Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: Mad Dawg
How do you know that it is?
Its been many, many years since my freshman course in logic, but I seem the remember that the absence of knowledge that something does not exist does not mean that it does exist. Proof of existence requires positive affirmation. The burden of proof is on the one who asserts.
We know that God exists due to reason and revelation. Are you claiming a revelation that the Seat of Wisdom exists other than residing in the Trinity?
The only individual on whom God bestowed the blessing of wisdom superior to that of other humans was Solomon. Can you cite Scriptural evidence of another instance of such a Divine blessing?
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but neither is it evidence of existence.
I've learned the Wisdom God is very frequently difficult or impossible for humans to understand. And the absence of understanding is not understanding.
Does any Scriptural evidence exists that Mary was afflicted by any sort of illness, intractable or otherwise?
139 posted on 03/31/2014 3:47:02 PM PDT by quadrant (1o)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 99 | View Replies ]


To: quadrant
We know that God exists due to reason and revelation. Are you claiming a revelation that the Seat of Wisdom exists other than residing in the Trinity?

We're talking NOT about Wisdom itself but about only its/his SEAT. Don't make our Marian devotions to be more than they are.

I would suggest that there could be more thought about what a mother and what a seat is. A Mother bears something that is in part hers and in part exogenous. She is the mother of what she bears and delivers. but we all know that not all of it is 'hers.'

So to say, "Theotokos," is to say FIRST something about IHS. But my mother brought no Y-chromosomes to the party. Mary brought no divinity. Yet I am a guy-type-person, and Jesus is God.

Likewise with "seat." To call Mary "seat of Wisdom" is only to say that Wisdom sat on her. I am currently on the "seat of Mad Dawg." But I am not remarkable, and neither is my chair.

As to the bigger questions: You submit that there is a radical seam between logic as we know it and Divine Logos. (Am I saying it fairly?)

I find that there are more problems with that as a starting point than with saying that Logos is Logos and Logikos is logikos, and our problem is lack of information and sin -- and the fruits of sin,like distractibility and preferring to be THOUGHT to know the truth before actually knowing it. You, in my opinion rightly, appeal to certain canons of human logic, absence of evidence and all that. But the problem is a certain lack of clarity about the use (if any) of human logic in theology.

And, just to make us all throw up our hands and decide to go out for beer instead, I think the NT in general, and the Gospel of John in particular suggests that the Holy Spirit will guide us into truths not explicitly set forth in Scripture. So, quite seriously, what we find in Scripture is the Sola Scriptura is not in Scripture!

I no longer care to win arguments with cheap, or even expensive, shots. I'm not trying to back you into a theological or denominational corner. Even if I could, which is by no means clear, I'm not sure what good that would do either of us.

I will make this "partisan" remark. While Aquinas is fer shur a Catholic, a mega-Catholic with oak-leaf clusters, A lot of what he writes appeals to many, including even to atheists. It's not that they agree with him necessarily, bot about everything. But they do see that he makes compelling arguments which deserve consideration.

Luther Says that Aquinas misunderstood Aristotle. I've read a lot of Aristotle, a lot of Luther, and a lot of Aquinas (and right much Calvin, too.) To ME, it's not a slam dunk that Luther understood EITHER Aquinas OR Aristotle.

But I do know that a lot of people don't read Aristotle because they've been told he's been "Discredited." (No one says by whom or how.)

And I fear a lot of Protestants and other non-Catholics don't read Aquinas because somebody in authority said he'd been discredited too. Well whether or not that's true, he's worth reading on the problem of reason and theology, even if one decides at the end that he is wrong.

Thanks for your patient and reasonable (if only with human reason -- ;-) ) posts.

147 posted on 03/31/2014 5:51:51 PM PDT by Mad Dawg (In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 139 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson