| > I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. And yet intellects like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas did not: what do you 'know' that they did not, or vice versa? Also, are you aware of the encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason")? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio > Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2). * https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d... Further, in your "formal philosophy" studies, how much of logic and proofs did you study? * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-... |
I am not saying I _know_ anything. Rather, I am disappointed in the incredible hubris and overconfidence shown by the Church fathers, not in terms of their faith but in terms of their certainty in the intellectual tools they had available and the extent to which those fumbling tools describe a God who in their own telling is infinite.
Yes I have read large portions of the Summa, Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, Origen, and others, and I am fairly confident in saying that if you strip away the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and their followers, many of the arguments laid out by the patristics become tautologies at best and semantically meaningless at worst.
I am not saying I know what the answers are. Just that we need more humility than what was shown by a church council convened by--checks notes-- a power hungry and opportunistic Roman dictator.