mfbukowski Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, Teancum said: Things really are mutually exclusive. The later Wittgenstein Frege’s theory of meaning, for all its sophistication, relied on an unsatisfactory account of thoughts as abstract objects. The Tractatus did not have to deal with such a problem, because it treated meaning—and language altogether—independently of the ways in which language is actually used by human beings. Less than 10 years after the work’s completion, however, Wittgenstein came to believe that this dimension of language is of paramount importance. Without some account of it, he now thought, the entire system of the Tractatus would collapse like a house of cards. In writings and teachings from 1930 on, accordingly, he emphasized the connections between words and practical human activities. Words are animated, or given meanings, by such activities—and only by them. In the variety of little stories describing what he calls “language games,” Wittgenstein imagined people counting, calling for tools, giving directions, and so on. Comparing the meaning of a word to the power of a piece in chess, he insisted that it is only in the context of human activity that meaning exists. By conceiving of language apart from its users, therefore, the Tractatus had overlooked its very essence. The slogan accordingly associated with Wittgenstein’s later work is that “Meaning is use,” though he himself never expressed this view in such an unqualified form. One of Wittgenstein’s principal themes is the open-ended or open-textured nature of linguistic dispositions. Although it may seem, especially to philosophers, that word usage is determined by the application of distinct and definite rules—and thus that knowing the meaning of a word is the same as knowing the corresponding rule—careful examination of actual speech situations shows that in no case can a single rule account for the countless variety of uses to which an individual word may be put. Wittgenstein asks, for example, what rule would explain the great variety of things that may be called a game. When one looks for something that all games have in common, one finds only “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.” The different games seem to be united only by a vague “family resemblance.” The usage of the word, therefore, is determined not by a complicated rule or definition—even one applied unconsciously—but only by a fairly relaxed disposition to include some things and to exclude others. If there is any rule involved at all, it is a trivial one: call games only those things that are games. Thus, knowledge of word meaning, and membership in the linguistic community generally, is not a matter of knowing rules but only of sharing dispositions to apply words in something like the way other people do. There is no conceptual foundation for this activity: the concept is generated by the usage, not the usage by the concept. This means in particular that word usage cannot be founded in Lockean ideas. Wittgenstein’s refutation of this view is one of the most devastating short proofs in philosophy. He first poses the problem of how someone can understand the order to bring a red flower from a meadow: “How is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word?” One possibility is that the hearer associates the word red with an idea (a mental image of red) and then looks for a flower matching the image. Wittgenstein says, But this is not the only way of searching and it isn’t the usual way. We go, look about us, walk up to a flower and pick it, without comparing it to anything. To see that the process of obeying the order can be of this kind, consider the order “imagine a red patch.” You are not tempted in this case to think that before obeying you must have imagined a red patch to serve you as a pattern for the red patch which you were ordered to imagine. The most-celebrated passages in Wittgenstein’s late masterpiece Philosophical Investigations (1953) attempt to unseat the notion of private experience. Their interpretation is endlessly controversial, but the basic idea is that objects of thought cannot include elements that are purely “private” to a single individual—as sensations, for example, are supposed to be. For if there were private objects of thought, then there could be no distinction, in what one says about one’s own thoughts, between being right and merely seeming to be right. Objects of thought, therefore, must be essentially public, checkable items about which one can in principle converse with others. Not only experience and observation but also reason and logic are transfigured in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. For Frege and Russell, the propositions of logic and mathematics are pristinely independent of sense experience, depending for their truth only on the structures of the abstract world they describe—a world made accessible to human beings through the light of pure reason. This vision was later somewhat compromised by the logical positivists’ assimilation of logic and mathematics to tautology and convention. In the later Wittgenstein, however, the entire distinction between logical and empirical truth becomes unclear. Logic, for example, is a set of practices and therefore a language, perfectly in order as it stands; what counts in logic as a