12:21 AM
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9 hours later…
11:36 AM
Jesus is true God and true Man, but Divinity and Humanity are distinct things. We are fully human, but fallen.
You still would insist philosophy is not necessary or is "human" and yet the fact is that we continue to run into differences caused by unspecified definitions. To define things abstractly and basically (what is God? what is human? what is goodness? etc) is philosophy. Through philosophic principles we can dialog better because we bother to ensure consistent frame of reference. Otherwise we get nowhere.
Swedenborgianism seems an interesting concept, but it seems too much to be trying to be distinct from other schools of thought but without actually logically consistently defining that diff…
Swedenborgianism seems an interesting concept, but it seems too much to be trying to be distinct from other schools of thought but without actually logically consistently defining that diff…
5 hours later…
4:21 PM
@eques I never said philosophy is unnecessary. But I think Catholic philosophy is mistaken and self-contradictory, mostly because it is required to accept the mistaken and self-contradictory dogma of the Trinity of Persons.
For example, Catholicism that God is intrinsically simple having no components. And yet, it also says that God has three Persons. There is no way to philosophically, logically, or rationally harmonize those two statements. They are inherently contradictory. And so the whole of Catholic philosophy is vitiated because it is required to accept something that causes fundamental contradictions in that philosophy from the ground up.
@eques The Latin essentialia as Swedenborg uses it in reference to the Trinity in God is somewhat difficult to convey in English. "Essential components" is what the most contemporary English translation uses, but I don't think it adequately represents what the Latin word means, nor have I come up with a really good one- or two-word representation of it in English.
Although I have no problem with the idea that God has parts (I reject the Catholic concept that God is "simple" if that means "of undifferentiated substance or essence"), "parts" is not exactly what essentialia means. "Aspects" is closer, as long as that is not thought of modally.
But a better way to conceptualize it is in terms of substance, form, and function, as explained in my article, "Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?" The substance, form, and function of any object are distinct from one another conceptually, but cannot be separated in reality. They are not "parts" in the usual sense, but rather "aspects" of an object.
4:45 PM
@eques However, everything we have that is human is derived from qualities that exist in God. And those qualities exist in perfection only in God. So the essence, reality, and perfection of humanity exists only in God, and we are mere imperfect copies.
@eques Further, none of the "true Man" in Jesus was derived from Mary. Once again, no created being can add anything to God. The whole "mother of God" meme in Catholicism is faulty and mistaken. And you will see, if you read the Gospels carefully, that although the narrator sometimes calls Mary Jesus' mother, Jesus himself never calls her that, and in fact specifically does not recognize her as his mother on several occasions.
@eques Back to philosophy, I do think it can be useful to us humans in understanding spiritual and divine realities. But philosophy cannot be the source of the fundamental truths of Christian belief. That's what the Word of God is for. And human philosophy can never be given precedence over the Word of God.
A fundamental problem with both Catholicism and Protestantism is that they have taken ideas derived from human philosophy and given them precedence over the Word of God, establishing human-derived concepts as litmus tests both for Christian doctrine and for interpreting the Word of God. If the Bible says one thing and human philosophy says another, then the human philosophy will be given precedence.
5:02 PM
3 hours later…
8:09 PM
@LeeWoofenden Your statement here is a chicken and egg problem. You presume Catholic philosophy is mistaken since it leads to the Trinity rather than seeing that the Trinity follows from Catholic philosophy. Id est, philosophy (its methods and techniques) is what helped early Christian theologians (the Fathers of the Church -- the earliest of whom learned directly from the Apostles) to explain what they had been taught and to expand the understanding of that.
@LeeWoofenden Have you read Summa Theologiae or any number of other Catholic philosophical texts? Your objection there is precisely been dealt with.
@LeeWoofenden essentialia, nominative plural of essentialis, a 3rd declension adjective, itself deriving from essentia + al (suffix meaning "pertaining to"); essentia is based on esse, meaning essence or being. Thus "essentialia" means things pertaining to being. But what is being? You need more rigorous definitions of substance form and function. Substance I would ordinarily equate to essence but I'm not sure this matches with how you are using the term.
@LeeWoofenden I find it ironic that you accuse the Trinitarians of being "materialistic" in determining what Father, Son and Holy Spirit refer to when Swedenborg based on your linked blog post defines Father, Son and Holy Spirit based on "a human being of soul, body, and actions".
@LeeWoofenden the abstract quality of "humanity" does not consist in the mere summation of its attributes and furthermore, the fact that they originate in God doesn't make God the prefect human anymore than the fact that all creation comes from him doesn't mean that God is creation.
@LeeWoofenden If the True Man did not derive from Mary, how is he Man? No created being can add anything to God, but God can work through His Creation to accomplish His Ends. He consented to be born of Mary. Mary is Mother of God because she gave birth to Christ (a mother is a mother of a Being).
@LeeWoofenden Jesus gives Mary to John in his Gospel which would only make sense if Christ was her Son (knowing he will die, he entrusts His Mother to someone -- it is a son's duty to care for his parents in Jewish custom). Jesus not saying it directly is an argument from Silence. If the Gospels are inspired, then what the narrator said is inspired, thus when the narrator identifies Mary as his mother, it is true
@LeeWoofenden All Wisdom ultimately comes from God. Philosophy is a means to abstractly approach statements about Truth, Doctrine, etc and make conclusions about them. It is not that it is given precedence over the Word of God but that it is a tool helping us to understand it.
8:31 PM
@eques I've read excerpts. But I disagree with the fundamentals. Reading the philosophical apologia for them is not going to change my disagreement with the fundamentals, any more than reading Protestant apologias for justification by faith alone is going to change my view that justification by faith alone is non-Biblical and false.
