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This was not my claim either. I went into lots of paragraphs to be clear on this point, that it was the best account they had at the time as well as being interpreted as an allegory from the beginning, and these two ways of reading the text are not exclusive but are actually part of four modes of reading the Bible that have been encouraged by Christians since the beginning.
I have little hope that you understand me anywhere if you misunderstand this.
Giving a reason for a regulation does not mean it's not a regulation. He certainly didn't make it dogma.
This is not the same as condemning polygenism. Again you are jumping around. "The first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted" is perfectly compatible with an allegorical read of Genesis. The bare bones, what you're required to believe in order to be Catholic is that:
God made a man by giving him a rational soul. This is something extra God had to do of His own choice, it's not something that developed naturally from evolution.
God also made a woman through the first man, man and woman share the same nature despite our differences, and this relates the the way in which God ensouled us.
Originally man's life would have been in perfect happiness with no suffering. Then the first man and woman together sinned against God and messed it up.
All humans inherit the fallen human nature and the fallen world these two blockheads made through their sin. We share a common dignity between sexes and races, we share the same fate.
The interpolations from the extended Acts in Codex Bezae do not match the style of Luke and Acts. Pretty much everyone agrees that they are additions, not that Luke/Acts were redactions.
This is getting too long. Calanda is not like the hadiths, my argument was not that the hadiths were from long ago but rather contradicted testimony written down earlier regarding this event. I feel like you keep missing what I am saying and which point I'm making by what I'm saying. It's an experience not unlike talking to an LLM.
Did you look at the photos and the analysis from Fatima? https://apcz.umk.pl/SetF/article/download/SetF.2021.001/28737 Photographs capture a light source from something that could not have been the sun. It also doesn't help that all these explanations for various phenomena contradict each other. The explanation against the colors is that they saw an effect that takes place is that this only happens when there is a specific, non visible cloud cover over the sun. But also the explanation for clothes drying (an effect also captured in photos) within minutes is that the sun was very hot/bright, the kind of hot that only happens when there is no cloud cover. Which is it?
Why am I not a Muslim? Because Catholicism is true. Once I accepted Catholicism as true, everything fit together, everything. All stories, all science, all longings of my heart and all the mental itching that told me I was missing something big, it all fell into place. The closer I grow to God through the practices of Catholicism the more certain I am. But I guess my path leading to it was the philosophical exploration of the uncaused cause, arguments for the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, the history of the Church, the witness and example of the saints, the proof present in their lives that a transformative union with God is possible, and not just possible but something with a clear path to those willing to try.
It is true and there is very little anyone can do that will convince me otherwise. I know it is true like I know I breathe air. And because it's exclusive against the strongest Islamic claims, I know that Islam is unfortunately false, and not only false but frightening and sad.
This just looks like something any serious religion that tries to be self-consistent can do. Everything fits together for [sufficiently faithful]Muslims, for Jews, for atheists etc.
Can you not imagine that had you instead accepted Islam as true, you would be saying the same about Islam today? If you can't, why?
What if you hadn't eaten breakfast?If you can, what does that say about your current system of beliefs?Yes I can imagine an alternate world where Islam was true. If it was this world, where Islam is false but I accepted it anyway, I doubt I would experience the same signal graces, miracles, and spiritual experiences that I do now. You are assuming that I would because you are coming from the assumption that neither is true.
Edit: I also think that to be a Muslim you have to ignore a lot of things to get by, while as a Catholic I don't have to ignore anything. Largely how the Quran is actually considered literally the word of God and yet misunderstands Christianity severely, gets events wrong from the Old Testament while claiming that the OT is also simultaneously true. Whereas the Biblical interpretive key has room for individual authors writing in their biases.
I am assuming that you would because I am coming from the assumption that Muslims experience signal graces, miracles and spiritual experiences. And I am not asking you to imagine an alternate world where Islam is true, I am asking you to imagine a world where you accepted it as true.
Why do you assume this? I think, if I accepted Islam as true in a world where it is not true, I would not have made as much spiritual progress.
I understand that Islam is a totalizing ideology, which seems to be what you are getting at. But the example of the Catholic and Orthodox saints blow the Awliya completely out of the water in terms of life-changing conversions, selfless love, signs and wonders. In fact, while Islam has a concept of miracles, Karamah, their theology says that people should hide their miracles and not flaunt them. This means that unlike Catholic miracles, most Islamic miracles have very little investigation, even from Islam-friendly sources.
