

I would really appreciate help, thanks

 

[Prayer_Warrior]

1. I wish I could help you but I’m not sure exactly what the problem is… could you elaborate further? Prior to Adam-- are you talking about the death of plants and animals? Why is that incompatible with what the Church teaches? Animals do not “suffer” in a human sense because they do not have immortal souls. That is not to say that they do not feel physical pain. They most certainly do. But animals and plants were a gift that God gave to mankind to have dominion over. They were always a “natural creation” not eternal. They were created to live and then to die. God created means for them to die-- disease, food chain, and ‘natural death’. He created a means for them to carry on-- birth cycle, and those that He willed to “die out”, did so. (I find it fascinating that millions of years before man, plants and dinosaurs flourished so greatly, then died out, and now they are a means of our fuel. God really thinks ahead!)
2. Yes, early Christians thought that Christ was coming back very quickly that is not to say that Christ did. It is very clear that they didn’t understand every tiny detail right from the beginning. The Church received it’s Deposit of Faith right from the beginning, but not everyone understood what it meant. That is why God used saints (like St. Thomas Aquinas) to explain the nuances along the way. By the way, Christ entered His Kingdom when He ascended. He is the ruling King of Kings now. There are many groups (ones who believe in rapture) who do not believe Christ is reigning now. This is missing out on the greatest even of human history! When Christ said things like “take no thought about tomorrow” He didn’t say that because He thought His second coming would be soon. He said that because He wanted us to trust completely in God. If you have trouble with certain scriptures, get some good solid Catholic commentary to explain what they mean, rather than Bertrand Russell. I think you’ll find that if you go to the Church that is authorized by Christ to teach us, you will find more satisfactory answers. Haydock commentary is very good and so are the Navarre Bibles.
3. Why doesn’t God heal amputees? Well, it is not in His will to do so, I suppose. There is one ancient saint that He gave new eyes to, but it is so far back in history that it is not “provable”. This may be the point though. God wants us to choose Him through faith, not because we see someone’s leg grown back. It is an evil generation that seeks signs. I would not put too much thought into why God chooses one miracle and not another because we can never know the mind of God. Like you said, you might see one person healed of a cancer that was certainly terminal, but why did God choose to heal this person and not that little six year old down the street? I can only say that when God does these sorts of miracles it is always for the good and for our salvation. Why He chooses one method of healing over another is His business and we should just praise Him in all things, even those we don’t understand.

 

[IvanKaramozov]

Thanks Prayer Warrior, that helps a great deal.

Could you, or someone else, elaborate a bit more on the first point? What exactly does the Church mean when She says that Suffering and imperfection entered the world with Adam’s sin if not the physical suffering and imperfection that animals experienced long before man, that is a point I feel a bit unsure of.

However your response has really lifted a weight off my shoulders in a sense.

Thanks

 

[Hubriss]

I’m in the same boat your in. These are what I believe to be some of the most pressing questions to christianity.

With regards to Adam and Eve I believe that the Catholic answer is something along the lines of: Animals and everything before the first humans did not have free will. They were all driven by their isntincts and had no idea of right or wrong, so their suffering and killing of one another was not evil because they were not aware of such things.
Now if you can start with the belief that we have a spirit and are divinely greater than other animals this might be a satisfactory point, but we know that we are just animals, and we shouldn’t make assumptions that something (spirit) exists while we are at the same time trying to prove to ourselves that it exists. But no, in order to reasonably and logically figure something out, we must start off with no assumptions.

So the problem of free will is a problem. We know that animals are not completely driven by instincts, they make choices, and some can even make “moral” choices. To me it is absurd to believe that it is somehow Adam’s fault that he sinned and imperfected God’s totally Good universe. If God is a being all powerful and all knowing then must have Known what would come about from his creation and he therefore certainly Knew what would come about from this free will. So I cannot agree that God actually created the universe good. The actual “sin” that Adam committed, willingly disobeying God and eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil contradicts itself. He already knew of the choice of evil (disobeying God to eat the fruit in the first place) so it is dumb to think that commiting this sin gave him and Eve the knowledge of sin/evil, since he already knew of such things.

About the second coming, thousands of people have claimed in the past 2000 years that the end was near (somewhere in their lifetime). My dad for example believes that by the time the year 2012 ends, we will know that the end has alraedy come, or there will be signs that it is coming very very soon. (He doesn’t really bet on it too much, but he sometimes proclaims it. There are several signs he thinks he sees. For example the war with the Muslims, the whole Mayan thing, his 50th birthday is on 12/12/12, etc.) We have the Zionists who think the end may be coming near with current and eminent wars in the Middle East (especially Jerusalem). But really I have nothing else to say on any of this, I’m not a historical expert.

And of course the miracles. They all seem to be minor and concerning cancer or preserved bodies. But I’d love to see a miracle that greatly and definitely defy the laws of physics and nature.

