We’re not gonna lie, in our 100th episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors we allow ourselves to get more a bit sentimental than we usually do (this may or may not have to do with our being, umm, more “in our cups” than usual as well). But hey, we all love a celebration, and we begin this show by allowing our listeners to celebrate with us and let us know what DXP has meant to them (culminating with our patron saint, Dick Bush, listing off the ways becoming “agnostical” has benefitted him in his personal life). But the mushy stuff eventually ceases and we move on to the cheery topics of killing preemies and primates, so there’s something for everyone. Concerning the former, we piggyback on last episode’s discussion of abortion, discussing whether the term “murder” is really fair to describe the procedure. And concerning the latter, how hard is it to design a gorilla cage that a toddler can’t infiltrate? Seriously.
Also, thanks for a great couple years, everyone. We love you all!
Podcast #295: Quarantine is Pretty Awesome
Podcast #294: Quarantined Ex-Pastors
Podcast #366: Depression, Ivermectin, and How Much to Hate America
Podcast #438: Air, Pornhub, and the Resurrection
• Drunk Mowing: There’s nothing you want more than to operate a machine with a spinning death blade than 3 or 4 beers in your system.
• “It’s Amazing!” Jason channeling a bit of Huell Howser there.
• Stop saying wiener and start saying ‘moist’ in literally every sentence.
• Ah. Nevermind. You guys already thought of that.
• I always have to sneeze when I read the Pollen epistles.
• Well, you can be honest as a drunk ex-pastor, you can never really be honest as a pastor. Too much pressure to hide parts of yourself. Too much church politics and bitching and back biting if you do.
• Diagnostacism: The belief that God is an IT worker and is trying to figure out what the fuck went wrong with the system. The great apocalypse predicted by its adherents involves God turning the universe off, then back on again
• Strange Brew is about two guys who like to sit around the drink beer and eat donuts trying to pull a scam where they stick a mouse in a bottle and end up getting a job as security guards at their favorite brewery where an evil businessman is trying to take over Canada by adding a mind control agent to the beer which he has tested out by making his own evil hockey team that is controlled by stadium organ music.
• It helps if you’re either 12, high, or drunk when you watch it.
• Don’t ask me why I remember a movie I last saw 30 years ago and I can’t remember the names of the people I see at church every week.
• When I was your age, kids, we have dial up internet, with our Netscape browsers, and AOL floppy disks with 700 free minutes, and landlines, and is some asshole picked up the phone while you were 50 minutes into downloading a porn pic, you had to reconnect and start all over.
• You can remember how to play any worship song on the guitar: Pick three chords. Sing 7 words. They can be any 7 words (no profanity) as long as one of the words is God or Jesus and one of the words is something like majesty or awesome or love. Repeat those 7 words 10 times. On the 11th go around, take it up one octave to really get the emotions flowing. Do that 4 more times and everyone will be ready for the sermon.
• Yes, Christian, they do know that 11 of those 12 embryos should die, but it’s okay if they die naturally. Killing is cool if God does it, man. 🙂
• Or if God commands you to do it to a bunch of pagan pregnant women and babies.
• I think the question was: why are you still talking about abortion when you’re never going to get a fucking answer?
• Ultimately, to me, when it comes to abortion, I’m not confident enough in my beliefs to be comfortable enough with inserting the State into a decision that should be between a woman, her doctor, and her God.
• Every sperm is sacred…
• One of the reasons my wife and I stopped having kids after having two is because I didn’t want us to be outnumbered.
• But yes, even with two kids, we still had moments of “oh shit, where is (s)he?”
• GOP: I’m pro-life and pro-war and pro-death penalty!
• If you’re speeding and you don’t know your speeding, but you hit and knock over a tree in the woods and it falls and no one is around to hear it because you’ve gone through the windshield and become one with the falling tree, does it make a sound?
• That won’t happen. Eventually, if abortion is made illegal, the woman having an abortion will be charged with murder or manslaughter.
• “Grace perfects nature” everyone take a drink.
Congrats on 100! Did Christian fall asleep at 1:14:45?
I was going to call because you guys have ruined my life as well. Cheers!
Ha! I don’t know what happened there. We paused it for something it sounds like and couldn’t remember what we were talking about when we came back. Ha. This is what happens when we don’t edit. LOL
It’s a riding mower and the blade switches off if I’m not on the seat, so when I get drunk and fall off, the blade turns off. 🙂
Congrats on 100! I think the abortion discussion was a good example of you guys at your finest! There was good, thoughtful discussion, and you guys pushed back on each other’s (that’s what she said) ideas.
Christian, you need to give up on the freezing argument 🙂 you also can’t freeze an embryo after 1-2 weeks, when the cell count has reached a critical mass. So by your standard, you wouldn’t even know you were pregnant before the dead line for personhood had passed.
It’s such a fun argument though. 😉
Seriously though, I still think it’s valid. If you can freeze a 1 day old embryo for 10 years, my argument would be that there is no soul yet (admittedly, I don’t have evidence that a soul can’t be “frozen” for 10 years, but it seems unlikely). The anti-abortionist’s argument is that the embryo has a soul at the moment of conception. If an embryo doesn’t have a soul at the moment of conception, then there is a time when the embroy/fetus is not a “person”. The question then would be how long does that last? When does a fetus become a “person”, specifically a sentient person with a “soul”.
You are definitely correct that the question is really about when does the zygote/fetus become a person, which has rights that need to be protected.
But if your argument is that personhood occurs at the point when you can no longer freeze and unfreeze the fetus, then you have only days after conception to terminate. Most pregnancy test can’t accurately detect that you’re pregnant until 1-2 weeks. Which means, unless you are taking plan B after every sexual encounter, your freezing criteria is essentially the same has not allowing abortions all together.
My argument is that I don’t think you can “freeze” a soul for 10 years. Therefore, a 1 minute old fetus doesn’t have a soul. Therefore, there is a point where a human gets a soul and it’s not necessarily at conception. That’s all.
I’m not trying to base when a fetus gets a “soul” based on what age you can no longer freeze it.
Maybe this is where I am getting hung up on your argument. By saying that the ability to successfully freeze and unfreeze and embryo, is proof that the embryo does not have a soul (assuming your assumption that you cannot freeze a should is correct).
Wouldn’t then the opposite of that statement also have to be true? That not being able to successfully freeze and unfreeze an organism, is proof that the organism does have a soul.
No, because as you pointed out, there is so much more to being able to freeze a body, and there are reasons that it can’t be done that have nothing to do with a soul. My point is just that person-hood does not being at conception in my opinion. It would be interesting, if it were possible to freeze fetuses older than a few days to know what age they could successfully be frozen until for 10 years without being dead upon thawing. (Not that I think that should necessarily be an experiment – just that it would be interesting to know.)
Okay, so I get that. But doesn’t that then mean that your freezing argument can only be used to justify abortions until about day 5-7 (I think that’s about how long the embryo is in vitro)? Any time after that, we aren’t able to confirm that the embryo doesn’t have a soul, so it could be a person.
If you are arguing solely against life at conception, I guess it works. But if you are trying to justify abortions past week 1, I think it falls flat and isn’t a compelling argument.
PS By “justifying” abortions, I am not suggesting that people are trying to make them super awesome and everybody should have them. To me, I think trying to find that line of personhood, is critical. But I also don’t think we will ever figure it out. Until the rapture of course 🙂
Congratulations on 100! Great episode and can’t wait to get my poster! Keep up the good shit and keep it 100
Congrats on 100 boys! Good job.
1.Universalism is stupid. If even one person doesn’t want there to be a God, doesn’t want anything to do with God if He is real, and would rather be separated from Him eternally if given the choice, then hell should be an option. Christopher Hitches, Thomas Nagel, and others have expressed such sentiments. That’s the whole point of having free agents in a broken world. Everyone gets the choice. If 8 out of 10 or even 1 in a trillion choose to tell God no they should be allowed to do so. If they aren’t, I can’t see why we should have free will at all. Its just an unnecessary extra that puts us in a shittier world.
2. Being pro abortion is for moral idiots. There isn’t one single argument that justifies abortion on the grounds of the baby not being “really really” a person. Its all arbitrary bullshit. When I go to sleep tonight I won’t be sentient. I’ll be asleep. You could chop off my head and i wouldnt be any the wiser. But that’s obviously murder because given enough time I’ll wake up and be a “person” again. No different for a baby. Except that the kid gets chopped up and reassembled on a medical table before being tossed in the garbage.
Really the worst part of the left is its stance on abortion. Super grotesque. Super disgusting. Super heinous. Completely deserving of ridicule and public scorn. Being pro abortion should carry a worse public stigma than being a member of the kkk or westboro baptist. But, amazingly, people feel comfortable defending it as if it were reasonable for a mother to rip it’s kids limbs off with a gripping tool and crush its head until the skull collapses and can be removed.
“But how many cells and brain connections does an embryo have!!!!!”
As if that’s relevant to any abortions which always stop a beating heart
Gross.
Anyways, I promise I love the show and you guys are great!
BTW if the USA doesn’t get out of their group or doesn’t start playing well don’t look at my Twitter. It won’t end well #copaamerica #IbelievethatWeWillWin
Congratulations! Way to commit to something for once! Ha!
I’m currently listening to the abortion discussion, and it is really good! I really like the push back and forth.
Christian your freezing argument is sooo ad hoc! You mentioned that Christians like un-falsifiable arguments. Maybe. But they are based in earned trust. If you start preforming miracles and fulfilling prophecy, and get a whole bunch of people to follow you to their painful death, I will reconsider your otherwise groundless arguments! Haha
But really guys great job! I look forward to the next 100!
Maybe in 60 years, myth will spring up around me and men will write books about the miracles I performed and how many of the DXP faithful sacrificed their lives for me. Probably not though, since we live in an age where things can be much more easily proven or disproven with media and records and such. Too bad I wasn’t born a couple thousand years ago. Then I guess I could make all the unfalsifiable claims I want!
Yeah, I’m with you. It all hinges on today’s game… I’m nervous.
I know right? But look on the bright side, you won’t get crucified… probably.
15 minutes talking about abortion, not a single mention of the woman, impressive!
Except as the baby carrier of course haha
Jason, would you jump on the grenade for a 15 year old girl who’s life is essentially going to end if she’s forced to give birth to a baby?
Who cares about the woman? Lol you know how many times people have to have an abortion to save the life of the mother? Like….. Never.
Did you catch Jason coming out officially for universalism (heresy) and also saying he wouldn’t change his opinion no matter what the Church teaches? 🙁
If the trajectory continues episode 200 will come with another Stellman paradigm shift into the unknown lol
We picked up the W!!
It’s certainly looking good! I’ve lost my voice.
