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Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
To me mercy and justness simply seem like different virtues
Justice classically defined is to give someone exactly what they deserve.
Mercy classically defined is to give someone more than they deserve.
They are contradictory, and calling God both Just and Merciful is one of the classic "mysteries of faith."
In God they are all the same virtue, because God is one simple thing. The most simple thing in existence. He is composed of no components. He has no composite parts.
then you are "judging" God if your praise of His merciful treatment of mankind constitutes a positive claim that it is present; if you can imagine a world where God was less, or was not, merciful, and in which consequently you would not be moved to compliment Him in this particular way. This seems to hold even if you think no negative judgement would be warranted in the absence of that mercy.
I guess we are judging as in assessing. Like I judge an apple to be an apple when I eat it. I can assess that God is merciful. And by merciful I mean something like, "humans are merciful sometimes, and God is doing something analogous to that when He paved a way for our salvation." But not that God is merciful in the same way a human is merciful. Our version of mercy is a pale comparison. The reality of mercy that has its source in God's nature is beyond our comprehension and our own behavior.
The difference is that Orcus, as a pseudo-Devil (though not a fallen angel), would be a scriptural figure and thus one priests had cause to talk about
Ok, Dolphins aren't explicitly in there, but Genesis Chapter 1 does come up and I was actually explicitly thinking of it when I called dolphins good:
And God said, βLet the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.β So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
God saw that it was good. Great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems. God saw that it was good. This is one of those places we see that word. I hear homilies all the time on the significance of this. So is there something else that is different between Orcus and Dolphins?
he's good in the sense of being a good person;
Don't get me wrong, He is both good and a person. Just our idea of a good person is limited by our overemphasis on our own species and nature.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
that God is not just good by analogy,
God is not just good by analogy, but what humans like you and I can understand about His goodness is only by analogy. He is not good the same way you are (presumably) good. When we see a saint, we see God's goodness there. A saint is good in the way God is, but God is so far beyond human behavior that we can't work the other way back to him. It's directionally confused.
And pure reason would never imagine a God who is communion, who is Father, Son, and Spirit in an eternal relation of love.
Yes, we learned something additional to God's nature through revelation, that doesn't discount the things we can reason about His nature and is revealed in Scripture as well.
as though "well-behaved" exhausts what it means to describe someone as "good."
No, explicitly God is good but not in the sense we mean when we say a human is good. When we say a human is good, we colloquially mean something along the lines of a human behaves well. That is not what we mean when we describe God as good, that is entirely the point I am trying to make!
Omnibenevolence is a recent term and I object strongly to people outside the religious tradition inventing it and then using their own invention as an attack against the logical consistency of God. I have no objection to calling God benevolent. He is. I object to Omnibenevolent, because it can be defined any which way. It's the "omni" part that I object to.
Goodness, must I sing God's praises with every Motte Post!
God is great, He created us for such good things. He is an ocean of love. He holds nothing back, He takes pity on my who is weak and has entered into the depth of God-forsakennesss for our sake. God went out from God to the furthest reaches of not-God, to the furthest reaches of degradation, torture, despair, guilt, shame, DEATH! So that no matter how far we run away from him, He will always be there first. So we can always find our way back to Him. Forever His praise shall be on my heart!
If I start every theological discussion like that will it make people listen better?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9mo ago
That is not my heuristic.
He liked me first. I figured out that he liked me and then I signaled to him that it was ok to ask me on a date using an indication well-known in my social circle. He read that signal successfully, indicating he belonged in a compatible social circle.
Then he identified a common activity we could do together, set a time and place, and summoned the courage to risk the wrath of HR and the rejection of the girl he liked. These all demostrate the bare minimum agency, risk tolerance, and self-confidence (which of course would continue to be vetted during the courtship.)
Your rebuttal seems to mostly be that this would rule you out. I'm sure you're nice to hang around, but based on what little I know, I wouldn't want to marry you even if we were both free to marry. I'm sure the feeling is mutual. Another win for the heuristic.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
30d ago
I didn't say that anywhere. I'm saying, love comes first, then repentance. Repentance is necessary. But it doesn't happen first.
