posted
Sorry about that Dag, I've been meaning to get back to this but I've been real busy. I'm only around now because I'm sick enough that I think I was doing negative amounts of work. However, I definitely owe you a response. I've started typing one out a couple of times a little while ago, but I couldn't seem to strike the right tone. I'll see what I can come up with tommorow.
One thing I want to put out there now is that I hope we're doing this in an air of mutual respect. I think you're a heck of an addition to this place. I intentionally took an antagonistic tone in a couple of places here to see if I could rattle your cage because I was pretty sure you could take it. You do seem to me to take a more negative impression from my stuff than I intend. I just wanted to make sure you know that I'm really not trying to be dismissive or malicious.
edit: Also, I was thinking, I'm not sure if you're seen Storm's humanism thread, but I think that a lot of my points on that thread speak to our disagreement here. You might understand me better if you give it a read.
posted
Never fear, MrSquicky, I think there's definitely mutual respect here. I read the Humanism thread, and think it is basically the flip side of the points being discussed here: that is, the dispelling of misconceptions about a belief system by those not holding the beliefs of the system. I think the misconceptions arise from looking at parts of each belief system in isolation from the whole; this is incredibly dangerous in Christianity. I would assume it's no safer in Humanism.
Looking back over things, one possible reason I may be taking things more negatively than you intend is that I can't tell if the incomplete picture of Christian beliefs you present in your posts represents your true conception of Christianity or is merely the portions you deem relevant to the discussion.
Any frustration I've felt has stemmed from my impression that you are presenting either/or (or either/or/or) choices that I don't think exist. Looking back, I'm not sure if that's your intent or not now. It is how I interpreted it at the time, though.
posted
You see, that's why I feel blind when I can't talk to someone face to face. I was trying to point out things I saw as weaknesses in Christianity and I was seeing you taking an apologist standpoint that none of these problems existed. I think it might be best if we sort of start again from fundamentals.
For the record, I think that I have a very complex view of Christianity. I was at one time a very devout Catholic. I think that I left the religion in large part because I believed strongly in the message and much less in the structure. Part of the problem was that I kept coming up with heretical ideas and, in studying Church history, I came to admire the heresiarchs and neglected thinkers much more than those whose works became canon. I certainly didn't leave because I hated the religion or even the people in it. I still have a lot of affection for the religion and I find it fascinating. I feel like there have been numerous times on the 'Rack where I've come in to correct people's misinterpretations of certain parts of Christianity or to provide a different context to see things in. I think that these have shown that I don't have a simplistic or extremely distorted conception of the religion.
I'm trying to keep talking about myself to a minimum, but I feel like I should explain the overriding context I'm approaching this from. Two of the central traits of my thinking about individuals and organizations are dynamics and relativism. Dynamics, as opposed to statics, is recognizing the systems are always in a state of flux and take a lot of their outward structure from the environment they express themselves in. This tends to lead to a concern with underlying motivations over their superficial expression. So, for example, rather than classifying someone as an extrovert or introvert, I'm more concerned with what they are expressing by their intro/extroversian. Relavatism is sort of the outgrowth of the scientific rejection of judging values. That is, science itself is supposed to only describe and not judge things. This isn't really possible in psychology, but at the very lesat it's important to understand that you make judgements with respect to what values you're imposing on them. The idea I'm trying to get at here is that I don't feel justified in criticizing the ultimate values that people are striving towards. Instead, I look at the general maturity - yes, that's a value judgement too, to an extent. sue me - of how they go about pursuing these goals. A good way of expressing this is that I try not to judge people on their opinions, on whether they agree with me or not, but rather on how they hold these opinions.
I'm sorry I'm doing such a bad job of explaining this. I don't think in words normally and this has been sort of like translating these ideas into a foreign language. Anyway, that was all a complicated way of saying that I focus on motives and don't necessarily judge outward expressions. So, I've more respect for a sincere Christian than for people believe like I do for what I think are immature reasons. Also, from a spiritual standpoint, I'm willing to recognize that my truth can be extremely different even contradictory from someone else's and yet both can still be valid. In a very real way, objective reality is made up of the union of our separate truths, and not their intersection. My job isn't to convince people to believe as I do, but to help them get past all the things that obscure their own truth.
