Philosophical and Theological Ramblings
Spent the whole of today writing an essay for a class at 4pm and missed most of my lectures as a result - ah well, so much for resolutions.
Having unsigned myself from Guest Night, deciding that as much as the food was wonderful, I preferred a quiet evening instead of too much fun and excitement, I was consigning myself to dinner with a book for company when I met Carmody who invited me to dinner with Francesco, a friend of her's who is reading PPE at Greyfriar's. We had a very engaging conversation about Catholicism and belief which I definitely found very insightful indeed. These issues have indeed been weighing heavily on my mind - that is issues of faith, belief and meaning; all deeply metaphysical and vitally important I think. A great deal of what I found insightful were the demystifying and correcting of many of the prejudices I had about Catholicism. I found very interesting the aspect of the Catholic faith that says that the individual's conscience is the ultimate guide to what is right or wrong, and is sovereign in that respect - no matter what church doctrine might state.
Further to this is the fact that Catholics do not make any judgements about salvation. In Francesco's view (something that is shared by the majority of Catholics he claims), a person who does not know Christ can still be 'saved' - indeed an individual who has explicitly rejected Christ can still be saved, because he may be living in accordance to God. This does address one of the fundamental problems that I have always had against organized religion, mainly of the evangelical vein as to how a merciful God can damn people who have never had the opportunity of hearing the word of God. The evangelical view is inconsistent and problematic precisely because they claim that salvation comes only through the personal acceptance of God, and indeed many of them claim that once you have heard the word of God and you reject it, you lose all chance of salvation. My logical response to that has always been as follows - I would then rather not hear anything of God at all - I would prefer to run away from all evangelicals. Why? It is certainly akin to running from the truth, if that is indeed what it is, but it certainly seems safer than facing the possibility of damnation!
More problematic for me was the view that Jesus created the Church as a representation of himself, as a single body of Christ, and that the Catholic church was the founding church and thus represents the 'true' church. Francesco strongly believed that the Church should never have been divided. A corollary to this is the idea of the Bible as 'text' - that is as having a variety of meanings. It is thus inherent on the Church or the individual to interprete the bible. This is why I find the notion that the bible is the word of God and should be taken literally as one that is just plain ridiculous. As such, he claims that the Catholic Church, as the one who has the weight of tradition and thinking about it represents that which can best interprete the teachings of Christ. He does point out, rightfully in my view that such things as the 'Holy Trinity' are nowhere to be found in the bible but are instead ecumenical doctrine that has since been accepted by the evangelical and protestant movements. However, I think doctrine, by its nature is open to interpretation and definition and the Catholic Church has no claim of monopoly over that.
Then there are aspects of the Church and its doctrine that I find harder to accept - one of which is the 'cult of Mary' and the whole idea of the immaculate conception. That Mary was born without sin as God willed it I can just about accept - that she did not sin to the point until Jesus was born I find rather less able to swallow. Then as well there is the fact that the Catholic Church tends to be highly secretive, something that I dislike - I find it much more accomodating to people if a church were open.
In addition, I just had a long discussion with my housemate who is a protestant and she says that the so-called ideas which I find very engaging - with regards to the idea of the sovereignity of the conscience as well as the idea of salvation being judged by God alone are central tenets of the protestant faith. In fact, she claims the former as a fundamental aspect of protestantism and the core of the split with the Catholic Church itself. Indeed, protestants often hold to a belief in a much more individual God, and the whole point is that each individual has a personal relationship with God and his conscience is meant to be the guide as to what is right and wrong. It tends to be the Catholic Church which is rather more dogmatic with its pronouncements that are meant to be followed by all its members. In the case of the latter, it could well be a small number of evangelicals that are giving protestants a bad name.
But anyhow, enough of metaphysical ramblings. It is good enough I think that I am thinking about it. I am also reading a book called The Twilight of Atheism by Alistair McGrath, which is a history of Atheism and very interesting indeed. As I would tell anyone who cared to listen, the most fundamental thing is to continually search for truth, wherever it may be.
Having unsigned myself from Guest Night, deciding that as much as the food was wonderful, I preferred a quiet evening instead of too much fun and excitement, I was consigning myself to dinner with a book for company when I met Carmody who invited me to dinner with Francesco, a friend of her's who is reading PPE at Greyfriar's. We had a very engaging conversation about Catholicism and belief which I definitely found very insightful indeed. These issues have indeed been weighing heavily on my mind - that is issues of faith, belief and meaning; all deeply metaphysical and vitally important I think. A great deal of what I found insightful were the demystifying and correcting of many of the prejudices I had about Catholicism. I found very interesting the aspect of the Catholic faith that says that the individual's conscience is the ultimate guide to what is right or wrong, and is sovereign in that respect - no matter what church doctrine might state.
