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St_Gregory
Guest
If faith is the essence of knowledge proposed by God for humans, why do so many, very God-fearing, Theists have such radically different believes?
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Blade_and_Blood
Guest
Times change. In one group that believes the same thing, it’s only natural that there be at least one person to rebel and really question certain things like faith… they eventually reason with others and gain followers. Neat, huh?
It happens.
Ironically Yours, Blade and Blood
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St_Gregory
Guest
Well okay, but that doesn’t really help me decide which is the true faith does it lol.
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Marsha_Adams
Guest
Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of things unseen. Hebrews 11:1
Or to put it in the context of the Church, the Church teaches many things that can only be accepted by faith. The God-fearing Theists you refer to have such radically different beliefs because they or their ancestors failed to have faith that the Church through the Apostolic Succession has Teaching Authority and is God’s sacrament to the world for salvation.
The Old Catholic Church broke from Rome after Vatican I because it rejected the infallibility of the Pope when speaking *ex cathedra. * Today, the Old Catholic Church embraces female and gay priests and many other heresies. Are they God-fearing Theists? Probably, but as soon as they abandoned faith in the Church, they wandered down a very different path.
Does that help?
Marsha
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St_Gregory
Guest
But the problems here are that you are saying that God-fearing people suffer false religion for the sin of their ancestors, when in reality the Biblical God declares to never hold the sin of the child on the father, each to his own responsibility.
Furthermore your theory seems to be very subjective to the pre-assumption that Catholicism is true – which from an objective viewpoint is unfair.
Furthermore your theory cannot account for the religions of asia and parts of africa and elsewhere which developed independently of and of the Abrahamic religions.
What I really mean is why does God, who wants to share His love with His Creation, allow people to have false religions when they try to seek Him and genuinely fear Him etc etc?
– as a side note, what’s wrong with gay priests? And where does the church teach that it is wrong?
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Genesis315
Guest
Everyone is endowed with reason as well, and yet there have been many radically divergent beliefs concerning “natural” knowledge among reasonable people throughout human history. It’s part of the fallen nature of man. That doesn’t mean the truth cannot be known or that we do not have a duty to seek it, but ultimately if we do believe an error in good faith, it will not be held against us.
Seek the truth with an open mind and heart for God alone, pray that He draw you (no one comes to God unless he is drawn by God), and adhere to that truth as you come to know it. That’s really the best we can all do–if we persistently knock and seek, we shall find eventually in this life or the next.
Seek the truth with an open mind and heart for God alone, pray that He draw you (no one comes to God unless he is drawn by God), and adhere to that truth as you come to know it. That’s really the best we can all do–if we persistently knock and seek, we shall find eventually in this life or the next.
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Marsha_Adams
Guest
What I meant by sin of the ancestor in this case was for example if a person left the Church to follow Luther, and all of his descendants down to Ralph in the present day were Lutherans, then Ralph’s adherence to a false belief system would be the fault of his ancestor. I didn’t mean that Ralph would burn for his ancestor’s sin, but that because of that sin Ralph is what Ralph is.
Oh, and just for the record, “that Catholicisim is true” is not a pre-assumption, merely a fact.
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neophyte
Guest
The idea of faith as “a deposit of intellectual propositions believed as truth” is certainly one definition of faith, but there’s another deeper meaning that needs to be remembered. Since Jesus was a Jew, the Apostles were Jews, and our faith is the flowering of Judaism, then we need to understand faith as a Jew would.
