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SirThomasMore
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is this like the personal witness that people received that Jim Jones was a Prophet?
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rainman10
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dianaiad, don’t mean to be picking on you, but you are the only one responding. Then, is it your own position that everyone has their own Holy Spirit? If, so, my Holy Spirit tells me it is the Catholic Church that is the only true church. And if you say that your Holy Spirit is the right one and mine is not (or maybe that Satan is speaking to me) how do you know that? How do you know that Satan is not the one speaking to you? Or is there only one Holy Spirit, and it lies to or confuses some of us by giving different answers?
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SteveVH
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Diana, I actually think this is the weakest argument of all. As others have said here, the Holy Spirit seems to say a lot of things to different people who make this claim. I certainly feel the Holy Spirit has guided me to the Catholic Church. In believing that, I cannot, at the same time, believe the Holy Spirit has guided anyone to the Mormon faith. That would be a contradiction. Those who belong to the “Bible Believing Church of Podunk Idaho” will tell you that the Holy Spirit gave them the correct interpretation of Scripture, while at the same time it conflicts with the interpretation of the next church on the block who claims the same thing.
The point is, it is not “the only way any of us know the truth of religious things.” One of the many things I love about the Catholic Church is that my reason does not conflict with my faith. Discernment of whether or not the Holy Spirit is actually speaking to someone, as oppossed to one’s own imagination, pre-conceived notions, or desires, must be based upon more than feelings which are then translated as a “personal witness”. If you are using this as some sort of proof, then your proof is no more convincing than the church down the street who makes the same claim.
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dianaiad
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There is only one, the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is the Witness of truth. He is the witness of truth no matter what surrounds it. I believe that He witnesses to the truth of whatever is asked, so…if a Catholic asks if God IS, or that Christ is His Son, then that is truth that will be witnessed. That’s not the problem. The problem is all the stuff we want to hang onto those simple witnessed truths, like velcro.
As to how I know that the spirit speaks truth to me…well, how do you know that He is speaking truth to you? That’s the problem with your question; it is very much double edged.
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dianaiad
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Without that witness of the Holy Ghost, then atheism is the only way out, you understand this, right? There IS no logical, impirical, reason to believe that God exists, based upon anything but that spiritual witness.
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Chris-WA
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Now that is funny!
She didn’t have a chance to do anything about it though. After all, God told Joseph in a revelation that Emma would be destroyed if she did not accept his new wives.
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PaulDupre
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…or the personal witness from the Holy Ghost that my JW co-worker got that tells him that the Watchtower is God’s only authority on earth
…or the personal witness that Muslims get that tells them that Islam is the one true faith
…etc, etc, etc
We can experience anything we want to experience. God wants us to use the intellect He gave us to “test everything that is said” (1 Thess 5:21).
We should test with all our resources, intellectual and spiritual.
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PaulDupre
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…or the 10,000 FLDS whose Holy Ghost has witnessed to them that God speaks to their prophet, Warren Jeffs.
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dianaiad
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With all due respect, Paul, there are a great many people of great education and intellect who disagree with each other spiritually. The final decision always comes down to the spiritual witness of the Holy Ghost.
Those who are afraid of that, or who dismiss that spiritual witness, are truly those who follow the words of mere men…and who 'preach another gospel."
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SirThomasMore
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SteveVH
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Well, again I disagree. We can, through reason, from observing nature and the order of the universe, determine that God exists; that there is intelligent design and order, rather than chaos. We may not be able to know God through this, but we can know that He exists. It is in Christ’s Church and His Sacraments, in which the Holy Spirit is intimately involved, that we come to know God. This would not be possible without the certitude that Holy Spirit is guiding and protecting the Church from error. This also does not mean that we cannot have, as you call it, a “personal witness” from the Holy Spirit, but we must discern whether or not it is the Holy Spirit (and not another spirit) who is speaking to us. We do that by measuring what we believe we are being told against the teachings of the Church which we know to be true through the promises that Christ made to His Church.
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dianaiad
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Question:
How do you know that the teachings of your church are a good standard to measure your certitude against?
Believe me, this isn’t a flip, or facitious, question AT all. it’s a question that is at the base of everything. Why are you so sure that Jesus is the Savior, and that He made any promises at all?
This question is not meant to be challenging or beligerant. Please take it prescisely as it is written, without reading any emotion into it. How do you know?
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SteveVH
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You ask a very good question and I don’t consider it flip or facetious at all.
It all begins with the person of the historical Jesus Christ. I read about his life, from witnesses who walked the earth with him. From this I must make a determination as to the credibility of those witnesses. Upon learning that these witnesses were willing to die through martyrdom rather than deny their testimony and, based upon the writings themselves, I decide that they are credible. I must then decide whether or not Jesus was who he claimed to be. Reading the witness’s account of what Jesus said and did, I decide that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that for no other reason but unfathomable love, he died for me (and for all) to save me from my sins.