 

[Hubriss]

Ivan Karamazov… I need to read that whole book. I read the little story that Ivan told to his brother, The Grand Inquisitor I think it was, a while ago and thought it was very well thought out reasoning by the cardinal against Jesus but still had a mysterious ending.

 

[Prayer_Warrior]

Thanks Prayer Warrior, that helps a great deal.

Could you, or someone else, elaborate a bit more on the first point? What exactly does the Church mean when She says that Suffering and imperfection entered the world with Adam’s sin if not the physical suffering and imperfection that animals experienced long before man, that is a point I feel a bit unsure of.

However your response has really lifted a weight off my shoulders in a sense.

Thanks

I think you are thinking of “the world” in a literal sense. As you probably know this teaching comes straight from scripture and there are four senses to scripture. There is the literal sense, but there is a spiritual sense as well. In this case, when it says “the world” it means the world of humankind. In other words, Adam’s sin affected all of humankind. Things did not change for plants and animals because they were never part of the “spiritual world”. They are part of the natural world, so to speak. Animals are not made in the image of God, they do not have reason. They cannot love God, they cannot know their existence or even love themselves because they do not know “love” in a spiritual sense. Hence, they also cannot sin–God knows they don’t have the mind to choose good and evil. However, He still created them as natural beings. This is not a punishment for them. They don’t go to heaven or hell either. Their soul just ceases when they die. There is always the hope for those who love their pets, that when humans go to heaven, they could request their pet’s soul to be brought (in a sense “re-created by God”) to heaven to be with them. I know God can do anything. However, I think when we get to heaven, that we will be so involved with adoring God, that we may not think of the dog after we see God. I just don’t know about that.

Humans have the unique privelege of residing in the natural world, while having souls that are at least in partial union with the spiritual world. Adam and Eve were in full union with the spiritual world, they walked and talked with God. When Adam sinned, that union was ruptured and it took Jesus Christ to heal it.

By the way, the term “the world” is used often in scripture and it does not always literally mean the entire world as we know it. I’m trying to think of the passage, but I know there is one in the New Testament that speaks of the “world” but from its context you can tell that the writer only meant the immediate surroundings of Judea (or something like that). I will try to look that up to share with you.

 

[IvanKaramozov]

Thank you Prayer Warrior, you have helped more than you know. I was honestly at the point where I was barely able to hold onto faith.

Are there any books about this that you would recomend?

 

[Nita]

1-Suffering before Adam. I understand that Pope John Paul II said that Darwinism was “more than a hypothesis” and that Catholics may beleive in evolution so long as we maintain that Adam’s soul was given to him by God and did not come about by naturalistic processes. However I am still haunted by the scientific fact that pain, suffering, and imperfection existed long before the first man came to be on the earth. Long before the first humans, and Adam’s sin dinasaurs and water life ripped each other to pieces for food, long before the firs man became self aware millions of creatures became extinct, starved to death, lived in pain.

I don’t see how this can be compatiable with Church Dogma, unless I just misunderstand the teaching.

Re underlined section:
What is troubling you, to my knowledge, has not been definitively addressed in any Church doctrine. Which is not surprising since the situation arises only with an evolutionary time line. Presuming the evolutionary timeline to be reasonable, here is a possible explanation I see for death and suffering to have entered the world before Adam and Eve’s sin:

Time as we know it, does not exist for God. Before they were created, God knew they would sin; they and their sin were present to Him from the beginning, - present as He was created the physical universe, the first animals. Therefore, because of that sin, all that came to be in the physical world was affected.
(What I am suggesting is something similar in concept to the redemption accomplished by Our Lord. Altho many people lived and died before Jesus was born, they did not all have to go to hell. In anticipation of Our Lord’s merits, those who were worthy were preserved from hell.)

I want to repeat, this would be just my way of understanding it - until the Church would make a definitive statement.

Nita

 

[Prayer_Warrior]

Thank you Prayer Warrior, you have helped more than you know. I was honestly at the point where I was barely able to hold onto faith.

Are there any books about this that you would recomend?

It makes me feel wonderful that you feel strengthened. To God be the glory.

Let me look through my books and websites to see what I can find for you. I think you may need some good solid Bible study to start. I just started one at www.qorbono.com that is very good, but is not free. I haven’t gotten very far yet, but the main speaker is good about explaining scripture in context. I’ll get back to you later today or tomorrow after I’ve had the chance to look through my stuff. Sorry, but I have about a hundred sites bookmarked and all my books are packed because we just got carpet and I had to pack my bookshelves.

More than anything, I would suggest prayer. If you continue to trust God, even though you don’t understand Him or His plan (and no one really ever understands it all), He will be pleased. Try praying the Rosary, praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and reading the Bible prayerfully. Ask God to open your mind to the scriptures. That has really been helpful to me.