Posts by aqwsed12345

57

How Did Watchtower Sell the "Jonadab" Concept ?

by Sea Breeze in

simply put; gullible people were told if they chose life on earth instead of heaven, they wouldn't have to die.

that's how they sold it.

the watchtower lied to people in the 1920 booklet and convention series titled "millions now living will never die!

aqwsed12345

Thomist Critique of the Watchtower’s Diminished God: Why “Spirit” Is Not “Energy” and Jehovah Is Not the True God

One of the most fundamental errors in the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses is their profoundly anthropomorphic and essentially pagan concept of God, a view which stands in direct contradiction to the entire tradition of classical theism—especially as developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. A particular manifestation of this error is their conflation of “spirit” (spiritus) and “energy,” reducing the immaterial nature of God to a kind of hyper-refined “energy” or “spiritual matter.” This mistake is not only philosophically untenable, but theologically disastrous, undermining the very foundation of Christian monotheism and ultimately leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses with a god who is neither infinite, nor eternal, nor even truly divine.

I. The Physics of “Matter and Energy” vs. the Philosophy of “Spirit”

In modern physics, “matter and energy” are, in a real sense, interchangeable—Einstein’s famous E=mc²—and both are quantifiable, measurable, and subject to the laws of the created universe. Everything that can be measured, whether as “matter” or “energy,” is part of the finite, contingent, temporal order. In contrast, classical Christian philosophy, and especially Thomism, recognizes a sharp distinction between the entire created order (which includes not just “matter,” but also anything that is measurable or changeable, including “energy”) and the purely spiritual, which is absolutely and essentially immaterial, unquantifiable, and unconfined by space or time.

To call God “Spirit” (spiritus) in the biblical and philosophical sense is not to say that He is an “energy-being” or a kind of “cosmic force,” as in science fiction or as in the Watchtower’s doctrine. Rather, to be “spirit” is to be completely above and beyond all categories of created existence, whether material or energetic, extended or non-extended, visible or invisible. Spirit is the very opposite of anything measurable, divisible, or subject to change.

In Thomistic metaphysics, matter (in the broadest sense) is that which possesses potentiality; it is “the principle of potency,” always capable of being otherwise. Even the most subtle forms of energy are, in this sense, “material,” since they can change, move, be measured, or be present here and not there. But spirit—as God is spirit—is the principle of actuality, pure act (actus purus), in whom there is no potentiality at all, and therefore no change, division, limitation, or quantification. God is not a “super-energy” being; He is, as St. Thomas says, ipsum esse subsistens—the very act of “to be” itself, subsisting by His own necessity.

II. The Watchtower’s Anthropomorphic and Pagan God

The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctrine of God is strikingly limited and materialistic. Their official publications and leaders have repeatedly described “Jehovah” as possessing a “spirit body,” residing in a particular location (even assigning Him a place among the Pleiades, at one point in their history!), and operating within the constraints of space and time. Even when the Pleiades myth was abandoned, the underlying error remained: God is described as being “in heaven,” as an “individual” who cannot be everywhere at once, and who must, if He wishes to act or communicate, send messengers across the cosmos, subject to travel time. This is not the transcendent, omnipresent God of Christianity, but a cosmic king or demiurge—a pagan deity with superhuman powers, yet fundamentally one of “the things that are,” a being among beings.

This error is compounded by the Witnesses’ materialistic account of creation. Rather than holding to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo—that God creates the world out of nothing, simply by His will—they posit that Jehovah utilized a portion of His “dynamic energy reserves” to produce the universe. This would mean that God is not absolutely infinite, but is limited by the quantity of His “energy.” This is the cosmology of myth and science fiction, not Christian metaphysics.

III. The Watchtower God Is Not Immutable, Eternal, or Omniscient

The Witnesses further ascribe temporality and mutability to God. Jehovah is not “eternal” in the classical sense (outside of time), but is simply “everlasting”—subject to temporal sequence, able to “learn” new things, to be surprised, to change His mind, and even to forget or erase things from His memory. Their god can choose not to know certain things, and only exercises his foreknowledge “selectively,” supposedly to allow human freedom. But this, again, is to make God finite and contingent—one being among others, subject to time, change, and ignorance.

The metaphysical consequences of this are fatal to any claim of true divinity. A being who is spatial, temporal, mutable, and contingent is not the necessary foundation of all that exists, but is rather a product of the universe. Such a “god” cannot be the Creator in any meaningful sense, since he is as dependent on space, time, and causal relations as are all creatures. As Thomists have always argued, the necessary being—the true God—must be utterly transcendent, without potentiality, uncaused, simple (without composition or division), and infinite in all perfections.

IV. The True Christian Doctrine: God as Pure Act, Spirit, and Necessary Being

Classical theism, and especially Thomistic philosophy, insists that God is not a being among beings, nor even the “highest” being in the universe. He is Being itself—ipsum esse subsistens—in whom essence and existence are identical. God is not “a spirit” in the sense of a subtle substance, nor an “energy” among other energies, but Spirit in the sense of absolute actuality, subsisting independently, and completely transcending the created order.

God’s infinity is not a matter of extension, but of perfection—He is unlimited because He is pure act, without any unrealized potential. His omnipresence is not a spatial diffusion, but the metaphysical fact that all things exist only by participation in His sustaining act of being. His omniscience is not a process of “learning” or “receiving updates” from angels, but is the eternal, simultaneous vision of all things, past, present, and future, in Himself.

The doctrine of divine simplicity means that God is not composed of parts (as the Witnesses imagine, with a “body” and “mind” and “energy”), nor of attributes “added on” to a substance. All that is in God is God; His knowledge, power, will, and presence are one and the same reality.

V. The Destructive Consequences of a Diminished God

The Watchtower’s conception of God is thus not merely defective, but idolatrous. It reduces the Creator to a cosmic superman, “spiritual” only in the sense of being “energetic” or “invisible,” but still subject to the limitations of created reality. This is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—nor the God of Jesus Christ and the apostles—but the shadow of a god, unworthy of worship or ultimate trust.

Moreover, as many critics have observed (see Magnani, The Heavenly Weatherman), such a god cannot even sustain the Witnesses’ own theology. If God can “choose not to know,” or can make mistakes, or needs to rely on messengers for information, then His promises are no longer absolutely trustworthy, and His providence becomes little more than educated guesswork. The entire structure of revelation, prophecy, and salvation collapses into uncertainty and subjectivity. It is no wonder that this doctrine breeds anxiety, legalism, and an obsession with performance among Jehovah’s Witnesses; their “Jehovah” is not the loving Father who knows and orders all things for the good of those who love Him, but a distant and unpredictable power.