The Hebrew word aman is translated as “believe”, “trust”, “have faith”, and also “support”, “nourish”, and “make lasting”. A derivative word is omenat, meaning “pillars” or “supports of the door” as in 2 Kings 18:16. Another cognate is emunah, which is “faithfulness” or “trust”, as in Exodus 17:12 where God brought victory to Israel as long as Moses would hold his hands up. Aaron and Hur held up his hands so that they “remained emunah until sundown”. All of these illustrate that faith is an action that we take, which is exactly what the Catholic church teaches. Faith is a work, it’s about what you DO and not merely about what you believe.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses this by saying that faith is an act of the will in which one turns toward God and away from sin; in which we decide that we will cooperate, with our intellect and will, with the divine grace that God gives us to enable us to comply with the moral law; it is a free response of the human person to the initiative of God; it is a personal adherence of the whole man to the God who reveals himself. It is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that HolyChurch proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith “man freely commits his entire self to God.” For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work
These are all actions, things we do in obedience to God. Thus the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:5 "Through Him we have received the grace of apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith…” This obedience is the essence of Christianity: submission to the Eternal One who was enfleshed, and through that submission being brought into union with Him so that we may participate in His divine life.
So then you can see how folks can hold to differing intellectual propositions about God, and yet have in common the response to him. I was rasied non-Catholic, and I rejected the Catholic Church because I believed it taught false doctrine. My intent in rejecting the church was to submit to God. Later I discovered that I had been wrong, and so I entered the Church. The essential character of my response hadn’t changed.
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CentralFLJames
Guest
Your whole faulty “thesis” is formed on an invalid assumption of the “reasonableness” of religious plurality; and that is itself a form of moral relativism which we Catholics utterly reject. Take a lesson from Cain and Abel - one form of sacrifice was accepted and another was rejected.
Therefore, in these forums where we Catholics all know beyond a shadow of a doubt through the faith of our fathers that we have the one true faith and know so many others are highly deficient (if not outright lies) we see you as forming a specious or rhetorical argument.
You might as well ask the more direct questions here: 'Why does God permit man to reap the fruit of his choice to know both Good and Evil to grasp at equality with God when man elected of his own free choice to believe a stranger over Him?
Further why use the linguistic semantics of proofs (e.g. “theory”) when we Catholics have no need of proofs and take our inspiration and faith from the martyrs and faith of the early church saints - who were all Catholics and believed just as we do?
James
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St_Gregory
Guest
Well that sounds okay; but I do sort of think that we should not settle for a religion that we can not know is true, by your theory a form of Theistic Agnosticism would be best.
M. Adams:
Oh ok then, no subjective bias there
I suppose that’s a valid answer as well: but then do you think a Catholic who refuses to participate in the sacraments until he decides a certainty that Catholicism is true (me) has more or less “faith” than a Catholic who thinks Catholicism may be true or is inclined towards it and does participate in the sacraments?
Furthermore it is hard to reconcile your theory with the Church’s condemnation of non-Christians (ordinarily) and a lot of the time (more in the past) even Protestants or other heretics.
I have no idea what “thesis” you were talking about but anyway.
In paragraph 2 you talked of certainty that Catholicism is true: what is this?
Paragraph 3 seems completely unrelated to my questions/criticisms - I accept the idea of freewill, but that doesn’t help me see where people can come to find the truth, or answer my question at all really. - plus, if yo don’t mind, it was phrased a tad rudely.
In paragraph 4 I would criticize your approach to religion and criticize your idea that Catholicism rejects coherent use of reason. I refuse on principle of religious honesty to force myself to believe something because my ancestors in religion were Catholics or were martyred. You have holy and good people and martyrs from many religions, it may point to some underlying truth but ultimately you cannot rely on it for confirmation of a religion.
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davidv
Guest
The CCC (article 26) defines “faith” as:
Given the differences between your definition and this one, it is very obvious to me why there is such a departure from common understanding and practice.
At the root of this problem is man’s innate disordered desire to decide for himself what is good and bad. We are unwilling, and maybe unable, to trust that God, though Jesus, established a visible Church with authority, which was commanded to teach all nations.
When one goes down the path of life alone, there are many detours and wrong paths to take.
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neophyte
Guest
The question of whether or not you’re rejecting God isn’t mine to answer. I suggest you have that conversation with your confessor.
Not at all, provided you keep in mind the context of those statements. The obligation to make sure that our consciences are well-formed is important, and at the same time one must keep in mind the possibility of mitigated culpability.