Having decided that Jesus was who he claimed to be, I then look at what he did. He started a Church; not Peter or Paul or Joseph Smith, but Jesus himself. “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
(Mt 16:18,19)
He gave them all power: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Mt 28:19,20)
The voice of the Church is the voice of Christ himself. “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
(Lk 10:16)
Timothy tells us that the Church is where we find truth. “…you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth”.
(1 Tim 3:15)
That is why I know that the teachings of the Church are a good standard to to measure my certitude against. Christ gave his Church all power, promised to be with it until the end, gave the Church the power to speak in His voice and established the Church as the pillar and foundation of truth. Sounds like a pretty good standard to me.
The Holy Spirit then confirms in me what has been taught by the Church, the “pillar and foundation of truth.”
That is a far cry from relying on my inner feelings as the basis of my faith. In the Catholic Church it all comes together, the history, apostolic succession, the power of Christ himself and an intimate relationship with him through the sacraments. And on top of it all, the Holy Spirit confirming all that we believe and have been taught by the Church which we can rely on through those promises of Christ listed above.
Now, you will quickly claim that the Church fell into apostasy (for which there is not a shred of evidence, historic or otherwise) and therefore I am being taught error. Therefore measuring the truth of my “personal testimony” against the truth of the Church is using error as the measure. But you really have nothing with which to back up your claim. You are left with no choice but to believe your inner feelings which you choose to interpret as a “personal testimony”. You have no history to speak of, no proof of apostolic succession, no proof of “priestly authority”, only the claims of a man. It makes sense to me as to why the “burning in the heart” is so very important to you. It’s really all you have because you have nothing that can be proven empirically. If I tell you an angle spoke to me last night, can you disprove it? If I tell you that the Holy Spirit told me to become Muslim, can you disprove it? It is rather convenient, don’t you think? I prefer the Catholic approach in which I find no conflict between faith and reason.
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SirThomasMore
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excellent post.
I believe Jesus KNEW there would be false prophets like Joseph Smith, Jim Jones, David Koresh, etc. He KNEW it. So, there would be no more “new” info. It is so much easier to determine false prophets if there are not supposed to be any. So, instead of Prophets, he set up His Church and depended on that Apostolic Succession. That is why Jesus promised He would never leave. That is why there could be no Apostasy…because Jesus loves us too much to do that. He would never want there to be the confusion that exists in His name.
That is why the Catholic Church is HIS Church
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SteveVH
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Thanks SirThomas. I’ve never really understood why it is so difficult for some to accept that Christ is God’s only word and that nothing more needs to be said. Unless, that is, you wish to change what God has already revealed. There is no other public revelation to be given and no private revelation that can change the unchangeable.
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PaulDupre
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To Diana and the others,
Of course I was called by the Holy Spirit to love God and to seek after Him (it sort of sneaked up on me several years after leaving Mormonism). But I had learned a bitter lesson at the hands of the Mormon church - that our emotions and feelings can make us vulnerable to ravening wolves (like the LDS) who prey on those whose feelings are easily manipulated. But now I was older and wiser. I knew from the spirit that God exists and that He was calling me, but I had to search out which belief system was the true one by using my intellect, not my feelings.
I started from scratch in the year 1990, and spent the next ten years researching all faiths, from paganism to Zoroastrianism to Hinduism to Sikhism to Judaism to Islam to Baha’i to Protestant Christianity. All of them disappointed me. In the process, however, I became convinced that Jesus was the only reasonable religious answer. But I was still driven on by the love of God that had been steadily growing within me through prayer and searching. Finally, as a last resort, I began to research Catholicism in which I had been nominally raised. I spent three long years reading everything about Catholicism, pro and con, that I could get my hands on. I finally had to admit that the Church that Jesus founded subsists still in the Catholic Church. In October of 2000, I went to confession for the first time since I was 12 years old. The next day I went to mass and received communion. I have never looked back.
Of course I was called by the Holy Spirit to love God and to seek after Him (it sort of sneaked up on me several years after leaving Mormonism). But I had learned a bitter lesson at the hands of the Mormon church - that our emotions and feelings can make us vulnerable to ravening wolves (like the LDS) who prey on those whose feelings are easily manipulated. But now I was older and wiser. I knew from the spirit that God exists and that He was calling me, but I had to search out which belief system was the true one by using my intellect, not my feelings.
I started from scratch in the year 1990, and spent the next ten years researching all faiths, from paganism to Zoroastrianism to Hinduism to Sikhism to Judaism to Islam to Baha’i to Protestant Christianity. All of them disappointed me. In the process, however, I became convinced that Jesus was the only reasonable religious answer. But I was still driven on by the love of God that had been steadily growing within me through prayer and searching. Finally, as a last resort, I began to research Catholicism in which I had been nominally raised. I spent three long years reading everything about Catholicism, pro and con, that I could get my hands on. I finally had to admit that the Church that Jesus founded subsists still in the Catholic Church. In October of 2000, I went to confession for the first time since I was 12 years old. The next day I went to mass and received communion. I have never looked back.
