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Justice_Mercy
Guest
You asked a question, I gave one of many answers that a follower of Christ would state. You can accept it or reject it.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Certainly this is true if you assume that a quest for knowledge is a good paradigm for spiritual life, that this “knowledge” is going from you to them, from outside them to inside of them. However, what if the “desired quality” is not like knowledge at all, but something that exists essentially inside of them and needs to come out? This quality, i.e., goodness, exhibits only organic growth, from the inside out, as all life does.
The knowledge paradigm assumes that the quality of knowledge is outside the learner and needs to be delivered inside of them by some instrumental means.
However, goodness is not an outside kind of quality, it is essentially in the very being of the individual and needs to flourish through the choices made by the person. It cannot be brought to them instrumentally.
Furthermore, the goodness of a person is not of the kind that has one answer. There may be a huge number of possibilities, just as there are for tasty foods. In this case, it cannot be delivered as a one size fits all kind of final outcome. It is how the individual interacts over time with all the outside factors that creates the outcome. There is no one final answer, only the creative final outcome that itself becomes the candidate for tasting.
God does not seek to make an army of manufactured robots that measure up to some quality control standard of “good enough” to pass muster. Look at the saints! No two are alike. They are all very individual and individually “good.” The qualities they exhibit are absolutely unique to themselves. My suspicion is that is the way God wants it. He provides all the ingredients, grace and power, it is up to us to add the creativity and bring about good, keeping in mind that there are certain parameters that define the good, but they are not necessarily the “safe” or controlled ones that might be expected.
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sophion
Guest
i reject it. its not real communication. sorry.
webster:
communication - information transmitted or conveyed
what information?
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LilyM
Guest
You too see what you want to see - doesn’t mean your assertions are correct. You’re coming across like a dunce science student trying to argue that because he or she doesn’t understand why e=mc2, nor do all the other other dunce science students, that therefore Einstein must be wrong.
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sophion
Guest
and what assertion is that?
how about you tell me what god told you. and i’ll tell you where you really got it from. deal?
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LilyM
Guest
The assertion that God does not communicate with us directly.and what assertion is that?
how about you tell me what god told you. and i’ll tell you where you really got it from. deal?
Put it this way - my beliefs are extremely inconvenient both to myself and those around me (who like all human beings sometimes wish I would bend a bit when it suits them for me to do so). That is at least a good indicator that they do not come from self interest nor from peer pressure.
You cannot say the same for yours.
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sophion
Guest
miss lily,
the fact is God does not communicate with me directly nor to anybody i know personally! nor to most people on earth. so even if god really communicates with you, or some guy out there the logic of my generalization is still correct. us- means the huge majority. is true.
so what does that prove?
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Look at it this way, what Jesus does promise is life, eternal life. This is not reducible to knowledge. A plant does not “know” anything about how it converts light from the sun to produce the energy it needs to flourish. If the plant began to become intelligent and learned how sun light is converted to sugar and energy in its leaves, that might be a bonus, but the plant does not need to understand how it works for it to work.
God provides grace to us in the same way that sunlight is used by plants. Grace makes us essentially good if we use it. We may or may not “know” how grace is efficacious, just as a plant has no way of knowing how sunlight helps it survive, but it does. All that is required for grace to work is a good will, the will to do God’s will, to be good, we need not know anything else.
Knowledge might be helpful in making use of grace, but it might, likewise, just get in the way. What is key for God, is not so much that information is given to us that we might “know,” but that grace is given to us so that we might “be” good.
So, it seems to me, that grace is the important factor, just as sunlight is for plants, but knowledge may or may not be helpful, and grace requires only one thing, a determination of the will to be good. Knowledge is optional, but like hands and tongues, if they cause you to sin, Jesus advised getting rid of them.
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Neoplatonist
Guest
Yes, now we’re getting to the really juicy part. Eternal life. Before I explain, though, I have to say your approach here to the possibility of an unknowing outgrowth of our inner nature sounds more Eastern and certainly seems to bypass the profound “otherness” of God as developed in the Catholic tradition. On this model things like redemption, grace, forgiveness, efficacious prayer, and judgment all fall aside. Surely that is not the direction you intend to travel.
