Posted on 12/26/2011 6:08:22 PM PST by rzman21
“But, I could not become a Catholic, because the Catholic Church seems to go so far as to discount the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, which is what truly drives me in the following of Christ.”
boy, you are lucky you weren’t born the first 1,500 years after the Church was established.
also, i kind of feel bad for all those monks who spent their lives copying the Scriptures for hundreds and hundreds of years so guys like you can accuse the Church of “discounting” the Scriptures. i guess they wasted their lives, huh?
Let's just keep it at that. Now let's all go save some lost souls!
“Or you could be a loving Christian. Why not focus your love on people who haven’t heard the Gospel.”
One of my favorite scriptures is 1 John 4:
God’s Love and Ours
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Hey, I’m still learning!!! I strive for the ideal, but as Paul would say... If I must brag, allow me to brag of my faults... I have a lot to learn!!!
re: “They were all correct, but all only had a small piece of the big picture. So it is with the many perceptions of God. They are all partially correct, but none have the understanding of the big picture of God. If you open your view and examine the universal truths within all religions, you will find that they say the same thing.”
This is totally incorrect. All religions are not saying the same thing. All religions do not have the same “god” or view of God.
The parable of the blind men and the elephant is a clear and powerful illustration, but an illustration is a mere point of view in more vivid terms. It is not an argument, but a well-articulated assertion. It doesn’t prove anything in itself. It doesn’t make one’s point valid. It only makes it clear.
Proving the point is another matter. It requires evidence and justification. Given the illustration of the blind men and the elephant, why should anyone believe this parable actually describes the way things really are?
First of all, you left out part of the story. The full story is as follows:
“Six blind men visit the palace of the Rajah and encounter an elephant for the first time. As each touches the animal with his hands, he announces his discoveries.
The first blind man put out his hand and touched the side of the elephant. “How smooth! An elephant is like a wall.” The second blind man put out his hand and touched the trunk of the elephant. “How round! An elephant is like a snake.” The third blind man put out his hand and touched the tusk of the elephant. “How sharp! An elephant is like a spear.” The fourth blind man put out his hand and touched the leg of the elephant. “How tall! An elephant is like a tree.” The fifth blind man reached out his hand and touched the ear of the elephant. “How wide! An elephant is like a fan.” The sixth blind man put out his hand and touched the tail of the elephant. “How thin! An elephant is like a rope.”
An argument ensued, each blind man thinking his own perception of the elephant was the correct one. The Rajah, awakened by the commotion, called out from the balcony. “The elephant is a big animal,” he said. “Each man touched only one part. You must put all the parts together to find out what an elephant is like.”
Enlightened by the Rajah’s wisdom, the blind men reached agreement. “Each one of us knows only a part. To find out the whole truth we must put all the parts together.”
The first serious limitation is that even though the men are blind, the elephant isn’t necessarily mute. This is a factor the illustration doesn’t allow for: What if the elephant speaks?
The claim of Christianity is that man doesn’t learn about God by groping. Instead, discovery is through God’s own self-disclosure. He is not passive and silent, leaving us to guess about His nature. God tells us what He is like and what He wants.
If God speaks, this changes everything. All contrary opinions are silenced, all conjectures are put to rest. God has made Himself known, giving us a standard by which to measure all other religious claims. The parable of the blind men does not take this possibility into account. Yet three of the world’s great religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—make this claim.
There is a second problem with the parable. It presumes that Christians reject religious pluralism because they lack exposure to other beliefs, much as the blind men erred because each explored only a part of the elephant. Had they searched more completely, they would have seen their error. Christians are just uninformed.
This is not the case, though. Christians reject pluralism, in part, because defining elements of different religions contradict each other. It’s not an inductive problem of discovery; it’s a problem of coherence.
Judaism teaches Jesus is not the Messiah. Christianity teaches He is. Jesus either is the Messiah or He’s not. Both groups can’t be right. The notion that Christianity and Judaism are somehow equally true is contradictory, like square circles.
What if the elephant in the parable was a miniature, so small the blind man could close his hand and completely encompass the elephant? If another then claimed, “The elephant is bigger than a house,” the first would be correct to disagree. Why? Because an elephant can’t be small enough to fit into one’s hand and also be as big as a house at the same time.