That's the big reason that, like I said in the stuff that started all this, I am saddened by many of the conversion stories that I hear and by the attitude that many religious people take that people are inherently evil. I can't be sure (nothing is ever sure) but I feel strongly that these are often those types of psychological defenses that don't allow people to grow past them. They can protect against certain things (and protection is important), but they often trun from a sheltering house to a confining prision
As I said, I've studied Christian history and, from my perspective, Christianity has often been used to serve the worse and most unChristian aspects of human nature. I don't necessarily put this at the feet of "evil" people who manipulated the religion either. Rather, I think it's often because certain aspects of the religion have fostered an immature outlook in many of its adherents. That's not to say that these are necessarily bad ideas, only that the effect they had on people in a certain state was undesireable. For other people in other situations, they might be very useful and life-affirming. It's a rare belief or practice that can't cut both ways.
That's why I believe in honest criticism of systems. One honest critic with integrity is worth a thousand appologists in terms of the health of an organization.
One of my big criticisms of Christianity concerns the doctrine of original sin and of magic redemption. That's sort of what underlies a lot of the stuff in here and also in the Humanism thread as well as my respect for the Pelagian heresy. I think that this idea has tons of very harmful consequences and generally serves to distort truth. However, it fits in very well with the individualistic bent of our culture (aI'd say that the two are highly intermingled, with one causing the other and vice versa).
If you want, I can trace out how I think this leads to a culture that is both psychologically destructive and unChristian, but I've written a lot for one post as it is. To put it very breif, do you really think market capitalism is an honest expression of Christian values? Yet, it has been strongly identified with being Christian.
To put an end to this rambling, yes, I think that Christianity has a lot of strong points. Some of the best people I know are Christian. However, so are some of the most immature people I've met. Also, as I've stated many times now, studies consistently show that the majority of American Christians score worse on many measures of maturity than non-religious people. I believe that a lot of both the good things in the Christians I know and the bad things about Christians both historical and contemporary are bound up in the structure and teachings of the religion.
Like I was trying to get at before, there are plenty of people who are Christian largely because they want good stuff and don't want bad stuff and the Church, in a lot of their teachings, has encouraged this type of thinking. Also, like when the Curia issued a statement to the African churchs that using condoms causes AIDs, they are very concerned with regulating people's behavior.
I'm willing to recognize the many good things about Christianity, but I think it's more important to openly investigate the many bad things about it too. however, it seems to me that Christians, much like all other sorts of people, generally react to bad things in their religion with defensiveness and apologism and not with the zeal for truth that they should. For me, one of the most disheartening about the priest sex abuse scandal was the lack of rage on the part of Catholics. For me, they acted just like a beaurocry with a "Let's do the minimum we can to get this out of the public eye" attitude, instead of the air of betrayal that I expected. A lot of my hope in reforming society through stengthening religious commitment died during that scandal.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I’m not quite sure if this is part of your problem with Christianity’s outlook on humanity Squicky, but I know others have this problem anyways so I’ll just go ahead and address it as best I can. The idea that some how all people are inherently evil.
I know different religions have different takes on this, and many of them undoubtedly will disagree with my take, but even if I only speak for myself, that’s still at least one person I’m representing.
People sin, they do. In my opinion that’s not from some predilection to do evil, but from a lack of perfection in one’s soul. A sin may be evil, and heck, a sinner may be evil too, but in my opinion most of the time they aren’t evil, or trying to do evil, they are merely not perfect.
I can understand why someone would resent it if I told them that what they do is not sufficiently good, because undoubtedly what it would sound like is I’m saying they aren’t good, which normally means they’re bad (evil). I know a lot of good people, they go through life with their understanding of morality and the world around them and try to do the right thing. I think they’re good, certainly better people than I am, but they are still not sufficiently good. They are not perfect. This isn’t something to be ashamed of, just like you wouldn’t think less of a 2 day year old child that was incapable of running a marathon, it’s just something to work on.
That’s how I see it, but the problem is most of the time believers and non-believers are speaking in completely different contexts. A non-believer would hear that since when they were little they stole someone’s pencil they’re now a bad person and resent it, seeing as how since then they’ve lived a righteous life (hyperbola, go with it ). Where as a believer probably means, you’re not perfect, flawed in some way, and though hopefully, after sufficient time you will become perfect (through work and effort), someone has to clean up for the mess you made while you working at it.
