A Working Definition of God

what?, like your priest example?...like you said... Adding supreme to the definition seperates him from the others you consider to also be divine.

Problem being, "supreme" is also not an objective term. What are the standards for supremacy, here?And while we're at it, we still have that vague "being" term, leaving us with not much besides a couple modifiers on an undefined life form of some kind.This message has been edited by [Dan's Clever Alias], 04-22-2005 09:05 AM

yeah...I think thats about as far as you're gonna get. But, as far as a definition goes, I think it works.

FMy point was that there really ISN'T a coherent explanation of the confusion anywhere else, but the Bible's explanation is comprehensive and truly illuminating. I don't depend on my own ability but trust God based on His word, and trusting in God according to His own instructions is the opposite of arrogance. The huge variety of beliefs is in fact explained in the Bible and nowhere else. People's interest in spiritual things and gravitating to what they agree with is of course true, but there is no way to derive from that fact a determination of which views are true and which false. That idea of "many ways" is in fact the dead giveaway that your views are very very different from mine. Jesus said clearly there is only ONE way. He said it, I didn't. Yes, that could mean he and I are not in agreement on some fundamental points, or it could mean that he is trying to come at the problem from a different perspective for the purpose of better communication, which is what he seems to be saying. I don't grasp some of his position but we'll see how it develops. None of the definitions anyone gave was complete, yet all were orthodox Christian, including your dictionary definition. I assume that if there were definitions from other religions to be had here they would have been posted. I thought Dan simply wanted whatever definitions people have, for some purpose of his own, and I still do not understand why he couldn't work with the definitions originally given him. He was looking for something else I can't figure out, so I really can't participate in that part of the discussion. I suppose this one is off topic but since you are the director of the place who am I to object? I am not in a predicament, Percy, you are projecting that on me. The only reason I exclude evidence from the natural world is that it's not evident to most people, not that it doesn't exist. Some people see God's hand in every aspect of his Creation, but most of us don't (Fallenness explains this too). God certainly DOES perform physical deeds, every day upholding this entire universe and being the remote cause of every physical occurrence -- traceable effects of his natural laws being the proximal cause. But the kind of evidence that you all demand at this site for such things as Biblical miracles is not in fact "in evidence" but we have the witness evidence of the Bible instead. Miracles do not leave the kind of evidence you demand. We are left with either believing the people who witnessed them or not believing them. I believe them. After what I worked my way through to arrive at the conclusion that the Bible IS absolutely THE significant and definitive word of God, and after experiencing confirmation of its truths in personal direct ways over and over, there's no way your view holds any conceivable attraction to me. The universe is at best both predictable and unpredictable, coherent and incoherent. For one thing it is not as it was originally created as the Fall brought destruction and death into it. ONLY the Bible gives us this information and without it the universe cannot be fully apprehended. The words "true" and "false" and "truth" versus "error, falsehood" and so on, are everyday English words that apply to science as well as to everything else. You seem to want to use the idea of "truth" in fact to deny truth and relegate it to something subjective and inconclusive. To say that a proposition or belief can be true for one person but not for another is in fact to deny the meaning of the word. Again I disagree. Objectivity simply means honesty and accuracy in apprehending and describing anything whatever. It is not the exclusive possession of science. Objectivity used to be the standard for journalism for instance, in which the reporter worked to keep his own opinions out of his description.I don't know what to say about your definition of faith except that it's about as far from anything I believe as it can be. Peace and goodness and caring and compassion? Nothing to do with it. Those things may exist and be cultivated without any faith in anything whatever. To have faith is to put one's trust in something or someone. That's what the word means. It has been corrupted in many ways to refer to things it can't possibly have anything to do with. Wrong idea I'm afraid, as most accusations of Biblical contradictions are. We don't HAVE the ability naturally to obey this command at all, can't even come close, not with heart or with mind or with soul, because of our fallenness. It is something we can only begin to do in the power of God, and that is not possible without BELIEVING in God -- believing in Him according to His word, not according to some sentimental idea we make up about what we want him to be like -- and trusting Him and obeying Him. IF we are doing that then He will gradually change us into people who can more and more love Him as He commands, with heart and soul and mind. But the natural man cannot. There is no point in appealing to anybody's heart. Pascal did us all a great disservice with his famous statement that "the heart has its reasons that reason knows not of" --although in context he is simply opposing the idolatry of Reason. But in practice in our time it tends toward a silly sentimental idea of religion. If the mind is not engaged there is no way to have true faith. It comes from neither place, certainly not through the senses but not the heart either, although the heart will certainly be engaged when God is known. It comes from BELIEVING God's word. That's how it came to me. That's not the senses and it's not the heart. Believing is the same as KNOWING God's word is true, taking it at its word, believing it with all your heart and mind, and ACTING ON IT with all your heart and mind. See above. The contradiction is in your mind, not mine. 1) The evidence is everywhere only most people can't apprehend it as such, as it follows natural laws and 2) the physical evidence people want for miracles is unavailable because they left no physical evidence. You may have a problem with this but I don't. What we have is mostly witness evidence. That's the way it is.TO BE CONTINUED.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-22-2005 12:54 PM

