I am five out of five. Had some credible firsthand experience with three of them.
Morality is a construct, and ours in the West (and spread to the world, really) is based on Christianity. And with Christianity being assailed from without and within...well, take it away, Nietzsche: "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads."
As the fumes of the fuel of Christendom evaporate, I fear that we will live through consequences as noted by Dostoevsky in "The Brothers Karamazov." Buckle up.
I've been calling them "Halloweenies" for years, but I quite like your formulation too. And the way they self-describe as a "non-theistic religion" to grift on tax exemption is such a hilariously stupid indictment of our debauched government, it's almost worth the price tag.
I remember the first one that I ever met. This would have been '99 before goth became emo and satanism became fashionable. We were both 16 started our freshman year together and were both admitted under an Honors dual enrollment thing which was a rather small program as the University was rather careful about being responsible for minors, probably the reason the program didn't last long, so we met the first day and saw quite a lot of each other for awhile.
Parker seemed like a nice guy the day we were moving into the dorm and I made some joke at him and was greeted with a hateful sneer, almost animalistic. Now, I am not a great one for jokes now and was even worse then but they don't normally provoke that sort of response. He was apparently already fairly accomplished artistically and it seemed strange that someone with such disdain for 'rednecks' had left Manhattan to attend school in Georgia. Looking back I think that he was there to be kept away from the drugs.
Within a couple of days the veneer was gone. He wore the same pair of leather pants and fishnet shirt thing the rest of the time that I knew him, which was until that spring. He spent his time giving himself piercings and trying to make everyone else uncomfortable, by asking questions about kinky sex stuff. I think that it only took him a week or two for him to make an 'acid connection' and he spiraled downhill fast. After Christmas break no one saw him much. When he was not high he would occasionally come around 'blow our minds' or whatever and express how much he hated us and how superior he was.
I always had the impression that he was bright and talented and lots of people tried to be his friend and be accepting and all of that sort of thing but he was deliberately ostentatiously transgressive. My guess, based on half remembered impressions, is that it was all a performance; hurting himself to punish his mom for being too busy for him.(Did anyone ever paint that picture as well as Pink Floyd in Welcome to the Machine? 'You bought a guitar to punish your mom') Anyway, it took until like March or April for his drug problem to be serious enough that he was whisked away back to his home.
I think about him when I see the emo kids, or whatever that is called now. That is the reality that they are LARPing. The child with all of the material advantages but nothing that actually makes life worth living who is destroying himself, the one who stuffs psychedelics in the hope that they will actually 'delete the self/soul' is a pretty piss poor role model.
My own research indicates that around 97% of people in developed countries are not even aware of the physical world around them. If you aren't even aware of what is going on around you then you are pretty clueless about spiritual realities. This isn't just logical I can back it up from 1 John 4. My apologies to any hermits or ascetic types but you are called to be 'in the world' because living a human life is a precondition for living a spiritual life. Anyway, back to the main point, based on that research the maximum number that might believe in 'spiritual entities' in any meaningful way is 3%. Out of that 3% the number who actually live in the truth to any degree is let's say 1 in 10.
Turns out that the many going through the broad gate to destruction is a feature not a bug. Read Matthew 7, the cause is said to be 'because the gate to life is very narrow'. He could have made that gate anyway that He wanted to. You are meant to have the experience of standing alone for the truth, a man facing off against the world, the flesh, and yes the Devil with only an invisible hope and a faith with no earthly support. In the cause of truth, whether natural or spiritual Numbers and Consensus are signs of weakness not strength.
So, all that remains my intrepid friends is to remind you that while you appear to be helpless you actually have with you the weapons with which St. Michael cast down the devil.
'10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.' Revelation 12
Your connection to the blood of the Lamb is 'the Way of the Cross', victory through defeat, glory through accepted humiliation, and the Communion of the Saints who follow this path.
