James Chastek, Accounting for what a substance is
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Byzantine, Texas: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, an abbreviated review
What does doctrine matter, as long as you're a theist. Or you believe in God? (Or worse, as long as you believe something and are a good person?) But some forms of ignorance can be excused; the rejection of charity cannot. Non-Christians (apart from the Jews) know nothing about loving God more than one's self.
But back to dogma - what if God has revealed Himself to us? Shouldn't we then be concerned with what He has actually revealed, instead of relying upon our own possibly mistaken ideas?
(Isn't everyone's faith the same? Isn't all just tradition? But what is the ultimate source of the tradition? And what do we know through the tradition? How is Christianity set apart from Judaism and Islam on this point? I do not think Islam would claim that the object of faith for a Muslim is God Himself.)
What does doctrine matter, as long as you're a theist. Or you believe in God? (Or worse, as long as you believe something and are a good person?) But some forms of ignorance can be excused; the rejection of charity cannot. Non-Christians (apart from the Jews) know nothing about loving God more than one's self.
But back to dogma - what if God has revealed Himself to us? Shouldn't we then be concerned with what He has actually revealed, instead of relying upon our own possibly mistaken ideas?
(Isn't everyone's faith the same? Isn't all just tradition? But what is the ultimate source of the tradition? And what do we know through the tradition? How is Christianity set apart from Judaism and Islam on this point? I do not think Islam would claim that the object of faith for a Muslim is God Himself.)
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