VI. Conclusion: Thomist Theism or Pagan Animism?

In conclusion, the Watchtower’s theology must be rejected as a form of philosophical and theological regression. By collapsing “spirit” into “energy,” and God into a powerful being located within the universe, they have abandoned the biblical and classical doctrine of God for a mixture of pagan myth and modern rationalist fantasy. The true God is not an “energy-being,” nor is He a cosmic weather forecaster, nor a superhuman on a distant throne. He is the one, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient Spirit—the necessary foundation of all reality, in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

To the modern mind, shaped by materialist assumptions and science fiction tropes, the distinction may seem subtle, but it is in truth the difference between true monotheism and sophisticated idolatry. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, unless God is pure act, infinite, eternal, and simple, He is not God at all, but a creature—subject to the very limitations He is supposed to transcend.

The classical Christian vision of God alone does justice to the divine transcendence and immanence, the mystery of creation, and the hope of salvation. All lesser conceptions—such as that of the Watchtower—must be left behind as inadequate for the human heart, mind, and soul.

12

"Perfect Angels"? A Subtle Shift in Watchtower Doctrine — And Why It Matters

by raymond frantz in

"perfect angels"?

a subtle shift in watchtower doctrine — and why it matters.

quoted paragraph from the watchtower september 2025, study article 38, paragraph 12:.

aqwsed12345

The paragraph that spurred the present discussion is not troublesome merely because it introduces an unfamiliar locution (“perfect angels”) or because it fails to recite the customary Watchtower syllogism that identifies Michael with Christ. Its deeper difficulty lies in what it tacitly presupposes about salvation, authority, and the status of God’s people. Those presuppositions flow from the Witnesses’ two-tier soteriology—an upper caste of 144,000 “anointed” who inherit the new covenant and a lower caste destined for perpetual earthly citizenship—and it is that architecture, rather than a single turn of phrase, that requires sustained theological scrutiny.

Scripture knows nothing of a redeemed élite who alone are sons of God while the remainder subsist as his well-favored tenants. The New Testament’s vocabulary for salvation is intentionally universal: all who believe are born from above (John 1:12–13; 3:3 ff.), all are incorporated into Christ’s body (1 Cor 12:13), all share one heavenly calling (Heb 3:1) and one inheritance kept in heaven for them (1 Pet 1:3–5). The promise of Revelation 7—white-robed multitudes from every nation standing before the throne—is not a consolation prize dispensed on a lower plane; the scene is explicitly celestial, before God’s throne, in his heavenly sanctuary. To consign that throng to terra firma while reserving the throne-room for a numerically fixed inner circle is to reverse the text’s plain orientation.

The Watchtower’s bifurcation was born, not of exegesis, but of chronology: early leaders calculated that exactly 144,000 Christians had been generated between Pentecost and the Adventist movements of the nineteenth century. When their membership soon exceeded that figure, they could either abandon the arithmetic or invent a second hope. They chose the latter and have had to retrofit the entire canon ever since. The result is an ecclesiology in which baptism does not confer full filial status, the Supper is a spectacle few may share, and the Spirit’s witness is presumed silenced in the majority. Yet Paul tells the Ephesians that there is one body and one hope to which they are called (Eph 4:4). A system that withholds that hope from most of the baptized contradicts the apostolic proclamation at its core.

The same hierarchical instinct appears in the treatment of angels. By introducing anonymous “perfect angels” as the moral superiors of even the congregation’s overseers, the article subtly reinforces the idea that holiness is a quality possessed in fullness only beyond the earthly sphere. That fits a theology in which the great mass of believers can never expect to attain the status enjoyed by a sealed minority. But it collides with the letter to the Hebrews, which declares that angels are ministering spirits sent to serve those who are inheriting salvation and that sons share the same nature as the Son who sanctifies them (Heb 1:14; 2:11). Holiness is derivative of union with Christ, not of angelic ontology.

The doctrine that Christ is Michael the archangel further entrenches the caste system. If the Lord of glory is himself but first among servants, then to describe a subordinate class of human servants as permanently outside the covenant can appear consistent. Yet Hebrews again overturns that logic: the Son’s name is “more excellent” than that of any angel precisely because he is eternally begotten, not created (Heb 1:3–5). His voice at the Parousia is “the voice of an archangel” because it commands archangels, not because it emanates from one. Early Christian writers who occasionally employed angelic language for the pre-incarnate Word did so metaphorically, never to deny his deity. The Watchtower alone built an ontology on a metaphor.

Finally, the rhetoric of “glorious ones” as a synonym for elders weaponizes 2 Peter 2 and Jude in order to silence dissent. In context, those epistles are condemning false teachers who mock heavenly authorities, not congregants who question administrative decisions. Chrysostom’s maxim remains sound: where the bishop teaches contrary to the gospel, Christ’s sheep are obliged to heed the gospel, not the bishop. By annexing to itself a category that Peter reserves for celestial majesties, the organization demands a deference the New Testament accords only to Christ himself.

The paragraph, then, is symptomatic of a wider pattern: heaven and privilege are portioned out to the few; the many are trained to regard themselves as second-class subjects; and the organization’s earthly hierarchy is shielded by an appeal to angelic example. The gospel according to the apostles offers something starkly different: one Shepherd, one flock, one covenant sealed in one cup, and the invitation to reign with Christ extended to every believer who overcomes.

57

How Did Watchtower Sell the "Jonadab" Concept ?

by Sea Breeze in

simply put; gullible people were told if they chose life on earth instead of heaven, they wouldn't have to die.

that's how they sold it.

the watchtower lied to people in the 1920 booklet and convention series titled "millions now living will never die!

aqwsed12345

The atheist critique here attempts to dismantle the “minimal facts” argument for the resurrection and to frame both the Christian worldview and classical theism as epistemologically deficient compared to speculative modern physics. Allow me to expose the philosophical confusions, category errors, and selective skepticism underlying this entire polemic, and to demonstrate that the intellectual foundations of classical Christianity remain not only intact, but unshaken by such superficial objections.

Let us begin with the assertion that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” This oft-repeated slogan is, in fact, itself an extraordinary assertion—one never actually demonstrated in philosophy of science, but only ever intoned as a rhetorical device. The standard for evidence, in any rational discipline, must be proportionate to the nature of the claim and the type of reality under consideration. When the subject is an event unique in history—such as the resurrection—the evidence must be adequate, not “extraordinary” in some undefined, self-serving sense. In fact, to demand “extraordinary” evidence for the unique is to betray a category error: by definition, no evidence for a singular event can be “ordinary.” Nor is this how we reason in other fields. The Big Bang, for example, is also a unique, unrepeatable, and wholly extraordinary event, but cosmologists do not demand “extraordinary” evidence in the sense the critic wants; they demand what is rationally sufficient given the phenomena and the available data.

