Posted on 04/06/2021 11:59:42 AM PDT by Marchmain
The influential and controversial Swiss theologian Hans Küng died Tuesday at the age of 93.
The German Catholic Church’s official website said that Küng died on the afternoon of April 6 at his home in Tübingen, southwest Germany.
Küng served as a theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council but repeatedly clashed with Rome in the years that followed.
The tensions culminated in a 1979 declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that Küng had “departed from the integral truth of Catholic faith, and therefore he can no longer be considered a Catholic theologian nor function as such in a teaching role.”
(Excerpt) Read more at angelusnews.com ...
“I am thinking in particular of his efforts with regard to a living ecumenism, his commitment to interreligious and intercultural dialogue, and the Global Ethic Foundation he founded, with its important research and projects on peace, justice, and the integrity of creation.”
I strongly disagreed with him.
aaah, ‘peace and justice’ and ‘ecumenical’ - the give-away words. RIP. You’ve done enough damage
That’s a polite way to say heretic.
He offered up argument after argument attempting to prove God exists. Only to counter each with a skeptic's view.
In the end, he decided that the only way to know that God exists is to have a personal encounter with Him.
I disagree, the evidence is around us in all creation including our wonderfully made bodies and the intricate mechanics of even a single cell. Proof is also in the prophecies, some of which have come true recently with the restoration of Israel. And there is evidence of miracles.
I can't refute the logic of his arguments. Someone who wants to remain a skeptic will find a way. For that person, a personal encounter may be the only solution, and even then they may choose to remain skeptical.
Look Ma! No Hans!....................
He knows now......................
“Sergi! Is that you?”
“Hans! Is that you?”
“Yah!”
BANG!
(old joke kids told each other)
Yeah, he does.
“Someone who wants to remain a skeptic will find a way. For that person, a personal encounter may be the only solution, and even then they may choose to remain skeptical.”
Three true statements.
I wonder why God chooses one person and not another for an encounter.
Definitely YEP!
I have not taken time to become acquainted with Kung’s theology, but have come across some exotic, esoteric notions that somehow gain more currency than they ought. Over time it has become more clear to me that the clearest manifestation of the Church is in a local parish where the Sacred Scriptures are read aloud in the midst of a congregation and the hearers are brought under the discipline of the same, conducting themselves with both joy and humility, while putting away malice and envy.
Only God knows His reasons, but I can think of a couple of scriptures that may shed some light.
I think everyone has knowledge of God written on their hearts and evidence of God in creation. How they react to that, whether to seek God and/or obey Him, impacts God's willingness to reveal Himself to them.
But then you have Saul running around killing Christians and he gets the Damascus Road experience and becomes Paul. But maybe Saul was very sincere in what he was doing. Perhaps his attitude towards the Lord was right even if his conclusions on what to do about Christianity was wrong. I don't know.
I wonder why God chooses one person and not another for an encounter.
God touches everyone. Some have no desire to listen. As long as God is “theoretical” then so is His authority.
I'm afraid your post shows your ignorance of the theological position that at the Fall, Adam's/a human's ability to reason also fell along with the human nature, and thus was unable to discover The God's Truth--including His Pre-Creation Existence--by reason alone, a facility apart from the disclosures of His Special Revelation.
Romanism was falling badly as a force for good until Thomas Aquinas took opposition to the idea that the ability of a man or mankind in general to reason correctly was lost, and instead proposed that the ability to come to unarguable conclusion as to The God's Existence had not been lost, and that the exercise of reason wold restore the Roman Church's claimed Holy Eminence that had somehow gone missing.
And so Romanism has swallowed that Aquinian approach hook, line, and sinker, and has proceeded on that theme ever since, particularly in the Jesuit manifestation. And because of it, found themselves oppositionally rebellious to the better theology of the Gospel of Faith Alone in the Incarnated, Specially Revealed Word of God Alone, through His Grace Alone, received by the preaching of His Written Word Alone, to save and reconcile a human to fellowship with His Father, and to be made judicially guiltless by that complete unreserved irreversible child-like trust in Jesus Messiah as Everlasting Owner, Lord, and Proprietor of that reconciled human, sanctified through progressive control of the Indwelling Holy Spirit to and through suppression and physical death of the old nature.
Perhaps through immersion in the Holy Word, and change by faith obtained from it, Hans Kung had become yet another rejector of the Aquinian false religion, voicing his opposition to it as did the Reformers guided by the Byzantine/Majority Greek texts that had been restored to prominence by Desiderius Erasmus (the true father of the Reformation), and no longer distracted by the uninspired erring Latin Vulgate interpretation or its child--the RCC Catechistic dogmatic published formulae. Eh?
What you need to realize that since the time of Aquinas, uninspired use of natural reason and its logic--though profoundly increasing the magnitude of human knowledge--has nonetheless led mankind away from God and into atheism and greater depravity, recognizing neither an eternal spiritual realm nor the soul-destroying dangers of ignoring it.
And that's where your line of thinking leads the unwary and foolish person who professes Christianity but does not possess it and is not permeated by its change of character nor the processing of one's experiences according to Gods unchangeable point of view rather than by the fickleness of human reasoning.
God says, "Come let us reason together, though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow".
Seems to me like God gave us a mind and still expects us to use it to reason. But the key phrase is "reason together"
If we had lost the ability to reason then how could we be held accountable for our sins?
But Rom 1:20 says " For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."
I don't believe God expects total blind faith from the start. He gives us a base of information to reason from. What we do with that is up to us.
That base includes creation, prophecies, miracles, scripture, and works. "John 14:11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves."
We are also told "That the heart of man is deceitful" and to "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;" and "Prov 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."
The heart influences our reasoning. So much so that Jesus referred to "reasoning in your hearts", Luke 5:22-26 “Why are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins have been forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,”
Here you have an example of God not only providing evidence to reason with but also correcting our reasoning.
We must still use reason to come to the point of believing that God exists and trusting God. And that's the point where faith takes over in my opinion. We trust in the goodness of God and we study his word to learn more of his nature and truth that may not be obvious to our own reasoning. And our faith grows.
And a man's heart is key in whether he will choose to seek out God or hide in darkness. "John 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God
Knowledge of God is imprinted on the heart and abundant in the creation around us. Knowledge of God's plan of salvation does take hearing. But the condition of the heart determines whether a person will choose to listen.
Romans 10:4 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
If yo think for a moment, you will begin to understand what Aquinas said as well as what I am saying that contradicts his thesis.
What Aquinas essentially said is that in the Fall (from innocence) Adam's nature became unrighteous, unreliable, fallible, corrupted; but his ability to reason, with enough diligence, and in the absence of prompting by Jehovah, did not.
What I am saying is that man's ability to reason did also fall, became corrupted, imperfect; and left alone, inevitably leads to unreliable conclusions. In your comment, your next sentence abandons the issue being discussed and immediately drags in a product of Special Revelation, quoting the Written Word of God, which tactic is contrary to the stipulation of man's inability through reason alone to have the concept that a supernatural entity exists, let alone prove it.
Then you go on and on, never addressing the issue of the fallenness of sinful humanity's reasoning powers.
That fallenness appears instantly in the same chapter that tells of The Fall--Genesis 3--and persists throughout the history of mankind right up to the time we are at. You have said nothing to prove otherwise.
So ponder on that for just a little longer. What has happened is described by the infallible Word of God, which an atheist denies even exists:
"But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:It seems obvious that your own power to reason through what I said was so lacking that you didn't even pursue it before setting out to register your own opinion.
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them" (2 Cor. 4:3-4 AV).
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