I’m not sure if I’m making sense but instead of trying again and just garbling it more and more I think I’ll leave it and let you ask for clarifications.
posted
Hobbes, I get what you're saying and I pretty much agree. If you check out the Humanism thread, I sort of address that there. I call this sort of thing maturity because it really isn't a matter of good and evil, I don't think, it's a matter of unfulfilled potential.
In my understanding, the doctrine of original sin doesn't allow for unfulfilled potential. The point is that people are unable to want to do good things without God's grace. Thus, to do good, you don't try to do good. You try to get God's grace, then you can do good things. But your aim should be Grace, not straight out doing good things.
A corollary of this is that people who aren't seeking God's grace, because, say, they're not Christian, are all evil. Even people who are Christian can't be trusted because they're going to do bad things as their default. I think hat this is more a case of a immature person projecting their own weaknesses into the world than a genuine truth about human nature.
Another corollary is that urges that come from inside yourself are only bad. I think this resulting in alienating your nautre (both good and bad parts) instead of integrating it and growing ad a person.
I remember a thread a while back where you mocked a teacher for telling you that a big part of releasing your creativity is to let go of constrained thinking. I think that sort of fits in with what I'm talking about.
People often seem to have a strange concept of what repression means. Repression doesn't mean feeling an urge and not acting on it. That's a much wider range of strategies and many of them are psychologically healthy. Repression is feeling an urge and then alienating the urge or even awareness of the urge from yourself. It's completely possible to handle an urge without directly expressing it. However, repression doesn't do this. In fact, the urge is still there, and you still act on it. You just are unaware that you are doing so or you feel a sense of guilt assosciated with it. You don't grow from your experiences when you repress.
posted
Then I think we're in agreement on this point, if I'm understanding you right. As I'm sure you're aware, the LDS Church does not hold orginal sin to be a true thing (Second article of Faith: We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgressions).
quote:I remember a thread a while back where you mocked a teacher for telling you that a big part of releasing your creativity is to let go of constrained thinking. I think that sort of fits in with what I'm talking about.
I think that was an edit in so I'm responding to it in a different post. First off, as I recall I wasn't quite as tolerant as I should've been, but I hope I wasn't mocking her.
I'm unclear though, how you think this comes in. I brought this point up a few times and went completely different ways with it so I think you'll have to refresh my memory as to what I was saying in that case because I made a few points about it, msot of which don't seem to relate to this discussion.
posted
I've got to come back to MrSquicky's post, but I need to respond to this, first: "We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgressions."
This statement is not in opposition to the doctrine of original sin. Original sin is not the concept that we are being "punished" for Adam's sin. Instead, it is an acknowledgement that Adam's sin voluntarily removed him from the supernatural relationship with God he originally possessed. His descendents have inherited his state; Christ's atonement has corrected it.
I'm not saying LDS believe in original sin. I'm just saying the quoted statement is not the place in doctrine where that disbelief is articulated.
posted
/tangent You know in reading this dialogue I just realized that the doctrine of original sin and the ideas of humanities goodness is probably one of the things that turned both myself and several close friends off from the brand of Christianity with which we were raised.
I need to ask dkw when she's over her extreme twitterpation (I hope she stays twitterpated for the rest of her life, just not quite at the current levels) how "liberal" type christians view this doctrine.
Essentially the way it played out in our upbringing was that "everyone outside of the church is going to hell." I have heard dozens of times from my mother "yes, so and so is a nice person, it's a shame they are going to hell" and "there will be a lot of nice people in hell because they don't think they need God." These people were always the few people we had contact with as children in the course of daily life outside of the church and I know my mother some how thought by saying this she was "neutralizing" their influence on me, since I shouldn't accept the weight of anything they said since they were going to hell.
When we went off to college and we were confronted the reality of the numerous good, kindly wonderful people that not believe the exact way we were raised, it became obvious that there were flaws in the logic. Because this just doesn't jive with their own teaching that everything good comes from God. So "good people" who are "good" because only things from God are good, then going to hell, just doesn't quite add up in my mind.
Like I said, I wonder if the liberal christian theologians have this dilemma solved in a less exclusionary fashion. I seem to remember dkw saying something about redemption eventually applying to everyone.
quote:The point is that people are unable to want to do good things without God's grace. Thus, to do good, you don't try to do good. You try to get God's grace, then you can do good things. But your aim should be Grace, not straight out doing good things.
