I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[amw79]

Years after years of hearing utter bullshit and it has never changed. So many words all to say so little. I guess that's religion for you. A pile of words that carry no weight.

Thats very easy to say. I could say the same about antitheists. But it makes no difference, without actual argumentation.

You claim, since some chick and dude named Adam ate a piece of fruit after God told them not to, that it is now my responsibility to seek out the catholic church to garner my info about the salvation of my mortal soul? Because, as you said, we don't have time to do it ourselves as it requires a lifetime of pious study.

Of course it's your own responsibility. You have a right to death and to hell.

Oh wait! Then you say something to the effect that I need not worry because on judgement day you'll be judged upon how much correct info you have been given? How much you were "shown the light" or however stupid way you put it.

That means that some gentile in a jungle isn't going to be judged for rejecting God on equal terms as a person with knowledge of Christianity. That is just a matter of justice. Perhaps his natural intuition of good will suffice for his salvation, only God knows, for God has written goodness in our hearts, in spite of the corruption of the fall which may cloud it, people still have a basic natural sense of the eternal law which might prevail over the temptations and the evils of this world. This natural sense is also called natural law.

If so arn't you now responsible for my damnation as you are "showing me the light" and I reject your "my interpretations are the only correct ones" contention?

That a person will be judged according to the light they have received, means that God will judge each one of us justly. So no, I am not responsible for your damnation. And who even says you will be damned? You are pretending to be God if you pretend to that knowledge. You are responsible for your own salvation, and if God damns you, that implicitly means that you have rejected God, for God sees all. And that also means choosing hell, for hell means the rejection of God, and thereby separation from communion with God.

You coulda just left well enough alone and me, in my ignorance cause I didn't even know what "patristic" meant until reading this thread, coulda slipped right by on judgement day. Damn you Jon.

You assume that you will be damned, which is a knowledge reserved to God, not to humans.

As Christians, our objective is not to say who is damned and who is not. We should rather focus on the miserableness of our own soul, rather than that of others. We should damn ourselves to hell, not others.

This is a lesson American evangelicals clearly haven't learnt. They tend to pretend to be the divine judge of who is damned and who is saved. They tell others that they will burn in hell, while they should be keeping their own mind in hell, for they don't know the destiny of others, or even if their own, since some of them may have rejected the True God and Gods True Church. Only God knows that destiny.

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A large number of words jon used were not even words according to the cambridge dictionary.
I wonder if he was using all kinds of words that some were not even actual words to confuse and evade questions. "patristic, nonspatial, nontemporal, subsistent, epistemically, actualising". All these words were not recognised in the dictionary. I thought I saw something off when I was reading his posts. I read words that I did not recognise.
Odd that.

What dictionary have you been using? All those are words, though you are not writing them in their root from. Patristic (Christian term, referring to the Church Fathers), temporal (from Latin temporalis meaning "of time", as in temporary), spatial (meaning of space from Latin spatium), subsistence (from Latin subsistentia (sub+sistere) meaning substance, that which "stands under", and is independent, as opposed to standing "on top of" (super) - Latin form of Greek hypostasis), epistemic (from Greek episteme (epi- "over, near" + histasthai "to stand."), meaning to "understand"/"overstand", to know), actual (from Latin actus, meaning real or existing, as opposed to possible/potential).

Sorry JP and others. I wanted to stay out of all this and remain silent - I really did! But this comment "the miserableness of our own soul", really fucking 'got my goat'. Even accepting a notion of the soul (I'll call it the self in order to avoid any spiritual connotations), this comment just goes to show what Catholicism is based on, the idea of self-deprecation, which consequently provides the need for salvation or redemtion, which can only be given to us by, you've guessed it - a divine authority.

If your soul is miserable, and I suspect it is (what with that pesky original sin to deal with), speak to a qualified councilor, rather than attempt to pass your miserableness, off as my miserableness. I'm rather a happy fella as my friends will testify.