correct application of a term or a permissible inference, therefore, depends only on what logicians do. As with word meanings in more-ordinary contexts, what matters are the settled dispositions of those who use the language in question. Because these dispositions may change, however, meaning is not—at least in principle—fixed and immutable. The rules reflecting common usage, including even fundamental physical principles and the laws of logic themselves, may change, provided enough of the relevant linguistic community begins using old words in new ways. The securest and most certain of truths may be coherently rejected, given that the rules underlying them have changed appropriately. There are no “higher” rules by which to evaluate these changes. An uncomfortable vision opens up at this point. The very idea of truth seems to presuppose some notion of correctness in the application of words. If one calls a hippopotamus a cow, except metaphorically or analogically, then presumably one has gotten something wrong. But if the rule for applying the word cow is derived entirely from linguistic practice, what would make this case merely a mistake and not a change in the rule—and thus a change in what the word cow means? An adequate answer to this question would seem to require some account of what it is for a rule to be “in force.” Wittgenstein suggests in some passages that there is no substance to this notion: in normal times, everyone dances in step, and that is all there is to it. This suggestion is made with particular force in the discussion of rule following in the Philosophical Investigations. It is clear nevertheless that Wittgenstein believed that the distinction between mistake and innovation could be made. Ordinary language philosophy Wittgenstein’s later philosophy represents a complete repudiation of the notion of an ideal language. Nothing can be achieved by the attempt to construct one, he believed. There is no direct or infallible foundation of meaning for an ideal language to make transparent. There is no definitive set of conceptual categories for an ideal language to employ. Ultimately, there can be no separation between language and life and no single standard for how living is to be done. One consequence of this view—that ordinary language must be in good order as it is—was drawn most enthusiastically by Wittgenstein’s followers in Oxford. Their work gave rise to a school known as ordinary language philosophy, whose most influential member was J.L. Austin (1911–60). Rather as political conservatives such as Edmund Burke (1729–97) supposed that inherited traditions and forms of government were much more trustworthy than revolutionary blueprints for change, so Austin and his followers believed that the inherited categories and distinctions embedded in ordinary language were the best guide to philosophical truth. The movement was marked by a schoolmasterly insistence on punctilious attention to what one says, which proved more enduring than any result the movement claimed to have achieved. The fundamental problem faced by ordinary language philosophy was that ordinary language is not self-interpreting. To assert, for example, that it already embodies a solution to the mind-body problem (see mind-body dualism) presupposes that it is possible to determine what that solution is; yet there does not seem to be a method of doing so that does not entangle one in all the familiar difficulties associated with that debate. Ordinary language philosophy was charged with reducing philosophy to a self-contained game of words, thus preventing it from real engagement with the world of things. This criticism, however, underestimated the depth of the linguistic turn. The whole point of Frege’s revolution was that the best—and indeed the only—access to things is through language, so there can be no principled distinction between reflection on things such as numbers, values, minds, freedom, and God and reflection on the language in which such things are talked about. Nevertheless, it is generally acknowledged that the approach taken by ordinary language philosophy tended to discourage philosophical engagement with new developments in other intellectual fields, especially those related to science. Later work on meaning Indeterminacy and hermeneutics Quine The American philosopher W.V.O. Quine (1908–2000) was the most influential member of a new generation of philosophers who, though still scientific in their worldview, were dissatisfied with logical positivism. In his seminal paper “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951), Quine rejected, as what he considered the first dogma, the idea that there is a sharp division between logic and empirical science. He argued, in a vein reminiscent of the later Wittgenstein, that there is nothing in the logical structure of a language that is inherently immune to change, given appropriate empirical circumstances. Just as the theory of special relativity undermines the fundamental idea that events simultaneous to one observer are simultaneous to all observers, so other changes in what human beings know can alter even their most basic and ingrained inferential habits. The other dogma of empiricism, according to Quine, is that associated with each scientific or empirical sentence is a determinate set of circumstances whose experience by an observer would count as disconfirming evidence for the sentence in question. Quine argued that the evidentiary links between science and experience are not, in this sense, “one to one.” The true structure of science is better compared to a web, in which there are interlinking chains of support for any single part. Thus, it is never clear what sentences are disconfirmed by “recalcitrant experience”; any given sentence may be retained, provided appropriate adjustments are made elsewhere. Similar views were expressed by the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars (1912–89), who rejected what he called the “myth of the given”: the idea that in observation, whether of the world or of the mind, any truths or facts are transparently present. The same idea figured prominently in the deconstruction of the “metaphysics of presence” undertaken by the French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). If language has no fixed logical properties and no simple relationship to experience, it may seem close to having no determinate meaning at all. This was in fact the conclusion Quine drew. He argued that, since there are no coherent criteria for determining when two words have the same meaning, the very notion of meaning is philosophically suspect. He further justified this pessimism by means of a thought experiment concerning “radical translation”: a linguist is faced with the task of translating a completely alien language without relying on collateral information from bilinguals or other informants. The method of the translator must be to correlate dispositions to verbal behaviour with events in the alien’s environment, until eventually enough structure can be discerned to impose a grammar and a lexicon. But the inevitable upshot of the exercise is indeterminacy. Any two such linguists may construct “translation manuals” that account for all the evidence equally well but that “stand in no sort of equivalence, however loose.” This is not because there is some determinate meaning—a unique content belonging to the words—that one or the other or both translators failed to discover. It is because the notion of determinate meaning simply does not apply. There is, as Quine said, no “fact of the matter” regarding what the words mean. Load Next Page https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-language/The-later-Wittgenstein Edited January 25, 2022 by mfbukowski Added link to source
Navidad Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 2 hours ago, Teancum said: Mark has created a paradigm for himself that the LDS Church does not teach. It does not teach it is the most truest. It teaches it is the ONLY TRUE AND LIVING CHURCH. This is among the many reasons I have trouble taking him seriously. I'll stand up for Mark! He is almost as quirky as I am. I don't understand half of what he says. I don't understand half of what I say. He is capable of saying some brilliant things and some really dumb (no offense, Mark) things. So am I. Through it all he truly and passionately believes in his faith. So do I! So when I stand up for him; I also stand up for me, as well as for most all of us here on this forum - quirkiness and all! 1
Teancum Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 11 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: CFR on bolding. There are no true THINGS and the concept is itself incoherent. I wil not give you a CFR until you do for me. 11 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: Linguistic statements find meaning through their context and interpretation. - Ludwig Wittgenstein You are asking for me to reference on every post I have ever made, retroactively. Absurd. No I am not. I am asking for CFRs that any LDS authority agrees with your approach. If you cannot do that well OK. Then as far as the LDS Church goes we can ignore your paradigm. 11 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: I will not do that, nor can I . I am writing the book and it is about half done Cool. I would love to read it.
Teancum Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 3 minutes ago, Navidad said: I'll stand up for Mark! He is almost as quirky as I am. I don't understand half of what he says. I don't understand half of what I say. He is capable of saying some brilliant things and some really dumb (no offense, Mark) things. So am I. Through it all he truly and passionately believes in his faith. So do I! So when I stand up for him; I also stand up for me, as well as for most all of us here on this forum - quirkiness and all! Ok. But his approach to truth is his own. It is not the approach promoted by the LDS Church nor anyone in authority in said church.
Navidad Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 2 hours ago, JLHPROF said: I agree with much of what you say. But I am trying to determine why the bolded section is phrased as if it's a problem? If it's true then it's true. If it offends others that doesn't need to be a concern. Somewhere it seems like offending someone became the worst sin you can commit. Christ offended people including other religions on a daily basis and remained without sin. I am not usually at a loss for words! I am almost never at a loss for words. As I read your reply, I am indeed at a loss for words. I have to run and go tell my wife. She never will believe this!