Let's put the question to you. If you were in a world where Catholicism was true, would you expect that Catholics would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Muslims? If you were in a world where Islam was true, would you expect that Muslims would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Catholics?
Because I have no reason to believe your inner experiences of faith - you as in the collective Catholic, not you specifically - are significantly more rich than those of the collective Muslim when the outward expression is the same. I have my differences with Islam and believe sincere Islam to be incompatible with the model of society I prefer more so than sincere Christianity, but I wouldn't go so far as to assume they have nothing in their heads.
That seems to support my point - that Catholic experiences of miracles appear to be more popular because they are investigated more, not because Muslims experience significantly fewer miracles. (To be frank, even if they did experience fewer miracles, the appropriate amount of miracles supporting a false religion would be zero, would it not?)
See my reply above - in a supposed thought experiment where Catholicism is objectively true, Muslim miracles do not objectively exist.
Would Catholics think they experience miracles more than Muslims, on levels not explainable by IQ, intensity of religious education, reporting effects - I don't think so.
Of course I would expect the world to look radically different than it looks now if Catholicism was true. I won't bother you with the details, others have listed them, in short I would expect it to look more like something out of Unsong - so obviously Christian that Islam, let alone atheism, would be engaged in only by deliberate contrarians or the mentally ill unable to participate in society.
Vice versa for a world where Islam was true.
And yet, I live in the current world, where you and a Muslim both would tell me I live in one of theirs, using very similar arguments!
There's a difference between paranormal circumstances, miracles, and vindictatory miracles. I'd expect 0 miracles that vindicate distinctively Muslim claims, meaning theological claims that Muslims make that Catholics do not also make. But "God loves us and has a plan for my life so He healed me" is a claim that holds as true in both Christianity and Islam. I'm even open to the possibility that humans have senses that we have yet to study in depth. Parapsychologists study and claim that many humans have an innate talent for water dowsing, remote viewing, telepathy, etc, which might be confused for a miracle in another religion but might actually follow some natural laws that we have yet to unpack.
Catholicism has the best attested vindicatory miracles and there are no real attempts in other religions to claim otherwise. Atheists like to believe that it must all be the same, but I haven't' seen one actually put in the effort to prove that other religions make anything like the claims of Catholicism.
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I would avoid saying disparaging things about my capacity to understand. It's more that the argument is futile, the OT says what it says and I actually don't care about genre classifications or attempts to walk back what it says. Whether or not it is « ancient biography » or « allegorical » to « Origen », I don't care because such mistakes are completely, utterly unacceptable to me. I demand correspondence with reality from the word of God. Sorry -- I was born secular and I have no other choice! I have no other standard to choose by, except my moral feelings (which is judging God)! You can't call a flawed document the word of God by saying actually I misunderstood the genre and I don't understand when it's just pulling my leg.
My position is rejecting the entire book not anything about Codex Bezae.
Yes and it's mostly people looking at the sky. Strangely nothing of the sky.
I am pretty sure I leaned towards saying it could have been magical in my response. However I had reservations about the power of the magic and the source.
Why isn't it frightening and sad? It has a nice history too, it has taqwa, just what is your issue with Islam? If you want to keep talking I think this should be the new topic, I am not convinced by the genre argument or the interpretation of the OT, although it is nice to know that Catholics at least see there is a problem and take up a half-measure solution, instead of doing whatever the literalist protestants are doing. To me that will always be more correct, and the miracles are interesting, just not what nonbelievers expect, not super exclusive to catholicism but maybe correlated, so I will read more.
I kind of feel like that about what I am posting about, in fact I haven't been able to get some of the doctrines of Valentinus and Marcion out of my head for almost 10 years. They just make that level of sense. When I run into something quoting « Isaiah » or talking about « Abraham » it's as if it were the Quran. It's almost ridiculous, and seems unenlightened. We know it's all not real too. There was no long-lived Abraham, there was no exodus. The Jews clearly worshiped just another tribal deity, and were the narcissists that said theirs created everything, so I guess the real everything came to humiliate them. Plato, and the gnostic books are far superior. I understand Catholics do that less than the lower forms of protestantism, but again, how about not at all?