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CentralFLJames
Guest
Without saying it in these many words your underlying assumption is your human projection that ‘a reasonable and loving God should and must accept a pluralistic and many faceted expression of faith’ in a sort of diversity is better trap of reason. I would say here that this is a fallacy of thinking since it tries to project an arbitrary human reason of what The Divine should take as acceptable while dismissing the more probable case that God is simple truth and truth is not multi-variant. Take the clue from the order of nature - we don’t have widely divergent laws of motion and order in the planetary system now do we? Quite the contrary we see repeatedly in nature that while nature certainly respects the diversity of individual expression, that expression is always conformant to a master template. In fact the better metaphor here is one of a celestial conductor with instruments all lending their similar range of voice with unique timbre but always in an ordered way. Even the occasional rifts, counter-points and discordant challenges are heard within a grand unifying theme that has the pattern of control, order and natural rhythm. I hope that is not too abstract for you.
We find certainty in the unbroken succession and continuity of the original faith handed down from generation to generation from the very first day of the Church - all in a climate of persecution and martyrdom for no other personal gain except to promote the faith.
Everything calling itself Christian that happens down stream of Catholicism is by definition in protest to Catholicism and is therefor anti-Catholic since Catholicism came first. Therefor by definition anything opposed to Catholicism, the original teaching is contrary to original truth and a new gospel never before preached.
Surely you must admit that objective truth is not subject to temporal shift and reformation over time do you? If God is eternal and unchanging then it logically follows that truth is unchanging. That I am certain of.
I have re-referenced your original post to help clarify what it is you originally asserted. Your original assertion is the wrong implication that faith is a function of knowledge. I assert this is yet another fallacy since faith and knowledge are in many ways orthogonal concepts (“blessed is he who has faith but has not seen”).
This is not to say that reason has no place since a natural fledgling faith in God can in fact be reasoned and discerned without direct benefit of knowledge from The Creator’s own natural works. But note that the Gnostic heretics tried to claim that there was a secret or privileged knowledge that gave them the proper “true faith” and we know that this was false since it was a new teaching never before heard in the original church.
The original faith came from Jesus himself or from the men and women who knew Jesus personally. No one outside of the Catholic Church (except the Orthodox) ever personally knew Jesus or the disciples whereas the Catholic Church has always known Jesus and the disciples through the continuity of the apostolic succession. They are our family. Essentially I can safely say: “The Catholic Church knew Jesus and the apostles; they were friends of The Catholic Church since they were our family; those outside of the Catholic Church never knew Jesus and the apostles or else they are the descendants of those who rejected Him or the very same people who knew Him but turned their back on Him.”
“Those that reject you reject Me and He who sent me”.
There is no room for equivocation here. Either one accepts Jesus’ assigned leaders or one rejects Him. Jesus prayed for unity of His Church therefor any sign of disunity is a sign of error and of things contrary to what Jesus wanted. Therefor anything outside of the original church, The Catholic Church, extends from anti-Christ since it is in opposition to what Jesus originally founded and because Jesus told us that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church. Therefor either one believes Jesus or one rejects Him. There is no such concept as partially accepting the truth since Jesus tells us “I am the way the truth and the light no one can come to the Father except through me”. One can not enter with only one foot in the door any more so than a person can enter by standing completly outside The Church.
[continued]
James
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CentralFLJames
Guest
[continued from above]
Your use of the terms ‘approach to religion’ tells all. The way you use the term “religion” by lumping them all together as equal shows an inclination for pluralism and prevents the possibility that one could be right and all the others wrong. So you are essentially showing that you have a bias that religion of all kinds are all similar and “as a system” or as “an approach” none can in and of themselves be correct. Without saying it you are asserting that the truth exists in the bits and pieces of min-truths that all form a collective web of religions. This is a Unitarian mindset that is new and never before seen in apostolic times. In fact this heresy does not come to us until the flower-power-days of the 1960’s. I challenge you to consider that this is an arbitrary logical fallacy and assertion made without proof.
Also, who are you to judge what people are “holy and good martyrs from many religions” when the concept of plurality of belief is itself an axiomatic contradiction of “good” and contrary to the notion of objective truth? Can we assume that you accept scripture rightly divided contains truth? If so, then the scriptures for example have many consistent messages that intermarriage of the faith is bad and to be avoided.