Navidad Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 1 hour ago, James 1 5 said: I like what you said and was inspired to think about the type of peace our Lord Jesus Christ gives to us. Peace even while in conflict with the opinions of other people who do not know or agree on what our Lord teaches us and gives to us. I think the type of peace the world offers or tries to offer is less conflict when there is some agreement, which I like when I get some of that. But what is better is to feel at peace with God even when others disagree with what I know God gives to me. So who or what is "the world?" Everything that isn't the LDS church? I long for the peace that passes understanding. I long for more of the Prince of Peace right where I am - Mennonite and all. My peace comes from trusting what God gives me, not from knowing it. I have a hard time understanding certainty as a fruit of the Spirit. Let me go back and check Galatians 5 again. Nope, it's still not there. 1
JLHPROF Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 12 minutes ago, Navidad said: I am not usually at a loss for words! I am almost never at a loss for words. As I read your reply, I am indeed at a loss for words. I have to run and go tell my wife. She never will believe this! Did I say something that disagrees with the gospel as my religion teaches it? I certainly wasn't trying to be offensive but I don't see that I have to downplay the beliefs of my religion any more than I would want you to downplay your faith. 1
mfbukowski Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 1 hour ago, Teancum said: Then why did you say God has told you the LDS Church is the truest religion? IF I said that, I stand by it, in its context. I have a testimony that we have the Doctrines coherently able to perfect humanity, if they were universally accepted. To me, both those statements mean the same thing
Navidad Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) 19 hours ago, JLHPROF said: If we believe the ordinances are required to return to Christ and we believe authority is needed to perform those ordinances then it only stands to reason that we need the help of another man to return to Christ. Wasn't the shed blood and broken body of Christ on the cross the ultimate sacrament/sacrifice? I think that was the ultimate and last sacrifice (ordinance) necessary for anyone to return to Christ. The only one who ever lived with the authority needed to return us to Him, was Him. I rest in the power of his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. I think all other ordinances from that point on whether they be the sacrament, baptism, marriage, feet-washing, ordination, or whatever others are practiced now are testimonies of the sufficiency of that one ultimate sacrifice. Because of that belief, I can never see myself going to the judgment seat of Christ with faith in anything other than the sufficiency of his atonement. When I give an account of my life to Him on that day, do you really really really think He is going to ask about my relationship to and with the LDS church? Or the Mennonite church? Or the Baptist church? The gospel (good news of his death, burial, and resurrection and the sufficiency thereof) is His and His alone. My salvific relationship is with Him and Him alone. My corporate community is the church. Edited January 26, 2022 by Navidad
Navidad Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) 48 minutes ago, Teancum said: Ok. But his approach to truth is his own. It is not the approach promoted by the LDS Church nor anyone in authority in said church. Neither is mine! Ha! See, he and I have much in common! I am on the edge of inside - he is probably on the edge of outside! That puts us remarkably close to each other! Ha! Edited January 25, 2022 by Navidad 1
Navidad Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 20 minutes ago, JLHPROF said: Did I say something that disagrees with the gospel as my religion teaches it? I certainly wasn't trying to be offensive but I don't see that I have to downplay the beliefs of my religion any more than I would want you to downplay your faith. I am not one to ask the first question. My surprise was that it seemed that you were wearing being offensive as an LDS merit badge. I don't ask you to downplay the beliefs of your religion. I would hope that you would regret the offense they cause, just as you might regret pain when you cause it, whether intentional or not. Denying someone a place in eternity with Christ and the Father based on nothing more than their lack of affiliation with your group is indeed the ultimate offensive offense. I am offended by it, but far more importantly I am ready and willing to stand before Christ full of faith in Him and His atonement, and empty of any LDS affiliation other than as my bishop used to say, that of being a "faithful non-Member" and that because my faithfulness is to Him, not to any organization. I apologize to you if my silliness on my other post offended you. I promise you that If I am there, I will have your back before Christ, just as you are! I could wish you would have my back just as I am too. But I guess you can't do that. BTW, I didn't go and tell my wife you made me speechless. She wouldn't have believed it anyway! Take care. 1
JLHPROF Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 21 minutes ago, Navidad said: Wasn't the shed blood and broken body of Christ on the cross the ultimate sacrament/sacrifice? I think that was the ultimate and last sacrifice (ordinance) necessary for anyone to return to Christ. The only one who ever lived with the authority needed to return us to Him, was Him. I rest in the power of his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. I think all other ordinances from that point on whether they be the sacrament, baptism, marriage, feet-washing, ordination, or whatever others are practiced now are testimonies of the sufficiency of that one ultimate sacrifice. Because of that belief, I can never see myself going to the judgment seat of Christ with faith in anything other than the sufficiency of his atonement. When I give an account of my life to Him on that day, do you really really really think He is going to ask about my relationship to and with the LDS church? Or the Mennonite church? Or the Baptist church? The gospel (good news of his death, burial, and resurrection and the sufficiency thereof) is His and His alone. I know that is what you believe. My beliefs are naturally different. My scripture teaches that Baptism is necessary to enter God's Kingdom. My scripture teaches me that the ultimate heavenly blessings come only through the eternal marriage ordinance. And then there are other ordinances that we believe are in scripture that you do not. It comes down to faith and testimony. I don't doubt your testimony of Christ and that Christ will reward you for your faithfulness. My scripture teaches me that all blessings are contingent on obedience to the connected law, not just on belief in Christ. 