The Testimony that we have is simply that we are weak, needy, unworthy, still crawling when we should be flying, lusting after the fleshpots of Egypt when we ought by now to be panting for Canaan's bounty. That we make a poor use or too often no use of the grace that we have been given but that this is irrelevant because it is exceedingly abundant and of surpassing excellence. Strangely the smaller we are the larger we become when the infinite God is added to us. Testify therefore to your smallness and dirtiness. Highlight your failures and the dragons will fall faster and further than you expect. I don't think that anything needs to be said about not loving your life to the death, does it?
I love the scripture verses you posted. Over the years, I have used that passage to irritate fundamentalists that believe in the 19th century fantasy that Christians will be sucked off the planet in a great Rapture. According to Jesus (as recorded in the book of Matthew), the evil ones, like weeds, will be removed before the product of God's love (believers) are taken.
Polls will always be misleading. It depends on how questions are asked. Do I believe in a Higher Power? Yes. Do I believe in magic? No.
Many who believe in Jesus accept the truth presented by Thomas Jefferson in his THE LIFE AND MORALS OF JESUS OF NAZARETH. Jesus' divinity was on display when he gave the Sermon on the Mount and when he told his disciples how to pray. I believe a person can be a Christian without believing in the Virgin Birth or Jesus' resurrection.
Never forget that the Gospels were written long after Jesus died. How accurate a view of Robert E. Lee or Abraham Lincoln do contemporary Americans have? And their exploits took place less than 200 years ago.
People can find God on their own without intermediaries. Quantum physics confirms that the universe and everything we experience is the result of waves of energy from the Ultimate Source.
The Gospels were written within 30 years of Jesus' death. Oral cultures can preserve knowledge far better than our own, where things are written down, but nobody bothers to read them.
And while you can find spirits on your own without intermediaries, not all the spirits are benign.
The book of Mark was the first book printed and it is believed to have been printed within 30 years of Jesus' death. The others were written after the destruction of the Temple, with the final book written between 90 AD and 100 AD.
Thirty years ago, terrorists carried out their first attack on the World Trade Center, and Rudy Giuliani became the first Republican mayor of New York City in 20 years.
What do we remember accurately about 1993?
While I would never challenge another Christian's faith, the gospels are inconsistent in reporting on the life of Christ (hence - Jefferson's project to cut-and-paste those bits of scripture that were consistent and did not include magic in the "Jefferson Bible".
That being said, Christianity has been a boon to mankind [when we ignore the politics of the Vatican and the Inquisition].
I agree that not all spirits are benign. Nice to meet you, Eric.
It was interesting reading Y.B. Yeats "The Celtic Twilight" which talked about all the peasant folk beliefs in all sorts of creatures. Fairies, wights, you name it. Peasant Christianity has always had this mix of pagan folkways and The Church. It's easy to dismiss these sorts of visions and experiences as primitive, but imagine how different life is to a peasant who had no T.V., internet, or even reading material. It was full immersion in the world, with all its strange elements that never fit nicely into theory. There was a symbiosis with nature that would surpass even the most devout yoga practitioner in this day and age.
This isn't to say there weren't terrible issues with such places. There was the poverty and corruption of man that exists everywhere, but they were smart enough not to dismiss the existence of fairies.
I think we (as a culture) have largely lost the meaning of believing in God (specifically the Christian One True God) and all the other things that go along with it. We attend a very small parish church, very traditional, so everyone there and their families are little-o orthodox. But I often come across other Catholics in my everyday life who really have no clue what the Church really teaches, etc. It’s astonishing. Of course, then there’s the “spiritual not religious” people. They don’t surprise me as much.
Being Gen X, I received First Holy Communion and Confirmation without ever being taught what, for example, Matthew 25: etc meant or even hearing the words New and Old Testaments in my CCD classes. It's no surprise that I wandered away from my faith when strong winds blew.