Further to this is the fact that Catholics do not make any judgements about salvation. In Francesco's view (something that is shared by the majority of Catholics he claims), a person who does not know Christ can still be 'saved' - indeed an individual who has explicitly rejected Christ can still be saved, because he may be living in accordance to God. This does address one of the fundamental problems that I have always had against organized religion, mainly of the evangelical vein as to how a merciful God can damn people who have never had the opportunity of hearing the word of God. The evangelical view is inconsistent and problematic precisely because they claim that salvation comes only through the personal acceptance of God, and indeed many of them claim that once you have heard the word of God and you reject it, you lose all chance of salvation. My logical response to that has always been as follows - I would then rather not hear anything of God at all - I would prefer to run away from all evangelicals. Why? It is certainly akin to running from the truth, if that is indeed what it is, but it certainly seems safer than facing the possibility of damnation!
More problematic for me was the view that Jesus created the Church as a representation of himself, as a single body of Christ, and that the Catholic church was the founding church and thus represents the 'true' church. Francesco strongly believed that the Church should never have been divided. A corollary to this is the idea of the Bible as 'text' - that is as having a variety of meanings. It is thus inherent on the Church or the individual to interprete the bible. This is why I find the notion that the bible is the word of God and should be taken literally as one that is just plain ridiculous. As such, he claims that the Catholic Church, as the one who has the weight of tradition and thinking about it represents that which can best interprete the teachings of Christ. He does point out, rightfully in my view that such things as the 'Holy Trinity' are nowhere to be found in the bible but are instead ecumenical doctrine that has since been accepted by the evangelical and protestant movements. However, I think doctrine, by its nature is open to interpretation and definition and the Catholic Church has no claim of monopoly over that.
Then there are aspects of the Church and its doctrine that I find harder to accept - one of which is the 'cult of Mary' and the whole idea of the immaculate conception. That Mary was born without sin as God willed it I can just about accept - that she did not sin to the point until Jesus was born I find rather less able to swallow. Then as well there is the fact that the Catholic Church tends to be highly secretive, something that I dislike - I find it much more accomodating to people if a church were open.
In addition, I just had a long discussion with my housemate who is a protestant and she says that the so-called ideas which I find very engaging - with regards to the idea of the sovereignity of the conscience as well as the idea of salvation being judged by God alone are central tenets of the protestant faith. In fact, she claims the former as a fundamental aspect of protestantism and the core of the split with the Catholic Church itself. Indeed, protestants often hold to a belief in a much more individual God, and the whole point is that each individual has a personal relationship with God and his conscience is meant to be the guide as to what is right and wrong. It tends to be the Catholic Church which is rather more dogmatic with its pronouncements that are meant to be followed by all its members. In the case of the latter, it could well be a small number of evangelicals that are giving protestants a bad name.
But anyhow, enough of metaphysical ramblings. It is good enough I think that I am thinking about it. I am also reading a book called The Twilight of Atheism by Alistair McGrath, which is a history of Atheism and very interesting indeed. As I would tell anyone who cared to listen, the most fundamental thing is to continually search for truth, wherever it may be.
posted by Caleb Liu | 11:35 PM
1 Comments:
There is a limit to the extent to which the Catholic Church - or any religion which claims universal following - can insist upon doctrinal consistency. Catholic churches in Southeast Asia, for example, tend to be more conservative than their American counterparts. The former do not have women communion ministers or even altar girls, while the latter is notorious for granting easier annulments. Yet, the papacy has been known to clamp down very harshly upon theological dissent. One, Tissa Balasuriya, was excommunicated for simply trying to make Christ more acceptable to people of other religious backgrounds.
I've never been persuaded that the bible should be taken literally - the divinely inspired Word of God was not written to appeal to lazy, uneducated intellects. You might want to read Peter Gomes' "The Good Book", in which he talks about "Bibliolatry", the effective worship of the Bible as God itself by various Christians. As with most things in life, I remain fundamentally committed to the idea of the existence of Truth, and the experience of Southern Baptists, who have consistently misinterpreted the Bible over the past 200 years (using it to justify first slavery, then passivity during the Civil Rights movement), is caution enough against the idea of total personal interpretation.
In that sense, despite my more Protestant leanings these days, I still hold fast to the idea of authoritative interpretation of the Bible. Whether this interpretive authority should translate into a political organisation like the Catholic Church is another issue altogether.
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