Ask Me Help Desk - Faith or rationalism?

The following is a fragment of today’s Gospel, according to John:

“Thomas, the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, «We have seen the Lord». But he replied, «Until I have seen in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe».

Eight days later, the disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Despite the locked doors Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, «Peace be with you». Then He said to Thomas, «Put your finger here and see my hands; stretch out your hand and put it into my side. Resist no longer and be a believer». Thomas then said, «You are my Lord and my God». Jesus replied, «You believe because you see me, don't you? Happy are those who have not seen and believe» (Jn 20:19-31)”

I think the majority of us Christians are very much like St. Thomas, that is, we claim we believe in God and, even deep inside us, we accept as true that we honestly believe it…

However, I wonder how many of us would not do like St. Thomas if a friend would knock at our door to tell us he/she has just seen the Lord and spoken with him?

At the Sunday Mass or Service, the priest and the pastor tell us that they have spoken with our Lord, but most of the time, I’m sure that we take it as a sort of routine talk that they feel they have to deliver although they may not be convinced themselves of it…

This, I think, is because our faith is not as strong as it should for we are very rationalist, and reason normally resists faith…

Quote:

Originally Posted by gromitt82

....

This, I think, is because our faith is not as strong as it should for we are very rationalist, and reason normally resists faith…

I guess you are right. Perpahs that's why Jesus chose very simple laymen as his disciple.

gromitt82,
I think you are right about that.
I often pray for a stronger faith for I fear that mine is not strong enough.
Fred

Right! Until we leave this human flesh behind we will always have a battle going on in our minds between "the mind of Christ" (implanted in us by our new birth) and "the mind of the flesh" which we inherited from our human parents... all the way back to Adam and Eve.

The clearest passage on this is when that really great believer said; by inspiration:

Rom 7:14-8:1

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! [B]Ro 7:14-8:1

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death ? 25 Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

NIV

Aren't these words all the more wonderful:

"Who will rescue me from this body of death ? 25 Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!"!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by gromitt82

I think the majority of us Christians are very much like St. Thomas, that is, we claim we believe in God and, even deep inside us, we accept as true that we honestly believe it…

However, I wonder how many of us would not do like St. Thomas if a friend would knock at our door to tell us he/she has just seen the Lord and spoken with him?

Gromitt - wow, I cannot believe it... I stumbled across your words and was struck by an experience I had yesterday. I met Jesus Christ face to face yesterday and it was the most unbelievable experience I ever had... I can barely type this as I am still beside myself... man, is there a way to leave a video recording on this website because I even managed to video tape my experience... seriously, this is no joke.

An excerpt taken from a paper by Ravi Zacharias on St. Augustine:

Augustine's Own Disillusionment and Flight to the Manichees

Augustine, who lived near Tertullian's Carthage in Tagaste, said in The Happy Life that he was "led into error [errorem]" through a "childish superstition [superstitio]" which "frightened [terrebat] me from the search [for truth] itself."[16] This puerile superstitio refers to the anti-intellectualism which pervaded the Church in Africa and demanded belief without offering any rational grounds for it. The word superstitio here has the sense of deterring from scrutiny and investigation. It was the shut-up-kid-and-just-believe mentality.

That this superstition refers to the anti-intellectual Christianity that surrounded him is made even clearer by the similar language used in The Usefulness of Belief.[17] Augustine wrote this piece six years after his conversion to Christianity, which occurred in 386. He sent it to Honoratus, whom he had converted to Manicheanism: "I fell among these people for no other reason than that they declared that they would put aside all overawing [terribili] authority, and by pure and simple reason would bring to God those who were willing to listen to them and so deliver them from all error [errore]."[18] The Manichees had said that "we [Catholics] were overawed by superstition [superstitione terreri] and were bidden to believe rather than to reason, while they pressed no one to believe until the truth had been discussed and elucidated." Augustine was thus "enticed by these promises," being an adolescent "with a mind eager for truth."[19]

Augustine considered his mentally-stultifying experience with the North African Catholica to be like "clouds" or fog that confused his intellectual and spiritual course--clouds by which he was "led into error."[20] It was this "childish superstition" which stifled intellectual inquiry and moved him toward Manicheanism--the religion of inquiring minds[21] and "the heresy of the intellectuals."[22] (In his Order [De Ordine], Augustine himself gently rebukes Monica for her superstitio--for her simple-minded rejection of philosophy. He reminds her that Paul's warnings in Colossians 2 are against a this-worldly philosophy, not against the true philosophia [the love of wisdom] of the other, intelligible world.)[23] Although Augustine was misguided by this Enlightenment-like ideal of pursuing pure reason, he preferred this route to that of blind submission to authority. Augustine's hunger for intellectual answers was not unreasonable or excessive.