Looking back at Vatican II, I truly believe that this poor faith formation was a deliberate attempt to undermine the faith. Characters like Pope Francis, Cardinals Cupic and Gregory, and Fr. James Martin are busy fertilizing weeds to choke out any blossoming genuine faith.
Lots of Catholics have no clue because nobody ever taught them the Catechism. I converted, and the RCIA classes (as they were called at the time) were really light on concrete Catholic teachings.
Same for me -- RCIA. I ne er even had a first confession. But I found a traditional church plus we did a lot of reading of Church Fathers, etc., that changed everything.
Interesting that demonic, obsessive, maniacal behavior is on the rise at the same time belief in "spiritual entities" is falling, which reminds me Carl Jung's observation of a similar trend in prewar Europe:
“Just when people were congratulating themselves on having abolished [the belief in demons], it turned out that instead of haunting the attic or old ruins the [demons] were flitting about in the heads of apparently normal Europeans. Tyrannical, obsessive, intoxicating ideas and delusions were abroad everywhere, and people began to believe the most absurd things, just as the possessed do.”
“Just as it’s equally certain their meaning of God might not match your own.”
Absolutely. Given the atheist’s description of what he doesn’t “believe in”, I invariably agree that I don’t believe in that, either, and I don’t blame them for not believing it. They’re usually straw gods, yet their disbelief being a religion, a dogma, they will reflexively reject a modern conception of the Infinite no matter how formulated.
The God of the primitives worked fine for primitive minds. It doesn’t work so well for modern minds, but many find themselves too preoccupied to work their way through to a more sophisticated understanding. And that’s sad.
I would suggest that the concept of the soul entering the world under forfeit (original sin) and the consequent belief that some sacrifice or at least special procedures are required to win God’s favor are primitive, yet almost universal, beliefs that aren’t compatible with more modern visions of the Universal, Infinite and Eternal.
Even so, it was revealed more than 2,000 years ago by Jesus of Nazareth that the only requirement of salvation is faith, and that faith is a personal and private matter between the individual and the Creator. “Ask and it shall be given; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened”.
Your citation doesn't seem to support your point, particularly in context. I doubt that you can find much support in Jesus of Nazareth for your position without mutilating the New Testament. And your 'modern visions' are going down like the Titanic so I'm not sure how much faith I would put in them. Probably time to actually read what the text says a little closer. But I do agree with you about your fundamental agreement with atheists.
It supports the point exactly. Jesus didn’t say “ask and perform some ritual and you shall receive”. “By faith ALONE are you saved” seems to me to exclude ritual.
Saved implies fallen. And while I believe in Sola fide the closest to those words you will find is in Paul(by grace you are saved through faith and that(faith) not of yourselves it(faith) is the gift of God). If you look a few verses down you will see that most of humanity goes through the broad gate to destruction. While the faith that constitutes walking through the narrow gate certainly isn't ritual it is a faith in a saviour from your sins. Saving faith implies a fall and a need for a sviour.
I believe that God knows us— who we were, are, and are becoming— perfectly and exclusively. To argue otherwise is to deny that God is omniscient, which, as the source and center of all reality He must necessarily be. His knowledge of us and His understanding of our spiritual needs as individuals is not affected by, or conditioned on, the actions of any third party, past, present or future.
In some sense, each of us relies on divine mercy— I doubt you can show me the person of advanced (relative to their earlier self) spiritual standing who would, in retrospect, not choose to have done certain things in a way that was more consistent with Jesus’ vision of how we should conduct ourselves than what they actually did. In those cases, the eye of faith lets them see that they may be judged on their life performance as a whole— that divine mercy may be extended. There really is joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, and not because they are about to receive punishment but because Jesus will lovingly welcome them to the fold just as in the parable. And while it seems to be the case that those who wake up and desire to follow the path of righteousness so brilliantly illuminated by Jesus of Nazareth are rather fewer in number than they might be, we should never doubt that divine mercy will be extended to the exhaustion of any chance of rehabilitation before divine justice functions.