No possible future discovery is going to change the fact that religious claims cannot be harmonized. Rather, exploration complicates the issue. The more one knows about the core beliefs of various faiths, the more complex the problem of harmonizing becomes.
Appealing to the ubiquity of something like the “golden rule” is no help. It is a moral action guide that says almost nothing about any religion’s fundamental understanding of the shape of the world. Profound contradictions between foundational beliefs are not removed by pointing out shared moral proverbs.
Contradictory claims can’t be simultaneously true. This has nothing to do with further discovery. Religious pluralism is false on deductive grounds, not inductive.
The third objection is the most serious. The application of this parable to issues of truth is doomed before it gets started. The view commits suicide; it is self-refuting. Here’s how.
There’s only one way to know our cultural or religious biases blind us to the larger truth that all religions lead to God. Someone who sees clearly without bias must tell us so. This parable, though, teaches that such objectivity is impossible.
The Rajah was in a position of privileged access to the truth. Because he could see clearly, he was able to correct those who were blind.
Such a privileged view, though, is precisely what advocates of both religious pluralism and the radical skepticism of post-modernism deny. Completely objective assessments are illusions, they claim. The truth lies in some combination of opinions or, for the more skeptical, is out of reach for any of us. This is precisely the kind of thing, though, the parable does not allow one to say.
The skeptical view itself is a claim meant to be understood as an objective and true assessment of the world. It’s as if one said, “Each of us is blind,” and then added, “but I’ll tell you what the world really looks like.” This is a clear contradiction.
The problem becomes obvious by offering this challenge. Ask, “Where would you be in the illustration? When you apply this parable to the issue of truth, are you like one of the blind men or are you like the king?”
This dilemma is unsolvable. If the story-teller is like one of the six who can’t see—if he is one of the blind men groping around—how does he know everyone else is blind and has only a portion of the truth? On the other hand, if he fancies himself in the position of the king, how is it that he alone escapes the illusion that blinds the rest of us?
At best, this parable—if it were accurate—might justify agnosticism, not religious pluralism. All one could really say is that it may be the case we’re all groping about with no one in full possession of the truth—but this can’t be know for sure.
If everyone truly is blind, then no one can know if he or anyone else is mistaken. Only someone who knows the whole truth can identify another on the fringes of it. In this story, only the king can do that—no one else.
The most ironic turn of all is that the parable of the six blind men and the elephant, to a great degree, is an accurate picture of reality. It’s just been misapplied.
We are like blind men, fumbling around in the world searching for answers to life’s deepest questions. From time to time, we seem to stumble upon some things that are true, but we’re often confused and mistaken, just as the blind men were.
How do I know this? Because the King has spoken. He is above, instructing us, advising us of our mistakes, and correcting our error. The real question is: Will we listen?
Good post.
i have no idea what this post means ( i don’t think you do either ), but the Church received the teaching from the Apostles that baptism is for the remission of sins and receiving the Holy Spirit.
can you give me one instance of anyone ever being told in the NT to say a “sinners prayer” or to accept Jesus into their heart as their personal Savior?
An outstanding observation, which also provides great justification to rely upon the work of God the Holy Spirit in the believer, instead of another man who has no more authority in our relationship with God the Father through faith in Christ than do each us as royal priests in His family.
If others insist upon placing themselves between God the Father, and the individual believer other than the High Priest Jesus Christ, then bless them and let that person be so held accountable at the bema seat or at the Great White Throne Judgment.
Excellent post..... Now explain God! I’m here to listen.
No, and neither will those act as a substitute for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for salvation.
exactly my friend. this is how the Catholic Faith was established.
where are the gross errors in the article, can you name just one?
Good post.
It appears that it is our time for Gods correction But, I could not become a Catholic, because the Catholic Church seems to go so far as to discount the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, which is what truly drives me in the following of Christ.
>>How so? Most assuredly there are bad clerics and laity, but I think the Catholic Church reveres the scriptures every bit as much as Protestants do.
