Faith Alone?

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Catholicism teaches a gospel of faith and works. The Bible teaches one solely on faith. If that isn't inconsistent I don't know what is. - Gavin

Well, if what you said was true then you'd be right, but I absolutely refuse to grant your conclusion, as your second premise is faulty. It is as plain as daylight to me, looking at the bible, that the idea that "The Bible teaches [a gospel based] solely on faith" is not a given.

Here's Catholic teaching on justification, grace and merit. I would encourage you to peruse it - it's not that long. If you must, however, take this as a hasty non-infallible summary by someone who has much to learn: Faith leads us to works - God takes our works and makes them good, as we are not in any way able to, fully by his own grace. Salvation by works alone is pile of pish, and a slur on Catholic teaching. As I say, see what the Church says.

If the Bible speaks for itself, let it - it wouldn't need your help.

In the meantime, I'll just give you a couple of passages that undermine your (insofar as it is stated) groundless assertion. I don't expect that you won't have an answer, but I do think that it won't do the fullness of Scripture justice. We both know that the Bible "contain[s] some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." You apparently think that the Catholic Church is ignorant and unstable, but all your arguments have ever done for me is built up my admiration for the fullness and coherence of Catholic teaching.

Just two verses for the moment, and these may well suffice, because the Church's teaching accounts for them and your's doesn't seem to.

Matthew 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."

James 2:24 -You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

In fact, this is a bit too easy. How will you account for the fact that James 2:24 flatly contradicts what you say? I think the whole of James 2 mirrors my inept summary of Church teaching rather well too.

Well now - gosh.

I thought that I was probably going to be a little too apprehensive about my 5 month review, but this is ridiculous. I was feeling a little too ill (just a cold) to be properly nervous actually, but even had I been in fine fettle, chewing my fingernails, I needn't have worried 'cos not a bad word was said about me. So I'm past the probationary stage, and properly contracted with a little increment as an award that works out at about £15 per month net. Nice.

The Curt Jester reminds me that pretty soon it's going to be the anniversary of about a gazillion Catholics being received into the Church. This fact has sort of drifted past me before, but it's great! It's like having another birthday or something.

In fact, come to think of it, my baptism is even more like one big collaborative birthday - Born again, of water and the spirit on the same liturgical day as the liturgical birth of our Lord.

And then there's Pentecost, and that's the Church's birthday, which is to say the body of Christ, which is to say "Huzzah! Once more, it is my and many other people's birthday!"

This religion thing can be fun, although perhaps you're finding all this far less engaging than I am.

It's no good though, I think the Queen is still one birthday ahead of me.

Suffering and Freedom

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Hey Mino, how's it going?

"But this is a God who does not want the joy and happiness of his sons."

No it isn't. God himself is the happiness of his sons. To be content in this world would be nice, yes, but it would be making do with a sort of synopsis of God's goodness. So, I dunno, God is more like Hamlet and this world is like the Cliff Notes. Perhaps more to the point, didn't your Dad ever get you to do something that you didn't want to do, but turned out to be a good idea after all? Like get out of bed and go to school in the morning? The difference is that we get to grow up into people whose intelligence approximates to that of their fathers, and because of our own experience and love know that we have to kick our own kids out of bed. But we don't grow up into God; instead he allows us sonship.

I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

"It seems that the bad exists just to remind people to "call" God from time to time: kind of post-it !!!"

I can't imagine a more necessary post-it then. It seems to aptly sum up a Christian approach to natural evil, the type that would have confronted Adam and Eve had they never rebelled. Again, if we made do with the world when we could have God, we'd be fools. There's sin too of course, which is turning from love of God to love of the world, and that suffering comes from ourselves. I suppose what you really wonder is why we have to call God anyway.

[W]hat is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

We maintain that we have a dignity which is absolutely bound up with being like God, with aspiring to be "perfect [...] as [our] heavenly Father is perfect." We also maintain that a part of this dignity is our ability to say no. We can say, "Screw you God, I don't want you." And there is beauty enough in the world for us to seek God, and ugliness enough for us to shun him.

"They will remind of him only when they have bad times!"

I expect you mean remember him. Well, it isn't true. Speaking personally, I'm telling you that I feel drawn to God not only when I'm suffering, but when I'm content and when I'm happy. Not all the time of course.

"Why sacrifice and sorrow have to lead to God and not joy and happiness?"

Well, I sort of accounted for this above, but I'll just restate briefly. a) Joy and happiness do lead to God actually b) It is only natural that a sense of the lack of God should inspire people to look for him.

"Never heard of Saint Francis?"