The debate among professing Christians regarding salvation through faith vs salvation through works began when Jesus' disciple Peter disagreed with the Pharisee Saul. James, the brother of Jesus, also disagreed with the radical theories of that man.
That’s interesting. I see both sides of the coin: the decision to live your life according to God’s will is the first act of faith; living it — taking action to share God’s love — validates and makes real that decision. The works follow faith, naturally and joyfully. God’s mission for us is much less about intellectual assent and much more about action.
Performing works without the faith is noble, but isn’t (necessarily) the path to salvation.
While the apostolic disagreement is real, it was resolved by the Jerusalem Council. Peter's earlier preaching to the Gentiles had already laid the foundation the details simply had to be worked out in the trenches, with fear and trembling you might say.
The exaggeration of apostolic conflict goes back to Tubingen and Baur and needs to be jettisoned like the rest of the 'higher criticism'
I suppose that is some of the Marxist woke influence, nominal atheists who can't believe in God or magic because criticism or disagreement is equivalent to hate speech, and then they get to be self-righteous without having to be righteous in any way.
"Even inside the Church, there are those who would have you snyodally lean forward with great synodilicity and accept the synodolic, warm ministrations along your Synodal Path."
And there are also people who insist that this synodilicity is actually Catholic.
State, Church and Devil are three different shapes of one entity, changing garb according to necessity. Not too difficult to fit in the rest as well. Or the Bible as a bunch of fig leaves.
I am five out of five. Had some credible firsthand experience with three of them.
Morality is a construct, and ours in the West (and spread to the world, really) is based on Christianity. And with Christianity being assailed from without and within...well, take it away, Nietzsche: "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads."
As the fumes of the fuel of Christendom evaporate, I fear that we will live through consequences as noted by Dostoevsky in "The Brothers Karamazov." Buckle up.
I'd use Dostoyevsky's _Demons_, rather than _The Brothers Karamazov_, but yeah.
Want to get even more depressed? Read Antony Beevor's Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921.
The Bolsheviks were scum, but they were organized scum; the Whites were (for the most part) just as scummy, but way more disorganized.
Demons walk among us, that's for sure. Thanks, I will check out the Beevor book.
"Church of Satan fedora LARPers..."
I've been calling them "Halloweenies" for years, but I quite like your formulation too. And the way they self-describe as a "non-theistic religion" to grift on tax exemption is such a hilariously stupid indictment of our debauched government, it's almost worth the price tag.
I remember the first one that I ever met. This would have been '99 before goth became emo and satanism became fashionable. We were both 16 started our freshman year together and were both admitted under an Honors dual enrollment thing which was a rather small program as the University was rather careful about being responsible for minors, probably the reason the program didn't last long, so we met the first day and saw quite a lot of each other for awhile.
Parker seemed like a nice guy the day we were moving into the dorm and I made some joke at him and was greeted with a hateful sneer, almost animalistic. Now, I am not a great one for jokes now and was even worse then but they don't normally provoke that sort of response. He was apparently already fairly accomplished artistically and it seemed strange that someone with such disdain for 'rednecks' had left Manhattan to attend school in Georgia. Looking back I think that he was there to be kept away from the drugs.
Within a couple of days the veneer was gone. He wore the same pair of leather pants and fishnet shirt thing the rest of the time that I knew him, which was until that spring. He spent his time giving himself piercings and trying to make everyone else uncomfortable, by asking questions about kinky sex stuff. I think that it only took him a week or two for him to make an 'acid connection' and he spiraled downhill fast. After Christmas break no one saw him much. When he was not high he would occasionally come around 'blow our minds' or whatever and express how much he hated us and how superior he was.
I always had the impression that he was bright and talented and lots of people tried to be his friend and be accepting and all of that sort of thing but he was deliberately ostentatiously transgressive. My guess, based on half remembered impressions, is that it was all a performance; hurting himself to punish his mom for being too busy for him.(Did anyone ever paint that picture as well as Pink Floyd in Welcome to the Machine? 'You bought a guitar to punish your mom') Anyway, it took until like March or April for his drug problem to be serious enough that he was whisked away back to his home.