Unless you factor in actual data from the real world: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/the-life-of-the-mother/
That kind of misses the point of the sentience argument though (or makes it into a straw man). Nobody would argue that you have to be conscious at every moment of every day. The realized capacity for consciousness, self-awareness, fear, pain, etc are generally considered to be markers of sentience. Even when you’re sleeping you have that realized capacity, even if you’re not exercising it at the moment.
So, if concepts like sentience and personhood are arbitrary, in the Christian view why isn’t the cutoff of conception arbitrary? Why aren’t the egg and the sperm invested with the same value and significance the moment before they merge than the moment after they merge? I’ve heard a few arguments on this, but none that are terribly coherent. And none with any scriptural basis that I’m aware of.
I have to say that I love it when you guys quote scripture. It kills me every time.
Everywhere I live I always end up becoming friends with other ex-evangelicals, and we usually don’t even realize it until the friendship is already forming. It’s like some kind of social radar. The inside jokes in these circles just never end. Besides quoting ironically-timed scripture, there’s all the other church-speak that’s just so second-nature when you grew up in the church. (On Thursday we’re going to drive up to Irvine for the Derrida seminar, Lord willing.”) It never gets old.
It is a fun argument, but I’m not sure why the soul comes in here. The idea of a soul that exists independently of the body is something that many atheist and agnostic folks would reject. Also, most non-human animals can’t survive freezing either, but I don’t think conservative Christians would grant that they have souls.
I’m just curious…. Did you read that link before you posted it? I don’t think it shows what you think it does 🙂
A total of 600 women die per year from pregnancy. In how many instances were abortion necessary to save the woman’s life? It doesn’t say. Do you know why? Because its incredibly rare for the doctor to be forced to kill the baby before extraction to save the mothers life.
Nobody would argue that you have to be conscious at every moment of every day.
Yes I know because that would be absurd. That’s how reductio ad absurdum works 🙂
A sleeping man has the potential to exercise consciousness, self-awareness, fear, pain, etc. but in fact does not have access to that potential while sleeping. Similarly, a baby has to the potential for all the same things. Only, he needs more time to wake up.
Do we stop being people when we sleep? Are newborn babies “less” of a person than you are? If you hit your head in a car accident and the doctor said you would be comatose for 9 months, should your mother have the right to choose your death? It doesn’t take a moral genius to grasp this stuff. Its pretty obvious.
Now about sperms, eggs, and life. Rationality, locomotion, nutrition, and the like are present at conception “in potency” or as inherent potentialities. These things are not present in sperm, eggs, etc. Thus, they are not persons.
I heard, not too surprising.
“The realized capacity for consciousness, self-awareness, fear, pain, etc are generally considered to be markers of sentience.”
As Christian pointed out, we should be careful. Maybe, when in doubt we should wait. How does 9 months sound?
“in the Christian view why isn’t the cutoff of conception arbitrary?”
Other than birth, it is a clear demarcation. It’s the first time a distinct human organization becomes present with it’s own DNA. It is so obvious, that it becomes clear to me that people who reject it are trying to fool themselves intentionally from the truth.
Second, it isn’t just the Christian view, it is the scientific view.
Scientific view:
An interesting side note … when the zygote forms, it spends about 6 days or so traveling to the uterus. When it arrives, it attempts to implant into the uterine wall. If the mother’s body determines that the 6-7 day old fetus is not viable, menstruation will occur, denying the embryo to implant. Pretty much exactly what the B plan pill does.
Women should be made illegal.
The real question is should we allow a woman’s body to choose to abort the pregnancy because an unviable fetus would put an undue burden on her body?
Or … If life begins at conception, should we hold the designer of a system that aborts a fetus after conception accountable?
So, an anti-abortion website publishes the claim that no woman’s life is every threatened by a pregnancy, with no data to back it up. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists posts data suggesting that at least some women’s lives are in fact endangered by bringing pregnancies to full term. Who do we believe?
First there’s the question of what counts as evidence. I think in conversations like these, this is unresolvable. The conservative Christian standpoint is based on a completely different epistemological stance than a modern liberal stance that would take research and data into account. I’m not arguing that one is better than the other – just that they’re diametrically opposed and you’re not going to build consensus across this divide since the ways of knowing are entirely foreign to each other.
But even given this divide, I will say that the claim that there are no women anywhere whose lives are threatened by bringing a pregnancy to term is pretty hard to defend. And in the Christian perspective it should be beside the point. The woman’s life (and her autonomy) are irrelevant to the argument here. If the fetus is considered a human life from conception, and all human life must be preserved at any cost, then it doesn’t matter what the carrier organism has to endure to bring it to term. Obviously I don’t agree with this, but that’s what consistency demands.
A clear demarcation is convenient, but how is it not arbitrary in the same way personhood allegedly is?
And I missed the scriptural basis for making DNA the locus of value in human lives. I even missed the scriptural basis for the claim that every human life has intrinsic value. Some human lives (if they are ethnically, socially, or spiritually aligned properly) have value. Others can be left in the desert to starve.
The term is actually “realized potential.” The “realized ” is important here. If we go with just “potential” then we can say the potential for all of the human functions are present in the egg cell and in the sperm cell. Does it require the right conditions to be realized? Sure. But the cluster of undifferentiated cells that follows conception also needs the right conditions to be realized. So what does “potential” actually get you?
We’re cold-blooded killers. Like on a monthly basis, with no remorse. 🙂
I honestly don’t remember what I said. But regarding universalism, what’s so sad about believing that God is as loving a Father as I am? If I had a child that was outside of my graces for whatever reason, I would just expand my graces. Simple as that.
I don’t understand the question, or the scenario. There’s a grenade?
Ah, but God is bound by the rules of his own nature, or something like that. And also omnipotent. These two facts kept me endlessly boggled for at least a third of my childhood.
I love to throw out “and the last shall be first and the first shall be last” whenever I beat my friends at something inconsequential like winning a fantasy football matchup or getting a seat at the pub with a better view of the TV. Also, back when I was a believer, I almost got “Deo volente” tattooed on my body.
Dying from natural causes, and caring out an act with express purpose of ending an innocent human life are quite different.
Blame the woman for a random miscarriage? No. Blame the choice to force a miscarriage? Yes. As for placing yourself in the judgment seat above God, good luck with that.
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists posts data suggesting that at least some women’s lives are in fact endangered by bringing pregnancies to full term.
Obviously women can die from childbirth. But in how many cases is it necessary to KILL the baby, rather than just deliver and try to save it? You haven’t posted a lick of data that informs the actual question.
I think in conversations like these, this is unresolvable. The conservative Christian standpoint is based on a completely different epistemological stance than a modern liberal stance that would take research and data into account.
No. I could reject Christianity right now and would still believe abortion is disgusting. Chopping up children for the mothers convenience is horrific. There is no “research” needed to inform such an obvious moral issue. We know when life begins. We know every abortion stops a besting heart. The idea that anyone (much less the party if “compassion” and “tolerance”) could defend the dismemberment of infants is shockingly evil.
You guys sound like a Muslim who doesn’t “personally like jihad” but understands that its a “deeply personal issue” that everyone has to decide for themselves. Ummmm NO
The woman’s life (and her autonomy) are irrelevant to the argument here. that’s not true. If its a first term complication (ectopic pregnancy) and the baby isn’t viable, won’t live in the womb, and endangers the mother, its a morally neutral decision. The baby will die no matter what. But if the baby CAN live outside the womb, the mother will die if she continues to term, we should take the baby out and do the best we can to save him or her. Its a manufactured issue meant to distract from babies being chopped up and reassembled by selfish mothers.
The “cluster of undifferentiated cells that follows conception” is the first point at which you have a separate unique human organism present; a human organism with 2 parents and his/her own unique DNA. You give a human zygote time and nutrients you get a developing human organism. On the other hand, you give any amount of time and nutrients to an unfertilized egg, a sperm cell, blood cells, skin cells, whatever – you do not ever come up with a new maturing human being.
Check out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wURL0rVLbY
That would have been an awesome tattoo.
One of my sister’s friends got a tramp stamp of “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” and I thought it was weird given that purity culture prevents you from showing off a tramp stamp in the first place.
If you were in a coma for 9 months would you have realized potential? I don’t think so. In that case, what dies potential really get you?
A sperm cell has potential to create a baby. It does not have the potential to BE a baby. At conception you have all the sane potential as a grown man in a short term coma. Further, I’m pretty sure a newborn doesn’t have all the mental capacities as a 8 month old. He or she could feel pain, but couldnt make anything of it, experience fear, love anyone, or anything else. Not very much realized potential there. Perhaps killing a newborn should just be a misdemeanor?
Ha! When did you become so concerned with Scripture? Which teaching of Jesus do you base your support for ending the life of the unborn? It probably isn’t the part about John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth’s womb when they came into the presence of the Blessed Mother carrying our Lord Jesus Christ incarnate 2nd person of the Holy Trinity in her Blessed womb?
What if you had a child that hated you and wanted nothing to do with you? What if, despite your best efforts, the child never wanted to see you again? Would you force yourself on him/her anyways? Is that what love looks like?
And Jason, you have up your career and went through hell so that you could have a magesterium, confidence in doctrine, etc. Don’t you think its ironic that just a few years later you would embrace heresy despite all that? Wtf was the point? Lol you can *hope* hell is empty, but you can’t affirm that it is while receiving communion on Sunday.
I go at those ideas directly in my book.
Despite all of our medical advances, more than 600 women die each year from pregnancy and childbirth-related reasons right here in the US. In fact, many more women would die each year if they did not have access to abortion to protect their health or to save their lives.
The claim that there are no situations in which a mother’s life cannot be saved through medical advances is denied by … the people who develop and utilize those very medical advances. Hm.
And this. I had a distant cousin who married young (extremely common in some churches) and got pregnant at the age of 19. About 6 weeks in she wasn’t feeling well and they discovered she had been born with one kidney, which was itself not functioning very well. Every health care provider she saw advised to terminate the pregnancy and find a kidney donor. She didn’t, everyone prayed for her, the baby was born preemie but survived, the mother did not, the father was overwhelmed with caring for a newborn so he moved to Alaska to work in the fishing industry, and the grandparents raised the baby. It was “God’s will.”
There’s one. All it takes is one counterexample to disprove a universal claim.
First, guys like Hitchens don’t hate Jesus, they hate conservatives’ version of him. And despite what anyone says, they wouldn’t really rather suffer in hell than be in heaven. They’re just posturing (just like when a teenager says he’d rather be homeless than accept his parents’ help — any good parent can see that for what it is).
And I am still “going through hell,” but to quote Will Hunting, it’s better than being unoriginal.
I’m concerned with logical consistency. If my actions are going to be governed by laws based on a book I don’t accept as authoritative, shouldn’t it at least be applied consistently? Knowing the scripture and accepting it as the authority in your life are two different things.
