The burden of proof is on believers to prove God exists (according to atheist philosphers)

[tonyrey]

I invoked “process theology” because it attributes change to God. Some postings on this thread seem to be moving in that direction although they do not explicitly mention “process theology”. Whether “process theology” is adequate is another question.

But I think that Greek metaphysics may not be entirely adequate either. Clearly, Aristotle’s god, who has no concern for or awareness of this world, is not the Christian God.

No form of human metaphysics is entirely adequate but it doesn’t follow that the Catholic Church’s teaching is less adequate than others:

God cannot be classified or defined, as contingent beings are classified and defined; for there is no aspect of being in which He is perfectly similar to the finite, and consequently no genus in which He can be included. From this it follows that we cannot know God adequately in the way in which He knows Himself, but not, as the Agnostic contends, that our inadequate knowledge is not true as far as it goes. In speaking of a being who transcends the limitations of formal logical definition our propositions are an expression of real truth, provided that what we state is in itself intelligible and not self-contradictory; and there is nothing unintelligible or contradictory in what Theists predicate of God. It is true that no single predicate is adequate or exhaustive as a description of His infinite perfection, and that we need to employ a multitude of predicates, as if at first sight infinity could be reached by multiplication. But at the same time we recognize that this is not so — being repugnant to the Divine simplicity; and that while truth, goodness, wisdom, holiness and other attributes, as we conceive and define them express perfections that are formally distinct, yet as applied to God they are all ultimately identical in meaning and describe the same ultimate reality — the one infinitely perfect and simple being.

newadvent.org/cathen/06612a.htm#IC

 

[inocente]

NB **"**and the Word was **with **God. What can be simpler than divine oneness?

Overstating it is the heresy of Sabellius according to Thomas Aquinas in his commentary:

“1451 This statement [Jn 10:30] rejects two errors: that of Arius, who distinguished the essence [of the Father from that of the Son], and that of Sabellius, who did not distinguish the person [of the Father from the person of the Son]. We escape both Charybdis and Scylla, for by the fact that Christ says, one, he saves us from Arius, because if one, then they are not different [in nature]. And by the fact that he says, we are, he saves us from Sabellius, for if we are, then the Father and the Son are not the same [person].” - dhspriory.org/thomas/John10.htm

Your post #438 contains dogmatic assertions I have already refuted…

It didn’t include any. My post asked two questions which you evaded repeatedly and continue to evade.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Overstating it is the heresy of Sabellius according to Thomas Aquinas in his commentary:

“1451 This statement [Jn 10:30] rejects two errors: that of Arius, who distinguished the essence [of the Father from that of the Son], and that of Sabellius, who did not distinguish the person [of the Father from the person of the Son]. We escape both Charybdis and Scylla, for by the fact that Christ says, one, he saves us from Arius, because if one, then they are not different [in nature]. And by the fact that he says, we are, he saves us from Sabellius, for if we are, then the Father and the Son are not the same [person].” - dhspriory.org/thomas/John10.htm

It didn’t include any. My post asked two questions which you evaded repeatedly and continue to evade.

The answer to Arius from the best minds in Christian tradition is not to abandon or compromise the oneness of God but to point to God’s eternal and unchanging self-knowledge as the way out of falling for the Sabellian trap.

Aquinas, in line with a solid theological tradition and particularly with St. Augustine, thinks that the Trinity reflects the same sort of relationship of self-knowledge and love going on in God. God the Father represents God. Proceeding from God is God’s concept of himself, or his self-knowledge; the self-knowledge of God is what Aquinas thinks of as God the Son. And the Holy Spirit is the relationship of love between God’s self-knowledge and God.

Here’s the analogy he uses to explain it, echoing the beginning of the Gospel of John and relating it to the use of language (which inevitably turns up when we speak of self-knowledge):

“Whenever anyone understands because of his very act of understanding, something comes forth within him, which is the concept of the known thing proceeding from his awareness of it. It is this concept which an utterance signifies; we call it ‘the word in the heart’ signified by the spoken word.” (Summa 1a.27.1)

So Aquinas thinks that the Son of God (or the Word, as Christ is called in the Gospel of John), is God as known to God; the Son of God is God’s self-knowledge or awareness.

aquinasblog.com/16-trinity.html

 

[inocente]

It seems to me, then, that if your “wisdom” comes directly from God then you ought to demonstrate that wisdom in such a way as to put all those know-nothing philosophers to shame. Go ahead then, lavish us with that wisdom!

Oh, and by the way, you will also need to show us how to recognize that wisdom to begin with and how anyone with any degree of intellectual or spiritual integrity would recognize the difference between the faux wisdom that infects the philosophers we don’t need and the wisdom that comes directly as a gift from Christ.

I strongly suspect that your “comes directly from Christ” is a facade and a completely empty proposition since what you claim to have is provably nothing more than what anyone else, including philosophers, have been granted - a life to lead as best you can, like everyone else.

It seems to me that if any philosophers such as those you cite as questioning the doctrine of divine simplicity have their wisdom directly from God they should absolutely be able to wipe the floor with those who don’t. I don’t see that.