But eternal life. There is the keystone. There is the promise of a job when you graduate from college, to connect with my analogy from earlier. I’m not asking God to “give” me an entire college education, in this case. But if I’m going to take out student loans, I want to know (not just hope) there are people do graduate from college and go on to get jobs (life after this one, after the death of the body).
Nor do I want a rigid algorithm as mentioned a couple of posts back that churns out cookie cutter automatons. To pick up on the theme that poster introduced, art, we can allow that certainly, my time must be spent developing my own works of art and my own style, but it only takes on meaning beyond a mere hedonism if there is an artistic life after I graduate from art school. Let the faithfully departed, a burning bush, an angel, whatever, show me that there is life and art after art school. With that in hand, the tasks of study and practice become things of joy and light.
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Peter_Plato
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God is indeed “transcendent,” but in Catholic tradition he is also immanent. Our spiritual growth toward sanctity is organic and the growth of the Kingdom of God (the will of God manifest in each of our lives) is from within.
“Careful observation” or seeking observable confirmations and signs will not get us closer to doing the will of God and bringing about the Kingdom because that part is not up to us. Like the sunshine, grace will enliven the Kingdom. It is not up to us to “know” how and by this knowledge bring about the Kingdom by power or intellect of our own. It is essentially grace working in and through us by faith.
To repeat, “…you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going…” Faith is required. To demand to know by confirmable signs of your own determination and on your terms is putting faith in your own abilities to discern and carry out what needs to take place once those signs are provided. Ultimately, however, it is God acting through his grace that is the powerful source of all real growth in the Kingdom
Of course, all this presumes Jesus knew what he was talking about and initiated the coming of the Kingdom at Passover. As Paul has pointed out, the Church is his Body, the Kingdom of believers, ruled by Christ the King and enlivened by the Holy Spirit. It is the community of believers moved by grace and faith, not by signs of their own choosing. God has given signs of his determination, they are called sacraments. We can either trust him on this or decide we should have the say on what counts as a convincing demonstration of God’s will.
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Peter_Plato
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I don’t recall having had any assurance of “joy and light” going through “art school.” There was the “hope” of joy and light, and that served as assurance.
In this case, it is God himself who provides the assurance. You can either trust him on this or seek some other assurance like a burning bush or angel of light. It seems to me, however, that seeking some other assurance is a sure sign of not trusting him.
My guess is that when the going gets tough, the seekers of ‘joy and light’ will soon disappear.
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Neoplatonist
Guest
- In the closing, are you suggesting that the writings of the saints talking about joy were misguided?
- I was just saying there would be joy - like that reflected in the language of the bride and bridegroom in the NT.
- I think it’s pretty easy to talk about having faith without signs for a bunch of people who allegedly saw a whole bushel basket full of signs and wonders.
- “God himself provides the assurance.” That’s begging the question. It is my whole contention that He doesn’t - hence the interesting theological and philosophical attempts going on to understand the “hiddenness of God.” Trusting him when He says something is far different than trusting what someone said someone else said He said. Any parent or spouse is familiar with the times when a child reaches out to them in fear or sadness or anxiety, and we offer a few words of comfort. What kind of dysfunctional relationship would NOT say something at those times in order that the spouse or the child could show how they trust us? When God tells me I should rest easy and know that there is life beyond the body, I would be in a position to trust him without requiring him to explain it all. When He tells me, though, or shows me. Not when someone tells someone else that their cousin was told by God . . .
- Are you suggesting that doubting Thomas should not be considered a saint?
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Peter_Plato
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The saints had joy precisely because they did not go looking for it. If their goal was joy rather than seeking the kingdom they would have given up when things got rough and joy seemed distant. It was because they didn’t seek it that they did find it.