The critique moves on to the “minimal facts” approach, claiming that it is methodologically flawed, subject to selection bias, and, ultimately, unable to bridge the gap between “the disciples believed Jesus rose” and “Jesus actually rose.” Let us be clear: the “minimal facts” method is simply a tactical concession to skeptical standards, demonstrating that even if we use only those facts most widely accepted in critical New Testament scholarship—including the non-Christian and the non-theist—the best explanation of these facts remains the bodily resurrection. If one wishes to dismiss the method as “apologetics,” the burden remains: what better alternative account actually explains the data without itself resorting to ad hoc speculation? It is not enough to intone “psychology” or “legendary accretion” as if such terms themselves did explanatory work. The radical transformation of the disciples, the emergence of Christian faith in the very city where Jesus was executed, the conversion of hostile witnesses such as Paul, and the virtual absence of an early veneration of Jesus’ tomb (which would have immediately short-circuited resurrection claims had the body remained) all demand a coherent account. To simply appeal to “human psychology” or “hallucination” is to collapse into a far more speculative hypothesis—especially when such explanations cannot account for group experiences, empty tomb traditions, and the birth of a resurrection-centered movement in a fiercely monotheistic and skeptical Jewish environment.

The further complaint that “resurrection violates the Standard Model of Particle Physics” reveals a basic misunderstanding of both classical theism and the metaphysical structure of miracles. The Christian claim is not that Jesus rose from the dead by natural causes, but that the Author of nature—who creates ex nihilo and is not bound by secondary causes—has acted in history. The Standard Model itself does not, and cannot, exclude the possibility of supernatural agency any more than the axioms of geometry can exclude the possibility of a painter painting on a canvas. If the Creator exists (and classical theism, especially in its Thomist form, offers the only rationally consistent account of why there is something rather than nothing, why there is order, causality, intelligibility, and finite being at all), then miracles are possible, and their recognition is not “science-defying” but “science-transcending”—an intervention by the Ground of all being, not an internal anomaly within a closed system.

The objection that “the investigation was never conducted and is impossible now” collapses on basic historical epistemology. All ancient history operates on the basis of testimony, textual analysis, and inference from physical and circumstantial evidence. No one today “verifies” the crossing of the Rubicon, yet only the most radical skeptic would say we know nothing of Caesar. Indeed, the documentary evidence for the resurrection, by any reasonable standard, is more abundant, closer to the events, and less subject to legendary embellishment than for most other events in ancient history.

The charge that “the argument is circular” because it presupposes a Christian worldview is patently false. The “minimal facts” approach, again, explicitly brackets confessional commitment and appeals to the standards of secular, critical scholarship. The conclusion—that the resurrection is the best explanation—is reached precisely because alternative naturalistic hypotheses do not account for the facts. To claim circularity is to misunderstand both the argument and the method.

The assertion that “the earliest followers were pre-scientific, uneducated, superstitious ideologues” is, aside from being patronizing and historically dubious, a textbook example of presentism and ad hominem. It is, ironically, a hallmark of dogmatic rationalism to assume that one’s own age is immune to delusion while earlier centuries were mired in gullibility. The apostles and early witnesses, far from being credulous, were in fact deeply resistant to the notion of resurrection (see the reactions of Thomas, the women, and even the apostles themselves to the first reports). The rise of faith in the bodily resurrection was not a product of “wish fulfillment,” but, by all the evidence, an unexpected and thoroughly disruptive event that forced itself upon them.

Turning to the critique of Habermas’ statistics: it is legitimate to call for methodological rigor, but it is simply false to say that there is no significant scholarly consensus on the core facts of Jesus’ death by crucifixion, the origin of the resurrection belief, and the transformation of the disciples. While there may be disagreement about interpretation, the data are robust. The attempt to discredit the entire field by pointing out that many authors are clergy is also hollow: should we dismiss every work on Buddhism written by a Buddhist monk, or every study of quantum physics written by a physicist affiliated with a research institute? What matters is the argument, not the biography.

Moving from historical to metaphysical terrain, your extended citation on the origins of the universe does not, in fact, rescue the atheist from the abyss of the “something from nothing” problem. The speculative cosmologies—whether Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology, the multiverse hypothesis, or “quantum vacuum fluctuations”—do not, and cannot, answer the classical metaphysical question of why there is something rather than nothing, or what grounds the actuality of any possible universe. To say that “the quantum vacuum is seething with particles” is, as David Albert rightly observes, not “nothing” but “something.” A quantum field is a metaphysically thick reality, not the absolute non-being classical theism has always intended by “nothing.” To ask why there is a quantum field, or why there is any physical substrate at all, is to leave physics behind and enter the domain of metaphysics. At that point, only a necessary being—Pure Act, Ipsum Esse Subsistens, as Aquinas defined God—can provide a coherent and non-circular account. The cyclical universe, many-worlds interpretation, or any physicalist “eternal substrate” does nothing but push the explanatory burden one step back, never answering why any actuality exists at all.

Finally, the atheistic rejection of miracles and of the resurrection on a priori grounds is simply an expression of metaphysical naturalism—an unargued presupposition, not a demonstrated conclusion. If one has reason to believe in God, then miracles are not only possible, but certain in at least the case of creation itself. The resurrection stands or falls on the best explanation of the historical data. The Christian does not fear open inquiry or rigorous standards; rather, it is the reductionist, the metaphysical naturalist, who clings dogmatically to a closed universe, unable or unwilling to ask the deeper question—why does anything exist, why does order obtain, and why is there a universe at all?

The Thomistic tradition is not an exercise in fideistic dogma, but the apex of reason seeking its ultimate ground. If you dismiss the arguments for God, do so not by caricature or by shifting the standards of evidence so that only your own worldview can win by default, but by offering a rival metaphysic that can actually explain existence itself, and the emergence of rational beings who—like you—are so mysteriously haunted by the question of truth, order, and finality. Until then, the classical theist, and the Catholic in particular, remains serenely confident that faith and reason, far from being enemies, together disclose the deepest structure of reality.

66

Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

by BoogerMan in

(matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

(jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

(acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

aqwsed12345

@slimboyfat

Tell me, how were you at mathematics in school? “Not greater” doesn’t require it to be lesser. Since you referred to common sense, after all. No one ever said that the Son is greater than the Father. Although Chalcedonian Christology does assert that the Son as a man is not God and is ontologically inferior to God.

Generally speaking, there’s a significant difference between acts of “sending;“ even a king can be “sent“ on a diplomatic visit by his advisor, or to a spa by his physician, without this implying the superiority of those sending him. Human missions are characterized mainly by two elements: the one who is sent acts under the influence of the one who sends; and, in order to fulfill the mission, he chooses situations and carries out activities appropriate to the nature and content of the mission. As for the influence of the sender on the one sent, this can generally be of three kinds. The sending can be a command, by which a superior sends his subordinate; it can be advice, by which, for example, a physician sends a king to the baths; or it can be an origin, by which, for instance, a mother brings forth—“sends”—her child into the world, or the sun sends its rays to the earth. If we speak about the relationship of sending and mission among the divine persons, only the third basis of sending can be considered.

