Questions for Catholics about God

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You cannot understand the Holy Trinity in itself in all understanding or else you are God.

You must come to know the One True God through His effects…
It is possible to have a coherent understanding of God without having to fully comprehend Him.

What you’re espousing is Palamism.
 
Palamism is yours and it cannot stand up to 2,000 years of consistent doctrine and tradition of faith…how our faith is lived out as well as fulfilling the Old Testament.

You are attempting with different philsophical and gnostic takes that move in the shadows and hidden knowledge that is not universal to all people and the human condition…Allah doesn’t care about the human condition.

You also didn’t know that the first Christian Church was Jewish.

You can ponder but it all must stand up to reality.
 
Palamism is yours and it cannot stand up to 2,000 years of consistent doctrine and tradition of faith…how our faith is lived out as well as fulfilling the Old Testament.

You are attempting with different philsophical and gnostic takes that move in the shadows and hidden knowledge that is not universal to all people and the human condition…Allah doesn’t care about the human condition.

You also didn’t know that the first Christian Church was Jewish.

You can ponder but it all must stand up to reality.
Palamists believe that God’s essence is completely unknowable, and that He can only be known by His actions or energies. That is just what you heavily implied in your last post. Read it yourself if you don’t remember.

We confirm the Vision of Allah in Paradise, confirm the reality of His qualitative attributes, and although our ability to comprehend the entity of Allah and our ability to assess His wisdom is limited, due to His transcendance; we nonetheless have the ability to understand Him in a coherent manner, according to our limitations. That is hardly Palamism. How do you accuse us of teaching hidden knowlerdge when throughout this thread, you have been a heavy proponent of the view that the Trinity is a mystery and cannot be comprehended?
 
You should get a Catholic Catechism.

Our belief has no competition with Islam. It does not need Islam.

Rather our faith in God is about the gathering of people, of humanity centered in relationship with God and life.

The Prologue will teach you how to approach Sacred Scripture. We are not People of the Book. Rather the Scriptures are the summation of Christ, Logos, the Word of God Made Flesh.

You must look at Sacred Scripture as written with human hands but inspired by God.

The Catholic Catechism contains 2,865 doctrines defining God through the Nicene Creed, the sacraments where Christ – the Lamb with 7 eyes representing the All Seeing Eye of God ministers to us, the Decalogue - the 10 commandments that are most clear, and breakdown the commandments, to the part on Prayer.

If you want to get an authentic explanation of the Septuagint, go to New Advent. It is giving you its complete explanation, all investigated and finally authorized. You ended up at the dispute of its origin and didn’t go any further.

We do not live by the flesh…because that is the source of emotive thinking.

And if Islam is true, then why does it still need some (name removed by moderator)ut from the Old Testament and the Gospels? Isn’t that indicating there is some deficiency as well as most base contraditions regarding life vs death and good vs evil?..

And finally, you are not answering the question of another…about the concept of heaven.

There are those who had concubines, harems, many wives…Muhammed included, and yet heaven in Islam is for more. Isn’t that the worship really of the flesh, of emotion?
 
Palamists believe that God’s essence is completely unknowable, and that He can only be known by His actions or energies. That is just what you heavily implied in your last post. Read it yourself if you don’t remember.

We confirm the Vision of Allah in Paradise, confirm the reality of His qualitative attributes, and although our ability to comprehend the entity of Allah and our ability to assess His wisdom is limited, due to His transcendance; we nonetheless have the ability to understand Him in a coherent manner, according to our limitations. Same here regarding the doctrine of the Trinity] That is hardly Palamism. How do you accuse us of teaching hidden knowlerdge when throughout this thread, you have been a heavy proponent of the view that the Trinity is a mystery and cannot be comprehended[FULLY]?
Poking my nose in after 84 posts is more than a bit late, but:
You and the rest of us are on very different wavelengths. For a start, i suspect very few if any of us here can make sense of some of the terms you’ve thrown at us (i don’t anyway. 😊). And terms which have particular meanings to us have different, if only very subtle, meanings to you.