The Catholicism with which Augustine had grown up commanded belief without lifting a finger to teach the believer or to answer the intellectual difficulties he might have.[24] Instead of a faith seeking understanding, Augustine's upbringing encouraged a blind faith which was told to suppress any inquiry. Peter Brown comments,

This African church was exceptionally narrow and conservative... The bishops were exceptionally sensitive to any challenge to their authority... This oppressive environment had always tended to produce extreme reactions among some African Christians. A strong current of "new," of "spiritual" Christianity had always run against the massive literalism of the traditional church.[25]

Augustine found that these conservative Catholics tended to be suspicious of any believer who made intellectual or philosophical excursions outside the provincial, popularly-accepted beliefs.[26]

Augustine could not tolerate North African Catholicism's lack of sympathy for the serious questioner. Augustine offers a couple of examples, apparently from his own experience. First, the Catholica would typically resort to frivolous and mocking answers in response to the serious and reasonable question raised by the Manichees (and their Gnostic predecessors): "What did God do before he made heaven and earth?"[27] Unlike the Catholica, Augustine refused to evade "by a joke the force of the objection" by saying, "He was preparing hell...for those prying into such deep subjects." Augustine continues,

It is one thing to see the objection; it is another to make a joke of it. I do not answer in this way. I would rather respond, "I do not know," concerning what I do not know rather than say something for which a man inquiring about such profound matters is laughed at while the one giving a false answer is praised.

By contrast, Augustine is willing to respect the person who asks a serious question[28] even if it is asked in a challenging spirit.[29]

Another example of Catholic simple-mindedness is the response of an "utterly foolish" woman to a Manichean woman's praising of the sun as an object of worship:[30] "she leapt up in her excitement and stamped on the place on the floor illumined by the rays that came in through the window, exclaiming, 'Lo, I tread under foot the sun, your God.'"[31]

Not only did Augustine hear such anti-intellectual quips, he himself was in the thick of particular intellectual difficulties during his pilgrimage. Before Jerome's scholarly translation of the Latin Vulgate, the Vetus Latina was used by North African Christians. Full of slang and jargon,[32] it was a very crudely translated work which, according to Augustine, was "unworthy of comparison with the nobility of Cicero's writings" because of its "humble style."[33] Although Augustine indicates that his "swelling pride," the begetter of all sin,[34] prevented him from looking past this crude translation to the truth,[35] the sloppy scholarship behind the Vetus Latina created yet another barrier and reinforced the anti-intellectualism with which he had grown up.[36]

Then there were the particular questions Augustine grappled with--questions for which Catholic Christianity seemed to furnish no answers. Two of the chief questions he sought to resolve had to do with (a) the origin of evil and (b) God's corporeality (in which North African Catholics typically believed). "Ignorant in such matters, I was disturbed by these questions."[37] In particular, the question of the origin of evil so troubled and wearied him that he was "driven into the arms of heretics," as he wrote in On Free Will.[38] Augustine simply could not see that evil was not a bodily entity--a substance that possessed "its own foul and hideous mass"[39]-- but was actually the privation of goodness. Whatever has being is good insofar as it is, but evil, however, is the privation of being.

