Yes he has. He used missionaries.
Why do you think it is question begging?
see the addition to post #3. I may have to discuss this with a crowd of non-Christians today.
Why should it? Does the fact that most of the world didn’t have the internal combustion engine except in the West in the 19th century and didn’t spread to the rest of the world, in some places for over a century, mean that the descendants of those so deprived shouldn’t learn to drive cars? This is a silly argument. Truth is truth no matter who passes it on to their descendants or if it never gets passed on to anyone.
I don’t see how this is begging the question.
He’s asking “how do you know you’re right?” That’s the real question.
How do we know?
Okay. That helps. Maybe I won’t be able to find an end-all knockout punch, but I suppose I could answer that the Christian believes that he is doing what is best for the non-Christian.
I don’t know much about Guadalupe, and I doubt very many others in my class would understand.
Perhaps… but consider the perspective.
Because the Word of God (Who is not a book) had already been given to the Indians [
I see. Our Priest quoted Archbishop Sheen recently answering an atheist: “How do you know for sure that God didn’t create the universe and that God doesn’t exist? In order to know that for sure, you would have to be present in each corner of the universe at the same time, all the time (to make sure God is not there). It means that you have knowledge of all things. It means that you must be omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. So you must be God, and if you are God then I am an atheist”.
Then you need to explain that desires everyone to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth (1Tim 2:4) regardless of whether or not they can read the Bible. Guadalupe was how God revealed His Son to millions of people who had no access to the Bible.
Hi. I think you should read G.K. Chesterton’s works. Almost all of them are already online and most can be found here.
And as you read through the work, Chesterton then points to the fact that ALL polytheistic religions have a curious fading away of this “Great Spirit,” focusing more and more into minor deities, along with a tale of the sundering of Heaven from Earth. It was as if something happened all those millennia ago, when God was forgotten by almost everyone and everything except for those tantalizing smidgens of clues in mythologies.
I’m in the process of reading The Everlasting Man right now.+JMJ+
Hi. I think you should read G.K. Chesterton’s works. Almost all of them are already online and most can be found here.
I would like to quote Chesterton’s work The Everlasting Man, because there is an anecdote there precisely about this. Chesterton was promoting a thesis that there was a primordial religion to One God that the whole world, except for the Jews, eventually forgot, and evidence can be found in all religions. He then relates these anecdotes:
And as you read through the work, Chesterton then points to the fact that ALL polytheistic religions have a curious fading away of this “Great Spirit,” focusing more and more into minor deities, along with a tale of the sundering of Heaven from Earth. It was as if something happened all those millennia ago, when God was forgotten by almost everyone and everything except for those tantalizing smidgens of clues in mythologies.
The Jewish, Moslem, and Christian traditions also have a tale like this, and it is called The Fall.
That answers the first question, “why the Christian God had not given the Biblical revelation to the Indians”: they, as all men, knew the Christian God, but they forgot because we all turned away from Him. And the New testament, God willed that it be spread to them by Christians in due time.
But read the rest of the book, it’s excellent, you will not regret it
As for the second question, “why the Christian religion is the right way to worship the “Great Spirit”, as he called God,” in my opinion the best way to answer is point to the Saints! Does he want happiness, even in this life? Then follow the ones whose joy cannot be touched by poverty, disease, persecution, disaster or any other evil that the world can throw at them. There are no people on Earth who were or are happier than them. There are other ways too, like civilization.
God bless!
You are right in saying that God has revealed himself to individuals but he only fully revealed himself to twelve individuals whom he also appointed as leaders of his Church. Those individuals (sans Judas) as a group, guided by the Holy Spirit, taught others. So the fullness of revelation is taught through the Church, not through individuals.