Les Miserables is on the mind, consider Jean Valjean and his moment of repentance. After a life of getting kicked around, he steals the Bishop's valuables. And in response, the Bishop loves him, saves him from going to Prison again, gives him more than he stole. And that is the moment that Jean Valjean actually feels sorry for his actions. Once he experiences true love.
You can say, that's just a story. But there is a reason why it rings true. The world is full of bitter people who will stay bitter forever unless someone breaks their shell with love.
Will it always work? No. But does it work? In my experience, yes.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
I, of course, agree that God is love and spend more time rejoicing in His love than getting into philosophical debates. I didn't pick the topic of conversation.
I am 100% correct to contest the word Omnibenevolence as it is not the Theist claim.
To say God is Love is to say God wills the good of all. What is that good? It depends on the nature. The God of philosophy is the Triune God.
As Catherine of Sienna reports God said to her, "I am He who is, and you are she who is not." When she wrote this, was she expressing how far away she was from God or expressing a closeness unfathomable?
I'm not writing about infused prayer over here. I'm picking a fight over a specific word.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
To be merciful is to exceed justice, to give someone something more than they deserve. To be less merciful would not indicate moral deficiency on God's part. We can be grateful for God's great mercy to us. But if God was less merciful we would not be able to judge God negatively.
Funny you bring mercy up here, I recently heard a priest say, in summary, "God's mercy to us is justice to Himself. Divine simplicity entails that God's mercy and justice are the same thing. It would be just to humanity for humans to never be redeemed, but it would have offended against what God owes to Himself - God's justice due to Himself. He deserves our reconciliation because that is what He created us for. Therefore He offers to us salvation, which is mercy to us but justice to Him."
I still insist, that when Catholics talk about God, we are taking in analogy. There are very few statements we can positively say that are true about God. Most of what we can say about God is what He is Not. This is called Apophatic theology.
It is true that Catholic.com uses unspecific language, because it is a apologetic outreach website and not a university-level publication.
that did not permit making any deeper claims about the supreme deity than can be made about a pretty sunset or a cuddly kitten!
Obviously God's greatness is far greater than a sunset or a kitten! I'm also arguing that His greatness is far greater than human understanding of good behavior. These are all poor analogies to the reality of the full significance of God's goodness.
If Orcus existed, I maintain that Catholics would not routinely say "Orcus is good", even if the statement could be narrowly defended.
Ok, here. Dolphins are good. They also rape and murder other sea creatures. Explain to me in your example the significant difference between Orcus and Dolphins so I can understand what you think I would object to.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9mo ago
You are focused on the "give the man a signal that you are open to being asked out" while my main focus has been on the topic of the thread, that the man should be the one to ask the woman out. If the man is too shy to do so, the woman should offer some encouragement, but not enough to completely overcome the challenge the man faces. This challenge is important and demonstrates many good qualities. I don't think anything you have said has really rebutted this or offered any opposition to this all all, except that your wife asked you out online.
I think you are very wrong about how much communication is non-verbal. When people study such things, the percentages are generally flipped around (less than 20% is word choice, tone and body language is more significant.) If someone is actually blind to body language and tone, then that doesn't seem like a good way to spend a marriage either.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
It seems like you are conflating things. Why would having sexual intercourse in general be the equivalent of shooting to kill? Where is that even coming from?
For my metaphor, the equivalent of shooting to kill would be having intercourse specifically on a day the woman is expected to be most fertile, in the hopes that it will bring forth new life. In fact, there are supposed tricks to time sexual intercourse to have a male or female baby (male sperm swim faster, so if you abstain from sex up until the moment of ovulation, there's like a 30% higher chance a male sperm will get there first.) Something like that would be shooting to kill. But just any old act of sexual intercourse is not this.
"Fufilling the act's primary purpose" - I'm not talking about the act's purpose. I'm talking about the object's purpose. That's the conflation many people are making on this thread. The object (Genitals, guns and bullets) and the act (firing a gun, engaging in sexual intercourse) are different. Still different are the things that the act can do (have a kid, target practice, etc). I'm not appealing to the Act's purpose at any point to describe what someone should do with the object.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
No, by that logic, it's "using/having a gun for a reason other than shooting to kill [its primary purpose] is suspect" (so 'I'm just here to shoot targets because it's fun' is immoral and weird).