As a fully developed human being I would have at some point in my life developed rationality, consciousness, etc. If I sink into a permanent unconscious vegetative state from which there is no possibility of recovery or return to consciousness, then that’s a whole other conversation. Probably also one we’ll disagree on. 🙂
A million changes and processes have to happen in just the right way, in just the right conditions, at just the right time for the undifferentiated cluster of embryonic cells to become a baby. Honestly, the contrast between the potential to be a baby versus the potential to create a baby seems like a distinction without a difference here.
Listen to the first 50 seconds of this:
https://youtu.be/2-d4otHE-YI
Stephen Fry doesn’t care which version of God allowed bone cancer in children. He doesn’t respect such a being no matter the theology. Same with Hitch and others who have said repeatedly they are thrilled that there isn’t a God. They don’t want someone to be powerful like that. They don’t want a divine Father seeing their every thought. They want autonomy. They want to be their own masters. And, to quote Stephen Fry, they don’t want in the pearly gates on His terms. Which is just exactly the way scripture describes unrepentant sinners. Hitchens and Fry aren’t original. They are honest. I would be willing to bet Christian Kingery would agree with them. Obviously no one would want to choose suffering over happiness. But decisions aren’t always that black and white. Marriage is suffering. But I still choose it over being single, free, and “happy”. Sometimes there are deal breakers which drive us to the agony. If even ONE person thinks that way, universalism would be immoral.
And Jason, taking communion while affirming heresy doesn’t make you original. But it does make you a protestant wearing a catholic jersey. Don’t be your own pope mate. Don’t make your own suffering be for nothing.
I get how the biology works. But what’s the mechanism that gets you “inherently valuable life” out of “unique human organism” or “unique DNA”? Every head of cattle walking the face of the earth has unique DNA, but I know very few Christians who will hesitate before devouring a cheeseburger. Hagar was a unique human organism, but she was not deemed to have inherent value.
So an egg or a sperm will not grow into a human life on their own. Neither will embryonic tissue, without the constant intervention of the mother’s body, in multiple ways, every second of the day and night.
It’s hard to hate somebody if you don’t think that person exists and you telling me that I’m gambling with my eternal soul based on what someone else told you is the only truth is not very convincing.
oh my god. I’m sure she got it for her future husband…
Who said anything about a permanent vegitative state? I said a 9 month coma. Does that person have a right to life or no? If your answer is yes the cognitive argument is abolished.
A distinction without a difference? Only if you think chromosomes, complete DNA, and a new biological organism is no different from an egg. Which is…… Bizaar
Well, maybe for you that’s true. I don’t need absolutes. I’m saying if there is only ONE person, whom has ever lived, that hates God and doesn’t want to be with Him forever, then universalism would be immoral.
You saying that you aren’t gambling your soul based off of something someone else told you is true is unconvincing…. Only if you frame that in absurd terms
I don’t really understand how any of this makes your point. Is anyone arguing that human development doesn’t begin at conception? As a matter of fact, wouldn’t the term “development” imply that the fetus is not a complete human yet?
“Natural causes” of course meaning “causes designed by God”, right?
We know every abortion stops a besting heart.
Except, of course, for all of the abortions that are performed before the heart is formed.
John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth’s womb when they came into the presence of the Blessed Mother carrying our Lord Jesus Christ
Oh, a baby kicked!? Miracle of miracles!
Kenneth, aren’t you the one with a strong dislike for the current pope?
Listen to the god he’s describing, Kenneth. That’s who he’s rejecting.
[eye roll]
Disliking a pope and dissenting from De Fide teaching are two different things. If Pope Francis lays down the infallible pen I’ll get in line
I don’t hold to Sola Scriptura as a Catholic. And the teachings of the Catholic Church on morality are quite logically consistent.
Every death, every single one, is either directly caused by God or allowed to happen by God. He created life, He can take it away.
It only took like 2 sentences before he rejected a false God (in this case, one who just hands out bone cancer to children).
The one that created babies and allowed them to have bone cancer. That is any God
There are zero of those in the US. Every legal abortion stops a beating heart. Every one.
Read this book:
https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51-GTU%2BRRAL._UY250_.jpg
Can’t you be a Catholic and hope for universal salvation?
So you can hope for it, you just can’t believe it?
So God kills babies all the time.
Science tells us how things work, such as when life begins. Science doesn’t tell what we ought to do. We have to talk about ethics to get the idea that human life is valuable. Are you suggesting that human life isn’t valuable? If so, don’t you think that is the root disagreement?
Neither will embryonic tissue, without the constant intervention of the mother’s body, in multiple ways, every second of the day and night.
Yes, you probably meant those naturally designed processes of life. “Intervention” is precisely what abortion is – a morally heinous intervention with the expressed purpose of interrupting the life on an innocent human, to cause their death.
You seem to be arguing, insisting for everything to be arbitrary, for their to be no distinction when it comes to life. You might as well argue that there is no difference between me and my mother, or going far enough back, between you and me. But that is absurd.
Lane, I was being a bit factious to illustrate a point. Striking the right tone with text is difficult … we can’t all be writers like Jason 🙂 Let me try again.
Pregnancy is extremely taxing on a women. You essentially have a parasite living inside you, that releases hormones and changes how your body works. In order to protect one’s self, the woman’s body has the ability to stop the embryo from implanting or to expel an implanted embryo through a miscarriage. We don’t always know the reason for the expulsion, but generally you can say that the woman’s body decided that the cost of pregnancy did not out way the benefit.
Either way, the woman’s body is making a choice to terminate the pregnancy in order to protect itself. I was trying to draw a parallel to current abortion debate, and whether or not a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy if she determines the cost is too much for her to bare.
As for the putting myself in judgement over God, I was trying to get the point that if life begins at conception, then why did God put in a system to terminate that embryo … seems silly. But if life begins some time after conception, than there is no judgement needed. Again I was trying to parallel this with people who are saying that doctors/woman should be punished for abortions.
“I don’t really understand how any of this makes your point.”
This is the scientific view of when human life begins. If you decide to end a human life, you are killing a human. We know when life begins; it isn’t a mystery. All your talk about personhood – arbitrary ad hoc talk – is simply trying to justify killing a human.
As for the word “development”, a embryo develops into a fetus. A fetus develops into an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager, an adult, and eventually becoming elderly and dying of natural causes. Unless, of course, nothing interrupts the development such as the mother intentionally killing the her child at say the fetus or toddler stage of development.
Right, but unfortunately I’m not speaking with atheist and agnostic folks. 🙂
If the idea of a soul that exists independently of the body is granted for the sake of argument, along with my crazy idea that you can’t long-term freeze an organism with a soul, then not being able to freeze an animal doesn’t mean anything to my argument. My only point would be that there’s no soul immediately after conception.
I think you’re begging the question. Is the embryo a human being or does it develop into a human being? Whether or not an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager, an adult, or an elderly person is a human being is not the question. We also eventually “develop” into dirt.
I’ll look at it, but my reading list is super slammed man. Just to be clear, IF someone did fit the description I laid out, would universalism be moral?
An embryo has two human parents; it has it’s own unique human DNA; hell, it even has a biological gender. So it is human. Just like every other living thing, it thrives when given nutrients. So it is alive. Unlike other cells in your body, given enough time and nutrients, it can mature into a 40 year old morally confused adult that supports abortion. So it is a living human.
Seriously, it isn’t really confusing. It is only confusing if you really really want to find a reason to kill it out of personal convenience. Which is wrong. You ought not to intentionally kill innocent humans. Period.
According to your logic, is it immoral to hit someone over the head and drag them out of a burning building if they’re resisting?
I generally end discussions when I’m told what my motives are, and frankly, you do it quite a bit. Like I’ve told you before, it’s a sure way to never reach the person you’re talking to. Later.
You can HOPE for that and tip toe right up to the line of heresy and be OK. But to say “universalism is the fact of the matter” is heresy and that person is no longer in communion with the Church.
If someone sets their masters mansion on fire, spits on him, rapes and kills his children, tarnishes everything beautiful that was his, and found them selves sealed into their own carnage despite the master begging to help them… I think that it would be immoral to force them out of their own situation just to start over somewhere else. Wheat and the chaff and all that jazz.
Later then.
And here’s where we hit the wall. We live in a country that was allegedly established based on the principle of freedom of religion. Which should ostensibly include freedom from religion, if that’s my choice. I can honor and respect the fact that your religion is extremely important to you and impacts every facet of your life. But there’s a huge jump from that position to the fact that I am or should be governed by your beliefs. If the inherent value of the human life of the fetus springs from religious authority – because it’s made in God’s image or has an immortal soul or whatever other reason – that is a compelling principle for you and for others who share your beliefs. It’s not yet a compelling principle for me.
And I am making a distinction between a coma that a person can emerge from versus a coma that indicates permanent loss of brain functioning and all that.
Eggs and sperm are potential ingredients for a new human organism. Embryonic cells are also potential ingredients for a new human organism. If placed and maintained in the right conditions, these can result in a human organism coming to be.
And just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re ignorant and don’t understand how things work. Perhaps they’re disagreeing with the way you’re categorizing or conceptualizing the issue.
If people don’t get to chose, what the hell is the point? I would rather have been hit on the head before all this sickness tragedy war and devastation
I’m suggesting that there are many other ways to get “human life is valuable” other than from a religious story.
Yes, you probably meant those naturally designed processes of life.
…which frequently don’t work. The very high number of spontaneous abortions that occur – often without a woman even knowing she was pregnant – illustrates that. What I’m saying is it’s not automatic. Embryonic tissue has the potential to become a human life.
I was simply turning the same mode of argumentation around. If sentience and personhood and all of that is arbitrary according to the anti-abortion line of reasoning, then so are numerous concepts and distinctions utilized in anti-abortion arguments. At the end of the day, it’s perfectly fine to say “I oppose abortion because of the Bible or because this is what my church community believes.” There’s nothing wrong with that. But then that doesn’t get you “abortion is wrong for everyone, in every situation.” Unless there’s a basis that we can all come to consensus on, you are bound by your beliefs and I am bound by mine.
An embryo is a member of the human species. You can feel free to say its not, but then I would just reference you to the file Lane dropped on you with all the scientific literature that disagrees. That’s like flinging a human man into space and saying “if he was put into the right environment this would be a human. But because he isn’t in just the right circumstances he isn’t one any longer.
I snap a picture with a Kodak. Its a brown smudge developing. You snatch it out of my hands and rip it to pieces. ” Oh that wasn’t actually a picture of you and your family, it was only POTENTIALLY a picture of your family. Lol NO that was actually a pic of my family and you destroyed it
There has been no part of my argument that referenced Scripture, although interestingly you asked for some. The only thing that informs the argument that might be considered religious is the value of human life. The entire argument has been that the fetus is a living human, and innocent humans shouldn’t be intentionally killed. You are the one suggesting that it isn’t a living human, against science. Or you are suggesting that it is a living human, but doesn’t have sufficient value (due to arbitrarily defined personhood) to not be killed at a whim. I assume that you agree that humans have enough value, other than the ones you decide aren’t persons, that it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent ones.