Rationally, it is God’s place to tell us what He considers “holy and good”. If you can’t accept this then you are trying to tell God what should be good for Him. That is a decidedly humanistic idea. If you do accept scripture then the question really becomes ‘what does God tell us is holy and good’? If we can accept the original faith of our forefathers and the accounts of the early church as being authentic then we must assume that the only good and holy person is the person who does the Father’s will. And we are told in scripture (as taught by the Church) that this person is the one who loves Jesus and does all He commands and is the same person who listens to those who Jesus sends in his name - the apostles and their assigns. Those Jesus sends are the episcopate of the Catholic Church through the apostolic authority granted to the Catholic bishops and clergy.
Can you give an example of what you mean by those outside of the Catholic Church (and Orthodox who follow substantially the dame faith) who you think are “holy and good”?
James
You are creating a strawman. I never said anything as absurd like Catholicism rejects reason. What we do reject is sophistry.
Your use of the terms ‘approach to religion’ tells all. The way you use the term “religion” by lumping them all together as equal shows an inclination for pluralism and prevents the possibility that one could be right and all the others wrong. So you are essentially showing that you have a bias that religion of all kinds are all similar and “as a system” or as “an approach” none can in and of themselves be correct. Without saying it you are asserting that the truth exists in the bits and pieces of min-truths that all form a collective web of religions. This is a Unitarian mindset that is new and never before seen in apostolic times. In fact this heresy does not come to us until the flower-power-days of the 1960’s. I challenge you to consider that this is an arbitrary logical fallacy and assertion made without proof.
Also, who are you to judge what people are “holy and good martyrs from many religions” when the concept of plurality of belief is itself an axiomatic contradiction of “good” and contrary to the notion of objective truth? Can we assume that you accept scripture rightly divided contains truth? If so, then the scriptures for example have many consistent messages that intermarriage of the faith is bad and to be avoided.
Rationally, it is God’s place to tell us what He considers “holy and good”. If you can’t accept this then you are trying to tell God what should be good for Him. That is a decidedly humanistic idea. If you do accept scripture then the question really becomes ‘what does God tell us is holy and good’? If we can accept the original faith of our forefathers and the accounts of the early church as being authentic then we must assume that the only good and holy person is the person who does the Father’s will. And we are told in scripture (as taught by the Church) that this person is the one who loves Jesus and does all He commands and is the same person who listens to those who Jesus sends in his name - the apostles and their assigns. Those Jesus sends are the episcopate of the Catholic Church through the apostolic authority granted to the Catholic bishops and clergy.
Can you give an example of what you mean by those outside of the Catholic Church (and Orthodox who follow substantially the dame faith) who you think are “holy and good”?
James
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St_Gregory
Guest
I fully accept this David, but I just fail to see where the hard evidence that Jesus really did teach all the things the Gospels say He did, or that He ever Rose from the dead.
Well I often have issues with my priests for their lack of objective reason and often poor understanding of Catholic doctrine so I’m a bit cautious of that.
Plus my confessor would be a Catholic whatever and I fear he’d take a fundamentalist Christian view and fail to allow some leniency in my own path to God.
But fair comment anyway, thanks, and I will think about it.
Well okay, but my “conscience” kind of tells me to take a slightly skeptical approach to Christianity - I don’t really doubt God’s existence I should say. And one thing that annoys me is that whenever I ask say a priest or someone about my religious doubts they just go on and on about reasons why God must exist and that’s just not what I’m worried about.
I’m not worried about Catholicism vs other Christian churches you know - I’m worried that the Gospels may be far less reliable than Christians claim and that Jesus may never had risen. Many scholars claim that the earliest Christians (i.e. 35-56 ish) took a liberal anti-realist view and believed that Jesus lived on in their hearts rather than really - for example.
Yes I agree with that - but my question is about what that truth actually is.
I’m not talking about partial Christianity or Protestantism or anything like that. I’m saying that you base all this evidence for Catholic doctrine on that person of Jesus but there is minimal hard evidence of who He was, or what He did.