Regarding God's corporeality, Augustine was surrounded by this pervasive belief. Earlier on, Tertullian had borrowed from the Stoics the doctrine of the soul's corporeality as well as God's own corporeality.[40] In his mind, if an entity is not embodied, it is not real. Augustine himself could not think of God except as corporeal and spatial, "either infused into the world or even diffused outside the world throughout infinite space....For whatever I conceived as devoid of such spatial character seemed to me to be nothing, absolutely nothing, not even so much as empty space."[41] This, of course, logically entailed the belief that an elephant's body would receive more of God than a sparrow![42]

Consequently, the Manichees would torment the North African Catholica with their questions on this subject as well: "Is God confined within a corporeal form? Does God have hair and nails?"[43] Augustine only later came to realize that being made in God's image did not imply that God had a body; rather he is a "spiritual substance."[44] Although Augustine subsequently realized that the Manichees themselves were hardly proceeding by pure reason and that they appealed to authority, they offered an attractive alternative to a religion which suppressed the life of the mind.

Through his encounter with Neoplatonist Christians in Milan (and Ambrose in particular), Augustine's erroneous belief in divine corporeality was corrected. In the language of Homer's Odyssey[45], Augustine describes in The Happy Life that his sea-faring brought him to a new "land": "here I came to know the North Star [either Ambrose or Neoplatonist Christianity][46] to which I could entrust myself."[47] Augustine realized that "nothing bodily should be thought of at all when one thinks of God or when one thinks of the soul, for it is the one thing in reality closest to God." [48]

What is astonishing is that Augustine considered his move from the narrow-minded, intellectual "clouds" of North African Catholicism to the Manichees to be a "scatter[ing of] that fog."[49] Becoming a Manichee was an intellectual step forward for Augustine.[50] Shortly before he joined the Manichees, he was inspired to convert to a life of philosophy upon reading Cicero's Hortensius at nineteen years of age: "I was delighted with exhortation only because by its argument I was stirred up and enkindled and set aflame to love, and pursue, and attain and catch hold of, and strongly embrace...wisdom itself."[51] Once he had been "made more upright" (or "upstanding"), he concluded that he would rather yield to those who "teach" rather than those who "command."[52] In his youth, he found the "yoke" of the Catholic Church to be more oppressive than what the Manichees had to offer. Unlike the Catholic clergyman he had encountered, the Manichees did not demand belief without reason and without offering to teach and instruct the seeker. Augustine could now stand on his own intellectual feet rather than being weighed down by an anti-intellectual authoritarianism. Instead of suppressing reason and blindly accepting authoritative commands in infantile dependence, he could think for himself as an rational adult.[53] Robert O'Connell writes,

For they [i.e. the Manichees] took seriously, more seriously than any Catholic clergyman Augustine had previously met, those words of Christ: "Seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you." And factus erectior ["after having been made more upright"], Augustine is boldly claiming that, prompted to choose between Manicheanism and the Catholicism he had experienced, his conversion by these mercenarii was a step in the right direction![54]

So Augustine viewed his conversion to Manicheanism as a positive step--despite its gross errors which he later came to realize. When he read Cicero's Hortensius, Augustine, inspired to pursue a life of philosophy, viewed himself as the Prodigal of Luke 15 who was finally being awakened to "rise up" so that he might "return" to God: "I began to rise up, so that I might return to you."[55] Leaving his "superstitious" Catholicism behind was, remarkably, a move toward God rather than away from him.[56]

The Soliloquies says as much when Augustine addresses God: "Receive me, thy servant, now fleeing from these things, as they [i.e. the Manichees--God's 'enemies' whom he had 'served'] formerly received me, a stranger, when I was fleeing from thee."[57] Unlike the Catholics whom Augustine had known, the Manichees had treated Augustine with a far more "Christian" spirit--a treatment which shaped the next decade of his life.[58]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakester

Gromitt - wow, I cannot believe it...I stumbled across your words and was struck by an experience I had yesterday. I met Jesus Christ face to face yesterday and it was the most unbelievable experience I ever had...I can barely type this as I am still beside myself...man, is there a way to leave a video recording on this website because I even managed to video tape my experience....seriously, this is no joke.

Woooowww..! You are so blessed. I am wondering how did you get the chance to videotape it? I am not doubting but curious to see the video and to know what did Jesus tell you?

You can upload your video on "Youtube" and then post a link here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Triund

Woooowww....!!! You are so blessed. I am wondering how did you get the chance to videotape it? I am not doubting but curious to see the video and to know what did Jesus tell you?

You can upload your video on "Youtube" and then post a link here.