In your view, the entire concept of human rights is based on what exactly? And why should anyone in our country, as you say, be forced to abide by that basis and the rights derived from them?
Regardless, we live in a country where I get to vote for people who hold my values, and make laws that uphold them.
Is it really a choice if you don’t have clear understanding? Like, for example, if you only see through a glass darkly?
“The very high number of spontaneous abortions that occur – often without a woman even knowing she was pregnant – illustrates that. What I’m saying is it’s not automatic. Embryonic tissue has the potential to become a human life.”
Yes, things go wrong and life dies. Happens all the time. Sometimes two year olds get bone cancer and die. That doesn’t give us the right to kill them. We are able to recognize when something goes wrong.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. But then that doesn’t get you “abortion is wrong for everyone, in every situation.” Unless there’s a basis that we can all come to consensus on, you are bound by your beliefs and I am bound by mine.”
Just because there isn’t a consensus that rape is wrong, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong.
As for your beliefs vs mine, too bad this particular argument doesn’t only involve 2 people, but a third who doesn’t get a say. I’m trying to protect that 3rd voice.
We can leave the conversation here. I don’t think we are getting any further today.
Kenneth’s God just gives up on folks.
I suspect in his bible, the parable of the Prodigal Sons ends with the dad giving up and going inside the house and locking the door before the son comes back. 🙂
Men will be judged in accordance with the light that they have been given. The Church gives you a lot of room for optimism and hope. But universalism is anathema.
What you, Jason, and Chris seem to miss…..
Its OK to simply trust God.
You can take Him at His word and trust that He has good reasons. I feel no great need in my heart to satisfy the itching ears of nonbelievers. You have no faith. No concession will ever be enough until Christianity matches one for one with 21st century western whims. And even then you would most likely toss it to the side as the irrelevant extra it had become.
Grace perfects nature, but according to liberal christianese its actually the other way around.
Barf.
You’re right, Kenneth. All I need to do is just choose to trust someone I don’t believe exists. I’ll get right on that.
Lol dude you’ve been gone forever. I’m sure you have a million intellectual excuses by now. But I would be willing to bet that initially the doubt came from distrust. It usually does.
Come on, Kenneth, be fair. The hosts of this podcast, who have been very successful in transforming themselves into cookie-cutter post-evangelical liberals (the hallmarks are all there: abortion rights, narrow, black-framed glasses, tribal tattoos, biblical fallibility, and declarative sentences inflected as interrogative sentences–to list a few examples in ascending order of offensiveness; by the way, happy 100th, what a great show), are much closer to contemporary Catholicism than, say, a Catholic or Orthodox or anyone who is conservative to the extent that tradition and the transcendent are not ipso facto a dead letter and unknowable / unrevealable, respectively. For example, JJS’ characterization of the moral law (at least as applied to sexual practice) as an ideal which doesn’t always apply in contemporary reality is basically in step with the teaching of the current Pope as expressed in his document following the synod on the family. More generally, the praxis of contemporary Catholicism, liturgically, hermeneutically, and pastorally, is basically a kind of therapeutic humanism. God, Jesus, the Church, the Bible, are all edited to fit the criteria of modern man, who is essentially a skeptical and pragmatic narcissist. Jason and Christian are right in line with this trend–they are, synchronically speaking, good Catholics. You (and I, though it seems we do not agree on much) on the other hand, seem out of touch, bad Catholics.
As for “universalism”, I don’t know much about contemporary teaching on this point. (I did read Rob Bell’s book on the subject, which seemed pretty tame relative to the hype.) Much of it seems to come from alt-Christian hipsters who used to be evangelicals, whose primary aspiration is to meld culturally with blue-blooded liberals, hoping to atone by imitation and flattery for their own ridiculous backgrounds in Bible colleges and non-denominational churches and such, even though what they have to say is necessarily tied to that embarrassing milieu, if only by way of showy and servile repudiation. There is, however, a substantial strand of patristic thought in support of the notion of apocatastasis, as well as hints that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” sprinkled throughout the Christian centuries. The ordinary, universal magisterium, in its eastern and western expressions, overwhelmingly if not outright infallibly teaches that the vast majority of human beings will burn in hell forever, but maybe apocatastasis can be reconciled with the letter of this magisterium while penetrating more deeply into the meanings and ultimate implications of the key terms. The free will objection to universalism is cogent, so far as it goes, but there are things that go deeper than that, things more fundamental than free will. For me, the most compelling argument against the patristic form of universalism is the pragmatic one, that accepting the doctrine would result in indifference for the majority of people. That is the main reason why I approach the matter with such caution–indifference, or more accurately presumption, is my default mode. (But of course it would be safe for a saint to be a universalist. Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Isaac the Syrian and others did not stop fasting and praying and otherwise denying the flesh and so forth, for all their “universalist” speculation.) So far I cannot find a contemporary proponent of apocatastasis that I don’t dislike on other grounds (e.g., the two that come first to mind are Orthodox writer David Hart and blogger Al Kimel), but there are resources that can turn you on to its basis in Christian tradition and theological reasoning. See Kimel’s “eclectic orthodoxy” website for some references.
If you have some references or arguments indicating that apocatastasis is a heresy, I’d be glad to see them. As it is, its one of those things that I am apt to accept on para-rational, intuitive, pseudo-mystical, and self-serving grounds, except that my style of para-rational, intuitive, pseudo-mystical, and self-serving is not like a liberal’s, not at all.
Based on the statistics I’ve read, 1/3 of abortions happen at 6 weeks or earlier. The heart starts beating at around 5 weeks of fetal development.
Your universal claim is incorrect.
Your stats are super wrong. It is an undisputable fact that each and every surgical abortion in the US stops a beating heart.
http://www.abortionfacts.com/facts/16
Universalism is condemned so it doesn’t matter what patristics support it.
I agree that Jason and Pope Francis mesh well…. But you can not affirm a heresy and be in communion with the Catholic Church. Its a mortal sin. I think that I was being pretty fair so far as it goes.
Well, now you’re qualifying your statement by saying “surgical abortion.” I believe that’s called “moving the goal posts.”
So what is your point about it stopping a beating heart? Every chicken sandwich you eat stopped a beating heart too. Does that make the chicken sandwich wrong? Are non-“surgical” abortions at week 4 OK since the heart isn’t beating? I don’t see how the “every abortion stops a beating heart” expression has any meaning or point in this conversation.
Just a side note: the conversation on this thread and the thread from podcast 99 assumes that all abortions are surgical, but I believe when you’re talking about early term abortions in the U.S. there are more medical procedures done than surgical. I could be wrong, but a decent percentage of them are not surgical.
Nonsense. The CDC reported in 2012 that approximately 34% of abortions happen equal to or prior than six weeks.
The human heart is in development since week 2, IIRC, but is incomplete until approximately week 5-6 when it begins to beat. Therefore, it is safe to assume that, whether you like it or not, any abortion happening prior to week 5 does not stop a beating heart because the heart never started to beat.
Hence, your universal declaration is false.
You may continue to argue the philosophical or theological morality of abortion, but you cannot argue this particular point.
So let’s back up and assume you’re atheist and your opposition to abortion is based entirely on a non-religious worldview. Where do you get “all human life is inherently valuable”?
I’ve honestly never met or read any philosophical arguments from someone who’s non-Christian and anti-abortion, although I don’t doubt that a few might exist. The problem is that coming from a religious standpoint you have an easy starting point: inherent value because Jesus/God/the Bible. Where’s your starting point once you let that go?
And I suggest that there’s a difference between living human cells and living human persons. That can be mischaracterized over and over again, but it doesn’t change the actual claim I’m making.
An embryo is a member of the human species.
This is your opinion. You can tell and retell the whole story of reproduction to me a million times (which, incidentally I got the first time, when I took Biology and Genetics in college, but ok) and it doesn’t change it. I get the science of reproduction. Disagreement with your opinion doesn’t equal ignorance on my part. Maybe in fact I’m perfectly capable of grasping scientific processes with my delicate lady brain and I still disagree with you. Dropping more files on me probably won’t change that.
Yes, that was moving the goal posts. Sorry.
There is no need to get stuck on that verbage. Even if it doesn’t stop a beating heart its just as bad. Not a hill I’m willing to die on
Like I told Christian, it’s not a hill I’m willing to die on. There are still zero valid arguments pro-abortion that anyone would be willing to apply consistently
OK great. 75% of abortions stop a beating heart. And there are no good arguments to justify 100% of them.
So…. So you disagree with the science or something else. I’m not calling you ignorant. I’m saying your arguments are awful and that you are defending something as evil as Jihad and much more evil than rape, stealing, or fraud.
Well now, when you say “universalism is condemned” it would be helpful to add some information, such as a reference or argument, as requested in my previous comment. So far, in this context, all we have is Kenneth Winsmann’s word on it, which would be sufficient for orthodoxy in some settings (e.g., the Church of Kenneth [*tm]), but not in others. There are some anti-Origenist canons added to Constantinople II, but these were not, so far as I can tell, promulgated by the Council, nor do they tell against apocatastasis as such. Again, I am open to evidence and arguments showing that universalism as taught by, e.g., St Gregory of Nyssa, is a heresy.
And, to be clear, it doesn’t take a deep philosophical or theological discussion to know killing children in the womb is wrong. Its just sort of freaking obvious. You support the party that wants as much abortion as possible. Partial birth, brain waves, the ability to feel pain, beating hearts, makes no difference at all. The party of compassion and tolerance is willing to kill children to get the votes of feminists and wackos who want to kill their kids for convenience.
How do you sleep at night?
You’ve probably mentioned this already, but is there a release date for your book?
I don’t know. How do you sleep at night with a party that oppresses minorities, despises the poor, supports state torture and execution, and unnecessary wars that kill actual breathing children?
First error: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” (Proposition XV).
Second error: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation and arrive at eternal salvation.” (Proposition XVI).
Third error: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.” (Proposition XVII).
Fourth error: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.” (Proposition XVIII). [Pius IX: Principal errors concerning the Church, Syllabus, Dec. 8, 1884 (CH 260-263)]
Third error will do
Weak
Haha… meaning your own conscience bothers you about the positions of your favored political party. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, my friend.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, ‘eternal fire.’ The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs” (CCC 1035).
In his 1994 book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II wrote that too often “preachers, catechists, teachers . . . no longer have the courage to preach the threat of hell” (p. 183).
