I am confused. The Popes pre and post Vatican II and their advisors, I assumed, are the final word when it comes to interpreting doctrine. That being so, how can any Catholic question their judgements?
I can't go along with this stuff--I am too conscious of how easy it is for me to err in judgment and how the Holy Spirit assists the Church in many, many indefinite ways that are still substantial.
Is it possible that a very holy Pope and all the bishops of the world could gather in most solemn conclave and beseech the Holy Spirit to guide them in helping the Church to change deeply enough to confront the modern world effectively; is it possible, I say, that they could do all that and the Holy Spirit would answer their prayer by delivering the Church over to near destruction? All throught the powerful machinations of a Bugnini and an hefty influx of Rhine Water? I suppose it's not impossible; i. e., not outright heresy.
But I think it's infinitely more likely that those of us who find Vatican Two and the direction of legitimate Church authority afterward offputting, disturbing and unattractive in many ways are limited by our tastes, our understandings, and our capacity for clear judgment.
So...I am a Vatican Two man, a JPII man, a Novus Ordo backer, despite my "traditionalist" temptations. I'll doubt myself first, if you don't mind. I'd rather explain to God why I stuck with Peter than explain why I abandoned him because I had a clearer view of the meaning of tradition.
So those who doubt the Council's effectiveness and abhor the new mass (it is my case) have abandoned Peter? That's the logical conclusion of your words.
Sungenis' piece is a mixed bag, as was Lamont's. But both raise vitally important questions. Let me offer a couple of remarks in response to Jeff's concerns:
One can without questioning the infallible authority of an ecumenical council or ex cathedra definition nevertheless question the prudence of its timing (as Cardinal Newman questioned that Vatican I's definition of Infallibility in 1870) or of its wording, etc. The more one goes into the detail of the way conciliar decisions are arrived at, I think the more one sees the human dimension of these deliberations and is amazed at how the Holy Spirit manages to write straight with such crooked lines at all. Hence, one could lament ambiguities in Sacrosanctum Concilium without questioning its authority.
Second, one can certainly question the faithfulness of the implementation of SC and other V-II mandates in the aftermath following the Council. One of the very sad things about the Novus Ordo as it stands, even with all its approved uses of communion in the hand, while standing, with priest facing the congregation, with the use of female altar servers, and extraordinary ministers, etc., is that every one of these post-Vatican II accommodations (approved by the Church) was initiated by movements animated by a spirit of dissent whose implicit (if not explicit) purpose was to downplay or eliminate the sacrificial element or belief in the Real Bodily Presence of Christ in the Mass. One can accept the licitness and validity of a Novus Ordo Mass that implements such practices, as they are now approved by the Vatican, without bringing oneself to believe that these accommodations are, in fact, spritiually healthy improvements upon traditional forms of liturgical practice, can one not?
I, too, am a "Vatican II Catholic," in the sense that the Novus Ordo is practically all I have access to, and, as a convert, I have no living memory of the pre-Vatican II liturgy in the Church. I have assisted at Teen Life Masses in my church where musical instruments have included electric guitars, drums, and bongos -- hardly my preferred taste in music -- and despite my distaste in the usual Marty Haugen/David Haas offerings, I have been impressed with stronger-than-usual homilies, with reports of the lives of teens changed by conversion, repentance, and a first-time-ever education in the actual meaning of sacramental reconciliation (yes, among TEEN-age Catholics). Thus I cannot deny that the Spirit will move where He will, even amidst Bongo Masses and Marty Haugen ditties. Yet none of this leads me to be intellectually convinced of the theological, aesthetic, moral, or spiritual superiority of these latter forms of worship to liturgical forms crafted by centuries of the Church's wisdom throughout her ancient history.
It would be a nominalist view of Revelation that would lead us to pit the voice of the Pope against Reason, or Vatican II against Sacred Tradition, or (like Protestants) Bible
It would be a nominalist view of Revelation that would lead us to pit the voice of the Pope against Reason, or Vatican II against Sacred Tradition, or (like Protestants) Bible against Church. By contrast, the full Catholic alternative, as I understand it, is embodied in the encyclical, Fides et Ratio by Pope John Paul II of blessed memory, who stressed, not either/or, but both/and. Is this not true?