I’m a former Lutheran, so I have a degree of respect for Confessional Lutheranism.
But Luther’s schooling in Ockhamist Nominalism skewed his thinking.
Most assuredly the Western Church was a disaster in the 200 years following the Black Death, but Luther didn’t make the situation any better apart from forcing Rome to finally address the need for reform.
The state of clerical education in the early 16th century was non-existent, and Luther himself only had two years of schooling before being named a doctor in the university.
But what most Protestants don’t understand is that Luther sought to reform the Roman Catholic Church rather than start a new religion. His thought changed after he was excommunicated.
There are true traditions and false traditions. Luther saw this and never went to the extremes that Calvin and the later Reformers went to when they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think having been a Lutheran has made me a better Catholic because I appreciate the scriptures. But Lutheranism did not restore the primitive Church.
Luther is likely the reason I went East because I gained an antipathy for Scholasticism from my Lutheran past. A lot of things that Protestants call abuses existed long before the Middle Ages and the era of supposed corruption.
Jesus tells us in John 17 that we should all be one so the world will believe Jesus was sent by the Father.
i am trying to get us all to be one, since Jesus tells us this will lead to lost souls coming to faith in Jesus.
Again, sounds like a cult to me. Just sayin’.And YES, ..full disclosure, I am Lutheran Missouri Synod. (^ :
>>With due respect, ELCA types would make similar claims about the LCMS’s dogmatism.
The latter group is really different. Their kings regularly sent out missionaries to the world. Sometimes they were mistaken for Buddhists (I think some recent discoveries in Greece were about Jains and not Buddhists BTW).
One of their doctrines is AHEMSA, which is also believed by some Hindus.
Here's what it is about ~ a man with authority over you makes you walk a mile. Instead, you walk two miles. He demands your cloak. You also give him your tunic and your sandels.
He kills your brother. You bless him and forgive him.
Remember the Ghandi movie when the people walked up to the colonial police and allowed themselves to be beaten by clubs? First of all, that was very brave and effective. On the other hand, that is not Ahemsa because it is considered wrong also to precipitate violence through a provocative move like walking up and challenging authority.
Ghandi didn't really believe in Ahemsa. William Penn did. I know some people who do. The Old Order Amish do.
The Jains have some other doctrines. like Americans they are strong believers in veterinary medicine and humane treatment of animals ~ even wild birds that fall from the sky.
Again, Jains are like Americans in regard to dealing with the very same sparrows mentioned in the Bible ~ and they are the source of 1/2 the charity given in India. Christians are the source of the other 1/2 of the charity given in India.
Every day I spend a bit of time ~ a very small part ~ trying to come to an understanding of why the first shall be last, and the last first ~ and why I should forgive my enemies, and why a naked Dagambra in India, walking down the road naked as a jay believes, for all practical purposes, pretty much the same things I have been taught to believe regarding human interaction with other humans and with the animals over which we rule.
Like I said, I do that briefly every day. Put myself in the other guy's shoes and look at my beliefs from his perspective. Just briefly.
by Baptism of the Holy Spirit you mean the Baptism as described in Acts 2:38 and 22:16?
There you go again... Immediately judging me wrong based upon your singular version of the parable. It’s been around for many thousands of years and is told in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sufism. There are many, many versions of this parable. You must have limited you interpretation to proving what was wrong rather than looking at the bigger picture and understanding what was correct. You will not find God in the anti-God search.
This is why Jesus said, “Let those with ears hear.”
re: “Now explain God! I’m here to listen.”
John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
John 3
1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”[d]
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.[e] 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[f] 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”[g]
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
**The Baptism is by God the Holy Spirit...**
The phrase “God the Holy Spirit” is not found anywhere in scripture. The phrase “the Spirit of God” IS sciptural. The Holy Ghost(Spirit) proceedeth FROM the Father.
You are on a path that will yield excellent results. To the extent you understand the path by observing other’s experiences and learning from them, your path will have fewer bumps and bruises.
Search for the meaning and you will find it. When we think we have it we are usually the furthest from the truth. LOL... I speak of that from my own “School of Hard Knocks!” That’s why our class colors are “Black & Blue!”
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