Concerning the reality of hell, the pope says, “In point of fact, the ancient councils rejected the theory . . . according to which the world would be regenerated after destruction, and every creature would be saved; a theory which abolished hell. . . . [T]he words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matt. 25:46). [But] who will these be? The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard” (pp. 185–6).
I don’t think my party has any of those problems. The left does horrible harm to the poor. See Venezuela, Detroit, Chicago, the black community, etc. But that’s just a radical change of topic. You know killing children is wrong. Everyone does when they think no one is watching. Which is why California charges you with double homicide if you kill a pregnant mother. Its just slips out every once in a while. Easy moral question. The left misses those frequently
Ha. Of course you don’t. A few thousand dead Iraqi or Yemeni or Palestinian children blown to bits with US bombs is just collateral damage after all.
And yes, killing children is wrong. I just no longer happen to share your conviction that a single cell zygote is a fetus is a baby or that every sperm is sacred.
As I’ve said before given a chance between saving 10 zygotes and 1 infant, I would choose the latter. You may ascribe that to my own biases and moral deficiencies, but I believe my choice is more ethical.
What about the minimum sentencing laws that came from the Clinton’s? Pardon me but didn’t the vast majority of demand vote “yes” to Iraq? And who exactly voted to displace Assad? Doesn’t seem like the party of peace to me.
Its not about single cells and zygotes. Its about dismembering children and reassembling them on a medical table. Its about shoving scissors into the head of a partially born baby. Its about shooting poison through the abdomen to give the kid cardiac arrest. You’ve bought into bullsit distractions (life of the mother, rape, instant 1 or 2 week old baby abortions) and turned away from the elephant in the room
Thanks. CCC 1035 is logically compatible with versions of apocatastasis. Clearly, various senses of the word “eternal” are at work here, denoting either a condition “outside of time” (without any necessary implication as to that state being permanent), or a succession of temporal moments, this duration being either finite (eternal in the sense of an “age”) or infinite (eternal in the sense of “never-ending”).
JPII is probably referring to Constantinople II, specifically the anti-Origenist anathemas. Apart from the question of whether those anathemas were actually promulgated by the council, thus having ecumencial authority (there is evidence that they were compiled before the council and are not part of its deliberations and decisions), there is the point that versions of apocatastasis which do not depend upon specifically Origenist principles would not fall under these anathemas.
Thanks again, seriously. I was being snarky in my comment last night, but not in the sense of not really wanting to look at the evidence. But of course the condemnation of the third error is logically compatible with apocatastasis insofar as the latter maintains that all those who are saved are saved by, through, and in Christ, and by implication are in some way in his mystical Body, the “true Church of Christ”.
Apocatastasis is, diachronically speaking, a minority opinion in the Church, but I don’t think that it is a heretical opinion, alt-Christian, hipster bandwaggoners notwithstanding.
Its not if you are willing to do the mental jumping jacks necessary to reinterpret early councils, stretch the word “eternal” to its semantic range breaking point, and completely ignore the historical context of Quanta Cura and the syllabus of errors. But someone could do that and affirm anything whatsoever. So I’m not impressed.
If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.
That’s universalism ^
Last I checked anathemas were infallible definitions. Doesn’t matter °how° this made its way into the council. Its a done deal
Goodness, young fella, I’m not trying to impress you. But I am interested in the difference between logical distinctions and “mental jumping jacks” as well as that between sketching actual lexical meanings of a word and stretching the semantic range of that word to its “breaking point.” You see, impressive or not, in each case I was trying to do the former. So, if you’d like to explain the difference, in each case, I will listen.
That is one of the anti-Origenist anathemas associated with Constantinople II. The level of its authority depends upon the nature of its association with that Council, which is in question. Its application to variations of universalism other than the specifically Origenist one that it was condemning depends upon the degree to which those other versions rely upon Origen’s theology as addressed by the anathemas, which sets the context for the part you quoted. I went over this before, so your quoting that bit here, as though it proved that “universalism” is heresy, is simply begging the question. It might be more fruitful to inquire into magisterial sources that teach that there is no possibility of repentance after death, as that would tell against (at least some versions of) apocatastasis specifically, though not universalism generally. The latter does not require the possibility of repentence / restoration after death; a universalist could simply posit that all men repent and are restored in some manner or other before they die.
Sorry, my comments are probably reading pretty dickish. I’m in the middle of moving so read charitably I’m typing on the fly!
You gotta just own that dickishness, Kenneth! 😉
That’s just not how definitions and anathemas work in my opinion. If you say that we have to take into account the GHM for this council and the minutia of what was being addressed then I get to do the same thing with Cuanta Cura and the syllabusbof errors. Which is then a slam dunk case. Either way, universalism is a heresy. Pick your poison
Lmao shut up hippie boy
No problem. It takes a real man to fight universalism while carrying a mattress down a flight of stairs.
What’s GHM? Most definitions and pretty much all anathemas (regarding doctrine) are formulated in response to some suspect opinion or other, so clearly one needs to have some understanding of the latter in order to better understand the former. And yes this principle applies across the board. This doesn’t mean that such texts are so wedded to their immediate context that they cannot be legitimately applied to other matters, but original context always counts in interpretation, dogma being no exception. Perhaps once you’ve enlightened me on GHM I’ll be able to see the slam dunk case versus apocatastsis and / or universalism more generally, along with the horns of the dilemma on which I’ve been caught. In the meantime, here is a helpful, summary case for the licitness of apocatastasis as a theological opinion compatible with orthodoxy:
https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/apocatastasis-the-heresy-that-never-was-2/
“Where do you get “all human life is inherently valuable”?”
If they disagree with that, we have identified their moral deficiency.
“I’ve honestly never met or read any philosophical arguments from someone who’s non-Christian and anti-abortion, although I don’t doubt that a few might exist.”
There are secular pro-life groups. Google away.
“The problem is that coming from a religious standpoint you have an easy starting point: inherent value because Jesus/God/the Bible. Where’s your starting point once you let that go?”
Yes, the inherent problem of atheism in general. No grounding for anything, not even the existence of the universe itself. That’s their problem.
“And I suggest that there’s a difference between living human cells and living human persons.”
We have already talked about living organisms and so forth. You have decided to reject the science as opinion. Hard to argue with someone who seems to present no grounding for anything, and asserts that everything is arbitrary opinion. Have wonderful day.
It seems to me that a secular argument against abortion could go something like, “At the very least we know that the thing is alive, and that it is human. And since we should avoid killing living humans if possible, we should avoid abortion if possible.”
It’s possible to be pro-life and reasonable without being a religious venomous zealot, I think.
You have decided to reject the science as opinion. Hard to argue with someone who seems to present no grounding for anything, and asserts that everything is arbitrary opinion.
LOL. Dude, you crack me up…but not in a good way.
Wait, am I the “religious venomous zealot”? I know I can be from time to time on this subject, but hopefully I haven’t been too venomous.
First, I think its worth pointing out that there are virtually zero Cardinals, Bishops, or Popes who think that universalism hasn’t been condemned. Even the most lefty of left Catholics agree that universalism has been condemned and opt for the “we hope hell is empty but don’t affirm it” message. I don’t want to drop an ad populum here, but you literally need to comb through google to find someone who expresses these sentiments at all. This, just for the benefit of any reader who may stumble upon this thread. Its not REALLY even a question within the Church….. But i suppose people can make an argument about anything.
There are two ways of reading ecumenical documents.
1. In context, using the grammatical historical method, intent of the author, etc.
And
2. The Vatican 2 way, where we abstract definitions and anathemas from their context and sort of take them at face value before twisting them all over the place.
I think that in either case universalism is condemned. So this isn’t meant to be a delima. But I’m saying either way universalism loses. Pick which one you like and we can go from there
There’s that moral authority I’ve been told the church has:
http://www.mcall.com/opinion/white/mc-bw-catholic-church-20160608-column.html
I’d really hate to see what they’d be like if they didn’t have God giving them morality.
I’m asking you for the basis of the claim you’re starting with. But of course you are free to claim that I’m arguing that human life has no value. Not truthfully, but you can make the claim. It makes perfect sense.
Also, I’ve never heard any reputable scientist claim that any random cluster of human cells is an organism. I’m curious what your source for this definition is.
I’m not defending anything – I’m pushing back at the conventional abortion argument. And admittedly poking at an argument is a million times easier than defending one. Which is why academic philosophy is sometimes completely insufferable.
As to the logic issue, here’s what I’m saying. You’re beginning your argument by assuming the truth of the very claim that you need to be able to establish in order to make your position work. That’s called begging the question. My point is that in this line of reasoning you have to have some way to establish that the cluster of cells following conception is a human person and that all human persons have value. You’re beginning by assuming those things, but if you’re trying to convince someone to also adopt your position, you have to provide reasons that they would agree to in support of those claims.
“Also, I’ve never heard any reputable scientist claim that any random cluster of human cells is an organism. I’m curious what your source for this definition is.”
Okay, I will drop the quotes again…
I remember people in my church being freaked out when a couple of states were revising their mandated reporter laws to include members of the clergy. There were special prayer meetings about it. Because, you know, when someone in your church is molesting kids (for which girls in evangelical churches are uniquely set up to be perfect victims) you don’t want to have to report it to the police. It’s much more effective to pray that the child molester will experience healing from the sin in his life and exhort the victims to be forgiving rather than hard-hearted and then act as if nothing happened. It worked so well with the Duggars. And with my uncle. And grandpa. 😉
My new favorite verse is Deuteronomy 22:23 and 24, which demands capital punishment for a woman raped in a city because if she wasn’t rescued from rape, she must have wanted it.
God is love, people.
Note that my original claim of mine that you were responding to is that there’s a difference between living human cells and living human persons.
So from your quotes we get “…development begins…” “…the word ’embryo’ includes the time from after fertilization…” the “primordium” of a human being…
Right. Got it. Therefore a cluster of living human cells is a human person and inherently valuable. No jump there.
As for the quality of the sources… peer reviewed? Maybe not 20+ years old? Maybe not an encyclopedia?
Beyond that, I think it’s a good idea to be careful about extending personhood, values, and rights to human cells. The implications are pretty extreme. Have you ever had your teeth cleaned? You killed some human persons. This afternoon when I left that cluster of skin cells on the wall of the racquetball court (ouch)? I killed some human persons. Last time I started my period – I killed a human person. We could keep going.
So maybe the response is, well, there’s a difference between those skin cells and the embryonic cells, because the embryonic cells have the potential to develop into a human person. OK, I grant that this is a meaningful distinction. But the same difference exists between a sperm or egg cell and a skin cell. Given the right circumstances that sperm or egg could produce a human person. Does this mean that as the originating organism that produced that cell you have an obligation to see to it that that sperm or egg cell becomes a human person? I would hope not.