Mr. Sungenis brings up some good points. Certainly any Pope's reign can be criticised for deficiencies of one sort or another -- Pope's are infallible ex cathedra, but they're still human.
But with his criticisms of misapplications or wrestings of Nostra Aetate, however, I would not entirely agree. There's no contradiction between Catholic doctrine and the statement that "The Old Covenant ... has never been revoked." It wasn't "revoked" -- it was fulfilled and transcended and transformed. Sungenis also quoted the PBC selectively and out of context with the quotes of "anti-Semitic passages in the New testament" and "the Jewish wait for the Messiah is not in vain."
The Jewish wait for the Messiah is not in vain, but only because the Messiah, Jesus, has already come, and St. Paul affirms that eventually the Jews will repent and join the Church -- "all Israel will be saved," he affirms. The PBC statements Sungenis refers to can be reconciled with the faith.
But when it comes to the statements of Cardinals Kasper, Willebrands, and Keeler, they are out and out heresy, irreconcilable with the faith. Those are perfect examples of what Sungenis was referring to.
Mr. Blosser:
I'm not saying one can't question this or that provision of law or this or that disciplinary measure. And I specifically said, one could take a hypercritical view of Vatican Two without explicit heresy. You can say that Counter-Reformation spirituality is wrong-headed and the whole course of the Church after Trent is absurd and wicked, too, without explicit heresy. But I don't think it's a sane Catholic position.
What I don't believe is that a whole, vast half-century long process in the life of the Church, initiated by an ecumenical council and overseen by the Popes can be going in the wrong direction. You can question communion in the hand, fine. You can wish for a restoration of the Offeratory prayers or push for ad orientem celebration of Mass, okay. But to say, essentially, Vatican Two and the entire reform project of the Church are wicked and destructive as a whole, though there are a few doctrinal statements among a hash of ambiguities that we can grudgingly accept--I just can't buy that. That seems to ME tantamount to saying that the Holy Spirit has abandoned the Church. And I've heard traditionists say things perilously close to this; the position breeds and sustains Despair, in the end.
Also, I don't buy the "ambiguous teaching" line. Most authoritative teaching is "ambiguous" and doesn't consist of doctrinal definitions. Huge areas of Catholic teaching don't even ADMIT of definition. The most obvious example is Scripture--the most authoritative teaching there is, but dreadfully "ambiguous." When we read it, I hope, we put it ABOVE us and figure it has something to impart which we must humbly receive, rather than tossing it out because it's "ambiguous." "'Blessed are the poor in spirit?' What does that mean? It's susceptible to dozens of interpretations! Useless pap. I can't be bound by something like that. Give me a clear statement of DOCTRINE and THEN I'll submit. But THIS stuff is just DANGEROUS."
No, it's the wrong approach to Scripture and the wrong approach to non-definitional teaching, infallible or not.
Others:
The question about the New Mass: I think BROADLY SPEAKING, things like the ecumenical project, the new practical attitude toward religious freedom, and the liturgical reform project AS A WHOLE (please note the proviso) are so universal and so deeply embedded in the Church that they MUST be construed as ESSENTIALLY good.
PB,
I see you reference above some commentary of Father Ed Schillebeeckx. I have a few of his books and find them very difficult to understand in general but he does have a few profound, easy-to-understand comments in them. One that I have noted before but worth repeating:
"Christians must give up a perverse, unhealthy and inhuman doctrine of predestination without in so doing making God the great scapegoat of history" . "Nothing is determined in advance: in nature there is chance and determinism; in the world of human activity there is possibility of free choices. Therefore the historical future is not known even to God; otherwise we and our history would be merely a puppet show in which God holds the strings. For God, too, history is an adventure, an open history for and of men and women." Church: The Human Story of God, Crossroad, p.91,1993 (softcover).