Well, I've heard of him. newadvent.org tells me there's at least eight though. Don't know anything much about them. Care to share?

Gratuitous scripture time:

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.

Love it.

I wouldn't say that I was doing a lot of thinking this evening, but I was thinking. RCIA was on the theme of new beginnings, which is - ahem - apt.

The world seems full of people who, though not queueing up to lynch me, obviously don't understand why anyone would become a Catholic, least of all myself. I can see why they might not, but sooner or later I'm going to have to, for my own spiritual sake even if for no-one else's, get a little more acquainted with why I believe in a catholic and apostolic church over and above churches which view themselves as one amongst many.

On the other side of the fence, I have about 2000 years of Christianity to get acquainted with. It's all a bit much when you thought you had your education out of the way. I figure I'll start small, like reading Justin Martyr's work, whose name, btw, I think I'll take on.

These are bizarre times. Please pray for me.

Well, while I'm here...

Mike, one of the people who's coming into the Church with me at the Easter vigil, said today, at the last RCIA meeting before the Saturday (10th April 20:00), that he thought that it was somehow easier for Christians whose faith was under attack, whether through persecution, or from difficulty of life in general, to feel close to God. The documentary that James, Rob and I watched a while ago certainly seems to support the verdict. What the World thinks of God I believe it was called. In any case, the affluent nations were the ones who thought that the existence of suffering and evil disproved the existence of God, whereas the more war-torn and famine-stricken among the nations surveyed didn't have so much of an issue with the fact.

Mmmm.

Now it may be objected against faith in God that it eases the suffering of the believer or it may be objected that suffering disproves the existence of God, but someone thinking rationally can't have it both ways, at least as a an explanation of a general trend of belief. This, I think, is worth considering. G.K. Chesterton had a lot to say about this type of self-negating two-pronged attack on Christian belief. C.S. Lewis also said (The Problem of Pain):

If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good creator? Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that.

Well, I think he's got a point.

Well, back to Mike's idea about the relative ease of nations being conducive to belief or not - frankly I disagree. I once heard, Word Alive I think it was, when I went with Will, an idea about a passage in Revelation 13 that I think has legs, to coin a phrase:

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea*[. ... I]t was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. [...] Then I saw another beast which rose out of the earth. [...] It excercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast[.]

The first thing to say is that though I myself assumed for ages that Revelation, as a book of prophecy, clearly dealt with the future, i.e. the end of the world, it's a self-confessed vision of "what must take place after this.", "this" being whenever it was that St. John received the vision. Basically, it can, and has, been read as a vision of the current state of things, rather than 'merely' the end of the world. What was I saying? Oh yes - that the first beast, the first great symbol of the enemy of Christianity is overtly warlike, and deals physical damage, the second is of the same nature as the first, but makes the earth worship the beast that attacks the righteous. That is to say that it's attack is an attack on the belief of men rather than on their bodies.

Am I stretching are point, are are you way ahead of me? Anyway, all that I mean is that the Apocalypse presents us with a model for understanding how Satan may attack us physically, with persecution and violence, or he may attack us spiritually and mentally, with anti-Christian culture and suchlike.

I think I'll stop.

* Sea can be read as a methaphor for chaos. I am given to understand that, as a nation without ports, Israel wasn't the biggest fan of the sea, it being large, wild and dangerous.

This, from Justin's Martyr's First Apology, reckoned as one of his genuine works, corresponds to what I've experienced at mass to a frankly ridiculous degree:

But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized [illuminated] person, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to genoito [so be it]. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion. And this food is called among us Eukaristia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;" and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood;" and gave it to them alone.

Just a heads up.

Mmm. Hello. I was just trying to write a review of The Passion of the Christ. I gave up. But here I am starting again, because it's not as though I don't have an opinion - it just happens to be very nebulous. Plus, this'll mean that I can give Karen (at work) the link to this blog entry and hopefully make up for apparently ignoring her e-mail on Friday.

This is a hard review to write. In fact, it seems nigh on impossible. All I'm really happy to say about it was that it didn't make as much of an impression on me as I'd hoped it would. I rather expect that years of harrowing films and literature have helped me to become somewhat calloused, which is a pretty horrible thought. For me it was a study in loss of innocence as much as anything. I did cry at certain points, but I wouldn't attribute that purely to the film so much as to the faith I have already received and brought to bear on it.

James just called it "no-nonsense" in a text message, which is true. It is a brutal film, which is, I think, commendable - an ugly film for an ugly deed in an ugly world. It removes the possiblity of some of the grosser platitudes generally attributed to Christianity.