“So from your quotes we get “…development begins…” “…the word ’embryo’ includes the time from after fertilization…” the “primordium” of a human being…”
You also get stuff like: “fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed” and “Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)… The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual” and “Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being.”
You claimed before that: “Also, I’ve never heard any reputable scientist claim that any random cluster of human cells is an organism. I’m curious what your source for this definition is.”
So I gave reputable scientists. Quotes from medical text books and encyclopedias. But you don’t think that’s good enough. I’m sure you are aware that science text books and encyclopedias are summation of the general scientific thought, the summation of the wide array of peer reviewed papers having come before. Your dismal of them is ridiculous.
Beyond that, I think it’s a good idea to be careful about extending personhood, values, and rights to human cells. The implications are pretty extreme. Have you ever had your teeth cleaned? You killed some human persons…
The bacteria in your teeth or your skin cells are not distinct human organisms that given time and nutrients can mature into a fully mature adults.
“OK,I grant that this is a meaningful distinction.”
Thank you.
“But the same difference exists between a sperm or egg cell and a skin cell. Given the right circumstances that sperm or egg could produce a human person.”
Egg and sperm, on their own, given nutrients and time simply will not become a fully mature human. You combine them on the other hand, and provide nutrients and time they may. That is first time that becomes true.
Rewinding your life, you are you yesterday. You are you, as a teenager, a child, a baby. You are you kicking in the womb, you are you when your heart first formed. You are you all the way back until the sperm combined with the egg and your DNA formed (the code written to build you as you). Prior to that you don’t exist, but only your parents. And I want to defend you from being killed on a whim.
Nope, didn’t have you in mind at all.
Doh! Grammatical Historical Method. I was thinking maybe something like Greater Hermeneutical Meaning. Fortuitously, these two GHMs pretty much map onto the “two ways” you described. But something like the second way has to be valid if texts, biblical, patristic, dogmatic, etc, are supposed to be applicable in different contexts, say, in the context where it turns out that there is an entire hemisphere of the world chock-full of souls who have had for the entire duration of their civilizations zero contact with special revelation and virtually no physical possibility of receiving the sacraments. (Vatican II addressed this in its teaching on extraordinary means of grace.)
My main point is that if special revelation, in scripture and tradition, and tradition as the authentic way that revelation is lived in the Church, somehow speak to mankind universally, in every condition, in manifesting the promise of salvation in Christ, then there has to be the possibility of development in doctrine relative to our knowledge of the conditions of man, not only as he is in the specific contexts where revelation is given, but in every context in which he lives and moves and has his being. Without something like GHM 2 (with “applying” substituted for “twisting”), it seems to me there can be no development of doctrine, and with no development of doctrine, special revelation is greatly diminished in application.
John Henry Newman of course, takes some trouble to distinguish authentic developments of doctrine from corruptions of doctrine. A “conservative” inquiry into apocatastasis (or any other idea) will be concerned with organic development, in fidelity to both scripture and tradition, whereas a “liberal” inquiry can simply reject these sources as inauthentic and / or irrelevant. His criterion are, to state it again, skeptical and agnostic (truth is unknowable), and consequently pragmatic (accept and promulgate “whatever works”) and narcissist (whatever works for the ends that I happen to like).
I am not yet convinced that “apocatastasis” or the final salvation of all is unbiblical. There seem to be specifically biblical reasons for accepting the doctrine and interpreting the judgment passages in its light, i.e., in light of the texts that teach or imply that all will be finally saved, even though most of us will first be as lost as lost can be within the all-consuming fire of God’s love, consigned to hell with Satan and the demons. The primary sticking point for this view, in my opinion, is traditional (though not dogmatic) teaching, which, with the exception of a few fathers and hints from some mystics, testifies that hell is eternal in the sense of never-ending–no one who goes in gets out, and the vast majority of people (the “massa damnata”) go in. What I am wondering is whether there is room, and where that room is, for a development of doctrine here, analogous to the developments of doctrine regarding the necessity of baptism and being a member of the Catholic Church for salvation.
Finally, I don’t think its reasonable for you to stipulate that apocatastasis, in some form or another, is not “really” even a question within the Church. That seems patently false to me, given that there are Catholic and Orthodox (I include them as members of true particular churches) theologians and bishops who have wrestled and continue to wrestle with this matter in published writings and public talks. You might simply mean that the Church has settled this question once and for all, so that all wrangling over the matter is ipso facto between orthodox and heterodox thinkers, but that is simply to beg the question. I don’t think that the Church has definitively settled the matter, such that those who hold with the opinions of St Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac the Syrian, or, to take some contemporary examples, Sergius Bulgakov, Hans urs von Balthasar, or Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, are heretics. They might be wrong, the evidence might be stacked against them, but that is not the same thing as being a heretic.
Plausible sarcasm detected
I am not yet convinced that “apocatastasis” or the final salvation of all is unbiblical. There seem to be specifically biblical reasons for accepting the doctrine and interpreting the judgment passages in its light, i.e., in light of the texts that teach or imply that all will be finally saved, even though most of us will first be as lost as lost can be within the all-consuming fire of God’s love, consigned to hell with Satan and the demons.
I think that its obvious to most readers that universalism is unbiblical. You only find universalism in scripture if you go looking for it, and even then, it’s a super tough fit.
The primary sticking point for this view, in my opinion, is traditional (though not dogmatic) teaching, which, with the exception of a few fathers and hints from some mystics, testifies that hell is eternal in the sense of never-ending–no one who goes in gets out, and the vast majority of people (the “massa damnata”) go in. What I am wondering is whether there is room, and where that room is, for a development of doctrine here, analogous to the developments of doctrine regarding the necessity of baptism and being a member of the Catholic Church for salvation.
No, there isn’t, because universalism is a heresy 🙂
Finally, I don’t think its reasonable for you to stipulate that apocatastasis, in some form or another, is not “really” even a question within the Church. That seems patently false to me, given that there are Catholic and Orthodox (I include them as members of true particular churches) theologians and bishops who have wrestled and continue to wrestle with this matter in published writings and public talks.
Wrestling with hell, and advancing universalism, are too different things.
You might simply mean that the Church has settled this question once and for all, so that all wrangling over the matter is ipso facto between orthodox and heterodox thinkers, but that is simply to beg the question. I don’t think that the Church has definitively settled the matter, such that those who hold with the opinions of St Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac the Syrian, or, to take some contemporary examples, Sergius Bulgakov, Hans urs von Balthasar, or Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, are heretics. They might be wrong, the evidence might be stacked against them, but that is not the same thing as being a heretic.
Balthasar didn’t affirm universalism. He “hoped” for universalism. Lets go through these condemnations now that I am finished moving and have more time.
“If anyone says that a man can be justified even after death; or if he says that the punishments of the damned in hell will not last forever: let him be anathema.” [The First Vatican Council, 1869-70
“Therefore, all who die in actual mortal sin are excluded from the kingdom of God and will suffer forever the torments of hell where there is no redemption.” (The First Vatican Council, 1869-70]
“He [Christ] will come at the end of the world; he will judge the living and the dead; and he will reward all, both the lost and the elect, according to their works…whether good or bad; the wicked, a perpetual punishment with the devil; the good, eternal glory with Christ.” [The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215]
“If anyone says or holds that the punishment of devils and wicked men is temporary and will eventually cease, that is to say, that devils or the ungodly will be completely restored to their original states: let him be anathema.” [Canons of the Provincial Council of Constantinople, 543]
It is just beyond clear that universalism is anathema. It makes a mockery of Catholic Tradition. Its completely unbiblical. Not even the most liberal popes in history affirmed it.
Its a closed case.
Further, take into account the sin of presumption. A universalist is ipso facto breaking the first commandment. There is no room for this in Catholic thought.
Point for point, sans citations:
Maybe, in the sense that you never find 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 unless you “go looking for it”. But once you find it, there it is.
You keep using that word (“heresy”). I do not think it means what you think it means.
I meant wrestling with universalism, which is the same thing as wrestling with universalism.
You can’t authentically hope for something that will not obtain. Thus, the permissibility of hopeful universalism entails the permissibility of universalism.
The first three citations from magsisterial sources are compatible with universalism. The fourth is no more binding than the decisions of any provincial council are binding.
Your final two paragraphs are mere assertions. Allow me to retort in kind: It is not clear that universalism is anthema. It does not make a mockery of Catholic tradition. It is biblical. Not even the most liberal of popes in history have affirmed it (which is a good thing, since being affirmed by a liberal is a good reason to believe that a proposition is false). It is an open case. Further, take into account the sin of despair. An infernalist is ipso facto breaking the first and greatest commandment. There is no room for this in Catholic thought.
Its just a fact that scripture is absolutely loaded with hell. Jesus says that NARROW is the gate and few are those who find it. Few does not equal all. Its like saying
“well we dont really KNOW the meek will inherit the earth. The Church has never defined that so its kind of an open question.”
Just as silly. Roman Catholics dont interpret dogma as protestants do. We dont line up all infallible declarations and see what we can cram in between them. The Ordinary Magesterium of the Church and Tradition are just as binding. The teachings of the Popes and the bishops on this topic down through the centuries AND TO THE PRESENT DAY has been universal, with only a handful of exceptions. The visions of Fatima, the warnings of Mary down through the centuries, the liturgy, etc. testify against it. Lets look at each condemnation and see whats what:
“If anyone says that a man can be justified even after death; or if he says that the punishments of the damned in hell will not last forever: let him be anathema.” [The First Vatican Council, 1869-70
So its anathema to say that those in hell wont be punished forever or that you can be justified after death….. but dont worry, no one is in hell so its a totally fucking redundant dogma.
“Therefore, all who die in actual mortal sin are excluded from the kingdom of God and will suffer forever the torments of hell where there is no redemption.” (The First Vatican Council, 1869-70]
Be very careful of mortal sin! If you die in that state you will be in hell foreever without redemption…. but dont worry too much. No one actually dies that way so again its sort of stupid to even talk about it.
“He [Christ] will come at the end of the world; he will judge the living and the dead; and he will reward all, both the lost and the elect, according to their works…whether good or bad; the wicked, a perpetual punishment with the devil; the good, eternal glory with Christ.” [The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215]
When Christ comes back to reward the living and the living he will reward every Hitler whom has ever lived with eternal life and dole out punishment to no one at all. This is such a tortured and absurd position that I cant believe you are defending it.
“If anyone says or holds that the punishment of devils and wicked men is temporary and will eventually cease, that is to say, that devils or the ungodly will be completely restored to their original states: let him be anathema.” [Canons of the Provincial Council of Constantinople, 543]
This is a provincial council but still represents that Ordinary Magesterium and the consistent teaching throughout history that hell exists and is populated. (rather than absurdly existing without population)
“the souls of those who die in actual mortal sin go down immediately after death into hell and suffer the pain of hell.” constitution of 1336, Benedictus Deus, Benedict XII
Again, unless you think the Church is in the business of teaching something over and over and over again that has no relevance or application to anyone in history, universalism is absurd.