Triund - my friend, I have to level with you... I said this partly as a joke but to make a serious point. I did not mean it to make anyone look silly; I meant to bring out a serious point about faith and rationalism. Part of you is curious, for sure... you would want to believe me because you are a rational creature... but part of you is hesitant to believe me fully because there is some part of you that is right to question things. Not because you unwilling to believe but because your experience in life teaches you to weigh things and consider them and wrestle with them.

Please read the article I posted and understand where I am coming from. Thomas did not doubt because he was acting stubbornly rebellious towards God, he was just being a rational creature. We later see that when he sees Jesus face-to-face, he doesn't hesitate to believe him... in fact, he even calls him his Lord and his God.

jakester,
Point well made.
Being a rational creature can and has been a thorn in the side of faith.
Fred

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakester

an excerpt taken from a paper by Ravi Zacharias on St. Augustine:

Augustine's Own Disillusionment and Flight to the Manichees

Jakester:

As I'm sure you're aware, there's somewhat of a misconception conveyed in your quote when taken alone. First and foremost is that Augustine's 'flight' took place early in life. Manicheans were a dualistic gnostic mixture of Zend and Christianity. Influenced by Cicero's "Hortensius" St. Augustine took to philosophy like a duck takes to water. As I see it, at first, like many scholars instead of reason, he unfortunately took to rationalism. Thinking that Manicheans found contradictions in Scripture, he set out to scientifically prove the dichotomies of Manichean. Instead of reason he found the lie in all rationalism. Hearing the allegorical rationalism of Manicheans, St. Augustine recognized the spiritual death it contained. It wasn't that Catholic scholars of the day couldn't respond with the truth, rather it was the rationalism of the “greater part of the philosophers” that influences his thinking.

Once a spiritual substance was found, combined with right reason, “after the manner of the Academics (as they are supposed), doubting of everything and fluctuating between all, [Augustine] decided that the Manichæans were to be abandoned” St. Augustine could not remain without spiritual answers to spiritual questions. While preferring philosophy, he found that he couldn't remain in the sect of Manicheans because their philosophical views were without Christ, thus failing the soul. Thus St. Augustine tells us; "I resolved, therefore, to be a catechumen in the Catholic Church, which my parents had commended to me, until something settled should manifest itself to me whither I might steer my course."

And there he stayed; a perpetual student of God's Truth, later to say, “But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church." St. Augustine, AGAINST THE EPISTLE OF MANICHAEUS CALLED FUNDAMENTAL.[CONTRA EPISTOLAM MANICHAEI QUAM VACANT FUNDAMENTI.] A.D. 397. Chp 5

From about age 30, until his death, St. Augustine was Catholic.

“I rejoiced, O my God, that the one Church, the body of Your only Son (wherein the name of Christ had been set upon me when an infant), did not appreciate these infantile trifles, nor maintained, in her sound doctrine, any tenet that would confine You, the Creator of all, in space— though ever so great and wide, yet bounded on all sides by the restraints of a human form.” Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, Book VI, 4, 5-6.

Consequently, what I see in Jakester's quote is practiced rationalism; hiding truth.

But, unable to deny truth wherever it's found, Jackester rightly deduces that St. Thomas seeming irrational demand 'to be shown' is little more than a reasoned response to unbelievable events. Carl Sagan, though atheist, once popularized the saying, 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,' no doubt St. Thomas would have taken it as an understatement. It's in the enormity of the risen Christ that we find spiritual truth. How many people do you know have died, was buried only to rise of their own accord 3 days later? Though crude, jokester joke proves the point. We are to believe with heart soul and mind; our reason is a critical part of our faith. To believe without question is superstition. Equally important, to rationalize away the true faith, as St. Augustine once attempted enslaves the soul, whereas Catholic Truth frees one to question.

JoeT

JoeT777
Yes it does free one to reason.
I know for 30 years I was and anti-Catholic Protestant.
Then I started reading the bible to prove how wrong The Church was and found instead that I was the one who was wrong.
I must give credit to a couple of marvelous priests who help open my mind and hearts eyes for it was they who introduced me to spiritual, Chrsitian reason.
And of course the Holy Spirit was at work with them and me.
Praise God!
Fred

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeT777

Consequently, what I see in Jakester’s quote is practiced rationalism; hiding truth.