Where is this coming from? I really don't know what you are arguing against.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
28d ago
You are correct.
However, we still ought to show her love. Because "this is not working" doesn't immediately lead to "this is what I should be doing instead." I think she is at the point of "This is not working." Now would be a good time to show her the unconditional fierce love that Christians in her life have so far failed to provide.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
29d ago
That would lower GDP, while reducing immigrant labor to increase productivity and GDP. Possibly because there is an increase to automation when cheap laborers are less available.
Machines are different from cheap laborers in that they do not compete for housing, food, etc. Demand decreases if you swap out a machine for a human. Where does price equalize if demand decreases and supply stays the same?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
It is a lot like the blind-men-elephant analogy. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing though. We can see how that goodness interacts with us. Our own human goodness has its source in His goodness as well. Since our goodness has its source in His goodness, we can say that it really is something like a goodness we recognize. It's not some kind of alien shrimp colors. But it is vastly beyond our morality as well, encompassing it and exceeding it.
The average normie Christian hugs the elephant's leg and thinks it's just like us. Look, it has a torso to hug! And that's wrong, but not necessarily dangerous. The average normie 8th grader thinks that the Earth goes around the sun in a circle and that's wrong but not necessarily dangerous or impactful to how they go about their daily life.
But those who have reasoned more about it or have further experience with the Goodness of God start to see other parts of the elephant. The goodness of God inspires such sentiments as:
One evening, not knowing in what words to tell Our Lord how much I loved him, and how much I wished that He was served and honoured everywhere, I thought sorrowfully that from the depths of hell there does not go up to Him one single act of love. Then, from my inmost heart, I cried out that I would gladly be cast into that place of torment and blasphemy so that He might be eternally loved even there! (Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux.)
or
St. Catherine of Sienna had a vision where God told her, "I am He who is; and you are she who is not."
Or the desire many Catholics have to suffer, their only desired relief being the presence of mind to offer that suffering to God as a sacrifice for the salvation of souls.
The goodness of God starts to look kind of distorted and weird the deeper a soul dwells in it. A human can reach beyond just a leg and we start to see something immense, kinda scary, but still recognizable and connected to the leg. We have every reason to believe it goes on further and further, beyond our comprehension but still Goodness because it's all part of the same animal, connected together.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Ok? Sure God could strike someone with lightning. No problem with that at all in most Christian belief systems. I think it's actually a cliche? A literal literary trope? You keep throwing these at me and I don't know why.
God could also preserve someone who was struck by lightning miraculously. He doesn't have to. But he could preserve and give being to a body that was struck by lightning so that no biological disruption occurred.
God can and will destroy the whole world one day - He will no longer provide it with the constant ground of being and will remake it. When God destroys He does so by no longer providing for being for a thing. Everything that exists now only does so due to God's continuous, active action of providing being to everything. He can remove this at any time without being malevolent. Nothing is owed existence except in the sense that God owes it to Himself to keep his own promises. God breaking His own promises would be an injustice to His own simple, unchangeable nature.
Saying, "well what about a hypothetical where God isn't the sustain-er of being" is just describing a hypothetical without anything that pertains to what I understand the category "God" to be. "What about a circle that had no sides?"
God made tigers. A good tiger is not a friendly or well-behaved tiger. "What about a God who made you a tiger? No eternal life, no love, just violence and raw nature?" Ok, there are tigers. It does seem to be within God's capacity to make a tiger. What does it prove that you think Christians don't know already?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
I am specifically a Catholic, so great.
I would recommend reading Brian Davies "The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil" for a study on this topic. Catholics do not believe saying "God is Good" is tantamount to saying "God is well-behaved."
Satan is not good, his nature is to be an angelic messenger in constant adoration of God and serving humanity. He is not living up to his nature at all. He is a very bad example of an Angel.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Have you read The Sun Eater series?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Ugh! I had a comment almost 100% finished and then closed out the tab by accident.