I think about him when I see the emo kids, or whatever that is called now. That is the reality that they are LARPing. The child with all of the material advantages but nothing that actually makes life worth living who is destroying himself, the one who stuffs psychedelics in the hope that they will actually 'delete the self/soul' is a pretty piss poor role model.
My own research indicates that around 97% of people in developed countries are not even aware of the physical world around them. If you aren't even aware of what is going on around you then you are pretty clueless about spiritual realities. This isn't just logical I can back it up from 1 John 4. My apologies to any hermits or ascetic types but you are called to be 'in the world' because living a human life is a precondition for living a spiritual life. Anyway, back to the main point, based on that research the maximum number that might believe in 'spiritual entities' in any meaningful way is 3%. Out of that 3% the number who actually live in the truth to any degree is let's say 1 in 10.
Turns out that the many going through the broad gate to destruction is a feature not a bug. Read Matthew 7, the cause is said to be 'because the gate to life is very narrow'. He could have made that gate anyway that He wanted to. You are meant to have the experience of standing alone for the truth, a man facing off against the world, the flesh, and yes the Devil with only an invisible hope and a faith with no earthly support. In the cause of truth, whether natural or spiritual Numbers and Consensus are signs of weakness not strength.
So, all that remains my intrepid friends is to remind you that while you appear to be helpless you actually have with you the weapons with which St. Michael cast down the devil.
'10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.' Revelation 12
Your connection to the blood of the Lamb is 'the Way of the Cross', victory through defeat, glory through accepted humiliation, and the Communion of the Saints who follow this path.
The Testimony that we have is simply that we are weak, needy, unworthy, still crawling when we should be flying, lusting after the fleshpots of Egypt when we ought by now to be panting for Canaan's bounty. That we make a poor use or too often no use of the grace that we have been given but that this is irrelevant because it is exceedingly abundant and of surpassing excellence. Strangely the smaller we are the larger we become when the infinite God is added to us. Testify therefore to your smallness and dirtiness. Highlight your failures and the dragons will fall faster and further than you expect. I don't think that anything needs to be said about not loving your life to the death, does it?
Wise of you to refuse to identify the hectoring uglies collective; everyone would be well-advised to skip the view aka The View.
Maybe it is called that because they all have The Same View of everything?
*Just as pertains to inside-out upside-down rightside-never long-suffering world(view).
I love the scripture verses you posted. Over the years, I have used that passage to irritate fundamentalists that believe in the 19th century fantasy that Christians will be sucked off the planet in a great Rapture. According to Jesus (as recorded in the book of Matthew), the evil ones, like weeds, will be removed before the product of God's love (believers) are taken.
Polls will always be misleading. It depends on how questions are asked. Do I believe in a Higher Power? Yes. Do I believe in magic? No.
Many who believe in Jesus accept the truth presented by Thomas Jefferson in his THE LIFE AND MORALS OF JESUS OF NAZARETH. Jesus' divinity was on display when he gave the Sermon on the Mount and when he told his disciples how to pray. I believe a person can be a Christian without believing in the Virgin Birth or Jesus' resurrection.
Never forget that the Gospels were written long after Jesus died. How accurate a view of Robert E. Lee or Abraham Lincoln do contemporary Americans have? And their exploits took place less than 200 years ago.
People can find God on their own without intermediaries. Quantum physics confirms that the universe and everything we experience is the result of waves of energy from the Ultimate Source.
The Gospels were written within 30 years of Jesus' death. Oral cultures can preserve knowledge far better than our own, where things are written down, but nobody bothers to read them.
And while you can find spirits on your own without intermediaries, not all the spirits are benign.
The book of Mark was the first book printed and it is believed to have been printed within 30 years of Jesus' death. The others were written after the destruction of the Temple, with the final book written between 90 AD and 100 AD.
