Why are we judged on such a brief flicker of time?

[Neoplatonist]

Interesting. Yes, I’m familiar with the arguments of the medievals, and actually presented at a conference on Aquinas’ argument in De Ente et Essentia regarding necessary and contingent being. That line of thinking opens up a whole strange other thread, for how are we to interpret all the events of the Bible and the metaphors Christ and the apostles present us with if we try to imagine God as being itself, rather than a being.

No voice from the sky at Jesus’ baptism. No will. No hearing or answering prayers. No ‘our Father.’ No appeal from Jesus at Gethsemane or the cross. I mean, seriously, what does it mean to ‘talk to being itself’? We can say some things, we can make sentences about it, but I don’t think we can grasp how to reconcile the idea with the teachings.

In particular, what would it mean to frame ‘being itself’ as giving or with-holding gifts? Water doesn’t ‘give or withhold gifts’ - if we do the right actions, it behaves in certain ways. Electricity. Light. Honestly, we will be hard-pressed, if we remove the idea of ‘person’ to maintain any but a thin pretense of distinction between Western and Eastern religions.

Back to the issue at hand, though, if we fail to align ourselves with Being, why would we continue to exist? There’s a whole new kind of paradox there if we try to imagine our soul continuing on for eternity after it had turned away from being. Have you considered that?

 

[Jon_S_1]

Interesting. Yes, I’m familiar with the arguments of the medievals, and actually presented at a conference on Aquinas’ argument in De Ente et Essentia regarding necessary and contingent being. That line of thinking opens up a whole strange other thread, for how are we to interpret all the events of the Bible and the metaphors Christ and the apostles present us with if we try to imagine God as being itself, rather than a being.

No voice from the sky at Jesus’ baptism. No will. No hearing or answering prayers. No ‘our Father.’ No appeal from Jesus at Gethsemane or the cross. I mean, seriously, what does it mean to ‘talk to being itself’? We can say some things, we can make sentences about it, but I don’t think we can grasp how to reconcile the idea with the teachings.

In particular, what would it mean to frame ‘being itself’ as giving or with-holding gifts? Water doesn’t ‘give or withhold gifts’ - if we do the right actions, it behaves in certain ways. Electricity. Light. Honestly, we will be hard-pressed, if we remove the idea of ‘person’ to maintain any but a thin pretense of distinction between Western and Eastern religions.

Back to the issue at hand, though, if we fail to align ourselves with Being, why would we continue to exist? There’s a whole new kind of paradox there if we try to imagine our soul continuing on for eternity after it had turned away from being. Have you considered that?

Well, I understand what your saying.

I guess overall it flows with your overall logic and paradigm on God. All of your analogies and questions…at their root deny either God’s omnipotence or his goodness.

If we believe that God is the one thing that can create from nothing, than we cannot limit that with our own physicality.

What I mean is…if God is truly capable of creating the universe from nothing. Are we really to believe that he is anything but “that which sustains being”. And if so, then why could he not manifest a voice in the sky, or manna from heaven, or part the sea, or anything else. He speaks the natural laws into existence and can manipulate or suspend them on his whim.

So I see no conflict between seeing God as both ipsum esse and personal.

I’m beating my head over hear because I want you take God out of the boxes !!!

 

[fhansen]

This is still the authority figure saying: “Your life should be centered on me. Worship me, do everything I tell you, ignore whatever you want and focus only on what I want, choose the life I want you to choose, be the person I want you to be; otherwise, off to the stalag.”

There’s one set of programs written on your heart, one set hard-wired into the wetware I’ve given you. Good luck. If you happen to re-think your choices while you’re there, too bad. 1 billion years is your sentence, no chance for parole.

What God really says is: I am your reality-any other place you explore is an exercise in non-reality. All you could possibly hope for, all you could need to satisfy is found in Me-there is no final happiness sufficient to be worth living eternally for apart from Me. If you have to find that out for yourself by experiencing, i.e. by knowing, good and evil, then so be it. My wisdom is perfect; test it and see if you must. If you don’t come to agree then I guarantee that unhappiness will be the natural consequence.

To disobey God is to be like a tree that cuts its own roots off, its life source, not a tree that’s inhibited or restrained from branching upwards, soaring into the sky. It’s to be a tree that wants to be a frog-or something other than a tree. God wants us to soar but we can only do so within the vast limits He prescribes,* together *with Him, not apart from Him, because we are Him in the sense of coming from and being images or expressions of Him.

Adam’s argument wasn’t against an arbitrary command of a God who just enjoys dominating His creation, rather it was an argument with Reality, with Truth. His decision was to stray from the truth of what defines a human being by himself taking on the role of the Definer of human beings, of human nature. Man has limitations, one crucial one for sure: he’s not God. All sin follows from failure to recognize that fact. All righteousness follows from gaining the wisdom to recognize that fact, insofar as it turns us back to God. He’s patient, waiting for us to agree; to come into alignment with Reality; He doesn’t force it upon us.

