A Dominican destroys Stan’s and Jesse’s and Glenn’s ecclesiology
[Hint: it helps to identify the consequences of fighting the Roman Catholic Church of the 16th century. You’ve blinded yourself to your immense 21st century ignorance of your own problems.]
From Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. on the Catholic doctrine of infallibility:
“The claim to infallibility, while a bold one, is actually quite sensible in its own way. It is virtually a tautology, in fact, since it amounts to saying nothing more than this: if God has revealed himself, then what he has revealed is true, and the Church can come to know over time in a definitive way what God has revealed.
These are not in themselves very astonishing claims. They rest on a more fundamental claim, namely that God has revealed himself. But if that has occurred, why would it be so strange that God should assist the Church over time, in and through controversy and dispute, and despite the terrible moral and intellectual limitations of her adherents, to come to know the truth he has revealed? What would be stranger, indeed illogical in its own right, would be the claim that God has revealed himself, most certainly, but that we might just as certainly deny the Church’s capacity to identify his teaching with certitude.
If the Church cannot teach infallibly, then we are in fact required to say something absurd of just this kind: God has revealed himself, but the Church can never say with assurance what God has revealed. In that case we might claim that there is an infallibly true revelation of God, but we must also admit that we cannot identify it, practically speaking, in any realistic way.”
[A comment I sent to Jesse on his siloed - anxious-fear driven - post as “commentary” on this post of mine:]
ReplyDeleteCowards and people of fragile faith are pretty bad at theology. You’re a coward with fragile faith. Otherwise, you’d confront me openly where you can say whatever you want. You hide here where control what is seen.
Just cursorily, without reading in detail, the following points seem devastatingly obvious re your “theological” approach to faith. Come correct me if you can and find some balls.
1. You give no allowance to the life of the Holy Spirit continuing to teach the church. In your theology the Spirit is dead in the world, locked in a book.
2. Therefore you deny any adequate representation of human life in the Spirit: specifically, that we learn God’s truths and goodnesses and beauty over time. In your theology the human person is dead vis a vis the way God created us: in God’s image and likeness.
3. In erasing the church’s role in protecting the revelation of god and preaching and teaching the good news emanating from that revelation, you have erased all assurance for the church that the revelation is true in any way. In your theology, the gospel is dead.
In this way: if you claim only that the Bible can convey the revelation of God, then you’ve contradicted yourself and killed your whole argument, stem to stern. Because it was the church, by the conciliar process of dialogue, argument, and consensus, that created the Bible. It is a tautology that if you deny the authority of the church you’ve denied the authority of the Bible.
___
If you cannot come and tell me where I’m wrong, then I will assume that you’re aware of your weaknesses, but unable to confess them even to yourself. And God has a problem with that.
A reminder: Jesse ran away when his faith in his theology failed. He claimed that the eternal characteristic framing the eternal attribute of Justice of the eternal God is retributive. Retribution, ie, punishment; revenge.
ReplyDeleteBy claiming that a retributive characteristic of God is eternal, Jesse claims that there is eternally active wrongdoing in heaven.
Whereas, I pointed out, Aquinas long ago gave deeper thought to the conditions of the eternal. Such that God’s justice is eternal by virtue of God’s eternal will to order heaven justly: giving all their equally and eternally due honor and purpose as saints. An absolutely perfect distribution of all the gifts accompanying perfect communion with the Trinity in love.
Jesse needs brutality as an aspect of God more than perfect love. Just like all radical protestants. So he ends up with a heaven which includes still sinning souls, no different than a post-fallen world. In other words, a failed Christ and an impotent God.
Corrupt theology making him sick in the head.
Not to mention that Jesse is a lazy reader. These aren’t thoughts from Matt Fradd. With whom I have disagreements over his counter-reformation but nonetheless radically protestant dogmatism.
ReplyDeleteThese are the thoughts - as it says at top - of the Dominican, Thomas Joseph White, O.P. OP, btw, is the Order of Preachers, which St Dominic founded, but of which St Thomas Aquinas is the most famous member.