There will be joy, but joy is not a virtue. It is a side effect of the virtues. Faith, hope and love along with prudence, justice, courage and moderation are the virtues. Seeking to become virtuous brings joy, but seeking joy does not bring about virtue or joy.
If the virtue of faith was easy, the churches would be filled. Perhaps the signs they (the Apostles and disciples) had were special circumstances precisely because they were called to such heroic virtue later on. The Israelites spent 400 years in Egypt before Moses was called and great signs were brought about. Signs will come at God’s determination, not ours.
Perhaps but to teach a child to place all their trust in the comfort of others is setting them up for disillusionment. Better to be trustworthy to the end and under all circumstances so the child’s trust is supported, than to speak trusting words and not live up to them.
The “hiddenness” of God is precisely the means by which trust is developed. No “trust” is required if every bidding and want is immediately provided. Comfort, assurance and security may result, but not the virtue of “trust.” Trust is only strengthened when we actually exercise trust in the face of all indications to the contrary. I might claim to “trust” my spouse if she is always beside me, but trust is “tested” when her actions are hidden from me. Only then is real trust required.
You are not being asked to trust someone else telling you, you are being called to develop trust in God. That only comes when you exercise trust in the face of risk. You didn’t bring yourself into existence, surely the One who had the wherewithal to bring that about, along with the entire universe, also has the power to keep you in existence after death.
Assurance from God rarely happens externally. I find it is more of a “tuning in” with my whole being, often in the face of extreme contraindications from the outside. Prayer is an absolute necessity, as are the sacraments.
When Jesus was facing his passion, the external supports (friends, popularity, success, power, prestige) in his life were completely taken away. What did he rely upon but faith? Again that is why faith is considered a virtue. There are times it must be exercised. In fact it is a prudent to practice it at all times.
Thomas, the Apostles and disciples were called to extraordinary action after Jesus’ Resurrection and the Passover. They may have needed some extraordinary assurance to undertake what was required of them. They are saints because they fulfilled their call, in spite of doubts, betrayal and other, less than saintly, behaviours. Perhaps, if God calls you to something extraordinary, he will, likewise, provide you with a sign to motivate you to act, but that would be his call, not yours. On the other hand, if you undertake an extraordinary act of love, he might also provide an extraordinary sign of assurance, but in a way you least expect.
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GregBussey
Guest
God spoke to me actually, physically, tangibly three times. In His presence, there is nothing you can do but shut up. His holiness floods out all thoughts of self. The first time, His message was that I deserved death because I had not sought Him above all else even though I loved Him above all else. I learned that it is intensely sorrowful to be apart from Him. The second time, His message was that His power is infinite and nothing to joke about. And he will not resist my cry for mercy. The third time, He filled every cell of my body with his presence. It was intense, burning, but not in a painful way, and loving and wonderful, far beyond anything I had ever imagined. His message was that He loves me. Words cannot convey the meaning of these messages adequately but in His presense, it made perfect and complete sense. This happened to me 20 years ago. It caused a 180-degree change in the kind of person I am. I have since returned to the sacraments and have come to understand that everything in the bible is completely true in the sense in which it was written – including the words of the Lord to doubting Thomas: “Blessed is he who does not see and yet believes.”
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Neoplatonist
Guest
Interesting. It makes perfect sense for you to believe given your experiences. Your perspective on whether people who have not seen should believe now has much less value, though.
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Portofino
Guest
You wrote a few posts back that what matters is not knowledge of God – rather, you likened the person receiving grace to a plant receiving sunlight, even if it does not have knowledge of sunlight – and that what was important was an unfolding of the goodness that was within oneself; a state of being, not a state of knowledge.
This seemed at least compatible with an individual who is spiritual, but not religious; or an individual who is non-religious, but a good person.
In more recent posts, however, you introduced the element of faith as a requirement, which seems --assuming you weren’t shifting your position – to clarify that saying “knowledge is not necessary” is not the same as saying “conscious awareness of God and of the necessity for faith” is not necessary.
You seemed to imply that the need for faith is an awareness that should come from *within *, based on the help of grace.