A question:
Do you believe the Catholic Church, and orthodox (“large and small o”) Christianity in general, are monotheistic or polytheistic? The reason for asking is that i’ve seen Muslim groups (on YouTube) carrying posters saying: “Islam The only monotheistic religion (or faith)”.
It’s about time practitioners of Islam were told that Christians are monotheists and the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity does not teach that there are three Gods…or whatever else some think.

Yes, the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity IS a mystery, and it cannot be FULLY comprehended, but we can still go into it as far as our God-given intellects will allow us. There’s no point in kidding ourselves that we can fully comprehend God (or in your case, Allah) because only God can understand Himself fully. He’s infinitely above us. There’s no point, either, in ripping the heart out of the Truth of Who and What God is, just to make Him appear more comprehensible. You’ve more or less said most of that already, but it’s worth repeating from this side so we know where we stand.

The Blessed Trinity is a union of:
Be-ing: the Father, the uncaused Cause. Self-existent. Fatherhood is the generating Principle.
Know-ing: the Son ie the Father’s Self-knowledge, generated by the Father in eternity.
Lov-ing: the Holy Spirit ie the Total Self-giving Love between Father and Son (already mentioned by an early poster), “breathed” or spirated in eternity.
God is alone, but not lonely. He has Himself to love, not in a narcissistic way, but in a total Self-giving way.
You’ve probably read all of that as well and rejected it, but for the sake of others…🤷

You don’t seem to think much of Fr Garrigou-Lagrange’s “Reality”, so you probably think even less of Frank Sheed’s “Theology and Sanity”, but for anyone who’s interested, here’s a link to the whole book, and it’s easy enough to find the section on the Trinity, more than 30 pages in the 1978 Ignatius Press version (The online one’s a 1947 version, virtually identical to the 1978 one.):

www.katapi.org.uk/TandS/Contents.html

Same book, different layout:

www.ecatholic2000.com/sheed/untitled-42.shtml
You should get a Catholic Catechism.

Our belief has no competition with Islam. It does not need Islam.

Rather our faith in God is about the gathering of people, of humanity centered in relationship with God and life…etc…

…We do not live by the flesh…because that is the source of emotive thinking.

And finally, you are not answering the question of another…about the concept of heaven.

There are those who had concubines, harems, many wives…Muhammed included, and yet heaven in Islam is for more. Isn’t that the worship really of the flesh, of emotion?
👍

Our goal is the Beatific Vision.
The Islamic goal seems very carnal
The Christian concept of God and the Islamic concept of Allah seem way apart.
The Islamic claim that the Church corrupted Scripture doesn’t help. Where’s the (reliable) proof?
The whole Truth of Our Lord’s atoning suffering, death, and then resurrection is totally denied.

It’s 12:50AM! :eek:
 
Yes. Poor fellow throwing out alot of ideas and never grasping the difference or the poverty with a belief that has no purpose, no destiny but the flesh…concentric that makes the soul a desert.

We in the Church, at Mass, are already at the first step into heaven.

And there are many in the Muslim world who are also experiencing their heaven here on earth…in another way.

Judeo Christianity proves God is with us. Need not say anymore.

Have a Blessed Easter!
 
Palamists believe that God’s essence is completely unknowable, and that He can only be known by His actions or energies. That is just what you heavily implied in your last post. Read it yourself if you don’t remember.

We confirm the Vision of Allah in Paradise, confirm the reality of His qualitative attributes, and although our ability to comprehend the entity of Allah and our ability to assess His wisdom is limited, due to His transcendance; we nonetheless have the ability to understand Him in a coherent manner, according to our limitations. That is hardly Palamism. How do you accuse us of teaching hidden knowlerdge when throughout this thread, you have been a heavy proponent of the view that the Trinity is a mystery and cannot be comprehended?
You would probably do better with this thread over in the Philosophy subforum. You might send the moderator (Michael Francis) a private message asking him to move it. This particular subforum is to discuss non-Catholic religions, and this thread is about Catholicism, which properly belongs either in Apologetics or the Philosophy subforum.

