Never was the philosopher type. Saw one helluva convincing testimony on YouTube the other day, by a guy who had been in prison. Claimed that one night in his cell, two demons took him to hell, though at the end of his video I had the feeling he was more likely in purgatory. And if his description was truly of purgatory, looks like I better start making alot more time for penance in my remaining days. Ultimately, after being out of his mind with terror, beseeching Jesus, confessing the evil he had done in the past, begging for Jesus to save him ... an angel took him away from that horrible place, back to his prison cell. There was nothing about the actual content of his testimony that was convincing. Lots of people can invent some great story. It was the raw emotion that overcame him as he was describing his experience. That did not seem like acting. Pretty sure of that. It was for me very convincing. But veracity aside, what really stuck with me ... might have been in a second video of his I watched only in part ... was his insistence that Jesus prizes most highly not faith that is acquired through theology and logic, but rather faith that is childlike. If your small child loves you and trusts you as only a little kid can, you can just tell him or her ... "everything will be OK, don't worry". And it works like a charm. This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96ruXROoGsQ
I agree and several passages in the scriptures make clear that the path for finding God is not through reason alone, nor should our faith be based on that. As Paul puts it "And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."
God? I do recommend Stephen Mayer's recent and excellent, "The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries Revealing the Mind Behind the Universe"
Imagine man making an intellecual problem of God ... instead of being even aware that the presumedly learned discussion about God is, by its very nature, utter blasphemy. Shows the place where the source of that presumed learning aka the Holy Scriptures have landed us.
Meanwhile the most biblically inspired nations on earth continue the killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the Promised Land. On a biblical scale of course.
I would like to add GOD HELP US but do fear that by now that too is blasphemy .
I have been told that Thomist philosophy can be very deep and involved, and admittedly I have never dipped my oar in. Your piece is perhaps a nice introduction and is quite understandable, but it seems to leave no space for free will.
To me, free will is the most fascinating aspect of God / man interaction. I have (poorly) imagined it as a massively complicated dance of action/reaction that only an unknowable God could make happen. To my mind, Jesus is the ultimate example of that Devine dance
We only think free will is incompatible with predestination because we are inside time. But if God is outside of time, when you accept him and start being perfected by his Spirit and his Word, he can predestinate you in "the past". For you, it's the past, but for him it's not.
I’ve always thought of it as the difference between the fisherman and the fish. While the fisherman can stand on the bank and see the whole stream from beginning to end, the fish only sees what’s in front of him and the random actions he took to get there. Where it gets really interesting is seemingly His gaze always rests on the heart and not necessarily the actions of all the major players in the Bible. He always seems to assess ongoing intentions rather than any specific actions. From that point of view, predestination makes sense from a consistency standpoint. Simply put, most people seem to have hard hearts early on extending throughout their lives. I am probably off your original point, but some of His major players weren’t always well behaved until they were.
Nice example. I agree, he sees the change of heart before any actions. Another example I like is provided by open world games like gta, if you were the main charachter in the game it would seem to you that there is no other way your "life" could have happened, however, for the player outside the game, we know for sure that it could have been entirely different.
Excellent point. For the conscious person who is actively seeking to mature in all the important aspects of their lives, it can be quite startling to look back on an earlier version of yourself and realize just HOW MUCH you have changed. It’s His omniscient awareness of your full potential.
I think it’s interesting to contemplate whether God (that is, the Heavenly Father himself) actually ever directly intervenes in material affairs. Frankly, I doubt it. God inhabits the circle of eternity, which is to say that He transcends time. Therefore, from God’s perspective (to the extent it is possible to refer to His “perspective” — a perspective is relative whereas God is absolute, but let’s pretend for a moment) every chain of antecedent causation is fully and finally resolved. Think of it this way: God, at the apex level of Divinity, encompasses all that ever was, is or ever could be in all an infinite eternity and an eternal infinity. Consequently, for God there is no such thing as a material contingency (or any other kind of contingency). Said another way, God’s absoluteness implies His changelessness and thus God can never be surprised and therefore there never is any need for His direct intervention at the finite level.