5 minutes ago, Navidad said: I am not one to ask the first question. My surprise was that it seemed that you were wearing being offensive as an LDS merit badge. I don't ask you to downplay the beliefs of your religion. I would hope that you would regret the offense they cause, just as you might regret pain when you cause it, whether intentional or not. Denying someone a place in eternity with Christ and the Father based on nothing more than their lack of affiliation with your group is indeed the ultimate offensive offense. I am offended by it, but far more importantly I am ready and willing to stand before Christ full of faith in Him and His atonement, and empty of any LDS affiliation other than as my bishop used to say, that of being a "faithful non-Member" and that because my faithfulness is to Him, not to any organization. I apologize to you if my silliness on my other post offended you. I promise you that If I am there, I will have your back before Christ, just as you are! I could wish you would have my back just as I am too. But I guess you can't do that. BTW, I didn't go and tell my wife you made me speechless. She wouldn't have believed it anyway! Take care. I hardly wear it as a badge, but as Paul said "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ". And if I believe in different requirements than another affiliation might I am not ashamed of believing we have something they lack. And I believe faithful non-members will be offered the opportunity at some point to obey the required law and become faithful members so they can receive the blessings of their faithfulness. I cannot believe that a refusal to obey a required law will achieve the same blessing. And for someone as faithful as you I would likewise have your back in praying that you accept of the required steps to receive the blessings of your faith. 1
california boy Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 5 hours ago, Amulek said: I would agree. I can only remember a few instances hearing the expression in real life, but they were always directed at someone else - someone else who was being angry or judgemental about another and were being admonished to remember that they ought to love that person, even if they disapproved of their behavior. I have heard that expression a lot. And it has always been directed at me in relation to being gay. Never about any other sins I may have. The easiest sins to condemn are the ones you are never even tempted to break. 1
James 1 5 Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 42 minutes ago, Navidad said: So who or what is "the world?" Everything that isn't the LDS church? I long for the peace that passes understanding. I long for more of the Prince of Peace right where I am - Mennonite and all. My peace comes from trusting what God gives me, not from knowing it. I have a hard time understanding certainty as a fruit of the Spirit. Let me go back and check Galatians 5 again. Nope, it's still not there. I think you would know if he has given you peace before you would be able to trust that he has. If you don't know it then I think you are just hoping he has. The feeling of faith comes with a sense of certainty to help you to be able to know something. Faith from God comes as a feeling of assurance to help you to know what God is giving to you, including a thought to help you know what God is thinking and trying to communicate to you. Many people read scripture without getting their understanding from God.
mfbukowski Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, Teancum said: Cool. I would love to read it. Start here https://juvenileinstructor.org/pragmatizing-mormonism-and-baptizing-william-james-or-was-william-james-a-closet-mormon-and-joseph-smith-a-proto-pragmatist-part-i-on-william-james-and-mormonism/ Quote: Brigham Young University Philosophy professor and Mormon theologian David Paulsen recognized as much and laid out what he saw as James’s conception of a finitistic God in his article “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and (William) James,” which asserts that James’s conception of God aligns much more closely the God of the Bible than does the absolutistic God of classical theology. Though Paulsen does not mention Joseph Smith or Mormonism in the article, to anyone familiar with Mormon theology, and especially with Paulsen’s previous writings on Mormon theology, the parallel was not difficult to divine. It was not lost on Mormon historian Richard Bushman, who referred to the piece as “stealth theology”-a strategy, Paulsen explains, that, until recently, Mormon philosophers and theologians had to resort to in order to get their works published in reputable academic journals outside of Mormon circles."" __________________________ Even critics like McMurrin knew how close we are to Pragmatism and all of contemporary philosophy Edited January 25, 2022 by mfbukowski 2
mfbukowski Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 49 minutes ago, James 1 5 said: I think you would know if he has given you peace before you would be able to trust that he has. If you don't know it then I think you are just hoping he has. The feeling of faith comes with a sense of certainty to help you to be able to know something. Faith from God comes as a feeling of assurance to help you to know what God is giving to you, including a thought to help you know what God is thinking and trying to communicate to you. Many people read scripture without getting their understanding from God. Rep point
Navidad Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 4 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: Rep point What is a rep point?