 

[oldcelt]

If that is true, then it would follow that we had no standards of mercy or justice before Jesus came. (And if THAT were true, it would mean Jesus suffered no injustice, nor Socrates, nor Uriah- strange to consider the implications of that line of reasoning.)

*during *our brief flicker of time on earth!

I feel your pain. Just in this thread you can find several explanations regarding our relation with the Almighty. There are so many unanswered questions such as the one you just asked that are really very important. I’m sure that I was influenced by my time as an archaeologist, but I think it is impossible for someone truly seeking God not to think about the millions who lived before Christ.
As I would hold one of those creations of an ancient human being in North America, I couldn’t help but wonder what they believed. They lived in a vacuum of sorts, uninfluenced by any other people. If only they had had a written language.

 

[Neoplatonist]

Ooh. This has taken an interesting turn.

I remember now why I had better faith when I was in grad school, and why the regular, dumbed-down treatments on Sunday sap that away. This thread is more fun than I can probably express.

 

[Jon_S_1]

Your questions Neo have caused me to put on my thinking cap and do some critical thinking ! Thanks for that!

To Old Celt

We know that men lived perhaps thousands of years before Abraham, and probably several hundred thousand years.

We just don’t know what they believed, or really what God revealed to them or how.

But the fact we don’t know doesn’t mean he did not. I have every reason to believe every human who ever lived had an opportunity to encounter God in some way.

 

[fhansen]

Your questions Neo have caused me to put on my thinking cap and do some critical thinking ! Thanks for that!

To Old Celt

We know that men lived perhaps thousands of years before Abraham, and probably several hundred thousand years.

We just don’t know what they believed, or really what God revealed to them or how.

But the fact we don’t know doesn’t mean he did not. I have every reason to believe every human who ever lived had an opportunity to encounter God in some way.

That’s Catholic teaching as well. From the CCC:
**
27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.1

28 In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being:

From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him - though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For "in him we live and move and have our being."2**

 

[vames]

@ Neoplatonist: Do you have a problem with the idea of eternal hell or with the idea of moral judgment per se? IOW do you find it’s injust for a soul to be punished for an eternity or do you find weird the idea that punishment in the afterlife depends on moral criteria that can have a practical relevance only to living people capable of benefiting (=changing their behavior) from punishments?

You asked “how we can modify or interpret the situation so that it fits with what we think of as fair or merciful”. Do you know this book? I think it represents such an attempt. The author was accused of being an universalist (someone affirming with certainty that all souls end up in heaven), but he just had the honesty to say that we don’t know what happens after death (let alone to claim that a vast majority of souls are damned), so we can hope that no human is eternally damned.

 

[Neoplatonist]

@ Neoplatonist: Do you have a problem with the idea of eternal hell or with the idea of moral judgment per se? IOW do you find it’s injust for a soul to be punished for an eternity or do you find weird the idea that punishment in the afterlife depends on moral criteria that can have a practical relevance only to living people capable of benefiting (=changing their behavior) from punishments?

You asked “how we can modify or interpret the situation so that it fits with what we think of as fair or merciful”. Do you know this book? I think it represents such an attempt. The author was accused of being an universalist (someone affirming with certainty that all souls end up in heaven), but he just had the honesty to say that we don’t know what happens after death (let alone to claim that a vast majority of souls are damned), so we can hope that no human is eternally damned.

Both. Especially since the soul already suffers as soon as it turns away.

 

[Jon_S_1]

Both. Especially since the soul already suffers

as soon as it turns away.

Did you not just answer your question?? The soul suffers because it chose to.

 

[Neoplatonist]

Did you not just answer your question?? The soul suffers because it chose to.

At heart my question is about a system where that is irreparable.

 

[Jon_S_1]

At heart my question is about a system where that is irreparable.

I’m wondering something about this.

If one could choose differently after death, How many times would be “just enough” to allow?

Would there be any limit to the amount?

I think we need to discuss the idea as well that Christianity is taught around our physical lives.

Really, so little is taught about heaven that it’s mostly speculative. What is taught is that our bodies will be raised and glorified and our souls will be reunited. And we will live some sort of physical existence for eternity.

Unlike, Plato, Christianity holds that the soul and body are meant to be together. As such, it seems to make complete sense that this is the life to make our decisions.

 

[vames]

At heart my question is about a system where that is irreparable.

OK, then why did you say “I’m not saying he shouldn’t. I’m not saying I’d do it differently”? So you would condemn souls to an eternal hell, but you have a problem with the idea?

Yes, the soul certainly suffers when it turns away: this is “hell on earth”. Also, death in itself is horrible, destroying the body and making the soul completely defenceless. So we shouldn’t imagine God doing what a bunch of vengeful people did to Pope Formosus. You surely understand that the idea of hell and purgatory did evolve from all the medieval horror stories, with only a selected few managing to avoid hellish and purgatorial tortures that didn’t spare even the unbaptized children, to the emphasis on God’s mercy that we seen today and the admission that we can’t know who actually is punished and how. The book of Urs von Balthasar or the encyclical Spe Salvi of Pope Benedict XVI couldn’t have appeared back then. So a reflection on how people’s understanding of God has evolved can be useful.