Here is one key reason why evangelical Protestantism has such a problem with evolutionary science, whereas Catholicism does not.For in Catholicism, the Fall refers only to a primordial loss of sanctifying grace by humanity. The physical effects asserted by evanagelicals, as above, are contrary to the Catholic understanding of Scripture, as well as refuted by Catholic Tradition (cf. Augustine, Aquinas, through Benedict XVI while heading the International Theological Commission) and also by the external scientific evidence that the fundamental physical laws of the universe have remained unchanged for billions of years before humans arrived on the scene. Quite so. Once locked into Sola Scriptura, one is painted into a corner on many issues, including but hardly limited to scientific issues.

So do you just ignore Paul's statement in Romans 5:12: Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned... ? If death came into the world with Adam's sin then obviously there was no death in the world before that, which contradicts evolution. And that includes animals as they were cursed along with the Creation as a whole because of the sin of Adam. Funny that instead of feeling locked in by it I find it the most liberating illuminating exciting key to Everything, and only expect more and more of same yet to come as I continue to plumb its depths.

No Faith, if you read Paul's statement as you seem to, you deny everything else in the Bible. Only Paul hints (and that only if you misread what Paul's saying) that death came into the world because of some alleged Fall. In fact Genesis itself is based on the fact that death already existed and was a normal part of life. In fact, the whole expulsion from the Garden of Eden had no purpose other than keeping the status quo, the norm.I have got to ask you, have you ever read the Bible?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

By no means. I follow the Catholic interpretation of this verse (that the death referred to is spiritual death, not physical death), not the (some) evangelical Protestant (s) mis-interpretation. That's just it. Your argument is based on erroneous premises. Physical death did not come into the world as a result of original sin. It was here already. I won't begrudge you your fideistic spirituality, but you'll find difficulty convincing the hard-headed rationalists on this board I think. Heck, I have difficulty, and I'm on the E side of the EvC debate.

Curious if you know how far back this Catholic interpretation goes?Funny that the word "death" is used by Paul without qualification, however, as surely Paul would know that ordinary people would read it to mean physical death, as ordinary people have to LEARN about spiritual death, but physical death is a fact we can hardly ignore. The idea of spiritual death is theologically sophisticated in other words, and so requires qualification, but Paul gave no qualification. And not only Paul but Moses too, who authored the Genesis story about how God said if you eat of the fruit you will surely die, not "die spiritually" but "die," period.Evangelicals understand it to refer to BOTH spiritual death and physical death, both immediate and also cumulative, a loss of the connection with God that got more lost over the generations, and a loss of physical life that started with a very gradual and at first hardly noticeable loss of physical health that got worse over the generations, and a progressive shortening of the life span.In fact a major Biblical clue that literal physical death is certainly meant by Moses and Paul is this subsequent progressive shortening of the life span over the following generations, from +/-900 years down to +/- 200 by Job's and Abraham's time. This only makes sense on the idea of a progressive accumulation of sin and death in the human race, the idea being that we all inherit the sin nature from Adam's sin and all commit our own sins to one degree or another, which add to the burden on the generations that follow us, also to one degree or another. Finally God says He will limit us to a life span of around 70 years or so (otherwise the human race would simply have disappeared altogether by now).Another question: How does Catholicism interpret this progressive shortening of physical life from Adam on down if the only death that sin brought was spiritual death? Not according to Paul and Moses, as demonstrated above. The hard-headedness is truly astonishing I must say -- one is tempted to say "block-headedness" -- but fortunately it's not my job to convince anybody, just be as clear as I can and let God do any convincing if He cares to.

At least as far back as St. Augustine, and probably back to the time of St. Clement, ie. the second or third century AD. Note that this is before the canon of Scripture was established. It doesn't interperet the patriarchal ages literally. There are inconsistencies in these in the earliest manuscripts anyaway.