I never said anything about inclining towards pluralism - you are reading into my words.
But you’re basing this on scripture, which I cannot be sure of is the Word of God.
Your rejecting goodness in other people who fall outside of Christian truth for that reason, it’s circular logic: you judge Christian martyrs as good, therefore you truth that their faith is the true faith, thus Christianity is true, thus only people who accept Christianity can be good.
Do you see the complexity of the problem?
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Marsha_Adams
Guest
The is where faith comes into the equation, and I go back to the definition of faith in Hebrews11:1 regardless of who wrote it or Who inspired it. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”
You don’t know me, we have never met and have had only limited interaction on the forum, but if I told you that yesterday I spoke with my sister in Florida you would probably believe me. That is an act of faith. You are absent of any hard evidence accepting on faith alone several things:
a. I have a sister.
b. That sister lives in Florida
c. I spoke with her yesterday.
d. I have the means of communicating with someone 1200 miles away.
e. I am not lying.
Faith is both a choice and a gift. Suppose you chose to accept as truth the Church’s teaching about the Bible and about Jesus. What would you have? On the other hand, suppose you chose not to accept them, now what would you have? We have shown above that you have the capability to exercise faith in me, what would it cost you to exercise the same faith in God and in His Church?
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CentralFLJames
Guest
Actually, all of your inquiries are extending from one simple concern - evidence. What you need to ask yourself is “what is YOUR personal acceptable standard of evidence”. Let’s explore this for a moment.
How does anyone really know that the person who claimed to write “Moby ****” was really Herman Melville? How do we really know that Dan Brown really wrote The DaVinci Code and he did not just steal it from somone else? How do we really know that we are rational beings and can even trust ourselves when we can’t explain why we do stupid self defeating things or make mistakes or harm others when human logic tells us that is ultimately self defeating? How do we know any of the ancient history we have is authentic and not just contrived from the lies of kings and rulers who wanted to publish lies and testaments to their own vanity? How do you really know you are the great great great grandson of Sarah Smith’s youngest daughter when there is no concrete evidence in the family photo album that says she ever existed and without someone telling you the traditional belief that you were in her blood line? The answer is: Tradition - Tradition - Tradition and the long multi-generational continuity of tradition.
When it comes to evidence the whole “evidence thing” is a canard and this is why I expect God elected to base salvation on faith and not massive unassailable evidence since people would reinterpret evidence to suit their own desires anyway. Do you imagine the devil cares about evidence? The real evidence is that humanity is fallen and sinful yet non-Christians want us to believe that there is no such evidence and its all a fairy tale and there is no such thing as sin or heaven and hell.
Except for a few individuals like the apostle Paul who had a radical and personal confrontation with Jesus how can anyone know with 100% certainty that the scriptures are 100% truth? The answer is its impossible to claim this without faith. If you are looking for indisputable forensic evidence that Christianity and scripture is unadulterated - you are going to be disappointed. All we really have is the seamless continuity of the same message from OT times and the remarkable similarity of events from gospel to gospel and the consistent and rational faith of the early church.
God for some reason elected to use the vehicle of faith (trust in Him) rather than concrete and permanent physical signs and wonders. Instead He elected to give us the permanence of The Church as a testament of faith. And that Church has prevailed through the ages and outlived empires, kingdoms and severe persecution. Jesus’ promised that “The gates of hell will not prevail” against His Church and the lingering presence of The Church in the face of severe persecution and world calamity are proving through the test of time that The Catholic Church has the proper teaching.
If the permanence of The Church and the unique message and teachings are not adequate testimony beyond all reasonable doubt of the Truth then you will just have to take your chances and hope God gives you the signs and wonders you seem to need to believe before you die. I would not however recommend trying to force God’s hand by persecuting The Church and seeing if God knocks you off your horse so to speak with an epiphany in the same manner He did St. Paul.