In my opinion, this statement/ conclusion is one of the most important of the last two millennia voids all Old Testament prophecies. Because of its importance, I assumed it would be widely commented on in journals and theology books. From what I can tell, it has not been. Any reason for this? Do you have any references where this particular forceful statement/rationale is discussed. I have for example read , The Praxis of the Reign of God, An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, M. C. Hilkert and R. J. Schreiter, editors, Fordham University Press, NY, 2002 and found no reference to the statement. A complete Internet search also failed to find any commentary.
"Therefore the historical future is not known even to God; otherwise we and our history would be merely a puppet show in which God holds the strings. For God, too, history is an adventure, an open history for and of men and women."
Yes, yes, we already knew that Silly Beaks is no longer a Christian. . . .
JP,
Yes, we know your thoughts about Father Schillebeeckx but he is still a priest in good standing with the Church. And I assume his theological conclusions are based on careful consideration of our Church's teachings. And to the best of my knowledge the Vatican has not commented on his conclusions about God not knowing the future.
PB, your thoughts please on Father Schillebeeck's conclusions? Any other theologians and/or philosophers out there?
Lots of heretics are priests in good standing within the Church. That proves nothing at all about their heresies.
Almost EVERYONE is in "good standing" with the Catholic Church. I remember once when the Archbishop of Managua put a parish under interdict and the authorites came and took away the tabernacle in the midst of shouting, fist-pumping crowds. Ahhhhh, those were the days!
"Lots of heretics are priests in good standing within the Church."
Yep. Some of them are even cardinals, like Kasper.
Jeff and JP,
I assume only the Vatican authorities can declare someone to be a heretic. Or have they "out-sourced" this responsibility?
Do you by chance have references to when our Church declared these priests/cardinals to be heretics? And who they are?
I haven't "declared" anyone a heretic. I've merely pointed out that they are heretics, even if the Church hasn't formally declared them so. I'm not aware of any Church teaching that requires us to pretend we aren't looking at a heretic until the Church says we are looking at a heretic. Indeed, how can any Catholic hold to the true faith if they aren't even able to say that such and such a doctrine is false unless the CDF has issued a verdict in a heresy trial? Are we to act as if we don't notice that the things the Church says and the things men like Cardinal Kasper have said are in irreconcilable conflict?
Jeff, agreed ... as to your main point about the Council being "above us" as Scripture is "above us" whatever their ambiguities may be, as you put it. Fine. No problem. And I fully endorse the notion that the Holy Spirit guides His Church, as well. No disagreement there. But the notion that the human caretakers of the Church -- the bishops -- may not get in the way of the Spirit by failing to mind the shop, that things could not nearly completely derail even for a whole generation or two (despite the Holy Spirit), I think is amply belied by a close study of Church history. Despite the first Ecumenical Council (AD 325) and Nicene Creed, for example, nearly the whole Eastern majority of the Church's bishops went over to the side of Arius over the next generation or two. It took decades and decades before the anything like a semblance of orthodoxy returned to the majority of episcopacies in the Church. While I am confident in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, therefore, I am not nearly so confident in the cooperation of our hierarchy and our episcopal conferences in restoring purity and substance to catechesis, a renewal to priesthood (though we've seen some positive steps), and anything like a fulfillment of the reform of the traditional Latin Mass called for by Vatican II. Can you imagine Archbishop Fulton Sheen delighted with conditions in the Church today? Holy Spirit, yes. But we human servants need prayer. Badly.
JP,
So you might say you "protest" from within, labeling those who disagree with your way of comprehending doctrine/dogma/Scripture as being heretics even when these individuals have significantly more education/creditials than yourself.
It has been argued by neo-conservatives, and by Benedict as well, that Vatican II was wonderful, its implementation dismal, simply because the implementers did not understand, or did not honor, the meaning of the documents. Sungenis, and Lamont too, accept this, and Sungenis in particular runs rather far with it. The nub seems to be that, according to Sungenis, and to a lesser extent Lamont, one must either criticize the documents as fueling a whole series of disastrous “reforms”, or criticize the wayward, even perverse interpretations of a great many priests, bishops, and cardinals, and of three popes, all of whom managed to misinterpret those blameless documents, with disastrous results.