A slight word of caution paisano -- from a fellow Catholic.The Catholic interpreation of the fall is that it refers in some way to both physical and spiritual death -- and that this is indeed the result of the original sin.For example, in the Catechsim of the Catholic Church I read the following: However, unlike some other demoninations, the Catholic Church recognizes that death was already present within the world -- and that Adam and Eve's transgression effectively opened the way for worldly death to come upon them.Another more precise explanation can be found on the Catholic Encyclopedia as follows: I suppose in the most basic sense, I see the following in the Chruch Doctors:They recognized that Adam and Eve already had the capacity to die -- but that this was not originally God's will for them to do so. This is to say, so long as they remained within God's grace, they would have remined effectively immortal.However, as a result of their transgression, the potential for death was no longer restrained and it indeed came onto humanity in a "physical sense" -- and they were further subject to the danger of "spiritual death" by virtue of their "original sin".This, in some mystery of iniquity, seems to pervade all of humanity (except for Christ [as true God and true man] and Mary [by virtue of the grace in Christ prepared in advance for her to walk in] and is transmitted via generation to generation.Consequently, to further illustrate this "original sin/physical death" within a distinctly Catholic perspective, it should be noted that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is deeply inspired by the Spirit for this exact same reasoning.For example, consider Henry Newman and his devotion to our lady as relayed by Thomas McGovern at Catholic.net. In particular, Newman was especially taken by the following affirmation of St. Irenaeus: In other words, while death certainly existed before the fall, and while Adam and Eve had the potential to physically die (but didn't so long as they obeyed) -- their sin did indeed open the dooway to "physical death" as well as "spirutal death".While we may (as Catholics) disagree with Faith on the scope of St. Paul's assertion, we should not distort our own sound Catholic doctrine beyond the scope of the intents of the Deposit of Faith just to distance ourselves from our "separated brethren".Rather, in instances like this, I think it more prudent to search for statements within each others faith systems that we might have in common. It seems to me a much less devisive path to follow -- and will probably go a much greater distance toward reconciliation and understanding then the accusations of one simply being Scripturally reprobate.Just saying.

I was going to ask you for references but then looked it up online myself. I found "Original Sin" in the Catholic Encyclopedia, and contrary to what you are saying, it appears that I am in agreement with Catholic doctrine, which IS that death entered the world with sin, and they quote Romans 5:12 just as I did. This is given as the Catholic answer to the Pelagians as a matter of fact, who claimed as you do that death did NOT enter the world with sin, and then changed again to say that death and sin were identical, both of which views were condemned by the Church. Also, Augustine is referenced in connection with the Pelagian dispute, which suggests that he took this position himself, again, contrary to what you are saying.From the Encyclopedia:
Original SinThey are certainly missing the point.What would be the allegorical interpretation or however they interpret them anyway? I was unable to find a Catholic commentary to look this up. In fact Catholic sites frequently link to Protestant commentaries instead, giving the appropriate doctrinal caveats of course.Note on "inconsistencies in the earliest manuscripts:" This phraseology tends to give the impression that these are the authoritative documents because they are the "earliest" which somehow implies authenticity. But the fact is that they are copies just as all the other extant mss are, as there are no autographs to be had, and not all that much earlier than the others, and above all they are the fewest ancient mss by some 5000+ to 45 as I recall, and the least respected in the history of Biblical copying and translation, and only promoted by recent lone-wolf scholars over the best judgment of Church scholars.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-22-2005 05:10 PM

While you've pointed out some fine distinctions here, what it boils down to in the context of the EvC issue is that the Protestant assertion of the Fall effecting radical wholesale changes in the physical universe (not restriced to humans) is not supported in Catholic teaching. Nor does it hold up under external evidence. As Catholics, we need not and should not fall prey to fideism.As to common ground with Protestants, although I advocate finding this where possible (and on many issues it is) , I must admit I am relatively unconcerned with supporting specifically Protestant apologetics issues at the cost of supporting concepts (either scientific or philosphical) which do not hold up under scrutiny. The EvC issue IMO falls into this category.

You're overgeneralizing physical death (in the human sense) into physical death in the universal sense.

Well, that's nice, that we both found basically the same material at the same time. I did not find in your post anything to support your statement that "death certainly existed before the fall," only that the capacity to die upon disobedience of God was present.I can certainly agree that this must be the case as they DID die upon disobedience, but I see no reason to think death itself existed at all previous to that act. Your discussion of this has led me to ruminate more about this: The reason the way was barred to the Tree of Life after their sin was that they would have received immortality from it, which would mean an immortality IN SIN, which would be a state of unimaginable evil, something like the condition of Satan and his devils I have to suppose. Through Jesus' death on our behalf we will be restored not merely to Adam and Eve's pre-Fall conditional immortality, but to unconditional immortality, only now in a state of holiness.Anyway, since I didn't see any evidence for pre-fall death in your post, and I'm not sure what you mean by "the scope of St. Paul's assertion" that you say you disagree with me about, please explain.Oh, also, what is YOUR understanding of the Catholic view of the shortening of the life span from Adam on?This message has been edited by Faith, 04-22-2005 05:40 PM