The convergence of faith, reason, and obedience

[Armor_of_Light]

I have been pondering this for a little while, and would appreciate discussion on the matter at this point. I’m stuck.

Am I correct in thinking that all 3 need each other?
Is there a perfect (as close as humans can get) balancing point for the 3, like the U.S. system of checks and balances?
What saints, popes, etc…found the balance? Have you?

I read somewhere recently someone (ABp Lefebvre I think) said (and I paraphrase) ‘Faith is more important than obedience’. Doesn’t sound right…doesn’t sound wrong, either! That’s what got me stuck.

 

[JReducation]

I have been pondering this for a little while, and would appreciate discussion on the matter at this point. I’m stuck.

Am I correct in thinking that all 3 need each other?
Is there a perfect (as close as humans can get) balancing point for the 3, like the U.S. system of checks and balances?
What saints, popes, etc…found the balance? Have you?

I read somewhere recently someone (ABp Lefebvre I think) said (and I paraphrase) ‘Faith is more important than obedience’. Doesn’t sound right…doesn’t sound wrong, either! That’s what got me stuck.

I would hope that Archbishop Lefebvre never said that. If so, he has a serious doctrinal problem on his hands. Our redemption was one by obedience. As St. Paul says in Phil, “Obedience even unto death, death on a cross.”

You ask about saints who have found the fulcrum on which faith, reason and obedience meet. The answer is, all of them. That’s what makes one a saint. A saint is a man or woman whose has lived a life of heroic virtue. But in what does heroic virtue consist?

It consists in reason enlightened by a faith that is obedient to the will of God as expressed through the voice of the Church. The unity of the three is called “the perfection of charity.”

 

[Basilios]

Faith without obedience can never lead you to Heaven, because you cannot be a disciple of Him who was obedient unto death if you cannot give up your will.
Obedience without the faith will never lead you to Heaven, because you’ll obey every doctrine as St Paul says, “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4: 14).I think this is what the Archbishop meant.
I am not sure how reason comes into it, though. I could try but it’s a lovely Saturday out there

 

[Eufrosnia]

I have been pondering this for a little while, and would appreciate discussion on the matter at this point. I’m stuck.

Am I correct in thinking that all 3 need each other?
Is there a perfect (as close as humans can get) balancing point for the 3, like the U.S. system of checks and balances?
What saints, popes, etc…found the balance? Have you?

I read somewhere recently someone (ABp Lefebvre I think) said (and I paraphrase) ‘Faith is more important than obedience’. Doesn’t sound right…doesn’t sound wrong, either! That’s what got me stuck.

Nothing much to add to what the good Brother said other than the following.

Reason leads us to what we must accept as from God. We accept and believe in the truths by Faith. We are then Obedient to authority, when it does not contradict what we accept and believe by faith, because that is what Christ has taught us through the authority he instituted, the Church.

So we respect & Obey those in authority, not just the Church, because their authority is given by God. We only disobey these other authorities (excluding the Church) when they command us to do something contradictory to what we have been taught by the Church.

But things are a bit different with the authority of the Church itself. One of the central beliefs we accept as taught by the Church, is that she will not teach error. So even when we do not understand, and new teachings may seem to contradict prior teachings, we hold by faith that it is our own understanding that is lacking to grasp how to reconcile teachings. So we still Obey the Church and her commands even when it may seem unreasonable or unclear to us. Looking at lives of saints, or perhaps in our own experiences, we can see that this is what we are called to do and indeed at a later time God gives us the Grace to understand and reconcile these truths. Those who had rebelled against the Church’s authority have rightfully come to be known to us as heretics who held on to various heresies and had caused the most harm to the Church.

Note that we only give such unbridled assent and obedience to the Church because we already know through reason that Christ through his death and resurrection had proven his authority over the natural and supernatural, and that the Church in indeed the entity that carries out and passes down the teaching authority given to her by Christ. Otherwise our assent and obedience would indeed be dangerous.

But since we know through reason that the Church is from Christ, the very person we know through reason itself to be the ultimate authority regarding God and the heavens, and the very person we know by faith to be the Son of God, we are reasonable in giving full assent and obedience to the Church of Christ: The Catholic Church.

 

[otjm]

One of the central beliefs we accept as taught by the Church, is that she will not teach error. So even when we do not understand, and new teachings may seem to contradict prior teachings, we hold by faith that it is our own understanding that is lacking to grasp how to reconcile teachings. So we still Obey the Church and her commands even when it may seem unreasonable or unclear to us. Looking at lives of saints, or perhaps in our own experiences, we can see that this is what we are called to do and indeed at a later time God gives us the Grace to understand and reconcile these truths. Those who had rebelled against the Church’s authority have rightfully come to be known to us as heretics who held on to various heresies and had caused the most harm to the Church.

One would think, with only a cursory review of the history of the Church, that obedience must trump faith as the final critical element. Either the Holy Spirit guides the Church and keeps it from error, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we can all sleep in late on Sunday and forget the whole thing, as the debates have gone on from not long after Christ ascended.

