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Habemus Papal

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Komnenos View Drop Down
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  Quote Komnenos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Habemus Papal
    Posted: 26-Apr-2005 at 19:58
Originally posted by JanusRook


How do you know these circumstances were not dictated by God? Likewise I can't prove that they were, but the Lord works in mysterious ways, why could this not be one of them.


As you probably know, that is a rather feeble argument and you are on thin ice here.
You just can not disect all the decisions the Church made in its history into the wise ones, inspired and dictated by God and the Holy Spirit, and the unwise ones, of which there were many, when God wasn't looking and the Holy Spirit was away on other business.
I'm afraid, if the Church wants intellectually to be taken seriously, than it must subject itself to all the same methods of criticism than any other institution.
And thus you might come to the conclusion, that the dogmas, doctrines and decisions of the Church were made by feeble humans, for very human reasons and only very rarely were inspired by something higher, be it divine or not.
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  Quote JanusRook Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Apr-2005 at 10:42

As you probably know, that is a rather feeble argument and you are on thin ice here.

No thinner than the "God doesn't exist because I haven't seen him" argument.

You just can not disect all the decisions the Church made in its history into the wise ones, inspired and dictated by God and the Holy Spirit, and the unwise ones, of which there were many, when God wasn't looking and the Holy Spirit was away on other business.

The church has never made any unwise decisions because God has always been watching over the church.

HOLD ON!

I am not saying that individuals the church haven't made errors in the past due to human rights abuses and such. What I am saying though is that the church is a growing organism under God's guidance and is heading in the proper direction until it's purpose is completed.

No man is able to dictate whether the decisions of the church are wise or not because they only live in the present whereas God dwells in all times at once. In the past a man might think it's perfectly wise to kill a traitors wife and children, since the children could repeat the offense, however now we would find that as ridiculous. My attitude is a wait and see approach, it's one of the features of Faith.

I'm afraid, if the Church wants intellectually to be taken seriously, than it must subject itself to all the same methods of criticism than any other institution.

How would you propose the church subject itself? Say "All right folks now we think we might be wrong on the whole ressurection thing so where going to send a team of scientists to experiment on the issue." What do you mean, the church constantly defends against all criticism. In fact many of the clergy are trained in the defense of Catholicism from a scientific perspective.

And thus you might come to the conclusion, that the dogmas, doctrines and decisions of the Church were made by feeble humans, for very human reasons and only very rarely were inspired by something higher, be it divine or not.

But you might also come to the conclusion that the moon is made of cheese, invisible strings keep us attached to the earth and the world only appears to be round and all the stars in the sky are candles held up by angels.

According to belief you can and should try to find any important dogma or doctrine false because if you try and God does exist you will fail at discovering any error in the teaching.

 

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