On a similar note, the doctrine of Original Sin states we are inclined to sin - not that humans can't commit good acts on their own or that they only want to commit sinful acts. It states that we cannot become the fully enabled people God created us to be without some additional help from God.
Since we couldn't exist without the original act of God, it doesn't seem outrageous that our true fulfillment can't exist without him either. The beauty of it is that we can choose the fulfillment - it is not forced on us.
Dagonee P.S., I'll reply to the rest later. Quick question though, does that post embody the response to my last post on the previous page as well?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ohh I know Dag, I realizied that as I was typing but decided to put it in anyways, because it's the same type of idea. We aren't all tainted by something beyond our control is the message I saw in it.
quote:Like I said, I wonder if the liberal christian theologians have this dilemma solved in a less exclusionary fashion. I seem to remember dkw saying something about redemption eventually applying to everyone.
The Catholic position is that there is no salvation without Christ's action, but that we are not given to know all the ways that action occurs nor what forms it takes. So it's possible that people who do not consider themselves Catholic (or Christian at all) to be saved, but we don't know if/when it occurs. (I put the full quote in one of the Mel Gibson threads at some point).
It does not relieve us of our duty in the Great Commission to teach the gospel, so it's of limited practical effect to a Catholic.
posted
Hobbes, My recollection is that it was stronger than not being respectful enough, but hey, I could have gotten the wrong impression. Let's just make it an abtract case. If someone mocked a teacher for doing that, I'd think that it was an example of this. Warning: I'm an arrogant bastard. I could be wrong about everything that I'm going to say, but this is what I took from it.
The important part of this for me was the motivated misunderstanding of what the teacher was saying. The teacher was talking about loosing constraints as part of the process, but what was heard was loosing constraints was the process. She was talking about creativity, but what was heard was something along the lines of "You should let go of all constraints to do your assignments." This was clearly not what the teacher was expressing nor what the person reported that the teacher said. They were paying attention enough to repeat what the teacher said accurately, but their understaning of it didn't accurately reflect what she said. Thus, this was probably motivated misunderstanding, fueled either by dislike of the teacher or of the idea or a combination. Based on later comments, it seemed to me it was the idea that was threatening. So, I figured that it was a fear of loosing constraints that motivated the distortion.
I could be totally wrong that this is what was going on. But it is a common situation. That sort of fear of open-minded thinking is very prevelant in our society.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Dag, I guess it was the answer to the last post. I feel like we misunderstood each other so much at that point I didn't know how to go forward.
However, I think you're mistating the Catholic position. For one thing, salvation is much more circumscribed than you are making it. It is only through Baptism (by water, fire, or desire) that people can gain salvation and enter heaven. For example, babies who die without being baptized are going to spend enternity in limbo.
Also, the Pelagian heresey that I keep bringing up is that people can be good without grace, or their basic nature is not evil. This is contrasted with Agustine's doctrine of orginal sin. Pelagius is still considered a heretic and Augustine is still considered a doctor of the church. I think you're being more generous in interpreting the doctrine than is reasonable.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
OK, I remember what you're talking about. Perhaps I wasn't specific in my thread but what she said was that your true self is who you are without the restraints that you enforce on yourself. That really gets to me, sorry.
posted
ehhhh...I've got my own set of filters too. I probably misunderstood.
In the context (I think it was an English class), I think that statement was out of line. It's not her job or her responsiblity to teach you what your true self is.
Creativity is a big thing for me. I've been trained in improv and I've found that, while trying to teach others, the biggest obstacle (other than fear of performing in front of people) is the inability to let go, trust yourself, and play in the moment. But, in the few instances where I've been able to help someone overcome this resistance the results are amazing. It's never failed to deeply affect the person. I'd fight for people to feel that sort of joy for it's own sake, let alone as part of a whole effort to change society for the better.
posted
I don’t think what I said was a distortion. From the Gibson thread I referred to:
quote:The Catholic Church does not teach that people outside the Church cannot obtain salvation. Gibson is wrong about this.
First, there are several Orthodox sects that are recognized as true descendents of the original Church, even though they reject the authority of the Peter.