Anyway I married a woman who is an atheist and I said we should go join a church together. And she wants me to convince her. So I kind of tried to with orthodox theology but she just had too many questions, and I got embarrassed about the orthodox answers, because I think some of them are embarrassing.
Her: Why did God make Adam sin if he's all knowing?
Me: Uh, free will idk.
Her: Why do humans have free will?
Me: No idea, calvinists say they don't.
Her: Why did God make cancer?
Me: Original sin.
Her: Why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?
Me: I don't know, maybe we are all parts of cosmic Adam and cosmic Eve and they were broken up by God and cast onto ... wait, that's not really orthodox, now I'm getting embarassed. This makes no sense.
Her: How do you know what church to join?
Me: I have no idea.
Her: I think God is too cruel.
Me: Judging god is prideful.
Her: How do you judge so that you don't become Muslim or Buddhist.
Me: I don't know, listening to the pneumos?
Her: What is that?
Me: A person of the trinity?
Her: What's the trinity?
Me: It's one God but three people. But it's one though.
Her: How does that make sense?
Me: I don't know. In the Bible that's how many there seems to be but it's not explicit.
Her: The Bible says the Earth is 6000 years old.
Me: That's an allegory.
Her: Then so is Jesus.
Me: No because ...
Her: Then why doesn't it just say what you said?
Me: I don't know, I might have said a heresy when I said it happened outside of this universe.
Her: Why doesn't God do something to make everyone believe now?
Me: I have no idea. Why doesn't he do a public miracle on video?
Her: Why is he obsessed with people believing in him anyway? I think a remote God makes a lot more sense.
Me: Well you can't say God is a narcissist because that would be pride.
Her: If he wants people to worship him, why doesn't he show himself to them?
Me: Maybe there's different types of people and it's a process to filter them ... wait, is that heresy?
Her: Nietzsche said it's slave morality and cope.
Me: But Jesus is mighty though because he's God.
Her: Why did he die then?
Me: Well he's alive in heaven.
Her: Why did he die first?
Me: To save us from our sins.
Her: He can forgive us, why didn't he just do that.
Me: I don't know. The last priest I talked to said it's a Mystery.
Her: Hahaha
...
Can you see how this is annoying? With gnositicism:
Her: Why did God make Adam sin if he's all knowing?
Me: The demiurge is not all knowing.
Her: Why do humans have free will?
Me: The divine spark.
Her: Why did God make cancer?
Me: The demiurge made the genes poorly.
Her: Why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?
Me: When they entered the world, they forgot where they came from. Either the Demiurge did it to them or it was a property of his world and the entrance is « sin ».
Her: I think God is too cruel.
Me: The demiurge is not omnibenevolent.
Her: How do you judge so that you don't become Muslim or Buddhist.
Me: Listening to the pneumos?
Her: What is that?
Me: We are pneumatic, so we have a connection to it, and it tells me Jesus is right and Mohammed wanted a harem.
Her: The Bible says the Earth is 6000 years old.
Me: That book is false, it was really cosmic, read this other book.
Her: Then so is the Gospel
Me: Luke and Matthew are false, here's the Gospel of Truth, Thomas, and Marcion's Gospel, and a restored version of John.
Her: Why doesn't God do something to make everyone believe now?
Me: He did. The crucifixion is a publication. Maybe we'll get another message in our life time that is explicit.
Her: Why is he obsessed with people believing in him anyway? I think a remote God makes a lot more sense.
Me: Gnosis is a calling for people to leave this universe because it is corrupt, it is not about worshipping the demiurge.
Her: Nietzsche said it's slave morality and cope.
Me: The orthodox corrupted it to feed it to the hylic masses, who demand to worship their own image. Gnostic texts say he is a great man.
Her: Why did he die then?
Me: He did not die, he put on Jesus. The body died but not the soul. And he went down to Hades where the demiurge was and put him in his place, and took his captives, because the demiurge does not know justice.
Her: He can forgive us, why didn't he just do that.
Me: We must prove ourselves through gnosis; he is not angry at us.
Her: Interesting...
...
I can't become catholic without her. And that leads me to Islam. I suspect you don't like it because you're judging by prior ethical and political standards. Catholicism, to me, as a secular who must use his brain, has alright morality. It's not all that tickles my insides, as you said, but it leaves out some silliness that protestants do.