If the Holy Spirit does actually guide the church, then when the debates start again, the church will wade in and give us the “final answer”. At that point, obedience either comes in, or we wander off.

As I am assuming this is a thread take-off from the one concerning the last letter from the SSPX: the SSPX have been playing cat and mouse with this issue since Paul 6 attempted to correct Archbishop Lefebvre. The Church has repeatedly attempted to bring about reconciliation. That reconciliation may be about something(s) the SSPX does not understand; and it appears they are attempting to say that faith demands they do not obey.

Wrong order. Obedience must trump their reason and faith or they will not be reconciled with the Church.

And that all hinges upon whether or not the Holy Spirit protects the Church.

 

[Lormar]

One would think, with only a cursory review of the history of the Church, that obedience must trump faith as the final critical element. Either the Holy Spirit guides the Church and keeps it from error, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we can all sleep in late on Sunday and forget the whole thing, as the debates have gone on from not long after Christ ascended.

If the Holy Spirit does actually guide the church, then when the debates start again, the church will wade in and give us the “final answer”. At that point, obedience either comes in, or we wander off.

As I am assuming this is a thread take-off from the one concerning the last letter from the SSPX: the SSPX have been playing cat and mouse with this issue since Paul 6 attempted to correct Archbishop Lefebvre. The Church has repeatedly attempted to bring about reconciliation. That reconciliation may be about something(s) the SSPX does not understand; and it appears they are attempting to say that faith demands they do not obey.

Wrong order. Obedience must trump their reason and faith or they will not be reconciled with the Church.

And that all hinges upon whether or not the Holy Spirit protects the Church.

OTJM, that about wraps it all up.

In the end, it is simple. No need to pour over theological treatises or manuals. If the Catholic Church be the Church of Christ and is the One True Church, She is worthy of trust and obedience. As you said, if we can’t trust Her, we may as well hang it up and the Church can go out of business without any further delay. Then, we can all start a class action suit against Her for fraud.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

Thanks everyone… I do have a tendency to over think things, and I don’t want to think myself out of Heaven!

 

[Eufrosnia]

One would think, with only a cursory review of the history of the Church, that obedience must trump faith as the final critical element. Either the Holy Spirit guides the Church and keeps it from error, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we can all sleep in late on Sunday and forget the whole thing, as the debates have gone on from not long after Christ ascended.

If the Holy Spirit does actually guide the church, then when the debates start again, the church will wade in and give us the “final answer”. At that point, obedience either comes in, or we wander off.

As I am assuming this is a thread take-off from the one concerning the last letter from the SSPX: the SSPX have been playing cat and mouse with this issue since Paul 6 attempted to correct Archbishop Lefebvre. The Church has repeatedly attempted to bring about reconciliation. That reconciliation may be about something(s) the SSPX does not understand; and it appears they are attempting to say that faith demands they do not obey.

Wrong order. Obedience must trump their reason and faith or they will not be reconciled with the Church.

And that all hinges upon whether or not the Holy Spirit protects the Church.

I hope I don’t offend anyone in my post here but I think the problem with the SSPX is that they have actually embraced the foundations behind the very thing they sought to reject.

For the SSPX, it seems unreasonable to assent and obey the Church since it sees a contradiction in current teachings and a difficulty to reconcile current stances with that of the Church’s past. So they see a need to act. There are two problems here though.

1. There is indeed a set of teachings and stances that people claim the Church to hold today that it actually does not hold. These do have serious issues with them and all Catholics should rightfully oppose such views and teachings. So plus marks for the SSPX here in so much as we are talking about these specific issues.
2. The SSPX do not seem to realize that REASON is only a primary part in discovering the True Religion. This search concludes with one discovering the Catholic Church as the ultimate authority. After that initial discovery, one accepts everything the Church teaches by faith and obeys its laws & commands since her authority is from Christ.

One has no luxury to deny any of the teachings or commands based on the criterion that they do not make logical sense, hard to reconcile with the past etc. Any difficulty to reconcile has to be admitted to be a fault with ones own understanding and intellect. The correct thing to do is to follow the Church in humility and obedience.

To disagree with the Church is tantamount to considering the SSPX itself to be the Catholic Church. But the SSPX cannot make such a claim by themselves since it is first and foremost a supernatural claim. That claim cannot be verified and must be a claim that we believe by FAITH. But the only authority we know of through reason to have the authority is the Catholic Church. Therefore, unless the Catholic Church designates the SSPX as the new Catholic Church, it would be unreasonable to assent or obey the commands and teachings of the SSPX.

Therefore the way I see it, the SSPX have started to proclaim themselves capable of teaching supernatural truths and designated themselves an authority. This is not much different from the countless other religions and religious figures that have done the same (ex: Mohammed, Luther, Buddha etc.). The issue with all such figures is that unlike the Catholic Church, there is no REASON to think they have any authority to speak regarding supernatural truths that cannot be verified. Now the SSPX in continuing to do so, is actually damaging the Church, the very last thing they would want to do.

The correct thing for the SSPX to do is to integrate back in to the Church and bolster the effort to correct the legitimate concerns in (1).