James
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neophyte
Guest
Have you studied the discipline of evaluating evidence? Do you understand the rules by which evidence, particularly historical evidence, is evaluated for reliability? Have you compared the evidence for the claims of Christianity against the evidence for the claims of the existance of other historical events?
The amount of extant ancient documentation for the texts of the Bible vastly outweighs that of most other ancient historical events. If you wish to conclude that there’s minimal hard evidence of who Jesus was, or what He did, then you need to throw out your belief in most other ancient historical figures. Socrates, Confucious, Plato, Aristotle, Pliny, Archimedes, Hippocrates,…they’re all gone.
You might want to study a book entitled “Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1”, by Josh McDowell.
The short answer is that there is sufficient evidence (more than sufficient) to conclude that the Biblical texts are accurate historical records, that Jesus actually existed and that He died and rose from the dead - in short, that He is God. And that He established a Church government, gave that government the authority to teach in His name and promised that He would prevent that government from teaching doctrinal falshood. These conclusions are based on reading the biblical texts as nothing more than accurate historical records, not as the inspired Word of God.
So because the Church government that Christ established dogmatically declared the texts are the inspired Word of God, I believe it because the objective historical evidence shows that God promised that He would preserve such declarations from error.
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St_Gregory
Guest
If I put faith in the idea that you spoke to your sister in Florida that would be reasonable since experience tells me most people generally tell the truth except when a special reason not to arises.
Furthermore I do not lose anything if my faith was wrong there.
To answer your question: I don’t like your talk of gain by having faith in Christianity - let me say I fully reject Pascal’s Wager. Basically I think it is religiously dishonest to have faith for the sake of some potential good end. Faith in Truth, genuine worship of God and submission to His Will are Intrinsically valuable NOT Instrumentally valuable. Therefore I do not just accept faith, or chose it for the sake of the fruits of faith, I will only accept it if I genienly believe it.
I do not think God would like me to treat faith in Him as a means to some good, I think He’d love me to honestly use my reason to its full without taking, what R. Dawkins calls: “the great cop-out.”
What about Muslim’s?- they accept that humanity is fallen and sinful and there is a heaven and hell. Same with some other religions.
But nonetheless you cannot base a belief on a belief without some hard grounding - it goes against the principle of sufficient reason. The Bible/Christian Tradition says humanity is sinful, so you use that as evidence here - see the problem? Maybe humans aren’t sinful. Maybe we just act in certain ways going by our instincts and other motives rather than responding/rejecting God. Also if God is nothing like the Judaeo-Christian God then what you mean by “sinful” is questionable.
Furthermore even if we are sinful and rely on God - why make this Christianity? Why not Theistic Agnosticism or Hinduism or somthing completely different?
But what makes the OT right in the first place? The Gospels actually have several blatent contradictions at least from a historical parrell view - even many of Jesus sayings appear to susipiously alter from one Gospel to the next.
I don’t persecute the Church: last time I checked I was a practicing Catholic - albeit a very sceptical/critical/doubing one.
I am not “taking chances” by any means, I am trying to be honest with Divine Truth rather than just go along with one culture’s idea of it.
I have read “The modern quest for the Jesus of history” by David Boulton (2008) if that helps.
The problem is is that the many other ancient historical figures do not have divinity claims to them. The Gospel writers would be keep to present their belief in Jesus through literary works.
The problems lie in many NT contradictions, many within the Gospel parrells which almost prove that at least one or more could not be written by their ascribed authors.
Yes okay there is significant historical documentation on early Christian traditions, but they do not add up to constitute enough evidence to bet your soul on who Jesus was.
Honestly I have to just plain disagree, sorry.
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neophyte
Guest
I’m not familiar with it. But try the book by McDowell.
Usually when people say things like that they’re about to either beg the question or make a special pleading. The first would be a variant of “there can be no miracles”, which presupposes that God does not exist. The second would be a variant of “extreme claims require extreme proof”, which is another way to say “I’ll reject the conclusion even if the evidence is comparable to that which I would accept for a different thesis.”
Every one of those with which I’m familiar aren’t actually outright contradictions.
I’m sure that that’s your opinion. Reasonable men can disagree.
- Status