 

[oldcelt]

@ Neoplatonist: Do you have a problem with the idea of eternal hell or with the idea of moral judgment per se? IOW do you find it’s injust for a soul to be punished for an eternity or do you find weird the idea that punishment in the afterlife depends on moral criteria that can have a practical relevance only to living people capable of benefiting (=changing their behavior) from punishments?

You asked “how we can modify or interpret the situation so that it fits with what we think of as fair or merciful”. Do you know this book? I think it represents such an attempt. The author was accused of being an universalist (someone affirming with certainty that all souls end up in heaven), but he just had the honesty to say that we don’t know what happens after death (let alone to claim that a vast majority of souls are damned), so we can hope that no human is eternally damned.

I can’t answer for Neoplatonist, but you have struck on an area that has caused me some sleepless nights of pondering. I look at the case of my mother, a devout Catholic until very near the end of her life, Circumstances conspired against this sweet, loving lady to the point that she looked at me one day and said, You know John, I’m not sure I even believe anymore. I cannot envision a merciful or practical God who would send her soul to eternal damnation.Such an act would be without purpose.
That possibility and some others have, at least temporarily, prompted me to look at a more simplistic view of God.,…a view that is not dependent on words written down by humans and translated many, many times. I feel strangely comfortable, but I want to be certain that I have understood what is truly important.

 

[oldcelt]

OK, then why did you say “I’m not saying he shouldn’t. I’m not saying I’d do it differently”? So you would condemn souls to an eternal hell, but you have a problem with the idea?

Yes, the soul certainly suffers when it turns away: this is “hell on earth”. Also, death in itself is horrible, destroying the body and making the soul completely defenceless. So we shouldn’t imagine God doing what a bunch of vengeful people did to Pope Formosus. You surely understand that the idea of hell and purgatory did evolve from all the medieval horror stories, with only a selected few managing to avoid hellish and purgatorial tortures that didn’t spare even the unbaptized children, to the emphasis on God’s mercy that we seen today and the admission that we can’t know who actually is punished and how. The book of Urs von Balthasar or the encyclical Spe Salvi of Pope Benedict XVI couldn’t have appeared back then. So a reflection on how people’s understanding of God has evolved can be useful.

Thank you for having the courage to bring up these facts, I imagine you will likely be pummeled tomorrow, but you have helped me greatly.

John

 

[tonyrey]

             *Civilised standards of **both***

Non sequitur. You have overlooked the word “civilised”. The teaching of Jesus applies to everyone regardless of time, place, race, colour or any other factor.

In proportion to our love for others

*during *our brief flicker of time on earth!

Time, place, race, colour or any other factor are irrelevant where love is concerned.

 

[Jon_S_1]

I can’t answer for Neoplatonist, but you have struck on an area that has caused me some sleepless nights of pondering. I look at the case of my mother, a devout Catholic until very near the end of her life, Circumstances conspired against this sweet, loving lady to the point that she looked at me one day and said, You know John, I’m not sure I even believe anymore. I cannot envision a merciful or practical God who would send her soul to eternal damnation.Such an act would be without purpose.
That possibility and some others have, at least temporarily, prompted me to look at a more simplistic view of God.,…a view that is not dependent on words written down by humans and translated many, many times. I feel strangely comfortable, but I want to be certain that I have understood what is truly important.

John,

Even Mother Theresa had many doubts and lost faith at times. We are too focused on damnation and not on doing what Christ said which it sounds like your dear mother spent much of her life doing.

 

[tonyrey]

I can’t answer for Neoplatonist, but you have struck on an area that has caused me some sleepless nights of pondering. I look at the case of my mother, a devout Catholic until very near the end of her life, Circumstances conspired against this sweet, loving lady to the point that she looked at me one day and said, You know John, I’m not sure I even believe anymore. I cannot envision a merciful or practical God who would send her soul to eternal damnation.Such an act would be without purpose.
That possibility and some others have, at least temporarily, prompted me to look at a more simplistic view of God.,…a view that is not dependent on words written down by humans and translated many, many times. I feel strangely comfortable, but I want to be certain that I have understood what is truly important.

Doubt doesn’t entail damnation.

 

[tonyrey]

John,

Even Mother Theresa had many doubts and lost faith at times. We are too focused on damnation and not on doing what Christ said which it sounds like your dear mother spent much of her life doing.

You anticipated me by one minute!

 

[oldcelt]

John,

Even Mother Theresa had many doubts and lost faith at times. We are too focused on damnation and not on doing what Christ said which it sounds like your dear mother spent much of her life doing.

Thank you…it has been a troubling subject for me. I need to reread Dark Night of the Soul and a great many others.