So, we are left with three general propositions:
(1) the truth of Vatican II is contained in its documents, which were misinterpreted by practically everyone in a position to implement them; or,
(2) there are grave errors in the documents of Vatican II, which were faithfully implemented by the clergy, and which only now are being recognized and addressed; or
(3) there were no errors in the documents of Vatican II, and no misinterpretations in their implementation, and everything is just peachy-keen right now, and has been so for the past forty years.
Let’s suppose (1) – Sungenis – is right, or at least closer to the mark than (2) and (3). My question is simply, what caused these men, so arguably among the best the Church had to offer, to error so grievously? Did they not read the documents? Did they perhaps not understand Latin any better than the current bunch? Were they simply so titillated by their own bold profiles that they mistook afterglow for affirmation? Or – my gracious, what a thought! – is it possible that the Holy Spirit’s presumed guidance was offset at crucial moments by the misguidance of another?
Professor,
I will pray for you. Badly.
;o)
"So you might say you 'protest' from within, labeling those who disagree with your way of comprehending doctrine/dogma/Scripture as being heretics even when these individuals have significantly more education/creditials than yourself."
No, I wouldn't say that. I would say, rather, that if Silly Beaks cannot see that the ignorant God he proposes is not only irreconcilable with Catholic dogma but also unworthy of worship -- not God at all -- then his "significantly more education/credentials" than myself are all in vain. Professing himself wise, he has become a fool, is how St. Paul would say it, I think. But then Silly Beaks knows better than St. Paul, right?
JP,
Father Schillebeeckx, as all good theologians, benefits from all that has been written and thought about by all the Church founders/fathers/protectors of our Faith i.e. Jesus, Paul, Constantine, Augustine, Aquinas et al. He then expands their thinking as is the way of evolution of our thoughts and minds.
Of course he does. That's how he fell into heresy.
Jeff, if "the ecumenical project" (your words), as it is, is "essentially good" (your words), then the Church's paramount rejection of it (throughout its History, and clearly in modern times in Pius XII's Mystici Corporis and even more decisively in Pius XI's Mortalium Animos) was "essentially bad", right?...
I think the Church didn't reject ecumenism (prayers for and efforts towards achieving the return of other Christians to the Catholic faith), but what has been called "false ecumenism," efforts like those that Cardinal Kasper favors, ones that compromise the Catholic faith in order to achieve the conversion of Catholics to false religions.
JP,
OK, so you have declared Father Schillebeeckx to be a heretic. I assume this is based on a thorough reading of his books and speeches? Or have you condemned/"googlized" him to Hell based on bits and pieces noted on various Internet sites?
He doesn't believe in the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, or that God is omniscient and capable of seeing the future before we humans experience it. How can it be said that Silly Beaks holds to the Catholic faith?
Ralph R-D says:
"My question is simply, what caused these men, so arguably among the best the Church had to offer, to error so grievously? ... is it possible that the Holy Spirit’s presumed guidance was offset at crucial moments by the misguidance of another?"
Ralph, you raise the question of our time in the Church, don't you -- perhaps not in so many words, but: "What went wrong?" For it's an empirical fact for anybody with two pairs of eyes and a brain that something has not only gone wrong but terribly wrong.
This isn't the place for a protracted answer, but just to not my appreciation for the question and to mark its significance. Your last answer may be the correct short one, although empirically there will have to be other pieces that need to be filled out. One thing that comes to mine is the failure of nerve of so many clerics in the face of the counter-cultural juggernaut of the 1960's. We haven't begun to take the measure of this monster yet.
Another way of putting it is, if a new building is found to have a flaw, the reason must be found either in the workmanship, or in the blueprints. If the blueprints are held to be faultless, then what compromised the workmanship? Were the workers boobs? Did they harbor malign intentions toward the architect?
Were the Church’s hierarchs boobs? Given the misadventures of the current gaggle, with their pronouncements blaming the church’s problems on the laity while they coddle anointed perverts, and fumble for translators, that they might understand the official language of their Church, I’m willing to consider the possibility. Boobs, cowards, and buck-passers – the stuff of which the other’s “useful idiots” are made.