So the more interesting question, in my view, is sort of the intension of yours: how does the Infinite and Eternal attenuate Himself such that the finite is even possible? How and “where” are actual and potential unified (for God is, by definition, unity)?
I once was a Deist too. Coincidence is how God gets things done. It's true the word "Surprise" is not in the Divine Vocabulary, but God did become Man and is still on earth Present in the Holy Eucharist on Earth. How much more personal can you get than that?
Yes. That very point was lurking in my question about how the infinite, eternal and absolute and the finite are able to coexist — the boundary between existential and experiential.
I tend to think of “coincidence” more as “all required finite interventions were baked in at the (hypothetical) inception of reality”: As you say, chains of antecedent causation often seem to intersect at fortuitous points.
I'm at that stage where I do think God exists, but I can't believe, right now, that he interferes directly with my life in any capacity. I doubt that, if I pray, that has any effect whatsoever in the way things unfold. I believe bad and good things happen randomly to everyone, the difference is that those who pray tend to be more at peace with their fate, and tend to even among adversity manifest virtue. St. Augustine has a wonderful text about this, and his understanding of adversity is similar, although I do not know his position on matters of prayer.
(Please don't show Modernism as an elegant sinusoidal waveform ever again. The horror.)
Words to live by in a Materialist world that has it's head buried in a phone app and hardly ever looks up at night at the night stars: "The greater the island of Knowledge, the greater the shoreline of Wonder -should be."
Best collection of proofs of God's Existence I know of:
Well William, having worked as an EE for while I do recognize this circuit. However, you left out a lot of components. Out of that full wave you're going to get some pretty lumpy PAIN across the FUTURE. HAHAHA.
Alas, I "quail against the powers of angels and demons" as well as vibrating strings, and am unconvinced a proper epistemology leads to either. Yet I suspect we'd agree on most of what that proper epistemology is. I'm admittedly a tiny demographic here, but try to represent something of a third option. Thought provoking as always, I look forward to the next one!
Never was the philosopher type. Saw one helluva convincing testimony on YouTube the other day, by a guy who had been in prison. Claimed that one night in his cell, two demons took him to hell, though at the end of his video I had the feeling he was more likely in purgatory. And if his description was truly of purgatory, looks like I better start making alot more time for penance in my remaining days. Ultimately, after being out of his mind with terror, beseeching Jesus, confessing the evil he had done in the past, begging for Jesus to save him ... an angel took him away from that horrible place, back to his prison cell. There was nothing about the actual content of his testimony that was convincing. Lots of people can invent some great story. It was the raw emotion that overcame him as he was describing his experience. That did not seem like acting. Pretty sure of that. It was for me very convincing. But veracity aside, what really stuck with me ... might have been in a second video of his I watched only in part ... was his insistence that Jesus prizes most highly not faith that is acquired through theology and logic, but rather faith that is childlike. If your small child loves you and trusts you as only a little kid can, you can just tell him or her ... "everything will be OK, don't worry". And it works like a charm. This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96ruXROoGsQ
I agree and several passages in the scriptures make clear that the path for finding God is not through reason alone, nor should our faith be based on that. As Paul puts it "And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."
✝️
God? I do recommend Stephen Mayer's recent and excellent, "The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries Revealing the Mind Behind the Universe"
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41088454
Imagine man making an intellecual problem of God ... instead of being even aware that the presumedly learned discussion about God is, by its very nature, utter blasphemy. Shows the place where the source of that presumed learning aka the Holy Scriptures have landed us.
Meanwhile the most biblically inspired nations on earth continue the killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the Promised Land. On a biblical scale of course.
I would like to add GOD HELP US but do fear that by now that too is blasphemy .
I have been told that Thomist philosophy can be very deep and involved, and admittedly I have never dipped my oar in. Your piece is perhaps a nice introduction and is quite understandable, but it seems to leave no space for free will.
I think it does, because it's your will that starts the process.
How it works, I have no idea.