Second, as the quote illustrates, salvation is obtainable by those "not formally and visibly membersof the Church." It also says we're not sure exactly how this works but it does emphasize such salvation is through the grace of Christ.
The document this comes from is DOMINUS IESUS, published by the Vatican with approval of Pope John Paul II in 2000.
The document does say several things which non-Catholics find tough to swallow:
Salvation is only possible through Christ and the Church. Note, it does not say whether the person has to express a belief in Christ - it just says salvation is a obtained through Christ's grace only. As explained above, Christ's grace works through the Church, so even a "non-Catholic" who receives salvation was somehow in communion with the Church.
Most non-Catholic Christian denominations are not "true churches." Basically this means that their lineage is not traceable straight through to Christ.
The preferred ("best") means of salvation is through full, active membership and participation in the Catholic Church.
Additional quote from the document provided by sndrake: "For those who are not formally and visibly members of the Church, ’salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally part of the Church, but enlightens them in a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation. This grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit.”
As for original sin, “according to Catholic theology man has not lost his natural faculties: by the sin of Adam he has been deprived only of the Divine gifts to which his nature had no strict right, the complete mastery of his passions, exemption from death, sanctifying grace, the vision of God in the next life.” (Original Sin). I don’t wish to understate the necessity of grace – it is absolutely and fundamentally necessary for salvation – no work can be completely, truly good without it, partly because no person can be fully in communion with God without grace, and no work can be truly, completely good without being fully in communion with God.
As for the requirement of baptism, the last method (desire) is what makes salvations outside full communion with the Church possible (but not preferred). I’m VERY hesitant to discuss it further here because desire is difficult, much more complicated than the word suggests, and not to be substituted for traditional exercise of the Sacrament.
As for unbaptized infants, I’ll let the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church speak for itself: "As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allows us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism." There is much disagreement within the Church about what state such infants are in after death. See this for more info.
Looking back, I realize it was misleading by being incomplete, although I don’t think inaccurate, especially in the presence of non-Catholics. Let me be clear – as a Catholic, I believe that the preferred (if you will) means of salvation is traditional baptism within the Catholic Church. However, it is possible to receive salvation through Christ’s grace in other forms, most easily in other Christian denominations and possibly in other forms. However, we are not given to know the requirements of such salvation nor how it is obtained, so there is “risk” involved in these non-preferred forms.
posted
Dag, I knew about that from Vatican II, but I hadn't realized that it had been incorporated into the Cathechism. That's cool. I was wrong.
I think I lost focus on Friday. I'd like to blame it on being sick, but I'm not sure it wasn't more because I was in attack mode. I still think you're overemphasizing the authority of these statements (I'm pretty sure that they are at the level of human suggestions rather than authoritative dogma and are strongly contradicted by the majority of Church tradition*), but I feel like that's going down the wrong path.
I would love for the Catholic Church to repudiate St. Augustine and his theory of original sin. It sounds to me like you would too, at least about the original sin part. Actually, it sounds to me like you think they already have. In large part, it seems to me that we are basically in agreement about the harmfulness of this doctrine. Where we disagree is that I think that it is a big part (I'd even say it's one of the guiding myths) of Christian thought in general and Catholicism in particular, and you disagree. I believe that many Catholics hold a view of original sin and of the inability of the unbaptized to enter heaven that is much closer to what I'm saying that what you are. Also, I think that this is a big part of their belief structure.
I think that it's the way I look at relative importance of beliefs that has led you to think that I'm throwing everything into an either/or structure. For me, belief systems can be classified by how much importance and attention people pay to it's various parts. The most important ones are those that win out in conflicts (e.g. the rules versus the love thing) and those that form the base state of thinking (e.g. posting the 10 Commandments instead of the "Golden Rule"). Thus, two people having the same basic beliefs but placing different priorities on the parts of this system can approach the world in very different ways. A lot of my criticisms of Christianity come from the way that I think it, both intentionally and unintentionally, steers people towards potentially dangerous ways of looking at things. That it supports Augustine over Pelagius and that it holders the Garden of Eden as one of the central myths are to me central pillars of an entire structure that leads people to hold the views of morality and human nature that I've been decrying.