Basically here are the four things Vatican I requires someone believe:
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The Pope is the chief bishop, primate and leader of the whole Church of Christ on earth
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He has episcopal jurisdiction over all members of the Church
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To be a member of the Catholic Church a man must be in communion with the Pope
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The providential guidance of God will see to it that the Pope shall never commit the Church to error in any matter of religion.
There are many, many people in the East, outside of Constantinople, who wrote things that either explicit agreed with these statements or logically entailed them.
If you want to imagine the longer version of my comment, I was mostly summarizing https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/archbishop-minnerath-on-rome-the-papacy-and-the-east/
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
The Orthodox would grant the Pope primacy, but for the Orthodox that means a position of honor as the first among equals. The Pope would not have direct universal jurisdiction over the whole church and could not alter dogma, as he did neither of those things prior to (the lead-up to) the schism.
The Council of Rimini in 359 had over 400 bishops in attendance. This council produced and agreed to the Arian formulas that, "the Son is like the Father according to the Scriptures" and "the Son is not a creature like other creatures." Pope Liberius recognized this as an attempt from Arians to lead to statements that Jesus is not God Begotten and rejected the council. Many who signed the council documents then repudiated it. In view of the lack of approbation by the Holy See, it had no universal authority. We see Papal Authority define dogma, superseding the findings of a council of over 400 bishops from the East and West.
but at the Ecumenical Councils did everyone just defer to the Pope? (at some he was barely involved) Did all the apostles just defer to St. Peter? St. Paul resisted him "to his face". The Council of Jerusalem was not decided by St. Peter and was presided over by St. James (if you want to go all the way back).
Papal primacy does not require the Pope to be always correct, to never be resisted, or for him to be involved with every dispute. However, for there to be a teaching out of a Council that is binding on the whole Church, it does require the acceptance of the Successor of Peter. Peter was present at the Council of Jerusalem, even if he's not the one who wrote the Council documents he set the tone and James promulgated it:
After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: βBrothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.β
I think most people don't understand that the Catholic Church does not make claims that the Pope is always correct or that he can just make up a new doctrine. The claim is not that the Pope is the one who has to call each council or determine the final council documents. We don't want the Orthodox to believe anything like that. We would just like for the same position of honor that was held in the past, because that is the road to unity instead of division.
Prior to the last 50 years or so there wasn't much discussion between the East and the West, and lots of misconceptions flourished. We didn't have as clear communication as we have now. The Petrine Doctrine is not the cartoon that (some) Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants act like it is.
I think from the Orthodox perspective what you are leaving out about the schism is that the Roman Catholics made an addition to the Creed.
That's because Dag said Catholics went off the rails in 1054, which is after the Filioque controversy. I would argue that the Filioque controversy is another instance of the East being intolerant towards Latin customs and usages.
Rome has never asked the East to say the words in their Creed. Eastern Catholic Churches do not say the Filioque. The East grew upset that the West created a new translation of the Latin text for internal Latin use.
The trouble with the Filioque is that, in Latin, there is no obvious difference between Spirate and Generate. In Greek it is clearer. The Greek word αΌΞΊΟΞΏΟΞ΅Ο ΟμΡνον (ekporeuomenon) refers to the ultimate source from which the proceeding occurs, but the Latin verb procedere (and the corresponding terms used to translate it into other languages) can apply also to proceeding through a mediate channel.
But if the persons of the Trinity are only distinct in relation to each other, and there is no distinction in the Latin Creed, then the Latins risk falling into heresy that either the Son and Spirit are the same or that there are differences in the Trinity that are not relational. In the Latin Church, the formulation "From the Father and the Son" has ancient roots, far older than the schism. Tertullian, Jereome, Ambrose, and Augustine all used this formula.
What about Ephesus I canon 7? Didn't that say that no other creed than the one promulgated at the First Council of Nicaea should be used? If that's the case, the East is in as much trouble as the West here. Because the creed from the First Council of Nicea isn't the one you say at your Divine Liturgy. Both the East and the West use the creed from the First Council of Constantinople. Take a look here, which do you use?