It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church. The Council of Florence 1442
More irrelevant teaching on something that doesnt impact anyone in the world and describing something that will never happen.
From the same council of Florence….
“the souls of those who depart in mortal sin, or only in original sin, go down immediately into hell, to be visited, however, with unequal punishments” (poenis disparibus).
and this
If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.
Which must also be taken as irrelevant because no such people will ever exist. The Athanasion Creed also wastes space when it says that
“They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire”
We could go on, and on, and on, and on, ad nauseum, with all the different teachings on hell. The Catholic Church has wasted so much time on the subject. Look at all this wasted space in the catechism:
1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”612 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.613 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.” (BUT DONT WORRY! THIS DOESNT ACTUALLY HAPPEN TO ANYONE AT ALL)
1034 Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.614 Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,”615 and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”616 (BUT JESUS IS FULL OF SHIT HERE BECAUSE THAT WONT EVER HAPPEN)
1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”617 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. (THERE REALLY ARENT ANY CHEIF PUNISHMENTS OF HELL BECAUSE NO ONE IS ACTUALLY THERE)
1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”618 (THE GATE ISNT ACTUALLY NARROW AT ALL THOUGH…. ITS COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS)
OK so now ive dropped a rather small file on you. I could drop thousands of pages of more. But universalists have zero popes on their side, zero councils, absolutely nothing. They have a few V2 theologians and ancient heretics. You cant deny hell while paying lip service to Tradition. If you think universalism is true thats fine. More power to you. But then dont pretend to be Catholic. Just go start your own little thing up and be your own pope. Because thats not how we roll
We are moving on!! USA USA!! #ibelievethatwewillwin lets go! Watch party at the drunkexpastors house next game? I will bring the beer #murica
Fuck that! If Costa Rica wins, I’m watching it in person in Seattle!
Halves for box tickets?!
March of next year.
Thanks for the information. It might have advanced the discussion if I (and others who think that universalism might be a permissible opinion and the final salvation of all a possible situation) had never read the Bible verses on hell with all the warnings of future judgment consequent upon sin, or if I never knew that most of the fathers and many statements of the ordinary magisterium argue or presuppose that most people do go to hell and literally burn forever–unending, conscious, spiritual and physical torment. But of course I have read the Bible and am familiar with the broad consensus of tradition on this point, and, as previously stated, do not see a contradiction between either the Bible or the irreformable dogma of the Church and apokatastasis as held by persons who also accept the authority of scripture and tradition and articulate a form of universalism which they believe to be compatible with both. Proof-texting will not suffice for proving your point, because there are universalists who already accept the texts you cite, while not accepting the implication that these biblical or magesterial texts rule out every form of universalist hope.
Now for the rest of the story: There are other points that you have not raised or responded to, namely, the ones that are made in sacred Scripture and some fathers regarding the universality of God’s salvific will and the ultimate unification of all things in Christ, so that in the end God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15.28). If I were to take your line of rhetoric, I’d say: “Never mind that Christ died for all, and that St Paul teaches that even as in Adam all died, so in Christ all are made alive. In reality, most people do not receive the eternal benefits of Christ’s sacrifice, and that shit about all being made alive is never going to happen.” But of course, I don’t take your line, and so would not write something like that, because I prefer to take into account more of the data, and proceed carefully and (so far as possible) comprehensively.
Along this line, by way of staking out some space for inquiry, it ought to be noted that: (1) The Church simply does not have the authority to declare that such and such a person is in hell, even granted that hell is a condition of man that of its very nature endures forever. So for every person who has ever lived, it is permissible and even obligatory, in charity, to hope for their final salvation, which we could not hope if we knew that they could not be saved. (2) As previously indicated, there is ample evidence to support the thesis that certain adjectives predicated of divine judgment (particularly “eternal”) and biblical words translated as “hell” do not ordinarily or at least necessarily indicate an infinite duration or permanent state. Thus, one can consistently affirm both that (a) the “many” do indeed take the broad road leading to destruction and are cast into hell as a judgment for sin, and (b) these are finally saved, “though as through fire” (1 Cor 3.15). (3) Regarding the testimony of the majority of the fathers and the ordinary magesterium, and setting to the side for a moment what conditions need to be met for such testimony to qualify as infallible, one could accept “hell” as indicating a condition of never-ending (inescapable) torment, thus agreeing with the majority on that point, while maintaining that there are other senses of “hell” as used in scripture and thus the possibility that many people go to hell in some sense, but no one goes to “hell” in the never-ending, inescapable torment sense of the word. (Yes, there are mystics who have related private revelations of the torment of the damned, but granted what I sketched above, it is possible that they where shown a vision of actual souls in an actual hell that is not the hell of unending punitive torment, but rather a temporal and purgative condition of sinners. It is not necessary, in order to accept the authenticity of a private revelation, to accept that the person receiving that revelation makes no error in interpreting and sharing it.)
Again, if there is a permissible form of universalism / apokatastasis, that is, a form logically compatible with orthodoxy as a whole, then it is clearly, up to now and probably for the foreseeable future, no more than a permissible theological opinion, susceptible of becoming a genuine development of doctrine if the Church were to clearly affirm it in some way, even as she clearly affirmed salvation by extraordinary means of grace and “degrees” of communion with the Catholic Church, which affirmations can plausibly be read as contradicting the teaching of the majority of the fathers and repeated statements of the magisterium on the necessity of baptism and membership in the Catholic Church for salvation.
Finally, on a general note, development of doctrine is an example of a larger principle that one first finds clearly articulated by Aristotle, relative to Parmenides (change is an illusion) on the one hand, and Heraclitus (all is flux) on the other, namely, that things both change and stay in the same, i.e., they grow and develop and are otherwise passable without losing their essential identity. The other positions are simpler, more susceptible of being used as an ideological hammer (conservative or liberal), but not nearly so adequate to what we know about reality, all things considered. So on this point, as on so many others, color me Aristotelian, in the sense of affirming the possibility of development-in-continuity, and, by the same token, in the sense of taking into account the “other half” of the data.
I just flatly disagree that there is another “half” to the data. If you want to say that universalism is heterodox rather than heresy I guess that’s fine. But you just don’t really have a leg to stand on if one is Catholic.
How can you grant that it is the constant and broad Tradition of the Church that hell is an actual place with actual people in there eternally and still hold an opinion contrary to Tradition?
How can you agree that the Ordinary magesterium condemns universalism and still think its fine to hold a contrary opinion?
With these two things in mind ALONE one should not hold to universalism. But when you add to this that there are in fact infallible declarations condemning universalism, condemning temporary hell, condemning salvation after death, condemning reconciliation of those who pass in a state of mortal sin, there is nothing left to do but be your own pope. Not one single Pope or Council in history have ever given universalism even a pat on the back. Not even Vatican 2 which is perhaps the worst and most liberal council in history. There is no Tradition of universalism in the Church.
You sound like a Protestant trying to explain how Trent didn’t *really* condemn sola fide because they hold to some version of faith alone not specifically mentioned by the council. Give me a break dude.
W-E-A-K
To hold this view you would have to say that the church has spent thousands of years defining, defending, teaching, and explaining something that is completely irrelevant to anyone who has ever or whom will ever live. And that is a heterodox position at best
My comment was moved to the spam folder, so I am re-posting it below. In response to your claims above, well, I mentioned bits of the “other half” in my previous comment, namely, those portions of scripture which imply or at least seem to imply a universal salvation. You can deny that those passages exist, but that doesn’t negate them. In response to your questions, I think it is possible to hold a form of universalism in a manner similar to that in which before Vatican II theologians could hold as permissible opinions that there people who are saved without receiving baptism or having explicit faith, and that non-Catholics can be in partial communion with the Catholic Church. I don’t think that the ordinary magisterium condemns every form of universalism. So the rest of your comment is irrelevant blabbering. Anyway, here is my previous comment (hopefully this one takes):
Thanks for the information. It might have advanced the discussion if I (and others who think that universalism might be a permissible opinion and the final salvation of all a possible situation) had never read the Bible verses on hell with all the warnings of future judgment consequent upon sin, or if I never knew that most of the fathers and many statements of the ordinary magisterium argue or at least presuppose that most people do go to hell for eternity, in the sense of an infinite duration of punishment. But of course I have read the Bible and am familiar with the broad consensus of tradition on this point, and, as previously stated, do not see a contradiction between either the Bible or the irreformable dogma of the Church and every form of apokatastasis. Proof-texting will not suffice for proving your point, because there are universalists who already accept the texts you cite, while not accepting the implication that these biblical or magesterial texts rule out every form of universalist hope.
Now for the rest of the story: There are other points that you have not raised or responded to, namely, the ones that are made in sacred Scripture and some fathers regarding the universality of God’s salvific will and the ultimate unification of all things in Christ, so that in the end God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15.28). If I were to take your line of rhetoric, I’d say: “Never mind that Christ died for all, and that St Paul teaches that even as in Adam all died, so in Christ all are made alive. In reality, most people do not receive the eternal benefits of Christ’s sacrifice, and that shit about all being made alive is never going to happen.” But of course, I don’t take your line, and so would not write something like that, because I prefer to take into account more of the data, and proceed carefully and (so far as possible) comprehensively.
Along this line, by way of staking out some space for inquiry, it ought to be noted that: (1) The Church simply does not have the authority to declare that such and such a person is in hell, even granted that hell is a condition of man that of its very nature endures forever. So for every person who has ever lived, it is permissible and even obligatory, in charity, to hope for their final salvation, which we could not hope if we knew that they could not be saved. (2) As previously indicated, there is ample evidence to support the thesis that certain adjectives predicated of divine judgment (particularly “eternal”) and biblical words translated as “hell” do not ordinarily or at least necessarily indicate an infinite duration or permanent state. Thus, one can consistently affirm both that (a) the “many” do indeed take the broad road leading to destruction and are cast into hell as a judgment for sin, and (b) these are finally saved, “though as through fire” (1 Cor 3.15). (3) Regarding the testimony of the majority of the fathers and the ordinary magesterium, and setting to the side for a moment what conditions need to be met for such testimony to qualify as infallible, one could accept “hell” as indicating a condition of never-ending (inescapable) torment, thus agreeing with the majority on that point, while maintaining that there are other senses of “hell” as used in scripture and thus the possibility that many people go to hell in some sense, but no one goes to “hell” in the never-ending, inescapable torment sense of the word. (Yes, there are mystics who have related private revelations of the torment of the damned, but granted what I sketched above, it is possible that they where shown a vision of actual souls in an actual hell that is not the hell of unending punitive torment, but rather a temporal and purgative condition of sinners. It is not necessary, in order to accept the authenticity of a private revelation, to accept that the person receiving that revelation makes no error in interpreting and sharing it.)