Thirty years ago, terrorists carried out their first attack on the World Trade Center, and Rudy Giuliani became the first Republican mayor of New York City in 20 years.
What do we remember accurately about 1993?
While I would never challenge another Christian's faith, the gospels are inconsistent in reporting on the life of Christ (hence - Jefferson's project to cut-and-paste those bits of scripture that were consistent and did not include magic in the "Jefferson Bible".
That being said, Christianity has been a boon to mankind [when we ignore the politics of the Vatican and the Inquisition].
I agree that not all spirits are benign. Nice to meet you, Eric.
It was interesting reading Y.B. Yeats "The Celtic Twilight" which talked about all the peasant folk beliefs in all sorts of creatures. Fairies, wights, you name it. Peasant Christianity has always had this mix of pagan folkways and The Church. It's easy to dismiss these sorts of visions and experiences as primitive, but imagine how different life is to a peasant who had no T.V., internet, or even reading material. It was full immersion in the world, with all its strange elements that never fit nicely into theory. There was a symbiosis with nature that would surpass even the most devout yoga practitioner in this day and age.
This isn't to say there weren't terrible issues with such places. There was the poverty and corruption of man that exists everywhere, but they were smart enough not to dismiss the existence of fairies.
I think we (as a culture) have largely lost the meaning of believing in God (specifically the Christian One True God) and all the other things that go along with it. We attend a very small parish church, very traditional, so everyone there and their families are little-o orthodox. But I often come across other Catholics in my everyday life who really have no clue what the Church really teaches, etc. It’s astonishing. Of course, then there’s the “spiritual not religious” people. They don’t surprise me as much.
Being Gen X, I received First Holy Communion and Confirmation without ever being taught what, for example, Matthew 25: etc meant or even hearing the words New and Old Testaments in my CCD classes. It's no surprise that I wandered away from my faith when strong winds blew.
Looking back at Vatican II, I truly believe that this poor faith formation was a deliberate attempt to undermine the faith. Characters like Pope Francis, Cardinals Cupic and Gregory, and Fr. James Martin are busy fertilizing weeds to choke out any blossoming genuine faith.
The Smoke of Satan has indeed entered the Church.
I’m a convert, but I didn’t come to truly understand the deeper meaning of our Sacraments in our Faith until about 6 years ago.
Lots of Catholics have no clue because nobody ever taught them the Catechism. I converted, and the RCIA classes (as they were called at the time) were really light on concrete Catholic teachings.
Same for me -- RCIA. I ne er even had a first confession. But I found a traditional church plus we did a lot of reading of Church Fathers, etc., that changed everything.
Interesting that demonic, obsessive, maniacal behavior is on the rise at the same time belief in "spiritual entities" is falling, which reminds me Carl Jung's observation of a similar trend in prewar Europe:
“Just when people were congratulating themselves on having abolished [the belief in demons], it turned out that instead of haunting the attic or old ruins the [demons] were flitting about in the heads of apparently normal Europeans. Tyrannical, obsessive, intoxicating ideas and delusions were abroad everywhere, and people began to believe the most absurd things, just as the possessed do.”
Carl Jung, After the Catastophe
“Just as it’s equally certain their meaning of God might not match your own.”
Absolutely. Given the atheist’s description of what he doesn’t “believe in”, I invariably agree that I don’t believe in that, either, and I don’t blame them for not believing it. They’re usually straw gods, yet their disbelief being a religion, a dogma, they will reflexively reject a modern conception of the Infinite no matter how formulated.
The God of the primitives worked fine for primitive minds. It doesn’t work so well for modern minds, but many find themselves too preoccupied to work their way through to a more sophisticated understanding. And that’s sad.
That is interesting. Can you give examples of the God of the primitives and what you find unsatisfying about Him?