Ephesus I Canon 7 wasn't actually considered a part of the universal deposit of faith. Ephesus I canons 7 and 8 are omitted in some collections of canons and the collection of Dionysius Exiguus omitted all the Ephesus I canons. At the time, it was not held that they concerned the Church as a whole.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
The Pope is just the Bishop of Rome. There's no position available for "The Pope but not the Bishop of Rome."
The Bishop of Rome can only be elected by bishops in his rite. Eastern Catholic rites do not participate in the election of the Pope.
Nobody on either side of the debate wishes to force all Orthodox to change to the Latin rite. That would not be worth the fraction of political power gained by sending a cardinal to the conclave.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
I was taught the Schism by a Ukranian Byzantine Catholic who didn't present it as a "Rome was always right" point of view, who clearly felt the wound deeply, but still felt like union was more important than our disagreements.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
You can't just say "we want to end the argument, you just have to give in to all of my demands that actually matter to you" and expect it to work.
See, that's not clear to me that this is the schism! For me, I think I'm asking that the East just goes back to believe about the Roman Pontiff the same things they believed before the 800s. Even Photius and Cerularius, the critical players in the East-West schism, never argued that the Petrine doctrine could justify schism.
For example of a Pope exercising primacy:
Before Sergius died, in 638, he assembled a great Synod at Constantinople, which accepted a "one will" formula as "truly agreeing with the Apostolic preaching." This synod was without any Papal legates nor did it receive Papal approval afterwards. The outcome of this council is not considered infallible or orthodox.
Subsequent Popes and Patriarchs rejected Monothelitism (with one Pope refusing to confirm Paul as Patriarch of Constantinople until after he stopped using the "one will" formula), but there was still some confusion about if Jesus had "one operation" or "two operations."
To clear all this up, Pope St. Agatho sent legates to the General Council in Constantinople in 680. The legates brought with them a letter in which the Pope defined the "two wills, two operations" terminology with authority as the successor of St. Peter, binding the council to accept. The council did and rejected the Monothelites.
That seems to me like the Pope undoubtedly exercising Primacy and the East recognizing this. I can point to dozens of other examples of the Pope settling disputes among various other Apostolic Sees, like when Dennis of Alexandria was accused of heresy, he appealed to Rome and was cleared. Let's look at a council document:
Philip, presbyter and legate of the Apostolic See said: We offer our thanks to the holy and venerable Synod, that when the writings of our holy and blessed pope had been read to you, the holy members by our [or your] holy voices, you joined yourselves to the holy head also by your holy acclamations. For your blessedness is not ignorant that the head of the whole faith, the head of the Apostles, is blessed Peter the Apostle. And since now our mediocrity, after having been tempest-tossed and much vexed, has arrived, we ask that you give order that there be laid before us what things were done in this holy Synod before our arrival; in order that according to the opinion of our blessed pope and of this present holy assembly, we likewise may ratify their determination. (Ephesus 431, Acts of the Council, session II).
To me, the source of the schism is the liturgical intolerance exhibited by the Byzantine Greeks towards Latin customs and usages. In every council document and story of the schism that I see, that is the primary difficulty that starts the argument. Even Photius admitted to Papal Supremacy in his letters to Rome, when he is appealing to Rome to help his case.
Instead, arguments about Papal Supremacy seem to be ad hoc justification, because the best reason not to be in communion with the Pope would be something like a lack of agreement on the Petrine doctrine. But that wasn't the actual disagreement.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
If you would like something more like a newspaper article, this is a good summary of several cases: https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/A_Protestant_Looks_at_Lourdes.pdf
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Women are more likely to seek treatment, so have a consistent medical record of before their healing which can then be used to judge a healing took place. They are also more likely to seek a faith healing.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6mo ago
The Ritual multivitamin only has 50mcgs so maybe that is it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6mo ago
Blood vitamin d is usually on the lower end, I've taken supplements (Ritual multivitamin) for years without seeing a change. I don't get sick in the summer but am sick all winter long.
Sounds like a Christian should have reached out to her and told her that she is loved - explained forgiveness, sanctification, and water that does not leave you thirsty. Instead, she got a mob calling her names.
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