To start with ethics I would like to begin with the state. Aquinas is the breath of fresh air in Catholicism because of what he says on tyrants but I would like to not even have the debate because Romans 13 is blatantly bad. Hylic states are bad, period, pneumatics should not be subject to the flesh by force, and Plato was right and we need a pneumatic city. There's a start under gnosticism that Catholicism does not provide.
I don't believe God gave us a Book but rather a Church. I find the Old Testament very fruitful for spiritual truths but only after guidance. Your idea that line by line it has to be literally exact or else it's all false is just not a good argument. You're arguing against a position I do not hold and will not hold and have no obligation to hold.
God did not make Adam sin. I think your question is getting at, why does God make humans knowing that they will chose Hell over Him. And my response would be He doesn't know before He makes a human which way they'll choose.
If free will is real, then "knowing the result of a free choice never made" is like "can God make a square circle." It's logically inconsistent and therefore not covered under omnipotence/omniscience. God has a very good idea of what choices a human would make, but does not know what choices a specific human will actually make until after He's committed to making them.
God had hope that Adam would avoid the temptation to sin and make the correct choice, up until He created Adam and then was locked into this course of action.
Because only someone with free will can love, and God created us to love Him and each other.
We are experiencing the consequences of their actions but nothing has been taken away from us that rightfully belonged to us. God gave Adam and Eve special grace to enjoy a life beyond their natures. Original sin removed us from that grace, it is nor ours by right but was a gift they rejected. This life of struggle is what our natures deserve on their own. We pay for our own sins, Adam and Eve paid for theirs, no one is being treated unfairly here.
Another way to look at it though is that the "curses" of God at the end of Genesis 3 is a remedial lesson on love. Adam failed to protect his wife, Eve failed to love her God, their failure was one of love. In response, Man will toil, Woman will suffer, but by doing so this is the remedy, the school of love. By undergoing the curse, we learn to love as our first parents did not, we sacrifice for others.
History, saints, etc.
The worst suffering in this life is a blip in time compared to the goodness that awaits us.
Going to respond with a quote from Dorothy Day to start:
The Trinity is the unity of the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love that unites them.
It doesn't exactly say that, this is what people after the fact said because they try to use math without understanding the cultural context in which certain parts, like people's ages and genealogies, were written.
The New Testament is substantially different from the Old Testament. It starts with five ancient biographies, followed by epistles written very early on, and ends with some banging apocalyptic (in the sense of "removing the veil of the bride" rather than "end of the world") literature.
There is something in the Search that is valuable and God does not want to squelch it. I think this line of thought is only pressing if you think that everyone is going to Hell except a small few, and that we don't all have the opportunity to be saved. Whereas I believe Jesus gives everyone a choice as they die, regardless of what they knew during life.
Why do you think God is obsessed with people "believing" in Him? Rather, I would say He wants us to love Him because it is in our nature and failing to live up to this hurts us. He cares that we're hurting ourselves.
Nietzche died alone and crazy.
Because that would not be comporting with the dignity He wishes to give us. The problem isn't one of just forgiveness but that we are broken and in need of healing. If He just snapped his fingers and forgiven us it would have been unjust to His nature and unmerciful to ours. Instead, Jesus, true God and true Man, was able to offer Himself as a sacrifice. Because He is God He has infinite worth, because He is human He actually is a real human being doing something incredibly selfless and sacrificing something of infinite worth.
Now we can take part in Jesus' sacrifice and have its merits applied to us. And this is not a cheap and easy fix, but something that elevates our dignity and inspires love towards our God who went to such extremes to save us. And remember that the original sin, the whole problem to solve, was that we need to learn love.
This is a cop out answer. If you say the crucifixion is a publication and sufficient to make everyone believe now, then the same holds for Christianity.
No. I was clear that I am not Muslim because I found the truth, and once you find the truth you don't keep searching.
This is not my position. In Mark there's a geographical error. It's plausible it's just an oversight and I don't want to throw out the core of Mark for it (although I believe there are some interpolations in the text that was canonized, the core however is not like that of Luke and Matthew, I believe it is gnostic like John at its core. Higher criticism supports this, I believe the Secret Mark letter, and Johannine theology was very gnostic).