But, unable to deny truth wherever it’s found, Jackester rightly deduces that St. Thomas seeming irrational demand ‘to be shown’ is little more than a reasoned response to unbelievable events. Carl Sagan, though atheist, once popularized the saying, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,’ no doubt St. Thomas would have taken it as an understatement. It’s in the enormity of the risen Christ that we find spiritual truth. How many people do you know have died, was buried only to rise of their own accord 3 days later? Though crude, jokester joke proves the point. We are to believe with heart soul and mind; our reason is a critical part of our faith. To believe without question is superstition. Equally important, to rationalize away the true faith, as St. Augustine once attempted enslaves the soul, whereas Catholic Truth frees one to question.

JoeT

JoeT - so you see in my quote "practiced rationalism; hiding truth." Ouch, Joe, that's hitting below the belt. Well, I guess you are entitled to your opinion but I really think you have me dead wrong. I'll leave it up to others with a discerning eye to decide whether that is who I am.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakester

JoeT - so you see in my quote "practiced rationalism; hiding truth." Ouch, Joe, that's hitting below the belt. Well, I guess you are entitled to your opinion but I really think you have me dead wrong. I'll leave it up to others with a discerning eye to decide whether that is who I am.

There was no foul made.

As a result, you build your faith on consensus? You entrust the well being of your soul to compromise? Read it for yourself; discriminate between ‘reason’ and ‘rationalism’ (CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Rationalism ).

Link to St. Augustine VI CHURCH FATHERS: Confessions, Book VI (St. Augustine)

Jt

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeT777

There was no foul made.

As a result, you build your faith on consensus? You entrust the well being of your soul to compromise? Read it for yourself; discriminate between 'reason' and 'rationalism' (CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Rationalism ).

Link to St. Augustine VI CHURCH FATHERS: Confessions, Book VI (St. Augustine)

Jt

No, Joe, I don't build my faith on consensus... I was appealing to others to build a consensus as to whether your opinion of me is as authoritative as you think it is—whether you interpreted what I was referencing in my post correctly in terms of what position I was espousing. That's all.

Off thread.

jakester and Joe,
That's an interesting difference of opinion on opinion.
I'm going to need to ponder that some more before I stick my neck out.
Peace and kindness,
Fred

Part of loving God with all our mind. We aren't asked or expected to "check our brains at the door" when we enter into a faith relationship. The facts are that the christian faith is more logical than any other explanation cooked up by man.

homesell
Greed!!
Fred

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakester

Gromitt - wow, I cannot believe it...I stumbled across your words and was struck by an experience I had yesterday. I met Jesus Christ face to face yesterday and it was the most unbelievable experience I ever had...I can barely type this as I am still beside myself...man, is there a way to leave a video recording on this website because I even managed to video tape my experience....seriously, this is no joke.

What was he doing? What did he say? What did he look like? How did you know it was Jesus since their were no cameras back then and we only have some artist rendition. What did you do? Did you invite him in, sit down, have a chat? Why don't you put it on "you tube." to share with the rest of us? Did he like wait around for you to get some footage, smile for the camera? Did he fade away, just quickly disappear, or walk out the door and float back up to heaven. Did you call others to witness this? Friends, pastors, news teams, police, neighbors, the dog, anybody? What was he wearing? Tall, short, fat, thin, black, white, red, yellow, beard trimmed, hair, did it stop growing over 2000 years ago or was it dragging along behind him. Was he weraing the usual white garb and sandals. Details man, details!

You can't just throw something out there as far fetched as meeting Jesus Christ and just leave out all the details.

Well, as I read on I see you were pulling our leg. I was beginning to really worry about you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakester

Gromitt - wow, I cannot believe it...I stumbled across your words and was struck by an experience I had yesterday. I met Jesus Christ face to face yesterday and it was the most unbelievable experience I ever had...I can barely type this as I am still beside myself...man, is there a way to leave a video recording on this website because I even managed to video tape my experience....seriously, this is no joke.

I understand your point... smarty pants jakester... but I tell you this and correct me if I am wrong but JESUS himself said it:

Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not ( even on video or Youtube)

You are full of poo! And I couldn't resist saying so. :D