I'm trying to pick a confirmation name. It's dead difficult. I thought I was probably going to be given one, but no, I have to think about it.

The thing is, as I get to choose it, I feel it should be something helpful to me rather than just something which sounds cool. I think it would be great if it was the name of a saint who I could aspire to emulate in some way. I like the idea of a saint renowned for courage, perseverance, loyalty, apologetics, devotion and such-like.

On the other hand, although it seems like a bad idea to pick a name just because I like the sound of it, I'm very much in favour of the idea of having a name that sounds a little out of the ordinary, because it'd probably help me to remember it and pay attention to it. Also, given that I'm all of a sudden adrift in a sea of extra-protestant tradition which I don't know so very much about, I'd like it to be something markedly Catholic, to mark it out as belonging to a new stage in my life.

So there you are. I don't know that much about saints really, but I know that I admire Justin and Polycarp. There's two things that worry me about them though. Firstly, they're both martyrs. As such they embody the kind of conviction that I can try to emulate, which is great, but there would seem to be a danger of romanticising martyrdom, and it also seems pretty pretentious. The second thing is how they sound. Justin sounds fairly ordinary and easy for me to forget, but Polycarp sounds absolutely crazy.

I like the idea of Raphael and Cyprian too, but I think it's mostly because I like the sound of them.

Well, it's not like me to decide on something in the space of an afternoon anyway. I shall pray about it.

All quiet on the southwestern front for me, the only event of note was me sitting on my glasses on Monday, cracking the hinge. So I decided to get an eye test and a new pair of specs, which should be completed on the 29th. Managed to get Frontier working on my PC and have been indulging in retro-gaming all this week.

I'm still making mistakes at David's shop, so he suggested that I ask him to make such momentous decisions as the position of the Job no. sticky label, especially with my handwriting. Well as long as I learn from my mistakes no real harm should be done.

Hello. Today I felt conspicuously better and so went down to the cafeteria for a 5 item cooked breakfast, which was okay.

I'd said to someone at work that I'd try to select some meditative readings for a lenten thingy at County Hall, and, owing to my incapacity, I hadn't done any of it, so I was fairly well occupied until 12 trying to find some things which I thought might be suitable, loosely grouped around the beginning of Luke 4. This was while Nicholas was at some seminars, after which we regrouped for a 10" margherita pizza and then met up with some Jitsukas in the pub. Stayed on the coke this time.

Nicholas deigned it fit to take the afternoon off, so we played a bit of pool at Mary Williams, which is his hall. Strictly speaking I beat him two out of three times, but it was only because he potted the black, whereas when he beat me it was because I was outclassed. Bit of table tennis after that. I really like table tennis, but the game got gradually more and more silly, as we couldn't hire any balls from the porter's lodge, and the one we did find had a crack in it which created many silly situations. There was also a coin-op (recently restored I gather) which had Dynablaster on it, so we had 10p's worth each.

Met back at JCs again for some pre-Jitsu action. Unfortunately I couldn't really join in, as everyone was trying to get their acts together for a grading on Sunday. I just sat and watched. I daresay that if I hadn't felt really conspicuously out-of-place, I would have enjoyed watching it more. They kicked off with some warm-up excercises that seemed to be pretty much what I used to do at Judo. Judo, I am told, is the 'soft' form of Jujitsu. Lots of deliberate falling after that. Then after a while they were countering punches in various ways so as to result with the ostensible agressor lying prone on the floor. Some disarming of wooden coshes and and bottles also followed. The best bit was right at the end where some guy was in the middle of a circle and had to counter attacks from wherever they were coming from... kinda like French cricket I guess.

Back to JCs again. Toyed with the idea of going to a funk night, but I changed my mind at the last minute 'cos I could tell I wasn't going to be in the mood for dancing, and if you're not dancing, then what is a club but an inadequate pub? So we bundled into someone's car and drove out into Swansea proper, to the house where Nicholas is apparently going to live next year. Seems okay. Met Ely, Nicholas' sparring partner, who he seems to get on alright with - tall, cheerful, French girl, who doesn't much like France. Watched a bit of Labyrinth, which is a good film, in it's way, but you do have to be far too careful about where you look when Bowie's on the screen. A double bill of Izzard - dodgy version of Definite Article followed by legit version of Circles, which I thought I had seen little of, but seem to have seen most of actually. Nicholas and Ely fell asleep near the end (Nick insists he was resting his eyes - uh, my eye - so to speak). We got a cab back (this I never do) because apparently it's really too far for Ely to walk.