The big points of the OT are unbelievable. Genesis is unbelievable as written without a garden on Earth recently. The core of the OT is unbelievable without a young Earth and giants found in archeology. The amount of time the patriarchs lived is unbelievable. The flood is unbelievable. Exodus IIRC has serious evidence issues. Jonah and the dag is unbelievable. In fact its taxonomy of dag is flawed. Yahweh couldn't reveal the difference between fish and sea mammals? You would agree all of its laws are flawed. You live by basically not a single word of deuteronomy or leviticus. Again if he's Yahweh's messiah that makes little sense a priori. I know there's an epicycle as to why law fulfilled means law abolished but it's not convincing, to use Matthew against you it's somewhat clear you should obey the law.
So why don't you obey the orthodox Jew scribes today (the answer is that the Church has an epicycle based on a contradictory Paul passage or something)?
Ancient opinion on the literary quality of the Old Testament:
Julian, Against the Galilaeans (c. 362; tr. W. C. Wright, Loeb 1923, pp. 381–383):
On the Ten Commandments (pp. 359–361):
Celsus, The True Word (c. 175–180, quoted by Origen):
Why make temptation if it could lead to infinite negative utility? Adam could have free will in the garden with no forbidden tree placed right there, and a serpent that the omniscient Yahweh allowed to seduce Eve? God couldn't even provide his dumb little children a reminder? Like argue with the serpent, thus allowing them an informed choice? What kind of parent lets their naive little child talk to a serpent like that? And then sets the child on fire if the child doesn't take well to being kicked out into the wilderness?
In addition, this is « open theism ». It is not the position of the Church. This is the first among several heterodox doctrines you have introduced in this comment. While I agree with you more than the Church, it's a terrible look for the Church. It means after basic pressing, their members cannot defend their own doctrine. Just like me making up heterodox stuff when my wife pressed me. The doctrine is nearly undefendable.
Vatican I, Dei Filius, ch. 1 (1870):
Catechism of the Catholic Church §600:
Other heterodox points:
The Council of Trent anathematises exactly this. Session V, canon 2: «If any one asserts, that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity… or that he… has only transfused death, and pains of the body, into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema.» Canon 3: Adam's sin, «being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own» (Trent, Session V). The Catechism: «By his sin Adam… lost the original holiness and justice he had received from God, not only for himself but for all human beings» (CCC 416). We don't just live with the consequences; on Catholic teaching we inherit the sin.
This is a massive departure from the Church and the canon. I conclude you cannot truly defend either. «Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ» (CCC 1021). «There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death» (CCC 393). A choice offered at death, regardless of life, is the speculative «final option» theory, not Church teaching.
Aquinas: «if He had willed to free man from sin without any satisfaction, He would not have acted against justice… if He forgive sin, which has the formality of fault in that it is committed against Himself, He wrongs no one» (Summa III q.46 a.2 ad 3). And calling it unmerciful to our nature is not true ... it would have been more merciful.
Vatican II: the Church's teaching office «is not above the word of God, but serves it», and «the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation» (Dei Verbum 10–11). God gave a Church and a Book, and the Church says the Book is inspired and without error.
No, because of the stakes. I hold to transmigration of souls. Therefore, people have a lot of chances to believe as according to their soul. I believe in hierarchy of soul; some never believe because they don't hear the pneumos. The hiddeness is built in. You believe in infinite hell for being skeptical in a short life (well, you don't I guess, because you departed from the Church and canon). The stakes are so high in the canon theology, that God should reveal himself clearly in everyone's life, thus giving them an informed choice to make. You believe this too I guess, with your final choice theology. But that's not the church. But maybe, based on what you are saying, I could join for the community, and rub shoulders with the other secret heretics, who believe such things.
I would just prefer the priest to preach the ultimate truth as opposed to these doctrines that even you, a member, reject.
I think it's best to move past this, and the genre remark. It doesn't work on either I or my wife. Both of these are quite post-modern arguments, we care about reality and mechanics, we do not care for classifications and « cultural context ». At the pearly gates, if Peter asks me why I lied, I suppose I could say I was doing a genre bit. And if he asks why I sinned, I can talk to him about cultural context. Surely, as one who beliefs in false statements that can be excused by genre and culture contexts, this will get me into the heavenly Kingdom (of St. Matthew, Moses, and Abraham!), despite being a heretic.