What I do see, is you picking sides and claiming the side you are on is the side that receives the God wisdom and anyone else doesn’t. And you do that by not making anything like a compelling case, merely by appealing to this “God wisdom” which you insist has been endowed directly to you and yours by God himself.

Call me skeptical.

In 1 Cor 1, Paul quotes from Isaiah 29, where verse 11 says that neither learned nor unlearned men can know God if “Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught”.

Meeting God isn’t something you can do on your own steam by studying and theorizing, since then you end up with mere human rules.

"The wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish”, since knowing God depends on grace, as in 1 Cor 2:

“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived” —
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.”

So while skepticism is an excellent and admirable trait in general , you’ll not meet with God unless you let his Spirit in. “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord”’.

*In other words, wisdom is not fully endowed immediately and without merit by a magic wand wave by the hand of the sky-god merely because we make a claim to it. Wisdom is integral to every experience of every event and to every thought and every judgement and every choice we make. We either gain a bit of it or lose a bit of it through what we will and do each day. It is hard won and integral to who and what we are.

Oh, I agree that wisdom comes from God - read the OT book of Wisdom to be assured of that - but I don’t think it comes by eschewing normal human experience and endeavor, nor simply as a supernatural endowment in exchange for our denigration of everything human. That would be closer to Gnosticism than to Christianity. Jesus became fully human and went through the same human process as we do to gain wisdom precisely because, as God, he emptied himself and placed himself in our shoes from the time Mary made her fiat.*

I think you’re speaking of worldly wisdom, which Paul calls foolishness compared with “the power of God and the wisdom of God”. Paul doesn’t say that ordinary believers are wise, he says Christ “has become for us wisdom from God”. Would you rather have all the wisdom in the world? Or Christ? “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” - Philippians 3

All together now, sing it out - youtube.com/watch?v=oxpPIa-BskY

 

[inocente]

Paul’s argument is NOT that anyone who is ignoble, lowly, weak, foolish and despised is, purely by being so, chosen by God. He is saying those Christians who were chosen by God at that time could have been any of those things and that still would not have stopped God from choosing them.

By your argument, Paul himself, who was NOT lowly, weak, foolish, ignoble or despised could not have been chosen by God because he was none of those things. He was well-off, well-educated, esteemed, powerful, smart, and a Roman citizen. Apparently, God miscalculated in his selection of Paul or couldn’t have chosen him because Paul was more of a philosopher than an ordinary believer - a fact that, by itself, would have eliminated Paul as being eligible for receiving wisdom from God.

Paul wasn’t arguing that ordinary (or lowly, weak, despised, foolish or ignoble) believers were all necessarily capable, he was arguing that being all of those things couldn’t stop God from making them wise. If fact, God wasn’t stopped from making Paul, the epitome of a brilliant philosopher, the recipient of true Wisdom from Christ - and using his philosophical skills to explicate Christ to his hearers.

Grace perfects nature - including natural human intellectual abilities.

Just because a person is an ordinary believer is not sufficient to make them wise. They may be faithful, but wisdom is more than that. It involves understanding and the ability to explicate what you believe and why.

The implications of rejecting the doctrine of divine simplicity are significant. Perhaps you need to assess those before you go arguing a position you don’t fully understand.

Besides that, many of the early Church Fathers, along with many effective Christian teachers and apologists, like Augustine and Aquinas, used terms and arguments from philosophy to explain the content of the faith to non-believers.

You seem to have gone off on a tangent there, as I never argued that only ordinary believers can believe. I said “You’re arguing directly against Paul by saying ordinary believers are not capable” and then I quoted Paul.

I don’t think Paul is claiming that God is “making them wise”, he’s saying that when it comes to knowing God, worldly wisdom and worldly strength count for little alongside “our righteousness, holiness and redemption”.

 

[inocente]

The answer to Arius from the best minds in Christian tradition is not to abandon or compromise the oneness of God but to point to God’s eternal and unchanging self-knowledge as the way out of falling for the Sabellian trap.

Doesn’t seem much of a trap. No ordinary believer would think of the Father and Jesus as being one, without any parts, on the sensible basis that Jesus has face, hands, feet and lots of other parts, and walks on earth while teaching of our Father in heaven.

 

[tonyrey]

Overstating it is the heresy of Sabellius

 

[tonyrey]

Overstating it is the heresy of Sabellius according to Thomas Aquinas in his commentary:

*“1451 This statement [Jn 10:30] rejects two errors: that of Arius, who distinguished the essence [of the Father from that of the Son], and that of Sabellius, who did not distinguish the person [of the Father from the person of the Son]. We escape both Charybdis and Scylla, for by the fact that Christ says, one, he saves us from Arius, because if one, then they are not different [in nature]. And by the fact that he says, we are, he saves us from Sabellius, for if we are, then the Father and the Son are not the same [person].” *
In view of the fact that at High Mass every Sunday I sing the Credo I am hardly likely to make such an elementary mistake:

. Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum,consubstantialem Patri

 

[Aloysium]

:twocents:

With regards to the OP, the value in believing or even considering that God exists, lies in the search for Him. That search, is a process of growth along what we can understand to be the Way that is Jesus Christ. To become Christ-like is our ultimate purpose. Beyond our individual circumstances, talents and desires, is our unique existence, the manifestation of the loving relationship that exists between God and His creation. Knowledge of God arises within this most intimate of personal relationships. As such, the “proof” requires not only a gift of grace by the Holy Spirit, but also the assent of the person.