It is possible for human reason to "prove" anything it wants, so much so that it seems completely true even though in fact it is utterly false. That's why the doctrine of the church can never be founded on or derived from philosophy. It must be founded on and drawn from the Word of God.
In simple terms, esse is the actual being of a thing, whereas essentia is the nature of that being. One has to do with substance; the other with form.
@eques Thank you for reading the post. But it doesn't define the Trinity based on those components of a human being; rather, it uses those human components as concrete examples and reflections of the higher reality of the nature of God. And it can do so rightfully because as Genesis 1:26-27 tells us, God created humans in the image and likeness of God.
The Trinity of Persons has no such tie-in with the biblical principle that humans are created in the image and likeness of God. That is yet another one of its failings.
@eques Humanity is not "abstract" in God. It is real and self-existent in God. We are human because God is human. Our humanity is a mere reflection of the true humanity of God. But in God the Father, that humanity exists at a level beyond human comprehension, so it is difficult for us to think of it as "humanity." However, as expressed in Jesus Christ, the Divine Humanity becomes perceptible and approachable by created human beings.
@eques The idea that Mary is the mother of God throws all of God's nature and creation on its head. God cannot be derived in any way, shape, or form from created beings. God is self-existent. Nothing in God is derived from any non-self-existent thing, such as a mortal human being.
This is yet another way in which Catholic philosophy is self-contradictory--saying that the Creator is in some part derived from the Creation.
@eques I do agree with you, though, that God can work through his Creation to accomplish his ends. He temporarily took on a finite human nature from an ordinary, finite human being (Mary) because there would be no other way for him to be attacked by the Devil, battle the Devil, and overcome the Devil.
The Devil cannot approach God directly, because there is no taint of evil in God that the Devil could approach, and not the slightest inclination in God that would be tempted in the slightest by anything the Devil had to offer.
Contrary to Catholic theology, what Mary provided was precisely the fallen, sin-prone nature by which the Devil could approach God so that God could battle and overcome the devil. God himself cannot be tempted. Yet we are told that Christ "was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sinning" (Hebrews 4:15). It was not the divine nature that was tempted. It was the human nature, from Mary, that was tempted.
But Jesus fought the temptations of the Devil from his divine nature, and that is why he always defeated the devil, so that in the end he could say to his disciples, "Take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33), "the world" here standing for the evil powers that had taken control of the world.
If the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception were correct, it would destroy the very reason God needed to temporarily take on a finite human nature. This is yet another non-biblical doctrine that Catholicism has adopted based on human philosophy and a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of the Incarnation.
@eques Mary was the mother of Jesus' finite human side. She was not the mother of his divine nature or of anything divine in him. The narrator speaks of Mary in human terms as being the mother of Jesus. But Jesus himself never acknowledges it. When bystanders call her "his mother," he corrects them and says that those who do his will are his mother, brother, and sister.
@eques Unfortunately, in the case of much of Catholic philosophy, it has obscured the truth of the Word of God rather than helping us to understand the truth.
@eques Scripture is very clear on the things that are essential to our salvation. There are, of course, many other things that are not so clear in Scripture, and that do require interpretation in order to properly understand.
@eques And not to put too fine a point on it, but theologians over the ages have misunderstood Scripture because it was in their interest to do so in order to gain reputation, wealth, and power.
I'm not saying every Christian clergyperson or theologian who believes false things is corrupt. But the false doctrines they believe did originate because of corrupt human beings within the church, who were focused, not on loving God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving their neighbor as themselves, as Jesus taught, but on establishing their own correctness and their own power and position within the church and within human political and social society.
And now that those false doctrines have been accepted as orthodox in the church, clergy who want position in the church must support them in order to gain and retain position in the church. Any Catholic priest who openly disagrees with the Church on fundamental doctrine will be quickly defrocked, or at least put out to pasture. Their livelihood depends upon not disagreeing with official church doctrine.
The same is true in other ecclesiastical institutions--Protestant, Orthodox, you name it. Clergy must believe what their church teaches because their livelihood depends upon it.
Unfortunately, if what their church teaches is false, they must believe those falsehoods. It may be perfectly innocent on their part. They may sincerely believe that the falsehoods are true. And they will not be held guilty of that spiritually. But the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle pressures on clergy to accept their church's doctrines are quite powerful, and not fully understood by most laypeople.
Most clergy will never seriously question their church's doctrines because to do so would be too threatening to their position, their livelihood, and their sense of self-worth and purpose in society. Church-affiliated academics, similarly, will rarely seriously question their church's doctrines, philosophical stances, and so on for the very same reason.
So falsities, once ensconced in the institution of the church, are rarely questioned or changed. Instead, the people whose job it is to examine and teach them will bend their minds toward supporting them with every scrap of evidence, logic, and philosophy they can muster. And that is true even if the doctrines so supported are utterly false, as are most of the reigning doctrines of traditional Christianity.
@eques So yes, I have read excerpts of various Catholic philosophical treatises. And they have struck me as faulty and false reasoning marshalled to support faulty and false doctrines. The whole thing, in my view, is a tissue riddled with holes, with no soundness in it, because it is all being called forth to support false, non-biblical doctrines that were invented by human beings rather than revealed by God.
Reading the entire treatise is not going to change my view of that. It would simply use large chunks of my time to confirm what I already know: that the writers of these treatises have gotten so ensnared in human philosophy that they are no longer able to read the Word of God and hear its plain message and meaning.
9:15 PM
3 hours later…
11:48 PM
@eques I didn't say Christ got nothing from Mary. I said that God, including Christ, got nothing that was God from Mary. During his lifetime on earth Christ did get a finite, fallen human nature from Mary. But none of that was God, and none of it became God. What is created cannot become God. It is impossible for Mary, a created being, to be "the mother of God."
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Discussion between eques and Lee Woof…
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