This seems to be the belief of most Catholics when we discuss our relationship with God through His Holy Spirit of truth, and I don’t remember anyone ever dealing with what we NC’s really mean when we talk about it.
I can only tell you how I believe, and I would love to hear from anyone who has a different perspective on it, RC or NC or others.
I’d like to see if I can explain to you and other Catholics, what I mean when I say, Gods Holy Spirit (or as John said the anointing) teaches us truths, and new truths.
As a child, I could never learn math by using formulas already developed by others and than given to me to use in solving other problems, I always had to start from scratch and understand the whole thing myself.
While in the WWCG, I found myself taking others word for why I believed certain things, and once I accepted their authority enough to trust them, I soon began giving the answers they had taught me, but I hadn’t understood them from my own discovery.
When the Church began to show how human they were, and how many mistakes they had made in doctrinal teachings and in their personal lives, I realized I had to make a choice.
I had to either follow the Church, and believe their teachings with out question, or I had to get back with God and the Bible, and allow His Spirit to teach me. That way I had no dependence on other men, but I would take personal responsibility for my own salvation, and put none on other men.
In regards to my saying that God leads his people into truths and new truths, I’m not implying that I’m learning new doctrines or beliefs that change the solid teachings of the scripture. I mean that God works miracles with us who are allowing Him to teach us from his word and through His Spirit every day.
First, God has to know that when we ask for help in understanding a matter, that if He shows us, we have to be willing to change and incorporate it into our lives if need be.
The excitement and closeness I feel towards God when He makes answers virtually come right out of the scripture is beyond words. To think, the Creator of all things loves me enough to take His time to sit down with me and show me things I could never have found with out a miracle is beyond words.
This happens almost daily, but in trying to remember just one example, a couple of years ago I was still dealing with Leviticus 11, and clean and unclean meats, and with Acts 10:15.
I couldn’t understand how God was able to cleans a Gentile who had always been unclean to a Jew, simply by pronouncing him clean. I had reasoned that since Jews would never be required to eat a Gentile, I could see how God cleansed him simply by telling Peter they were no longer unclean.
But trying to use this same reasoning to explain how a pig could be cleansed simply by God’s pronouncing it cleansed, just didn’t work, because the final test of a pig being cleansed, was not the same as a man being cleansed, since the obvious test was that a pig had to be eaten, where a man wasn’t.
I was stumped, and could find no way out of this dilemma. I thought to myself, God must not have cleansed the animals after all. Herbert may have been correct on this one, but since I eat very few pork products anyway, I guess I’ll just have to stop eating it all together.
I was about to wrap up my studies and put things away, when my eye was directed to one of the scriptures I had printed out from my search of the word “unclean.” I read the next couple of verses past Deut 14:19, and verse 21 jumped out of the page at me.
V- 21. Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God.
I asked myself why would God tell Israel to give contaminated meat to the stranger or alien, when it was unclean for a Jew to eat? Didn’t God care if they became sick and died from eating spoiled or contaminated meat?
I knew God would never do this to the Gentiles since he was going to open salvation to them soon, and then the Spirit of truth (Jn16:13) brought to the frontals of my mind, “THE MEAT IS ONLY UNCLEAN TO THE JEWS, NOT THE GENTILES.”
I realized there was nothing in the food that would harm anyone who didn’t believe it would be hurtful to them, thus, unclean is a state of mind for the Jew, it could make them sick because they knew they were going against God’s command not to eat it, not because it was physically unclean.
The strangers or Gentiles, had no such command, so it was harmless to them to eat.
Clean meats, could become just as unclean for a Jew as the unclean meats were, and both were then “unclean.” It always meant the same Hebrew word “tame”SHN-2931 which was the same for both, the clean which became unclean, or the unclean which God told Israel not to eat such as pork and etc.
It was a matter of ceremonial law, and had nothing to do with actual harmful foods such as spoiled and rotten meats that could actually be harmful if eaten.
Now my point is this. There are possibly millions of people who knew this long before I did, but this was “my truth,” as it was revealed to me and no one else in my exact situation.
I didn’t understand it because some Church gave me the formula in a missal or a tract or at a Mass or a sermon, I was given this truth by God through His Holy Spirit for my personal need, it will always be mine, regardless of who else writes about it or quotes it or discovers it for their first time.