It's not so much that I'm even saying that they shouldn't necessarily hold these views - that's not my place. It's more like I think that, if you are going to have certain strong beliefs, it's important to understand what possible effects they may have. It seems to me that far too many people are unwilling to consider that their beliefs may have negative as well as positive effects. That's why it bothers me so much when people's response to someone pointing out potential problems is a feverent denial that these problems could exist (I'm thinking of the 9/11 probes here, where the default response to someone saying that there might have been something wrong with the way that either Presidents Bush or Clinton handled things has become a partisan football with one side denying and the other attacking, instead of a way of looking at how we could better our security systems).
----
* - I'm not trying to weenie out of that discussion. I think it would interesting, if you want to continue it. I just didn't want to get off on that tangent.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:I believe that many Catholics hold a view of original sin and of the inability of the unbaptized to enter heaven that is much closer to what I'm saying that what you are. Also, I think that this is a big part of their belief structure.
That is not at all consistent from what I learned from my mom or CCD classes or sermons. What I heard was consistent with what Dagonee said. And my mom went to a very conservative school taught by bitter nuns, so most of what she taught me tends to be conservative. Especially since my mom went blind during college and has pretty much remained fixed on the conservative/sheltered teachings she had learned prior to that.
Posts: 1990 | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
See, I thought the whole reason Catholics found it so important to save an ailing baby, even if the mother died, and the whole reason they had a priest pray over you when you were on your deathbed, and the reason suicide was a moral sin, was that if you died with even a SPOT of sin on your soul, you couldn't get to heaven -- so that if you had sinned since being shriven, you were basically headed to hell until your next confession. And since babies were born with sin, re: Augustine, it was vitally important to have a priest present at the birth.
Clearly, at some point, American Catholics stopped thinking this way. But what prompted the change?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Theologians admitted they couldn't know what God would decide, sometime during/after Vatican II.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:See, I thought the whole reason Catholics found it so important to save an ailing baby, even if the mother died, and the whole reason they had a priest pray over you when you were on your deathbed, and the reason suicide was a moral sin, was that if you died with even a SPOT of sin on your soul, you couldn't get to heaven -- so that if you had sinned since being shriven, you were basically headed to hell until your next confession. (emphasis added)
Tom,
This has never been the teaching of the Church. I don't have time for a big explanation, especially since I owe Suicky a detailed reply. This link is probably more than you want to know, but it is only mortal sins that remove sanctifying grace from the soul. Venial sins do not.
The Church has never believed unbaptized children go to Hell - the prevailing thought was limbo, which was basically as much hapiness as a person could get without experiencing the beatific vision of God. Throughout it's history, the Church has acknowledged it did not know - Limbo was a theory that was accepted as not being inconsistent with Church doctrine.
posted
Yeah Dag, I'm feeling fine. I went out running again today for the first time in a while, Whoo boy it was nice...and really really painful.
I've been keeping away from this thread so that I didn't throw anything more onto the pile for your response, but I get antsy, so I do.
I did want to respond to Tom to say that Dag's totally right that there's never been anything in the Catholic Church about going to hell if there's even a little bit of sin on your soul.
Of course, I'm gonna have to disagree about the unbaptized babys going to hell thing. Even a cursory look over St. Augustine shows that this was in fact the accepted position for a long while. In fact, even though there were different factions about this through much of Church history, it was only sometime after St. Thomas Aquinas' disagreement that the stance was officially changed. There was a whole big thing about theologians distinguishing between Augustine's personal authority versus the Church's authority on his thought. It was a really interesting time, I think anyway. Here's a link about the development of thought about the post-mortem fate of unbaptized children.
edit: Here's another that places the Augustinian view in context as bein opposed to the Pelagian one.
edit again: Theca, That's fine. I'm cool with that. Here's the thing. I'm a veteran of 12 years of Catholic schools and that is exactly what they taught me as well as every other catholic school student in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. I'm not just making this stuff up.
posted
BTW, was there ever a Part 2 to this thread that I just didn't see and doesn't come up on Search?
Posts: 1595 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:I need to ask dkw when she's over her extreme twitterpation (I hope she stays twitterpated for the rest of her life, just not quite at the current levels) how "liberal" type christians view this doctrine.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
). Where as a believer probably means, you’re not perfect, flawed in some way, and though hopefully, after sufficient time you will become perfect (through work and effort), someone has to clean up for the mess you made while you working at it.![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