It kind of brings us full circle with the argument of Neoplatonist - “why doesn’t God communicate with us more directly?” But you seem to be maintaining that there is something within us that does recognize the need for faith, or that God does communicate with us (for example, through innate ideas, or a kind of inspiration). Awareness of is still “knowledge of,” even if it does not come through reasoning (the Gnostics, for example, did not believe in gnosis through reasoning, but through awareness of the God within); in this sense, then, knowledge is necessary.
It becomes tricky, though, because no one could be a Christian without having heard of Christianity from the outside – without being told by the Church, “we know whereof we speak”; or without being handed a Bible, and told, “it knows whereof it speaks.” No one ever came to conscious awareness of the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, without having been told about it from another human being.
Subsequent to this exposure, God then would be communicating directly because – when you picked up a Bible, for example – your feelings or intuition, perhaps, would enable you to “sense” the truth behind the words. Or these inner promptings would tell you that your intellect does not understand–revolts against it, perhaps–but you at least understand and are sufficiently aware that you ought to have faith and trust in it.
This raises a big question mark, then, for all those who have heard of Christianity from the outside, which is indeed necessary – from their parents, their teachers, fellow Christians, through being evangelized, through having a Bible placed in their hands – and yet do not accept it. Grace never translates, for them, into a conscious understanding of the need for faith. They are also told – inevitably, through others that claim authority in the matter – that they must have faith. Yet having faith in the Christian God may be no more compelling to them than having faith in Allah, or in the Book of Mormon. They feel no inner compulsion to believe it, or to put their faith and trust in it.
Intellectual reasoning could aid in the promptings of faith – for example, reason telling you that the Bible is of more historicity than the Book of Mormon, and that the Gospel accounts seem convincing – yet you’ve pointed out (rightly, it seems) that intellect alone is not reliable, since it is necessarily human and fallible.
So it seems what the difference of opinion boils down to, is that Neoplatonist is saying, “how does one know that faith is required, if God does not communicate with us directly?” And you seem to be saying, “knowledge of the need for faith is innate – the way God made us – and is triggered through the promptings of grace.”
Again, this ultimately raises the question of whether there is such thing as an honest non-Christian or an honest atheist – for example, one who receives grace as a plant receives sunlight, and unfolds the goodness within, without necessarily being aware of even the need for faith and trust that the Christian God exists, or that Christianity is true.
This seems to be the Gandhi dilemma, at bottom. Gandhi read the Gospels cover to cover and said, “I admire Christ”, but never felt compelled to convert to Christianity (other Indians have). Was it invincible ignorance? A mere intellectual error? Even calling it an intellectual error would be a paradox, however, because the Christian maintains that intellect alone cannot get the job done; only faith can.
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sophion
Guest
- “You are not seeking me enough. YOU DESERVE TO DIE”
- “My power is infinite. IT IS NOTHING TO JOKE ABOUT”
- “I LOVE YOU”
so, uh…how did that change your life. i thought you said you loved god already above all else before that. so what changed?
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Neoplatonist
Guest
If the virtue of faith was easy, the churches would be filled. Perhaps the signs they (the Apostles and disciples) had were special circumstances precisely because they were called to such heroic virtue later on.
Perhaps but to teach a child to place all their trust in the comfort of others is setting them up for disillusionment. Better to be trustworthy to the end and under all circumstances so the child’s trust is supported, than to speak trusting words and not live up to them.
The “hiddenness” of God is precisely the means by which trust is developed. No “trust” is required if every bidding and want is immediately provided. Comfort, assurance and security may result, but not the virtue of “trust.” Trust is only strengthened when we actually exercise trust in the face of all indications to the contrary. I might claim to “trust” my spouse if she is always beside me, but trust is “tested” when her actions are hidden from me. Only then is real trust required.
You are not being asked to trust someone else telling you, you are being called to develop trust in God. That only comes when you exercise trust in the face of risk. You didn’t bring yourself into existence, surely the One who had the wherewithal to bring that about, along with the entire universe, also has the power to keep you in existence after death.