In Christianity, with the revelation of Jesus, the incarnate Word, we who are limited in our capacity to understand, are brought face-to-face with God. Through His teachings and as an example or signpost of who we are when we are true to ourselves, Jesus demonstrates how we are to truly worhship God: by doing His will which is to love our neighbour and even our enemy. The Eucharist as the body and blood of the sacrificial unblemished Lamb, we are brought into union with Christ, dying with Him to our sins and reborn to eternal life. So, there is no “burden of proof” so much as there is a yoke that we must bear as servants of God. That burden is light and personal; doing His will we come to know Him, the living Truth to which our theology points.

Our relationship in time with God, who is in every moment and encompasses all moments, is in movement because we are moving towards or away from Him. God’s compassion envelops our entire lives; He knows our joys, suffering and the temptations others which we are faced. We meet a Him at the here and now of our conception, of this particular time and place as we entertain these ideas, and in our last prayer. I would say He can be pleased, surprised and angry, with our choices and actions in the particular moment, and is thus for all eternity. God is the one, simple, and loving Source of all change, transcendent and immutable. His relationality extends into creation, which consists of individual beings, participating in the whole that is the universe in a state of flux, within His eternal vision.

The value, then, of these discussions is to engage in a form of prayer that leads us individually and as part of the body of Christ, to greater faith. The proof of God’s existence is right here, in the sharing of our response to His call. There are countless more words that can be used, but I don’t know what more can be offered. The proof awaits its seeker.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Doesn’t seem much of a trap. No ordinary believer would think of the Father and Jesus as being one, without any parts, on the sensible basis that Jesus has face, hands, feet and lots of other parts, and walks on earth while teaching of our Father in heaven.

Actually, the human “face, hands, feet and lots of other parts” of Jesus are not essential to his divine nature. In fact, the doctrine of the hypostatic union of Jesus teaches that Jesus is one person with two natures – God and man. So his human nature is not an aspect of his divine nature.

In other words, Jesus is fully God without his human nature, so his human parts have entirely nothing to do with his divine nature. In a sense, they are essential to his human nature but not essential, but accidental, to his being God.

 

[IWantGod]

:twocents:

With regards to the OP, the value in believing or even considering that God exists, lies in the search for Him. The proof awaits its seeker.

But why has God made the search so difficult. Why does he not make it obvious?

 

[Aloysium]

But why has God made the search so difficult. Why does he not make it obvious?

It isn’t about gaining ideas but of transforming oneself into love.

 

[IWantGod]

It isn’t about gaining ideas but of transforming oneself into love.

Then why doesn’t he make that obvious.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But why has God made the search so difficult. Why does he not make it obvious?

It is as obvious as it needs to be.

Our culture expects everything handed to it on a plate while zipping past a drive-through window.

More like gestalt than Where’s Waldo.

 

[tonyrey]

But why has God made the search so difficult. Why does he not make it obvious?

When you appreciate the power of love and God’s love for us you don’t have to search any more because you know it is more precious and significant than anything else in the entire universe…

31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading** for us**.

35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”a]) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,**(“Romans 8:31-39 NLT - Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s - Bible Gateway”)] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39

 

[tonyrey]

Actually, the human “face, hands, feet and lots of other parts” of Jesus are not essential to his divine nature. In fact, the doctrine of the hypostatic union of Jesus teaches that Jesus is one person with two natures – God and man. So his human nature is not an aspect of his divine nature.

In other words, Jesus is fully God without his human nature, so his human parts have entirely nothing to do with his divine nature. In a sense, they are essential to his human nature but not essential, but accidental, to his being God.

Indeed. It is not beyond God’s power to choose to become incarnate…

 

[inocente]

But why has God made the search so difficult. Why does he not make it obvious?

Stop trying. Let it happen in God’s time.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Stop trying. Let it happen in God’s time.

What ever happened to “Seek and you shall find?”

I would suggest that it is more about attuning oneself to (with faith in God’s grace) than abandoning the quest entirely.

 

[inocente]

What ever happened to “Seek and you shall find?”

I would suggest that it is more about attuning oneself to (with faith in God’s grace) than abandoning the quest entirely.

If you don’t find, you’re seeking wrongly.

So, stop and consider that it takes faith to seek in the belief you shall find.

So stop trying, have faith that God will seek you. Leap of faith.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Then why doesn’t he make that obvious.

How could it be made obvious to those who do not want to believe?

Neither the Temple Jews nor the Romans thought it was obvious, though Jesus himself in the flesh had made God as obvious as it was possible to make Him.

Only when we let down our defenses can God attack our hearts and minds.

That is how God made us … free to choose Him or refuse Him.