When Scripture speaks of the Father “sending” the Son, and the Son being “sent,” this does not indicate an inferiority or lesser status, but simply expresses the eternal relationship of origin within the Trinity, which is reflected in the temporal mission of the Son in the world. The concept of “sending” (missio) in the context of the Trinity differs fundamentally from human sending, which is usually based on authority or hierarchy. In the Trinity, the mission is based solely on the eternal procession or origin of the persons: the Father sends the Son because the Son proceeds from the Father, not because the Son is in any way less divine or less worthy. Thus, in the context of the Trinitarian missions, being “sent” refers to the manifestation of the Son’s origin from the Father in the world, not to any ontological subordination. Furthermore, the new mode of presence brought about by the mission (sending) does not create an ontological hierarchy within the Trinity. Rather, it establishes a new relationship with creation, not among the divine persons themselves.

Therefore, John 13:16 does not address the inner-Trinitarian relationship of essence (ousia), but rather the relationship between Jesus, his disciples, and the Father within the economy of salvation. The Son’s being “sent” refers to his mission in the world, not to his divinity or status within the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinitarian missions fully preserves the ontological equality of the Father and the Son: the difference is not of nature or dignity, but of origin and mission.

57

How Did Watchtower Sell the "Jonadab" Concept ?

by Sea Breeze in

simply put; gullible people were told if they chose life on earth instead of heaven, they wouldn't have to die.

that's how they sold it.

the watchtower lied to people in the 1920 booklet and convention series titled "millions now living will never die!

aqwsed12345

@Vanderhoven7

No one is incorporated into Christ by a doctrinal checklist; the decisive question is whether the soul dies in sanctifying grace, which can be possessed only through union—at least implicit—with the visible Church that is Christ’s Mystical Body. When a Protestant is validly baptized in the Trinitarian formula, the indelible character of that sacrament grafts him onto the Church in re, not merely in voto. From that moment every supernatural act of faith, hope, and charity he makes is nourished by juices that rise through Catholic roots, because the one saving economy established by God admits of no rival streams of grace. The Council of Trent therefore acknowledged the validity of baptism conferred even by heretics, and Vatican II, echoing Pius XII, speaks of “many elements of sanctification and truth” that subsist in the ecclesial communities separated from Rome; through these the Holy Spirit “impels towards Catholic unity.”

Yet the same Fathers also insisted that these communities suffer grave wounds: the absence of sacramental priesthood and Eucharist, the eclipse of Marian dogma, the loss of the ordinary means of reconciliation, a diminished sense of the communion of saints. These privations are not neutral; they are objective defects in the substance of revealed religion and, if knowingly embraced, constitute formal heresy or schism, which severs supernatural life. The distinction is crucial. Most Protestants are heirs, not architects, of separation; they reject our claims not out of contumacy but from inherited convictions and cultural formation. In Thomistic terms they are “material” rather than “formal” dissenters; whatever error clings to their intellect is often accompanied by an upright will sincerely seeking God. Where invincible ignorance excuses, grace can heal: the theological virtues elicited by baptism dispose them, at the hour of death, to the further light by which Christ may manifest the full deposit of faith and invite explicit assent. Should they accept, they die within the Church, though history had kept them outside her canonical boundaries.

This mercy, however, is no charter for complacency. Because God has willed that the ordinary means of perseverance are the sacraments and doctrine entrusted to Peter, a Protestant knowingly refusing those remedies, or a Catholic abandoning them, imperils salvation. Likewise the Catholic may not adopt a false irenicism as though Marian dogmas or the sacrifice of the Mass were expendable ornaments. They are part of the “whole Christ,” without whom the seed of baptism struggles to reach full stature. Hence the Church both acknowledges what is already Catholic in our separated brethren—real though incomplete communion—and at the same time pleads for their return, knowing that the plenitude of truth and the ordinary assurance of final perseverance are found only where Peter’s faith cannot fail.

We readily admit that it often costs a person considerable effort to discover the essential difference between false or erroneous religions and the true one. Upbringing, environment, and prejudices absorbed without critical reflection can make orientation very difficult. Yet it is objectively impossible that God should have rendered the true religion so unrecognizable, giving it no marks by which it can be known and distinguished from error. In fact, whoever pursues the matter seriously and studies the Catholic religion and the other religions without bias will, with almost infallible certainty, arrive at the recognition of the one true Church.

The mere fact that we worship one God does not mean it is irrelevant how we worship Him or what we regard as His revelation and command. Jews and Muslims, too, worship the one God, yet it surely makes a difference whether one is a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian. Likewise, it is not indifferent whether, as a Christian, I serve and adore God within the framework of the Catholic religion—which possesses the fullness of faith and rests on the divine will—or within systems that in greater or lesser matters conflict with God’s ordinances.

At the same time, we do not claim that everyone outside the Catholic Church is automatically lost and only Catholics can be saved. One question is whether a religion is in itself true and exclusively correct; quite another is whether individuals who are objectively in error may nonetheless be free of personal fault and therefore not morally culpable for their mistake. A person who clings to an erroneous religion not out of negligence, contempt, or obstinacy, but because he is the victim of honest misjudgment, commits no sin on that account and need not be damned for it. Nevertheless, it is everyone’s most sacred duty to seek the truth, God’s revelation and will—hence the true religion—according to the best of one’s ability, and, once found, to embrace it in spite of every obstacle. If someone remains in error through no fault of his own, he does not sin; but if he recognizes the truth and refuses to follow it, he commits a grave sin and may be lost because of it.

We acknowledge that other denominations, too, have devout and God-fearing members, and even martyrs; for it is one thing to ask whether the creed they profess is true and legitimate, and quite another to judge how fully they, as individuals, conform in conscience to the law they recognize as right. Subjectively, even a pagan can be God-fearing, noble, heroic, even martyr-spirited; that does not follow that pagan doctrines are therefore true. Moreover, Christians who stand in error do not err in every article, but only in certain teachings. In most of the fundamental questions the Eastern Orthodox hold the full truth: the existence of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation and Redemption, judgment and eternal life, the necessary co-operation of grace and free will, the sacraments. The Eastern Orthodox go to confession, receive Communion and confirmation as we do; they honor the Blessed Virgin, celebrate a valid Mass, possess validly ordained bishops and priests, and so on. Even broken fragments of the true religion radiate such vital power that, under their influence, many upright and well-intentioned souls among its adherents bring forth heroic manifestations of holiness and piety. Likewise, among Protestants there lives much of the ancient Catholic truth and much heartfelt devotion; many deeds pleasing to God are done. Yet all this does not cancel the fact that their doctrines are erroneous in certain essential matters—above all in denying ecclesial unity.