God has given me answers to 100’s of dilemmas in my search for truth, and to me they were profound truths, which were all memorable experiences.
A Catholic can not build his faith in this manner, because someone has already given them the answers to all the questions before they had the need or interest to ask the question.
Possibly you will say, big deal, I’d rather just ask someone who has already done the leg work and take their word for it, then to go through all the work you had to go through, just to come up with the same conclusions.
If all Catholics are conditioned to think this way, then you must have other ways of being drawn close to God by using His Spirit in you.
I know there are other ways of using God’s Spirit, such as charitable services and helping in the Church, or visiting the sick or giving offerings, but for me, this is what being able to discern truth and search the scriptures daily is all about, and my faith is built on personal contact with God.
This truth is part of me, and I’ll never have to ask myself, what if someone down the line was wrong, or if God ever ask me how I knew my beliefs were based on His truth. IMHO :-)
JH
A Catholic need not “build” his faith in that manner because all of the answers are answered before he asks the question. It is only human folly (or perhaps vanity) that makes any of us think we have “discovered” something new.
I do not intend to be insulting (I certainly hope you have that impression of me by now), but I think you identify a real misunderstanding between the two camps and come at it precisely backwards.
It’s really pretty straightforward. If the RCC is not the “true” Church, then by definition many of their pronouncements are wrong, cannot be infallible, and any Christian who blindly follows them is in some measure of danger. Since no other “organized” denomination could be the single true church, it must be a nebulous body of believers tied by the Scriptures and by the HS. Thus, your confusion makes perfect sense.
If the RCC is the Church that Christ founded as His Body and the working of the HS is through that church then you present a logical impossibility. An individual cannot be lead by the HS to conclude a spiritual truth in conflict with Church teaching because the source of the two is the same and does not change. When the Pope speaks infallibly it is only because it is God speaking through him, just as God has done for at least four thousand years. It is not because he is somehow imbued with some extraordinary power to create new “truth” any more than we might decry a NC who believes that the HS has “led” him to a “new” truth.
You see, the confusion is not whether or not a Catholic can be individually led by the HS... of course we can. It is whether the HS would ever lead us anywhere other than where He has led the Church for two thousand years. You postulate a scenario where the HS leads a Catholic to a foundational “truth” apart from what “someone down the line” has taught. I claim that scenario is a “null set”.
Does the HS lead individuals to truths that are new to them that they do not even know the Church has taught? Certainly, and the experience is just what you describe for yourself, I recognize it. Does He lead us on topics that the Church adresses that are not issues of salvific faith (like how to handle a pedopriest)? Yep. Does the HS teach us individually on topics that the RCC has never even mentioned? Of course. But does He lead us about in dozens of contradictory directions to “new” “truths”? No. The journey is taken anew by millions of Christians each year, and may seem “new” to each of them (and is no less profound for being taken before), but the destination is (and must be) the same since there is nothing new under the Son. “Jesus Christ. The same yesterday, today, and forever”
This is not to say that those who disagree with the RCC are nor Christians, not saved, or not honestly seeking His will. It merely means that “fell short of the fullness” as you have no doubt heard it said.
A Catholic can not build his faith in this manner, because someone has already given them the answers to all the questions before they had the need or interest to ask the question.Well, this isn’t all that accurate. I’ve spent a great deal of time doing just what you did. There are some things we are called to accept the church teaching on, yes. On these things we should not reach conclusions contrary to the Church’s teachings. However, I have built onto my faith by reading the Bible on my own, studying it on my own. Every time I open the Bible I first sit and talk to God, asking Him for His guidance, that I may accept His Word the way He means for me to, rather than how I want to. I’ve even read the sections that relate to our dogma this way, though I have wound up coming to the same conclusions the Church has.
I guess that’s part of why I’m still Catholic.
If all Catholics are conditioned to think this way, then you must have other ways of being drawn close to God by using His Spirit in you.Well, we do consider there to be other ways of drawing close to God than merely reading the Scriptures, but they all involve God’s grace, as I don’t think man can approach Him without that Grace, that tremendous gift. We believe we receive it in prayer, reading the Word, as well as through the Sacraments, which for us are the primary interaction/prayer we have with God.
Dominus Vobiscum
patent +AMDG