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dianaiad
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This raises a question. If their martyrdom…willingness to die for their beliefs, is witness for their credibility, what of all those who died for beliefs that you do not share? There have been many, many martyrs to non-Catholic beliefs…many to non-Christian beliefs. Some of them have died at least as bravely, and horrifically, as any Christian martyr.
The most the willingness to die for ones’ belief proves is that…that person believes what he claims. It is not witness for the truth of those beliefs. Life would be very complicated indeed if this were true, don’t you think?
You have told me what you have decided (and I agree with you) but not how. For instance, how do you know that the stories in the NT are accurate, and that the witnesses to His life actually did see what they claimed to see? There are quite a few people nowadays who have problems even acknowledging that Jesus existed as a person, never mind the Savior…and their arguments are pretty logical. So…why believe?
…except that you skipped a step. I’m not trying to be difficult here…
strike that. I AM being difficult and I know it. What I’m trying to get at is the very basics of things. How do you know that the bible is ‘true,’ and that any of those accounts are accurate? The fact that the men who seemingly wrote it (and people are arguing about who wrote which even now) were willing to die for their beliefs…well, that’s all well and good, but Joseph Smith was willing to die for his, too. So were many of my ancestors who were NOT Catholic. So are many Muslims, Hindus, Budhists…
Shoot, if you want to talk about people willing to die for their beliefs, what about the Heaven’s Gate people? They committed mass suicide to catch a ride on a spaceship hiding behind a comet, for crying out loud.
*Of course someone who teaches religious truth and believes it would be willing to die for his beliefs. *…but so are people who only think they know the truth. Therefore, their willingness to die is not proof that their beliefs are ‘true.’
You skipped right over what I asked to 'having determined that Christ was Who He Said He was…" I’m saying whoa, there, and hauling you back. How did you determine that?
Remembering that I actually agree with you…I too believe that Christ is Who He said He was.
<snip to end, for space>
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benidict
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interesting my friend. other than Joseph Smith being a prophet, i was told by a Seventh Day Adventist, on another thread, that they believed the same thing about calvin and luther. but they believe it was for the way to be paved for Seventh Day Adventism. it would be fascinating if we could get a thread going, where your 2 groups hash this out. im kinda biased so i would be cheering for you and your fellow Mormons. i think im going to try this. lets see what happens.
Peace 
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dianaiad
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I would be a disappointment, I’m afraid. There are many things about the SDA’s that I rather like.interesting my friend. other than Joseph Smith being a prophet, i was told by a Seventh Day Adventist, on another thread, that they believed the same thing about calvin and luther. but they believe it was for the way to be paved for Seventh Day Adventism. it would be fascinating if we could get a thread going, where your 2 groups hash this out. im kinda biased so i would be cheering for you and your fellow Mormons. i think im going to try this. lets see what happens.
…and they would be right; Calvin, Luther, et. all DID pave the way the SDA’s took.They just took a wrong fork at the last minute.
Since they, I’m quite certain, believe the same thing about the Mormons, then I guess we would agree with one another about Calvin and the early Reformationists.Diana
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SteveVH
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Well, Diana, if I was using only martyrdom as a basis for measuring truth of the Church I might agree with you. There is obviously a lot more involved than this. The history of the Church is just as compelling to me, if not more. The words of Christ himself; the witnesses to his resurrection; the lives of the Saints (as in Catholic Saints); my personal experience with the Sacraments; the unchanging doctrines and the continued expansion of Christ’s Church; all of these (and more) come together to form a body of information which compel me to believe. And yes, I have the personal witness of the Holy Spirit which confirms this truth in me.
In college, I took a dendrology course. Determining the difference between certain species of trees was very challenging at times. Often, nearly all of your senses were involved; touch, smell, sight and even taste. One of these on their own was not enough if the species were very closely related. It is the same here. We have a body of evidence in the Catholic Church that is overwhelming, in my opinion. I was just giving you a thumbnail sketch of my reasoning, martyrdom being only one of the factors involved.
You ask another question “How do you know that the Bible is true?”. I would love to answer this in depth, but I believe we’re getting a little off topic anyway. The bottom line is this. I believe it because my Church proclaimed it as the inspired word of God. This is the only reason that even your Church can believe it. You received it from our Church. It didn’t drop out of the sky with a little note attached that said “This is the word of God”. I won’t go into the details as I know you are already versed in the compilation of the canon of Scripture. I believe it because the Church, which Jesus himself started, which is guided by the Holy Spirit, told me so. There is really no other reason I can believe, and no other reason that anyone can believe. I believe that Christ keeps his promises.
Blessings.
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