To me, free will is the most fascinating aspect of God / man interaction. I have (poorly) imagined it as a massively complicated dance of action/reaction that only an unknowable God could make happen. To my mind, Jesus is the ultimate example of that Devine dance
We only think free will is incompatible with predestination because we are inside time. But if God is outside of time, when you accept him and start being perfected by his Spirit and his Word, he can predestinate you in "the past". For you, it's the past, but for him it's not.
I’ve always thought of it as the difference between the fisherman and the fish. While the fisherman can stand on the bank and see the whole stream from beginning to end, the fish only sees what’s in front of him and the random actions he took to get there. Where it gets really interesting is seemingly His gaze always rests on the heart and not necessarily the actions of all the major players in the Bible. He always seems to assess ongoing intentions rather than any specific actions. From that point of view, predestination makes sense from a consistency standpoint. Simply put, most people seem to have hard hearts early on extending throughout their lives. I am probably off your original point, but some of His major players weren’t always well behaved until they were.
Nice example. I agree, he sees the change of heart before any actions. Another example I like is provided by open world games like gta, if you were the main charachter in the game it would seem to you that there is no other way your "life" could have happened, however, for the player outside the game, we know for sure that it could have been entirely different.
Excellent point. For the conscious person who is actively seeking to mature in all the important aspects of their lives, it can be quite startling to look back on an earlier version of yourself and realize just HOW MUCH you have changed. It’s His omniscient awareness of your full potential.
I think it’s interesting to contemplate whether God (that is, the Heavenly Father himself) actually ever directly intervenes in material affairs. Frankly, I doubt it. God inhabits the circle of eternity, which is to say that He transcends time. Therefore, from God’s perspective (to the extent it is possible to refer to His “perspective” — a perspective is relative whereas God is absolute, but let’s pretend for a moment) every chain of antecedent causation is fully and finally resolved. Think of it this way: God, at the apex level of Divinity, encompasses all that ever was, is or ever could be in all an infinite eternity and an eternal infinity. Consequently, for God there is no such thing as a material contingency (or any other kind of contingency). Said another way, God’s absoluteness implies His changelessness and thus God can never be surprised and therefore there never is any need for His direct intervention at the finite level.
So the more interesting question, in my view, is sort of the intension of yours: how does the Infinite and Eternal attenuate Himself such that the finite is even possible? How and “where” are actual and potential unified (for God is, by definition, unity)?
I once was a Deist too. Coincidence is how God gets things done. It's true the word "Surprise" is not in the Divine Vocabulary, but God did become Man and is still on earth Present in the Holy Eucharist on Earth. How much more personal can you get than that?
Yes. That very point was lurking in my question about how the infinite, eternal and absolute and the finite are able to coexist — the boundary between existential and experiential.
I tend to think of “coincidence” more as “all required finite interventions were baked in at the (hypothetical) inception of reality”: As you say, chains of antecedent causation often seem to intersect at fortuitous points.
I'm at that stage where I do think God exists, but I can't believe, right now, that he interferes directly with my life in any capacity. I doubt that, if I pray, that has any effect whatsoever in the way things unfold. I believe bad and good things happen randomly to everyone, the difference is that those who pray tend to be more at peace with their fate, and tend to even among adversity manifest virtue. St. Augustine has a wonderful text about this, and his understanding of adversity is similar, although I do not know his position on matters of prayer.
(Please don't show Modernism as an elegant sinusoidal waveform ever again. The horror.)
Words to live by in a Materialist world that has it's head buried in a phone app and hardly ever looks up at night at the night stars: "The greater the island of Knowledge, the greater the shoreline of Wonder -should be."
Best collection of proofs of God's Existence I know of:
https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm
Well William, having worked as an EE for while I do recognize this circuit. However, you left out a lot of components. Out of that full wave you're going to get some pretty lumpy PAIN across the FUTURE. HAHAHA.
Alas, I "quail against the powers of angels and demons" as well as vibrating strings, and am unconvinced a proper epistemology leads to either. Yet I suspect we'd agree on most of what that proper epistemology is. I'm admittedly a tiny demographic here, but try to represent something of a third option. Thought provoking as always, I look forward to the next one!
The Pope used the word "faggot", in Italian. Might as well have been a Brazilian Pope.