Again, if there is a permissible form of universalism / apokatastasis, that is, a form logically compatible with orthodoxy as a whole, then it is clearly, up to now and probably for the foreseeable future, no more than a permissible theological opinion, susceptible of becoming a genuine development of doctrine if the Church were to clearly affirm it in some way, even as she clearly affirmed salvation by extraordinary means of grace and “degrees” of communion with the Catholic Church. These affirmations can plausibly be read as contradicting the teaching of the majority of the fathers and repeated statements of the magisterium on the necessity of baptism and membership in the Catholic Church for salvation, but they can also plausibly be read as developments in essential continuity with prior teaching, even though such an interpretation faces very real difficulties.
Finally, on a general note, development of doctrine is an example of a larger principle that one first finds clearly articulated by Aristotle, relative to Parmenides (change is an illusion) on the one hand, and Heraclitus (all is flux) on the other, namely, that things both change and stay the same, i.e., they grow and develop and are otherwise passable without losing their essential identity. The other positions are simpler, more susceptible of being used as an ideological hammer (conservative or liberal), but not nearly so adequate to what we know about reality, all things considered. So on this point, as on so many others, color me Aristotelian, in the sense of affirming the possibility of development-in-continuity, and, by the same token, in the sense of taking into account the “other half” of the data.
Those scriptures are irrelevant to me because I’m not a Protestant. Plucking out two or three pet verses won’t due.
You continually assert that there a forms of universalism not condemned…. Like what?
Does this form of universalism craftily navigate all the condemnations?
Does it contradict the universal teaching of the ordinary magesterium?
Does it contradict the Tradition of the Church?
Would it require my believing that the Church has taught, expounded upon, defined, defended, and explained a doctrine for 2k years that was completely irrelevant and would never effect a single human being?
That’s heterodox bud
A few quick responses, then a couple of quotes from the “Sayings of the Desert Fathers” (lifted from the end of Balthasar’s book on hopeful universalism), which, in my opinion, set forth in condensed, parabolic form exactly the right personal disposition regarding such matters.
I did not know that being Catholic made portions of sacred scripture irrelevant. I thought that being liberal did that. I don’t think that Catholicism sucks as badly as you think it sucks, regarding the Bible.
The forms of apokatastasis taught by St Gregory of Nyssa and St Isaac the Syrian have not been condemned as such, as distinct from the form taught by the sixth century Origenists. Also, neither the Catholic Church nor the Orthodox Church have condemned the teachings of contemporary theologians and bishops who teach that a univeralist hope is permissible (Balthasar, Bulgakov, Ware, Barron, etc). Such condemnation could be forthcoming, but until then, perhaps the ecclesial court of Kenneth (TM) should exercise some restraint.
It depends what you mean by “craftily navigated”.
Prima facie, yes, universalism contradicts the teaching of the majority of the father and the ordinary magisterium, even as Vatican II, prima facie, contradicted the prior teaching of the majority of the fathers and the ordinary magisterium on the necessity of baptism for salvation and the possibility of salvation outside the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
Ibid.
No.
Maintaining that some forms of universalism are permissible within the bounds of orthodoxy would be a heterodox opinion if (what we can infer likely would be) your answers to the questions posed in your previous comment are correct. But your (implicit) answers are incorrect (clumsily and superficially incorrect, if they are at all like your stated positions). I recommend that you read some books and articles on universalism (Al Kimel’s website features a number of recommendations) and think some thoughts about what you read, taking your time and not disregarding evidence and logic. That way, you would at least be interestingly and intelligently wrong.
Finally, those quotes:
“Anthony [visiting an Alexandrian goldsmith] asked, ‘Tell me about your achievements.’ The other replied: ‘I can’t see that I have accomplished anything worthwhile. Indeed, climbing out of bed in the morning I say to myself, ‘The whole city, from least to greatest, will enter the kingdom for their good deeds, while I myself have merited only punishment for my sins. And in the evening I tell myself the same thing.’ Father Anthony then said, ‘Like a good goldsmith who peacefully stays at home you will inherit the kingdom; but I lack discernment, and even though I live in the desert [as an hermetic monk], I am far from being better than you.”
“[Another desert Father visits a gardener.] He begged him to reveal his thoughts. After considerable reluctance, the man finally replied: ‘When I get up in the morning, I tell myself that the whole city will enter the kingdom, only I shall be punished because of my sins.’ At this, the din of songs and noise flowed in from the street. ‘Doesn’t this disturb you?’ asked the Father. ‘Not at all’, replied the other. ‘But what do you think hearing this?’ ‘I think that all those people will enter the kingdom.’ Overcome with admiration, the Father exclaimed, ‘Your achievement is greater than what I have reached after these many years of struggle!”
Being Catholic doesn’t make portions of scripture irrelevant. But there is no need to talk about goofy universalist interpretations if you accept Sacred Tradition and the authority of the Ordinary Magesterium. If you want to think with the mind of the Church you will not be a universalist. Period.
Balthasar and Robert Baron arent going to be condemned because NO ONE is condemned anymore in the Church. Not even pedophiles are condemned until the media forces the Church to discipline. But they hold an absurd position. They are “hoping” for a heresy.
“I dont affirm that sola scriptura is true, but i think there is good reason to HOPE sola scriptura is true.I agree that there is such a thing as Sacred Tradition but I dont think anyone anywhere at any time has ever known what this actually is. The magesterium can certainly be infallible, but I dont think they have ever exercised this power and I hold to a super crafty niche theology on this that the Church hasnt officially condemned yet. So im all good and this is all perfectly acceptable”
Same thing, different doctrine. As Catholics we submit to the Ordinary magesterium as well as the extraordinary magesterium. We read scripture as illuminated by Tradition and the life of the Church. We think with the mind of the Church as a faith seeking understanding. To do otherwise is heterodox, which is exactly what Balthasar, Barron, Jason, and others represent on this topic.
So scripture is relevant, and the remaining question is whether the universalist passages, along with the various interpretations, are “goofy” or need to be taken into consideration and perhaps discussed. (By the way, adding “period” followed by another period after a period is hyper-menstrual, as are the following two paragraphs of your comment. So I will skip those bits, hoping that you start to feel better.)
Your concluding paragraph is less obstreperous, but still question-begging at the end. As for the rest, yes, so long as tradition and the life of the church are not restricted so as to exclude those elements found in the same which in favor of universalism. The question, re the magisterium, is whether all of those elements have been irreformably condemned. I think it is pretty clear they have not. So a traditional, bible-loving Catholic can yet hope that, in the end, God will be all in all.
So scripture is relevant, and the remaining question is whether the universalist passages, along with the various interpretations, are “goofy” or need to be taken into consideration and perhaps discussed.
They might be discussed if they were not already expounded upon by the tradition of the church and her magesterium. But they have been addressed so there is no need to play sola scriptura bible games on this topic. We have 2k years of VERY inconvenient teaching to look at.
As for the rest, yes, so long as tradition and the life of the church are not restricted so as to exclude those elements found in the same which tell in favor of universalism.
The number of people in history who have affirmed such a doctrine is so tiny and minuscule that there is no legit way to tie them to tradition. Especially in light of the fact that a significant number of that handful have been condemned precisely for holding those positions! I could bury you in an avalanche of quotes from ECFs Popes, councils, encyclicals, etc in every generation to this present day, teaching contra-universalism. Universalists have ZERO support from ecumenical councils, zero support from the Popes, and very close to zero support from the early church fathers. Tradition isnt even a contest. WHich I think you have already agreed with.
BUT also please notice how the rhetorical person unsure if sola scriptura has been condemned can say the same thing. Its just a crafty way being heterodox while pretending to play by the rules
The question, re the magisterium, is whether all of those elements have been irreformably condemned. I think it is pretty clear they have not. So a traditional, bible-loving Catholic can yet hope that, in the end, God will be all in all.
This is your worst mistake yet. And its a serious one. Your entire argument re the magesterium thus far rests upon an erroneous understanding of what you are allowed to affirm as a lay catholic.
From the same Pope St. Pius IX and his famous “Syllabus of Errors:”
“The obligation by which Catholic teachers and writers are absolutely bound is restricted to those matters only which are proposed by the infallible judgment of the Church, to be believed by all as dogmas of faith”
The INFALLIBLE decree of Vatican I’s Dogmatic Constitution concerning the Catholic Faith, chapter 3:
“Further, by divine and Catholic faith, all those things must be believed which are contained in the written word of God and in tradition, and those which are proposed by the Church, either in a solemn pronouncement or in her ordinary and universal teaching power, to be believed as divinely revealed.”
You owe submission to the ordinary magesterium of the Church. It is sinful not to do so UNLESS said magesterium teaches something out of step with Tradition or previously defined dogmas in which case you can have faithful dissent. But you wouldnt argue that a belief in hell qualifies in either way. SO you are dissenting for no other reason than what you “prefer”. (if you do in fact affirm universalism) It is not up to you to decide what can and can not be developed. You are just a layman. And as one, you should submit to Church teaching until the Church tells you something has changed. Universalism is heterodox and to affirm that position is to refuse to think with the mind of the Church
and in your bible, youve torn out all but like ten pages that you happen to like and agree with. LOL
Speaking one layman to another, it seems to me that there are significant developments of catholic doctrine as well as permissible theological opinions which find scant support in the ordinary magisterium, diachronically speaking. (How could it be otherwise, with all there is everywhere, including the deep places of the word of God, which a million magesteria could not plumb to the bottom?) Developments, even where organic, often surprise, the organism flourishing in astonishing ways, like a tiger lily. I have already named two such things, several times, but you have yet to engage the point, presumably because you disagree with the ordinary magisterium about those things. That is fine by me (speaking one layman to another), but it renders your lectures and bold print a little bit ironic, dontcha think?
Anyway, you sound like Luther, and I sound like Luther, and that is okay. I am sure an argument like mine could be used to any number of ends, the solas not the worst. But the end I have in mind is merely apokatastasis. Luther is probably in heaven, I mean one day he will be, before Napolean but after Michael Landon. I sure hope so. But I don’t spend much time thinking about what I’m allowed to think or not to think. I just try to do some thinking, and read me bible, because its a really good book and very often beautiful. The fathers are sometimes okay, every once in a while great, occasionally sublime and even satirical. Once in a blue moon beautiful.
Just a layman? There are few things in this world so solemn and astonishing as a layman, like the pilgrim who wandered around Siberia saying the Jesus prayer over and over and getting in adventures. He is probably in heaven also. Maybe even Judas, one day, waiting for the end of the world. Its late, and I can’t yet turn in, but I’ll now tune out of this conversation, apologizing for saying insulting things to you and hoping that you go to heaven someday, quoting Denzinger to Jesus.
cheers!