I"ll leave that up to you. 🙂
 
What I said just a couple of posts ago:
We confirm the Vision of Allah in Paradise
In Sunni Islam, the Beatific Vision is the ultimate reward. We believe that our physical bodies will be resurrected, and just as those in Hell will undergo punishment of the senses, those in Paradise will experience pleasure of the senses; so yes, sex and wine are rewards in Paradise. Sex is not intrinsically evil, otherwise even marital sex for the purpose of reproduction would be considered a sin; wine is also not intrinsically evil. In this world, sex and wine do have defects, but in Paradise they will be free of defects and pleasure will be greater in magnitude.

I did post a request at the beginning of this thread for a moderator to move this.
 
I did post a request at the beginning of this thread for a moderator to move this.
From messages they have posted, I don’t think they necessarily read everything and they consider it bad form to post messages to them from the thread. You can either private message them or just hit the little red triangle at the top right and flag the post for moderator review, which I think they would prefer less. I’ve had threads moved and others they had thought were fine where they were.
 
Yes…

Have a Blessed Easter!
Thank you!
As far as the next life is concerned, is there a distressing similarity with Mormonism and “Celestial Marriage”?
In Sunni Islam, the Beatific Vision is the ultimate reward.
What is your understanding of the Beatific Vision? The fact that both sides use the same two words doesn’t mean that they have the same meaning for each side.
We believe that our physical bodies will be resurrected, and just as those in Hell will undergo punishment of the senses, those in Paradise will experience pleasure of the senses; so yes, sex and wine are rewards in Paradise. Sex is not intrinsically evil, otherwise even marital sex for the purpose of reproduction would be considered a sin;
No.
In this life, the purpose of marital sex is to propagate the human race, and it’s blessed by God. In the next life, there will not be sex because its purpose will have been fulfilled. When the Sadducees tried to trip Our Lord up on the question of the woman who had married seven brothers and been widowed each time, His response was:
“… when the dead rise to life, they will be like the angels in Heaven and will not marry.” (Matthew 22:30) Luke 20:34-36 is similar.
wine is also not intrinsically evil. In this world, sex and wine do have defects, but in Paradise they will be free of defects and pleasure will be greater in magnitude.
Again, it all seems just physical/carnal. What about the spiritual side of it?
For us, the Beatific Vision is raw spirit-to-Spirit contact with God, an indescribable union of knowledge (intellect) and love (will) with God and all of the angels and other saints. That’s spiritual. And of course the resurrected body will be glorified and perfectly united with the soul and spirit.
But, again, you probably know all of that…

That question again, reworded:
Why does Islam say that we’re polytheists…or doesn’t it? Do some Muslims say we are because they don’t understand the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity?

Presumably Allah knows Himself totally, so that’s similar to the relationship between the Father and the Son. 🤷
 
Besides, polygamy is impoverishing.

Again Christ came first – reversing the stiff necked custom of divorcing one’s wife in jewish culture…that what has God has brought together, no man put asunder…that marriage is permanent between a man and a woman.

Then it changes in this other belief system hundreds of years later-- multiple partners, harems, concubines, and more in heaven.
 
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Stay on topic. This is not about marriage and polygamy.
 
That reminds me of another question. Why is it that prior to Isa ibn Maryam (AS), all the prophets, the righteous and the believers among the children of Israel did not recognise the Trinity? The usual answer from Christians is that Revelation was in its infancy, as the aforementioned would not understand the Trinity. But clearly, not even Christians to this very day understand the Trinity, referring to it as a divine mystery. So the question still stands.
Polytheism
 
What I said just a couple of posts ago:

In Sunni Islam, the Beatific Vision is the ultimate reward. We believe that our physical bodies will be resurrected, and just as those in Hell will undergo punishment of the senses, those in Paradise will experience pleasure of the senses; so yes, sex and wine are rewards in Paradise. Sex is not intrinsically evil, otherwise even marital sex for the purpose of reproduction would be considered a sin; wine is also not intrinsically evil. In this world, sex and wine do have defects, but in Paradise they will be free of defects and pleasure will be greater in magnitude.