Which brings us back to the Fatima prophecy John XXIII was so concerned to suppress.
Ralph,
Why are you so upset about Fatima and its "prophecies"? The Church continues to remind us that we do not have to believe in these apparitions which to me says there is significant doubt as to the validity of said appearances.
"God is capable of seeing the future before we humans experience it" -- something fishy about this! To talk about God as if there were a "before" or a "future" from God's perspective is incompatible with the doctrine of divine eternity. To talk of the future as "already" known makes no sense in terms of the logic of temporary predicates. A little bit of apophatic modesty is called for here.
temporary SHD BE temporal
I talked once with Schillebeeckx and he warned me about using the words "temporal" and "eternal" as if I or anybody else had a clear idea of what such concepts mean.
The prophecies of Fatima are self-refuting. One of them, delivered in 1917, said that the soldiers were already on their way home from the war front. The war ended on Nov. 11, 1918.
The "Third Secret" must surely be one of the great damn squibs of religious history. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
damn squibs SHD BE damp squibs
Realist,
If everyone agrees that we don't have to believe it, why the reluctance to reveal it? John XXIII could have done so, we all could have shared a jolly good laugh, and gotten on with our lives.
Ralph,
I "ditto" your observation about John XXIII. Maybe there were some economic factors involved. Visits to Fatima probably took a hit after the last "revelation" was made.
"'God is capable of seeing the future before we humans experience it' -- something fishy about this! To talk about God as if there were a 'before' or a 'future' from God's perspective is incompatible with the doctrine of divine eternity."
Of course it is. That's why I said God is capable of seeing the future before WE HUMANS experience it. It's not "future" to God, since to Him all time is the present. That's how he can see the future before we experience it.
"The prophecies of Fatima are self-refuting. One of them, delivered in 1917, said that the soldiers were already on their way home from the war front. The war ended on Nov. 11, 1918."
Then why has the Church declared that Fatima is worthy of belief, if it is really subject to such a slam-dunk refutation?
JP,
You noted that Father Schillebeeckx does not believe in the Virgin Birth or the Incarnation. Do you have references to these beliefs, preferably references to his books where he makes these conclusions to include his exact words?
"That's how he can see the future before we experience it."
I think it's the equivocation between God's experience and ours that people find objectionable. You seem to be saying that God knows things as we know them before we know them, and that's wrong. God's mode of knowing is entirely different from ours and beyond analogy. To say that God knows "before" is to imply temporality in God, which He doesn't have. "Before" and "after" can't rightly be predicated of God's knowledge at all.
Not exactly slam-dunk, perhaps. Here is the exact wording of the prophecy:
13 October 1917
"I want to tell you that a chapel is to be built here in my honour. I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue always to pray the Rosary every day. The war is going to end, and the soldiers will soon return to their homes."
13 months and five days is hardly "soon" in the case of the worst war the world had ever seen, a war that took thousands of young lives every day. Are we to suppose that in the eyes of eternity a year is as a day?
Here is another prophecy, July 13 1917:
"You have seen hell where souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Plus XI. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given to you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world."
Pius XI was explicitly named in the prophecy! The children thought it was the name of a king!
So at least Lucia wrote -- in 1941!
LUCIA SPEAKS! THIRD SECRET BARED!
at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
THIS IS THE TRASH THAT OBSESSED SO MANY CATHOLICS FOR THE LAST CENTURY! SURELY WE NEED TO GROW UP!
Father Schillebeeckx is quite the heretic. even orthodox Protestants genrally see this. Ad he is a dated on at that.
Joe
"'That's how he can see the future before we experience it.'
"I think it's the equivocation between God's experience and ours that people find objectionable."
What do you mean "people"? You and Fr. O'Leary are the only two who have expressed confusion about what I wrote. I didn't say anything about God's knowledge that God Himself didn't already say in the Bible.
"You seem to be saying that God knows things as we know them before we know them, and that's wrong."