The trinity is okay because in gnosticism there are emanations from the One and it's very similar, however it is much easier to start with an ontological argument to arrive at the One, and then use Platonism to discuss the emanations of the Ideals.
If you did not learn about Islam you do not know it is not more true than the Church doctrines (many of which you have rejected silently).
No, you have an interpretation error. All the "geographical errors" people claim in Mark are modern people assuming that the authors of the Gospels felt a need to stick to precise chronology, listing things in order, or that geographic areas have to be specific or else they are wrong. If I wrote, "I went down to West Palm Beach and had fun in the Atlantic Ocean," would people understand what I mean? Or would I have people thousands of years later saying, "According to our best records, the city of West Palm Beach did not actually share a coast with the Atlantic, showing that this was written by someone unfamiliar with the area?"
I obey the person who sits on Moses' seat now. With the fall of the second temple, the Jewish religion as practiced in Jesus' day is ended. Jesus gave the parable of the vineyard where he described taking the vineyard and giving it to someone else. That someone else was the 12 Apostles and continues to this day in the bishops throughout the world.
Because without it there would be 0 positive utility. Infinities are of different sizes, yes? You can have a larger infinity than another. In order to have the larger infinity of Heaven, there has to be the possibility to not love God, which is Hell. Heaven is much better than Hell is worse.
Adam had to have a choice. The Tree is a manifestation of the ultimate choice - do you trust in the love of God and His desire for what's best for you? Without the possibility of that choice there is no love.
Middle knowledge is still an open topic of discussion inside Catholicism. Here is a Catholic Answers apologist explaining this position: https://jimmyakin.com/2020/12/why-would-god-create-people-he-knows-will-go-to-hell.html Catholics are not required to believe in Middle Knowledge (the belief that God knows what every possible creature would freely do in any given circumstance ("counterfactuals of creaturely freedom"). Molinism is a permissible opinion, but it's not heresy not to believe in it. I stick to the Catholic belief that God has:
And this is consistent with what I said too. God stands outside of time and knows all that will happen, including our free-will choices.
No it doesn't.
Adam has injured us all by his actions, in the sense that we would have had a gift and now we do not receive it.
The consequences of this revocation of a gift is not just to the body, but also to the soul, preventing us from achieving everlasting life outside of intervention.
My statement fits comfortably inside this canon.
Yes, Adam's sin is one that we inherit, as if by propogation. This canon is rejecting the idea that we only have original sin due to the world around us, but that if we were placed in the garden of Eden ourselves as an infant we'd be ok. It's not through imitation of a fallen world external to use but through something we genuinely miss in ourselves now.
You are misreading me. I said, "As they die" as in, as they are still alive, taking part in the process of Death. After death is complete and the soul exits time, no choice is possible. But many saints attest to the power of final repentance, and Saint Faustina particularly goes into depth regarding Jesus's fight for every soul:
Diary Entry 1486:
Where are "«" these marks coming from? What do they mean to you?
I think you have a misunderstanding about Church teaching that I need to clear up now. There are many millions of permissible theological opinions any faithful Catholic can hold. As conflicts develop, the Church may declare one out of bounds, and narrow the number of theological opinions that are permissible. It doesn't matter that the "final option" theory hasn't been declared infallible Church teaching as very little has been declared infallible Church teaching. I am still free to hold it if it seems to be the best answer to the data I see.
I think St. Aquinas is wrong here, and St. Anselm got it right. In Cur Deus Homo Chapter 13:
No, God gave a Church and the Bible is written by the Church for the Church. And yes, the Bible is inspired and without error, in everything that the human authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, intend to assert regarding God, salvation, and faith. You're missing the importance of a clause in Dei Verbum you are quoting. "that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation."
You're just following the wrong Catholics. Follow Bishop Barron, Jimmy Akin, Joe Heshmeyer, Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress, Fr. Gregory Pine. Read the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, Hans urs von Balthazar, St. John Henry Newman.
I am not a heretic and your objections depend on a misreading of what I say. But regardless of labels, if you think my answers are half decent, then jump in, I'm not a lone wolf making this up on my own. There are a large community of priests and lay theologians who provide the philosophical backing to what I'm saying.
I highly recommend watching this... not sure what genre this is. Interview? Debate? on Divine Hiddenness between a Dominican priest and an atheist and maybe you can see that I'm not some lone wolf crazy person: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8k9A7d2Wnjk
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