Is it therefore possible that someone who follows an erroneous faith may nevertheless be saved, even become a saint and a martyr? Yes, it is possible. We must suppose that even among non-Christians many obtain grace if in spirit they have sought the path of truth and have remained within some non-Christian religion only through inculpable error. The working of grace embraces a wider circle than the Church’s visible boundaries. By Christ’s appointment the Church is the ordinary guardian for obtaining and increasing divine grace and holds its special and abundant means; but this does not mean that the stream of grace never trickles beyond her banks. The two theses are not mutually exclusive: that the Catholic Church is Christ’s true Church, and yet that in extraordinary ways those outside her visible fold can be saved—through that very Church to which they belonged, albeit unconsciously, in spirit.

You might ask whether it then makes no difference to which denomination one belongs. That conclusion would be false. It matters greatly. If a person recognizes the true Church and yet refuses to follow her, he commits a grave sin against the Holy Spirit and, unless he repents and repairs it, cannot be saved at all. Membership of the Church is Christ’s most stringent command and an objective condition for salvation. “If he refuses to hear the Church,” says Jesus (Mt 18:17), “let him be to you as a heathen and a tax-collector.” This means: whoever, in spite of the lawful preaching of the Church’s ministers, does not believe will be condemned (Mk 16:16). Non-membership is guiltless only when it results from invincible and honest error—that is, when someone neither knows nor suspects that he ought to join the Catholic Church. This is the sense of the ancient Christian expression “no salvation outside the Church.”

Many say the notion of “the one saving Church” is extreme intolerance; yet, as shown, it is not. Were this principle intolerant, then Christ Himself would have committed the first and greatest intolerance when He declared that whoever will not receive the teaching of His disciples and believe it “will be condemned.” There, on Christ’s own lips, is the first formulation of the one saving Church. Is it intolerant if we say, “we have only one homeland”? If a country can be but one, why should not the Lord Jesus’ realm, the Church, be even more indivisibly one?

Our Lord instituted only one lawful and unified Church; therefore every “church” or denomination that stands opposed to this one lawful Church and separates itself from her is in error and illegitimate. This is not lack of tolerance, but consistency and fidelity to Christ’s ordinance. Of course, tolerance remains a Christian virtue, and the Catholic Church is tolerant. Yet tolerance is of two kinds. There is doctrinal or theoretical “tolerance,” which, for the sake of peace, would sacrifice divine revelation itself: that the Church rejects. And there is civil or practical tolerance, which seeks to live in peace and charity with neighbors who are in error, without approving their error or placing it on a level with the truth. The Catholic Church knows no doctrinal tolerance—she would see that as treason against Christ—but she does practice civil tolerance, often to a degree surpassing others.

You may ask whether, then, every Protestant must be considered a wrong-doer because he still clings to Luther’s and Calvin’s doctrines. If someone, knowing all this, willfully clings to ecclesiastical rebellion, he indeed cannot be acquitted of grave guilt and complicity in sin. Most present-day Protestants, however, do not know these facts and perhaps cannot easily understand them, because from childhood they have been taught and made to believe that Luther’s and Calvin’s revolt was not only lawful but divinely ordained. The chief strength of Protestantism lies in its skillful and unceasing propaganda, by which it continually re-inculcates its ideas into its adherents; only a few realize that the whole mental framework in which they were trained is erroneous. Yet whoever does realize it generally draws nearer to the Catholic Church; in countries like in the UK or in the USA tens of thousands return every year, including ministers. Religious division today is maintained chiefly by ignorance on one side and passion on the other, not by calm consideration, solid reasoning, or sound evidence.

So, the answer is twofold. Protestant Trinitarians who, through no grave fault of their own, remain outside visible unity can indeed be saved, but never by a salvation proper to Protestantism. If they reach heaven, it is because the merits of Christ and the mediation of His Catholic Church have secretly nourished them and, in their last conscious moment, found no obstinate resistance. Those who would knowingly repudiate the Church once they have recognized her as the divine ark place themselves under the condemnation Saint John describes. Charity therefore obliges Catholics to evangelize, and prudence forbids us to narrow God’s mercy into channels of our own devising while it equally forbids us to widen the gate by denying the objective claims of the one fold and one Shepherd.

66

Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

by BoogerMan in

(matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

(jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

(acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

aqwsed12345

@slimboyfat

A careful reading of the second-century apologists shows that their occasional description of the Logos as ἄγγελος is neither an assertion that Christ belongs ontologically to the angelic order nor a precursor of the modern Watchtower claim that Jesus is Michael. The difficulty arises from a semantic shift that separates the ancient Greek noun ἄγγελος, whose primary sense is “messenger,” from the English loan-word “angel,” which in ordinary parlance designates a created spirit of fixed rank. When the Church Fathers wished to speak of a created angel, they normally supplied an adjective such as “one of the angels” or “one of the ministers,” whereas in Christological contexts they explained why the Word may properly be called ἄγγελος, namely because he is the primordial envoy who makes the Father known. To transpose that functional title into an ontological claim is to wrench their language out of its literary and theological setting.

Justin’s First Apology VI is the passage frequently marshalled in favour of an Arian reading. The Greek, however, is syntactically ambiguous and the critical editions acknowledge competing construals. A straightforward translation, retaining the order of the words, is possible: “We worship and adore the Father … and the Son who came forth from him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow him and are made like him, and the prophetic Spirit.” Even if that rendering is adopted, Justin is not assimilating the Son to the created order; the Son heads the clause, receives divine worship together with the Father, and is specified as the one whom the angelic host follows and resembles. The phrase “other good angels” therefore presupposes a categorical difference between leader and followers, not an identity of nature. Moreover, the same author insists only a few chapters later (XIII) that Christians worship the Son καὶ δεύτερον τάξιν, that is, in second rank, a formulation he repeats in XVI and LXI. The triadic pattern—Father, Son, Spirit—here receives explicit liturgical application, while the angels remain absent; hence scholars from Grabe through Schaff have judged that the mention of angels in VI, if taken with the verb “taught,” explains to the emperor that Christ instructs not only human beings but the angelic ministers as well. Either way, worship is restricted to the three hypostases of the Godhead.

Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho LV–LVI removes the residual ambiguity by defining his vocabulary. The Logos is “called ἄγγελος because he announces to men whatever the Maker of all things wills to declare.” The causal clause—διὰ τὸ ἀγγέλλειν—makes the point unmistakable: the title derives from the activity of revelation; it is not an index of created status. In the same breath Justin affirms that this Messenger “was God even before the creation of the world,” appeared in the theophanies to Abraham and Moses, and is now incarnate in Jesus Christ. One cannot coherently read “even God” (καὶ Θεός) as a predicate of a creature whilst maintaining fidelity to Justin’s insistence that Christians render him λατρεία, the worship owed exclusively to the one true God. To juxtapose “we worship the Father, the Son and the prophetic Spirit” with “we are not atheists” is to declare that denying the full divinity of the Son would collapse Christian monotheism.

The same semantic logic governs Clement of Alexandria. When he calls the Logos ἄγγελος (Paed. I.7) he has already laid down the hermeneutical key in Chapter 3: the Lord “ministers all good to us both as God and as man.” The word ἄγγελος serves him as a metaphor for the revelatory economy of the Old Covenant; it is forced into alien service only when modern readers isolate a single sentence and forget the ontological claims that frame it. Trinitarian theology therefore urges caution against one-liner proof-texting in patristic literature as well. Terms are plastic, context is decisive, and an author’s controlling analogy—fire from fire, light from light, rational word from rational mind—must govern the interpretation of any ontologically subordinate image.

Nor does the Arian appeal to “other good angels” reckon with the apologists’ doctrine of creation. Justin distinguishes between the Logos, “begotten before all creatures,” and the angelic race, “created” (ποίημα, κτίσμα). A being begotten of the Father’s own substance cannot simultaneously belong to the order of creatures without collapsing the apologists’ most basic metaphysical contrast, a contrast they borrowed from Scripture itself: in principio the uncreated Word is with God and is God; through him all things that came to be were made (John 1:1-3). Hebrews attributes that creative agency to the Son precisely to demonstrate his transcendence over angels, who worship him and whose very winds and flames he fashions (Heb 1:5-14). To merge Christ into the angelic host would unravel the epistle’s argument and confound the Church’s baptismal confession, already discernible in Justin’s era.

The modern identification of Jesus with Michael the archangel therefore mistakes both biblical exegesis and patristic semantics. Michael is explicitly “one of the chief princes” (Dan 10:13), a creature who, in Jude 9, does not dare to pronounce judgment in his own name. The pre-existent Christ, by contrast, receives titles, functions and honors reserved for Yahweh alone: he forgives sins, commands worship, and bears the incommunicable Name. The Church Fathers who call him ἄγγελος do so to underline this paradox of divine condescension: the eternal Word stoops to become the envoy, yet without surrendering his equality with the Sender. If that trope is flattened into the claim that Christ is merely a higher member of the angelic species, the Gospel’s central mystery—the Word became flesh—loses both its metaphysical depth and its soteriological power.

66

Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

by BoogerMan in

(matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

(jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

(acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

aqwsed12345

The Arian allegation that Trinitarian theology relies on a verbal sleight-of-hand—treating Christ as an angel when convenient and not an angel when inconvenient—fundamentally misrepresents both the biblical text and the theological tradition it accuses of inconsistency. At the heart of this misunderstanding lies the Greek term angelos (and its Hebrew counterpart mal'akh), which translates to “messenger.” In both linguistic and scriptural contexts, this word denotes a function rather than a fixed ontological category. The Bible employs it flexibly, applying it to created spiritual beings like Michael, who serve as God’s emissaries in the heavenly court, and to the eternal Son, who, before His incarnation, manifests as God’s visible envoy in Old Testament theophanies. Far from being an equivocation, this dual usage reflects a coherent distinction that Trinitarian theology upholds and that early Christian thinkers, including Clement of Alexandria, carefully preserve.

Clement’s discussion in The Instructor (Paedagogus), Book I, Chapter 7, offers a key example of this distinction in action. Surveying the history of divine revelation, he describes how the Logos, the eternal Word, guided Israel under the old covenant through a pedagogy of fear. In this role, Clement notes, the Word “was an angel”—not in the sense of being a created being, but as God’s messenger delivering divine instruction to His people. With the arrival of the new covenant, this same Logos “has appeared” in the flesh as Jesus, shifting the divine approach from fear to love. This statement does not imply that the Logos is a creature; rather, it highlights a functional role in God’s self-revelation, first veiled in theophanic encounters and later fully disclosed in the incarnation. Clement reinforces this interpretation just two chapters earlier in Book I, Chapter 3, where he writes that the Lord “ministers all good to us both as God and as man; as God forgiving sins and as man training us not to sin.” This attribution of divine prerogatives—forgiving sins, a power reserved for God alone in Jewish theology, and receiving worship—directly contradicts the Arian notion of a subordinate, created Logos. Clement’s theology aligns with the Trinitarian affirmation of the Son’s full deity, not the Arian reduction of Christ to a mere creature. By situating the “angel” reference within the context of divine theophanies, Clement aligns with the mainstream Christian tradition, which identifies the “Angel of the LORD” as the pre-incarnate Christ, not a creature like Michael. The Arian attempt to isolate the “angel” metaphor from Clement’s broader theological framework distorts his intent and misrepresents the early Christian consensus.

This perspective is not unique to Clement but echoes across the pre-Nicene Christian tradition. Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 110 AD, repeatedly calls Christ “our God” in his Letter to the Ephesians (Chapter 7), describing Him as “God existing in flesh,” both “made and not made.” Justin Martyr, around 150 AD, in his Dialogue with Trypho (Chapter 56), identifies the “Angel of the LORD” in Old Testament appearances as the pre-incarnate Logos, distinct from created angels, and inherently divine. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing around 180 AD in Against Heresies (Book IV, Chapter 20), asserts that the Son is “eternally with the Father,” co-equal and uncreated. These early voices form a theocentric and incarnational consensus, not an angelocentric one, demonstrating that the divinity of the Son was a foundational belief long before Arius challenged it. When Arius, in the early 4th century, proposed that the Son was a created being, subordinate to the Father, he introduced a novelty that diverged from this established tradition. The fierce resistance to Arianism, culminating in the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, arose not from mere politics but from a theological necessity: if the Son is not fully God, the worship offered to Him in Christian liturgy becomes idolatrous, and His mediation of salvation—reconciling humanity to God—lacks divine efficacy.