When Jesus was facing his passion, the external supports (friends, popularity, success, power, prestige) in his life were completely taken away. What did he rely upon but faith? Again that is why faith is considered a virtue. There are times it must be exercised. In fact it is a prudent to practice it at all times.
Thomas, the Apostles and disciples were called to extraordinary action after Jesus’ Resurrection and the Passover. They may have needed some extraordinary assurance to undertake what was required of them. They are saints because they fulfilled their call, in spite of doubts, betrayal and other, less than saintly, behaviours. Perhaps, if God calls you to something extraordinary, he will, likewise, provide you with a sign to motivate you to act, but that would be his call, not yours. On the other hand, if you undertake an extraordinary act of love, he might also provide an extraordinary sign of assurance, but in a way you least expect.
- Not all who have received signs and visitations have been called to heroic virtue. But if that is the price, I would gladly pay it. I trust the words of the Saints who have said it was still worth more than the price they paid. n.b., This is a function of the experiences, however, not a function of hearing someone else tell them of an experience.
- Stop trying to fill me with straw I am not suggesting that we must work without trust, or that we must put ALL our trust in others. Nor am I suggesting anything close to “having every bidding and want immediately provided.”
- There are two important distinctions, which are being lost,
a) that between trusting in someone’s motives once they have shown you, and I mean you personally, that they have your interests in heart and deserve to be trusted, and
b) the difference between trusting in their intentions in a given ambiguous situation, and trusting in their existence
With regard to b, well, I take something like the dancing sun to be a good example of a sufficiently ambiguous sign of God’s existence, while being far from an answer to all my questions or a completion of all my longings.
- It is important in our discussion to consider that arguments from design never get us more than theism. They do not get us to deism, and that is an important gap.
- The parable of the passive friend. Let’s talk about my friend from college, we’ll call him Jack. We hung out a lot, he was a great-hearted guy, we had some laughs and some tears, did some things we wouldn’t want to come up during a Senate campaign, and so on. Over the years, he has been consistently non-responsive when I invited people to parties, when I needed help moving, whatever. Now on your model, maybe he’s doing that so that I will trust him MORE, or somehow be offered the chance to develop a more pure form of friendship. For most of us, though, we would - at some point along the curve - begin to trust him LESS. Now, if we imagine that same parable, and take away the time we spent together in college sharing (mis-)adventures and so on, the problem with the PURE TRUST model stands in even sharper contrast.
No, something Clarence or Imogene wrote down in a book about a voice they heard doesn’t count as me being asked. Nor does seeing a picture of suffering kids in Africa, which could be there (wherever it is I see it) for any of a thousand reasons. (Unless, of course, it just appears in front of me in mid-air.)
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Neoplatonist
Guest
Yeah, I dated a girl kind of like that once.
- “You are not seeking me enough. YOU DESERVE TO DIE”
- “My power is infinite. IT IS NOTHING TO JOKE ABOUT”
- “I LOVE YOU”
so, uh…how did that change your life. i thought you said you loved god already above all else before that. so what changed?
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InJesusItrust
Guest
When I was an unbeliever I was presented with a problem. I had no faith in God, yet the bible you must have faith and ask with your heart to receive whatever you need–that is to please God, you must believe He is first. I had of course heard of Christians describing their experiences of God, and knew that I just couldn’t have faith without such an experience.
I solved this problem by taking a leap of faith: “Oh God, I want believe in you but I am unable to. Please give me faith so I may believe.” I reasoned thus: if I prayed in faith with all my heart then God may have pity on me and give me the gift of faith. Now what prompted me to believe that God existed in the first place that I wanted to believe in Him? Was that not a kind of faith?
I believe faith comes by reading the Bible. You feel a prompting to call out to this God, but you may also ignore this prompting. Hearing God’s Word plants the seed of faith. The soil it lands on can be tilled or ignored, and some soils can never help the plant grow. The sunlight (grace) is given to all, but the seed must be nurtured.
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