I would suggest that the concept of the soul entering the world under forfeit (original sin) and the consequent belief that some sacrifice or at least special procedures are required to win God’s favor are primitive, yet almost universal, beliefs that aren’t compatible with more modern visions of the Universal, Infinite and Eternal.
Even so, it was revealed more than 2,000 years ago by Jesus of Nazareth that the only requirement of salvation is faith, and that faith is a personal and private matter between the individual and the Creator. “Ask and it shall be given; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened”.
Your citation doesn't seem to support your point, particularly in context. I doubt that you can find much support in Jesus of Nazareth for your position without mutilating the New Testament. And your 'modern visions' are going down like the Titanic so I'm not sure how much faith I would put in them. Probably time to actually read what the text says a little closer. But I do agree with you about your fundamental agreement with atheists.
It supports the point exactly. Jesus didn’t say “ask and perform some ritual and you shall receive”. “By faith ALONE are you saved” seems to me to exclude ritual.
Saved implies fallen. And while I believe in Sola fide the closest to those words you will find is in Paul(by grace you are saved through faith and that(faith) not of yourselves it(faith) is the gift of God). If you look a few verses down you will see that most of humanity goes through the broad gate to destruction. While the faith that constitutes walking through the narrow gate certainly isn't ritual it is a faith in a saviour from your sins. Saving faith implies a fall and a need for a sviour.
I believe that God knows us— who we were, are, and are becoming— perfectly and exclusively. To argue otherwise is to deny that God is omniscient, which, as the source and center of all reality He must necessarily be. His knowledge of us and His understanding of our spiritual needs as individuals is not affected by, or conditioned on, the actions of any third party, past, present or future.
In some sense, each of us relies on divine mercy— I doubt you can show me the person of advanced (relative to their earlier self) spiritual standing who would, in retrospect, not choose to have done certain things in a way that was more consistent with Jesus’ vision of how we should conduct ourselves than what they actually did. In those cases, the eye of faith lets them see that they may be judged on their life performance as a whole— that divine mercy may be extended. There really is joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, and not because they are about to receive punishment but because Jesus will lovingly welcome them to the fold just as in the parable. And while it seems to be the case that those who wake up and desire to follow the path of righteousness so brilliantly illuminated by Jesus of Nazareth are rather fewer in number than they might be, we should never doubt that divine mercy will be extended to the exhaustion of any chance of rehabilitation before divine justice functions.
The debate among professing Christians regarding salvation through faith vs salvation through works began when Jesus' disciple Peter disagreed with the Pharisee Saul. James, the brother of Jesus, also disagreed with the radical theories of that man.
That’s interesting. I see both sides of the coin: the decision to live your life according to God’s will is the first act of faith; living it — taking action to share God’s love — validates and makes real that decision. The works follow faith, naturally and joyfully. God’s mission for us is much less about intellectual assent and much more about action.
Performing works without the faith is noble, but isn’t (necessarily) the path to salvation.
While the apostolic disagreement is real, it was resolved by the Jerusalem Council. Peter's earlier preaching to the Gentiles had already laid the foundation the details simply had to be worked out in the trenches, with fear and trembling you might say.
The exaggeration of apostolic conflict goes back to Tubingen and Baur and needs to be jettisoned like the rest of the 'higher criticism'
I suppose that is some of the Marxist woke influence, nominal atheists who can't believe in God or magic because criticism or disagreement is equivalent to hate speech, and then they get to be self-righteous without having to be righteous in any way.
But what should be the point of the survey? Does this survey supposedly mean anything? If 2+2=4 it doesn't matter how many % of people believe in it.
"Even inside the Church, there are those who would have you snyodally lean forward with great synodilicity and accept the synodolic, warm ministrations along your Synodal Path."
And there are also people who insist that this synodilicity is actually Catholic.
State, Church and Devil are three different shapes of one entity, changing garb according to necessity. Not too difficult to fit in the rest as well. Or the Bible as a bunch of fig leaves.
It's all in Measure for Measure.