I have no idea how you got that idea. I certainly do not seem to be saying any such thing. I didn't say or imply anything about HOW God knows things, or whether His mode of knowing is the same or similar to ours.
"To say that God knows 'before' is to imply temporality in God, which He doesn't have. 'Before' and 'after' can't rightly be predicated of God's knowledge at all."
For the last time, I didn't say anything that predicated "before" and "after" to God's knowledge. If you will kindly re-read what I wrote, you will find that the word "before" had to do with when WE HUMANS come to know what is to us (not to God) "future." Now, I hope you do not wish to contest the statement that "before" and "after" can rightly be predicated of human knowledge.
"Are we to suppose that in the eyes of eternity a year is as a day?"
Sure. Why not?
Now that you've quoted the prophecy, it's clear that , contrary to your claim, the prophecy didn't say that the soldiers were then on their way home -- just that the war would end soon and the soldiers would return to their homes.
"Do you have references to these beliefs, preferably references to his books where he makes these conclusions to include his exact words?"
No, but Fr. O'Leary recently referred here at some length to Silly Beaks' denial of the Virgin Birth. In any case, if he really denies that God is omniscient, then he obviously doesn't believe that the God that we Catholics worship "was made flesh and set up a tabernacle among us." Silly Beaks' God is not the Eternal God at all, just a vastly powerful superbeing.
JP,
Using Father O'Leary as a reference!! Wow that is interesting!!
And did he also reference Father Schillebeeckx's conclusion that God is a vastly powerful superbeing?
In some respects, we are all Sons and Daughters of God made flesh and are tabernacles on this Great Earth.
" . . . Now, I hope you do not wish to contest the statement that "before" and "after" can rightly be predicated of human knowledge."
My reply to Jonathan Prejean was unneedfully snippy and rude. Guess I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Sorry.
"And did he also reference Father Schillebeeckx's conclusion that God is a vastly powerful superbeing?"
No, that was you who did that (see above).
JP,
No, I was just copied and pasted your conclusion about what Father Schillebeeckx supposedly concluded. Again references please!!
No, you were the one who quoted Silly Beaks' denial of the God in whom we Catholics believe. Here again is what you wrote in this thread:
"Christians must give up a perverse, unhealthy and inhuman doctrine of predestination without in so doing making God the great scapegoat of history" . "Nothing is determined in advance: in nature there is chance and determinism; in the world of human activity there is possibility of free choices. Therefore the historical future is not known even to God; otherwise we and our history would be merely a puppet show in which God holds the strings. For God, too, history is an adventure, an open history for and of men and women." Church: The Human Story of God, Crossroad, p.91,1993
Silly Beaks' God is ignorant, limited -- whatever else his God is, you can't use the words "omniscient" and "omnipotent" to refer to him, or her, or it.
JP,
Ahhh, the Gifts of Life, Future, Free Will, Intelligence and Choice!!
Happy Thanksgiving and Thanks Be to God for these Gifts.
Schillbeeckx's views on omniscience are not necessarily heretical.
Consider the following. Divine omnipotence is not unlimited. It is limited by the logically impossible. Thus God cannot make two and two to be five.
Similarly, divine omniscience is not unlimited. It is limited by the logically impossible. It is logically impossible to know a future contingent before it occurs. Such prior knowledge would destroy freedom and chance and imply a deterministic universe. Divine omniscience may be conceived as knowledge of all that is. The future qua future is not, and is therefore now an object of knowledge or of omniscience, except insofar as it can be anticipated on the basis of present and past (and that is the kind of knowledge of the future that biblical prophecy deals with). To say that what is now to us future is "already" known by God is incompatible with the logic of "future".
is therefore now SHD BE is not therefore now
"Schillbeeckx's views on omniscience are not necessarily heretical."
No, they are undoubtedly heretical. His views on omniscience amount to "Open Theism," which is a denial that God is omniscient, but instead claims that God does not know the future but can make much better guesses about it than we can.
The problem is that Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium explicitly affirm that God does know all things, including the future, and that God inhabits eternity. God does not experience time as we do. Only those who believe God exist only within the temporal, and experiences time just as we do, will have a problem with the Catholic doctrine that God knows everything, including those things that we have not yet experienced, which are to us still future.