The biblical texts undergirding this tradition draw a clear line between the Son and created angels, further dismantling the Arian claim. The “Angel of the LORD” in Old Testament narratives, such as Genesis 16:7-13, Exodus 3:2-6, and Judges 13:18-22, consistently acts with divine authority. In Exodus 3, this figure appears in the burning bush, declares “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” and prompts Moses to hide his face in reverent fear of God. In Judges 13, the “Angel” reveals a name too wonderful to comprehend and accepts worship, actions forbidden to created beings under penalty of blasphemy. By contrast, Michael, the archangel, is portrayed in Daniel 10:13 as “one of the chief princes,” a finite being among others of his kind. In Jude 9, Michael defers judgment to God, saying “The Lord rebuke you,” and in Revelation 12:7, he leads a host of angels in battle but never receives worship or claims divinity. The Epistle to the Hebrews, particularly in Chapter 1, cements this distinction by placing the Son on the side of the Creator—“the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being”—while relegating all angels to the role of “ministering spirits” who worship Him. To conflate Jesus with Michael, as some Arian interpretations might suggest, obliterates this canonical boundary and undermines the text’s explicit emphasis on the Son’s supremacy over all creation.

Thus, the Arian question—“When is an angel not an angel?”—finds a straightforward answer in Trinitarian theology without resorting to verbal trickery. When angelos refers to a created entity like Michael, it describes a finite, spiritual creature fulfilling a messenger’s role. When it applies to the eternal Logos, as in the “Angel of the LORD,” it designates the uncreated Son temporarily acting as God’s envoy, without any compromise to His divine nature. This is not a manipulation of terms but a recognition of the semantic flexibility inherent in the biblical language itself. Clement, the Scriptures, and the early Christian tradition unanimously affirm the Son’s divinity, viewing Him as worthy of worship and co-equal with the Father. The Trinitarian position honors this witness, maintaining that the Son is adored as God because He is, eternally and unchangeably, of the same divine essence as the Father. Far from a sleight-of-hand, this doctrine reflects a consistent and historically grounded interpretation of both Scripture and the faith delivered by the early Church.

The claim that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a late borrowing from earlier pagan triads rests on superficial resemblances and ignores the radically different conceptual worlds in which those systems operate. Sumerian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Hindu religions certainly speak of groups of three deities, but in every case the three are discrete gods who merely cooperate or form a celestial family, not one indivisible being who eternally subsists in three co-equal, co-eternal persons sharing a single undivided essence. In Egyptian theology Osiris, Isis and Horus remain ontologically separate; in classical Hinduism Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Śiva are three hypostases of an impersonal Brahman that itself is expressed through countless other manifestations. By contrast, Christian Trinitarianism is a development internal to Second-Temple Jewish monotheism: it preserves the uncompromising confession that “the LORD is one” (Dt 6:4) while recognizing that the one God is eternally Father, Son and Spirit. The decisive difference is metaphysical—Trinitarianism is concerned with the unity-of-being problem inside strict monotheism; pagan triads never attempt to solve that problem because they are not monotheistic in the first place.

The further assertion that the doctrine stands or falls with the historicity of Jesus, whose existence is said to be unverified, collapses against the consensus of contemporary critical scholarship. Seven undisputed Pauline letters, written within twenty-five years of Jesus’ death, presuppose his public ministry, crucifixion under Pilate and post-mortem appearances (1 Cor 15:3-8). These texts are independent of the later Gospels and are cited by scholars of every ideological stripe as primary data. Outside the New Testament, Tacitus (Annals 15.44) and the most widely accepted stratum of Josephus (Ant. 18.63-64) confirm the execution of “Christus” under Pilate and the continuance of his movement in the first century. The question is therefore not whether Jesus existed—virtually no credentialed historian denies this—but what explanatory framework best accounts for the rise of a community that worships him as “Lord” while remaining convinced that they have not abandoned Jewish monotheism. The earliest Christian answer is already visible in the high Christology of Paul (Phil 2:5-11; 1 Cor 8:6), in the Fourth Gospel’s Logos theology (John 1:1-18) and in the Spirit-Christ-Father benediction that closes the earliest preserved sermon-letter, 2 Corinthians 13:14. These texts pre-date the fourth-century councils by centuries and show that the raw materials of Trinitarian belief arise organically within the first generation of Christianity.

Pagan derivation theories also falter on the decisive role played by Scripture in the fourth-century debates. At Nicaea (AD 325) the term homoousios—“of the same substance”—was adopted precisely because the party defending Christ’s full deity, led by Athanasius, found that every attempt to express the New Testament’s teaching solely in biblical phrases was being reinterpreted by Arius to deny the Son’s co-eternity. The Nicene bishops therefore chose a non-biblical adjective to safeguard the manifest witness of the biblical text. Athanasius defended the term’s use by arguing from Scripture, not by appealing to any pagan precedent. Far from importing foreign mythology, the council used philosophical language as a fence to protect the narrative and doxological claims already embedded in the apostolic writings.

The suggestion that Genesis 1:27, 5:3 and 9:6 dictate a unitarian concept of God misunderstands the analogical logic of the imago Dei. Humankind is said to be made “in” or “according to” God’s image; analogical likeness does not imply identical ontology. To reason backwards from human singular personhood to divine singular personhood would invalidate biblical data that present a complex unity in God, such as the Old Testament “Word,” “Wisdom” and “Spirit” motifs, and the New Testament’s integrated worship of Father, Son and Spirit. Moreover, the image language functions in these texts to ground human dignity and accountability, not to supply a metaphysical definition of divine identity.

Finally, the charge that the resurrection is mythical overlooks the cumulative historical argument for the empty tomb, post-mortem appearances and the origin of the disciples’ belief. The unity of these three phenomena is most convincingly explained if Jesus was in fact raised; alternative hypotheses—hallucination, legend, deliberate fraud—fail to account for the transformation of skeptical individuals such as James and Paul or for the remarkable early consensus that resurrection, not mere immortality, had occurred in the midst of history. Granted the resurrection, the exaltation of Christ to the sphere of divine identity follows, as shown by the earliest Christian worship practices documented in pagan sources such as Pliny’s letter to Trajan (c. AD 112), where believers “sing hymns to Christ as to a god.”

Trinitarian theology therefore cannot be dismissed as a late pagan accretion. It represents the church’s sustained exegetical reflection on the revelation of God in Christ and the Spirit, under the pressure of maintaining Jewish monotheism while honoring the divine prerogatives ascribed to Jesus. The intellectual vocabulary of the councils was drawn from contemporary philosophical resources, but the content it expressed was hammered out in continuous dialogue with the biblical texts and against the resistance of rival proposals that could not do justice to the apostolic witness. The result is not mythology but a coherent account of God that arises from, and remains accountable to, the historical and textual foundations of the Christian faith.

FYI: Did the Trinity Come from Paganism?

66

Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

by BoogerMan in

(matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

(jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

(acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

aqwsed12345

@Rattigan350

The dilemma dissolves once we notice the Bible uses the word “angel” in two very different ways. In most passages it denotes a created, finite spirit-servant of God. But occasionally Scripture applies the same Hebrew and Greek terms (מַלְאָךְ ; ἄγγελος) to God himself when he temporarily appears as a “messenger.” In those theophanies the word describes a role, not an ontological category. The “angel of the LORD” in Genesis, Exodus and Judges speaks as Yahweh, bears his Name, receives divine worship and forgives sin. He is consistently identified as God, yet distinguished from God the Father; Christians therefore recognize him as the Son—Jehovah in self-manifestation, not a creature.