I did post a request at the beginning of this thread for a moderator to move this.
[Mt22:2929 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.]
 
Problem is that Christianity is not defined by philosophical, labelled schools of thought.

Christianity that is in the head is intellectual and not ‘the real deal’.

Even St. Thomas said once he saw a glimpse of heaven, his works were as straw.
 
Problem is that Christianity is not defined by philosophical, labelled schools of thought.

Christianity that is in the head is intellectual and not ‘the real deal’.

Even St. Thomas said once he saw a glimpse of heaven, his works were as straw.
I am not a theologian or an expert at Medieval Aristotelian logic, either one. But I do think discussions like this can go nowhere, just as they did in St.Thomas Aquinas’ time. St. Thomas’ purpose, he said, was only to show that Christianity was not contrary to that logic system. That, we understand, was satisfactory to his fellow philosphers at the time, though surely not the Islamic ones.

Islam has the same problem, and believes it has solved it to the satisfaction of its scholars. In the Hadith, Allah is said to have ninety-nine names, each pertaining to a distinct aspect of Allah’s personhood. If one can accept ninety-nine, three is not that much of a stretch.

Also, Allah is said in the Koran to be essentially “unknowable”; his nature being beyond the ability of the human mind to grasp. If so, then Aristotelian arguments purporting to explicate the nature of Allah as relates to Christianity or anything else, can be interesting, but they cannot truly tell us anything about Allah, if one accepts his existence. Nor, as St. Thomas himself said, can they truly plumb the nature of God.
 
I am not a theologian or an expert at Medieval Aristotelian logic, either one. But I do think discussions like this can go nowhere, just as they did in St.Thomas Aquinas’ time. St. Thomas’ purpose, he said, was only to show that Christianity was not contrary to that logic system. That, we understand, was satisfactory to his fellow philosphers at the time, though surely not the Islamic ones.

Islam has the same problem, and believes it has solved it to the satisfaction of its scholars. In the Hadith, Allah is said to have ninety-nine names, each pertaining to a distinct aspect of Allah’s personhood. If one can accept ninety-nine, three is not that much of a stretch.

Also, Allah is said in the Koran to be essentially “unknowable”; his nature being beyond the ability of the human mind to grasp. If so, then Aristotelian arguments purporting to explicate the nature of Allah as relates to Christianity or anything else, can be interesting, but they cannot truly tell us anything about Allah, if one accepts his existence. Nor, as St. Thomas himself said, can they truly plumb the nature of God.
The ninety-nine names of Allah, are in no way similar to the three hypostases of the Trinity…

Not even in Christianity, are the attributes and names of God considered identical to the three hypostases. Peter Abelard attempted to assert that the three persons referred to three qualities/aspects, and his view was rejected by the Church.

Each of the ninety-nine names refer back to the seven qualitative attributes (sifat ma`ani) of Allah. When the Christians of the East attempted to assert that there is little difference between the three hypostases of the Trinity and the seven qualitative attributes of Allah, claiming that the three hypostases were really just attributes; such an argument was systematically refuted by Muslim theologians, such as Imam al Baqillani.
 
You need to discuss this with a Catholic expert in Aristotelian philosophy, and sadly it doesn’t look like anyone here is up to the task. You should try reaching out to:

Dr. Bryan Cross: principiumunitatis.blogspot.com/
Dr. Taylor Marshall: taylormarshall.com/

As for why the dogma of the Trinity was not fully revealed prior to the Incarnation, consider the Catholic principle of opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt - all the works of the Trinity toward creation are the indivisible single work of all three Divine Persons. So, in the Old Testament, all the actions of God toward the people of Israel were the common work of all three Persons, with the result that distinguishing the three Persons would have been a purely intellectual exercise.

However, the Incarnation allows us to relate to one of the Hypostases in a real way - we can see, hear, touch, even smell Him. We can also clearly relate the other two Hypostases to the one we can physically sense - the Father is the one who sent the Incarnate Logos, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is sent by the Incarnate Logos.

Karl Rahner touches on this in “The Trinity.”
 
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