"Consider the following. Divine omnipotence is not unlimited. It is limited by the logically impossible. Thus God cannot make two and two to be five."
Silly Beaks is not merely limiting omniscience, he is denying it altogether.
"Similarly, divine omniscience is not unlimited. It is limited by the logically impossible. It is logically impossible to know a future contingent before it occurs."
Wrong. It is logically impossible for US to know a future contingent before it occurs, but from God's perspective there is no such thing as "future" -- all things are "present" to Him.
"Such prior knowledge would destroy freedom and chance and imply a deterministic universe."
No it wouldn't. As C.S. Lewis explained, God is present here and now -- but we have freedom now. Why then would His being "already" present in our future prevent us from having freedom when those moments in time are finally given to us?
"Divine omniscience may be conceived as knowledge of all that is."
That's not divine omniscience. It is knowledge of all that is, was, or will be. If God only knows about the things that exist in our here-and-now, then He is even more ignorant than we are, for even we humans know the past, even though the past no longer exists in the present.
"The future qua future is not, and is not therefore now an object of knowledge or of omniscience, except insofar as it can be anticipated on the basis of present and past (and that is the kind of knowledge of the future that biblical prophecy deals with)."
No, the Scriptures say that God knows the end from the beginning, and that the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world, and that God calls the future things into existence for us.
I know there are many theologically ignorant fundamentalists out there who think God experiences time exactly as we do -- as past, present, and future, in that order. Indeed, I was once one of them -- the sect in which I was born and raised held to Silly Beaks' opinions. Some Protestants have formulated a new, heretical doctrine called "Open Theism." Now it would appear that some Catholics are joining the fundamentalists in that childish, un-Christian
concept of God. Very sad.
JP,
It is very sad that some Catholics believe that our all-merciful, all-loving God allows children to be killed in their mothers' wombs, to be born blind, to be born without legs or arms, or to be born with other physical and mental deformities.
These Catholics hold on to their belief in an omniscient God apparently because by doing so it allows them to quote prophets and prophecies and the belief that Jesus/God knew that He would be crucified. God allowed His Son to be humiliated and mutilated by a bunch of goons where this same God severely punished the Egyptians and saved the Jews from slaughter by another bunch of goons? God even saved Isaac from his father's knife but would not save His own Son? It is time to end all this "omniscient nonsense".
S would certainly never speak of God as making guesses about the future.
The theory that the future is present to God in his eternal present is a way of reducing foreknowledge to knowledge of what is, rather than seeing it as a prior knowledge of what is to be -- the latter undercuts the logic of time and the reality of contingency and freedom.
As usual Christian metaphysics cleans up the simple langauge of Scripture, but in such a way as to strain our minds very much!
As usual Christian metaphysics cleans up the simple langauge of Scripture, but in such a way as to strain our minds very much!
Fr. O'Leary makes a good point about the tension between the language of metaphysics and that of Scripture. The reason for the necessity of the former, of course, is that if we stick with the latter and puzzle over such expressions as that God "repented of having created men" (in the sinful days of Noah), or "God hardened Pharaoh's heart," you run into imponderable conundrums. The same is true of the "equality" and "subordination" passages referring to Jesus (as either "equal" or "subordinate" to the Father). The mind can't help inclinding to try to make sense of such seeming discrepancies. Hence the difficult challenge of metaphysics, and why we shouldn't condescendingly dismiss out of hand the painstaking work of the Catholic scholastic tradition, much of which is far better than most people realize.
Good point that the Catholic scholastic tradition is among the supreme achievements of the human mind. I would never dismiss it. But I would contest it if and when it claims hegemony over the primary language and experience of revelation centered on Scripture. By overcoming metaphysics I mean a step back to this more comprehensive context and an effort to keep metaphysical thinking in its secondary defensive role in regard to the encounter with God in Christ. Of course that is a very vague and global statement; in each particular case the assessment of the interplay of biblical and metaphysical is a rich exercise in historical judgment.
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