Michael, by contrast, is explicitly introduced as “one of the chief princes” and “your prince” (Dan 10:13, 21), language that places him among the created heavenly host. He never wears the divine Name, is never worshiped, never forgives sin, and in Jude 9 declines even to pronounce judgment in his own authority. Revelation 12 shows him leading fellow angels—something Scripture never does with the Angel of the LORD, who commands angels because he is their Creator (cf. Heb 1:6–7). Michael’s entire portrait is creaturely; the Angel of the LORD’s portrait is divine.

When the New Testament depicts the incarnate Son it never calls him a “created angel.” Hebrews 1 deliberately contrasts the unique Son with “all the angels,” proving his superiority precisely because he is God’s eternal radiance and heir. Calling Jesus “Michael” would flatten that contrast and force us to read the chapter against its grain.

Thus there is no contradiction. “Angel of the LORD” is a divine self-revelation; “archangel Michael” is a mighty but created servant. Jesus can be the first and cannot be the second. Different senses of the same word do not make him both a creature and the Creator; they simply remind us that “angel” sometimes labels function, other times nature, and context decides which.

57

How Did Watchtower Sell the "Jonadab" Concept ?

by Sea Breeze in

simply put; gullible people were told if they chose life on earth instead of heaven, they wouldn't have to die.

that's how they sold it.

the watchtower lied to people in the 1920 booklet and convention series titled "millions now living will never die!

aqwsed12345

@Vanderhoven7

The Catholic Church has never offered anyone a route to heaven that “bypasses” the Cross or excuses him from the obedience of faith; she simply distinguishes between a culpable refusal of revealed truth and the misfortune of never having heard that truth in an intelligible way. When Saint John says that “he who believes not the Son shall not see life” he is speaking, as the context of both Jn 3 and 1 Jn 5 makes plain, about those to whom the Son has actually been proposed and who therefore stand before the drama of acceptance or rejection. Thomas, commenting on the same verses, adds that unbelief becomes mortal when it is “pertinacious”—that is, when it resists the truth once known to be such. The soldier on Hadrian’s Wall and the Bedouin child are not, before any act of their own, in that situation.

Yet neither are they saved by a second, “natural” covenant. If they are saved it is solely because the one sacrifice of Calvary and the one bridal gift of the Church are made present to them by an anticipatory grace that elicits an implicit, seminal act of the very faith you name: faith in a God who is Father, in a mercy that forgives sin, and in a life that conquers death. The Holy Spirit can plant that seed because, as Pius XII teaches in Mystici Corporis, Christ’s merits overflow the visible enclosure of the sacramental economy and can touch those who “by an unconscious desire” are already ordered to the Church. At the instant that seed is accepted it ceases to be merely implicit, for grace is not a vague benevolence but a supernatural light; it contains within itself, virtually, the whole Creed. Should life last, Providence ordinarily leads such a soul toward the explicit confession of Jesus as Lord; should death intervene, Christ, who “enlightens every man” (Jn 1:9), can unveil Himself in the final moment so that the obedience of faith may be perfected or, if spurned, finally judged.

This is no modern novelty. Saint Justin could call the righteous pagan “a Christian unawares”; Saint Thomas could say that a man who follows the light given him “would receive further illumination, even by an angel, sooner than God would fail in what is necessary for salvation”; Pius IX and the Fathers of Vatican II repeat the same doctrine. None of them weaken the necessity of Christ or His Church; they simply refuse to bind the Almighty to the accidents of geography or history when He wishes “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” That refusal is not sophistry; it is theologia crucis, for it confesses that the Blood outpoured on Golgotha is puissant enough to reach even those whose tongues have never formed the sacred Name, provided they do not wilfully shut their hearts against the invitation written on creation and conscience.

Therefore the Church evangelises with urgency—for explicit faith, baptism, and full communion are the ordinary road—and yet she dares to hope for the unevangelised, not because she trusts fallen nature, but because she trusts the pierced Heart of her Spouse.

66

Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

by BoogerMan in

(matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

(jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

(acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

aqwsed12345

@MeanMrMustard

When a Thomist speaks of the “unified reality” that grounds the human capacities for thought, love, freedom, and bodily life, he is pointing to the substantial form of the living human being: the rational or intellective soul. In classical hylomorphism every material substance is a composite of matter (the principle of indeterminacy, the stuff that can receive different shapes) and form (the principle of determination, that which makes the stuff to be this particular kind of thing and equips it for its characteristic operations). In plants and animals the form is already called “soul,” because it is that by which the organism is alive at all; in man the soul is further specified as rational, since it founds powers that rise above the merely organic—universal intellection and free choice.

DNA, neurons, hormonal cascades, and all the biochemical marvels we chart with microscopes belong to the material side of the composite. They are the structures and dispositions that the soul employs as instruments, the way a musician uses strings or pipes. Remove the soul, and the molecular patterns may linger for a while, but the coordinating principle is gone and the organism soon dissolves into a heap of tissues. Conversely, without that molecular scaffolding the soul cannot express its life outwardly: even the highest intellect needs a healthy cortex and sensory data to reason about justice or geometry. Form and matter, therefore, interpenetrate without confusion: the soul is not a ghost floating in a machine, nor is it reducible to genetic code. It is the immanent cause that makes the bodily matter to be a this living, human body—one substance, not two loosely coupled agents.

So the “something there” is not an unknown x that we posit only to cover our ignorance; it is the formal cause whose existence we infer from evident effects. Whenever we see a genuinely human act—abstract thought, free consent, moral resolve—we know that a principle proportionate to such acts must be inside the agent, because nothing can give what it does not possess. The rational soul is grasped, then, not under a microscope but by a metaphysical judgment: these acts exceed the explanatory reach of chemistry alone, therefore the living subject includes an immaterial formative principle. Aristotle and Thomas would call that conclusion science, in the strict sense of a reasoned insight into causes.

Admittedly we do not “locate” the soul the way we trace a chromosome, because the soul is not a parcel of matter; it is the very act by which matter is organized into a living, human whole. But we are not left with a pious shrug either. We can describe the soul’s powers, distinguish its immaterial operations from its organic ones, analyze its relation to the body, and even show (by philosophical argument) that such a form is incorruptible once separated from matter. In short, the Thomist claim is not that we know nothing of the ground of human nature, but that what we know is formal and metaphysical, not another layer of empirically detectable stuff. The soul is precisely that formal act which, together with matter, makes a human being to be—not merely to seem—a rational animal.