Olmec Donald Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 8 hours ago, Saint Bonaventure said: I would argue that, yes, an implication of Matthew 16:18-19 is that Peter was given the authority to bind heaven. In the Catholic Church, this means that there must be a notion of infallibility, even if it's not saying that a particular person is themself infallible. Imo one of the advantages that Catholicism and Mormonism share is, the ability to make relatively rapid and decisive course-adjustments. If the Pope decides that it's time for Mass to be celebrated in the language of the congregation, he can make it happen. If the President of the LDS church decides that it's time to reverse course on racial policy, he can make it happen. If either of them want to make an influential statement about the possibility and implications of intelligent life on other planets, he can do so. On the other hand most Christian religions are often stuck with trying to apply statements made thousands of years ago to situations they were not intended for. There is no real mechanism for inserting new and/or greater light and knowledge, and deeper understanding. I'm not saying that can't happen at the individual and possibly congregational levels, but such can never be given widespread credibility comparable to Biblical writings. So imo whether or not the idea of infallibility is infallible, at least it gives God a theoretical pulpit if He has something to say which wasn't clearly articulated thousands of years ago. 3
Navidad Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 (edited) 3 hours ago, James 1 5 said: I think you would know if he has given you peace before you would be able to trust that he has. If you don't know it then I think you are just hoping he has. The feeling of faith comes with a sense of certainty to help you to be able to know something. Faith from God comes as a feeling of assurance to help you to know what God is giving to you, including a thought to help you know what God is thinking and trying to communicate to you. Many people read scripture without getting their understanding from God. I will just reiterate, faithing and trusting are not about knowing any more than they are about hoping. Faith also isn't a feeling. It doesn't come with a sense of certainty - that is why it is deemed faith. Certainty involves a sort of ego fulfillment. It is about "I am" not about "God is." Again faith is not a feeling. God communicates to me through diligent study of the word and prayer. He does more than try! I don't know who your "many people" are? Do you have anyone or groups in particular in mind? My concern is with people who get an understanding of God without reading scripture or praying. Welcome to the forum! We are a diverse group. Edited January 26, 2022 by Navidad 1
mfbukowski Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 3 hours ago, Navidad said: What is a rep point? The little heart on the bottom right indicates that you like a post It used to be called a "reputation point". Because @James 1 5 is new, we cannot tell him yet that we "like" his post, so I had to spell it out. I am just used to calling them "rep points" 1
Calm Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 (edited) 6 hours ago, Navidad said: So who or what is "the world?" James will have to define it for himself, but most Saints I know use it to mean anything secular, outside the realm of religious faith, or what people generally label as “worldly”. Also use as an alternative for how scriptures use “Babylon”. One really needs to see the context to tell what the most likely definition is. Various usages are mentioned in this talk: https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1974/01/to-be-in-the-world-but-not-of-the-world? Pretty much all are variations on this theme: Quote It is obvious the “world,” as referred to by the Savior, does not mean the sphere on which we live, but an environment created by individuals who live contrary to his teachings. This does not mean or is meant to imply anyone not a member of the Church. Some would see “secular” as disregarding Christ’s teachings even if they are not contrary, so might automatically stick anything secular into the category of “the world”, but I would not since Christ’s influence can be anywhere. Edited January 26, 2022 by Calm 2
mfbukowski Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 5 hours ago, James 1 5 said: I think you would know if he has given you peace before you would be able to trust that he has. If you don't know it then I think you are just hoping he has. The feeling of faith comes with a sense of certainty to help you to be able to know something. Faith from God comes as a feeling of assurance to help you to know what God is giving to you, including a thought to help you know what God is thinking and trying to communicate to you. Many people read scripture without getting their understanding from God. I agree with you, Navidad is a Mennonite, and apparently thinks differently. For us, God communicates with us through feelings. For us faith is a HOPE at first of things unseen Faith is a principle of action As we act on faith, we feel that testimony feeling again and again, and our faith because certainty For other Christians, they believe only in revelation through existing revelation, because they do not have an open canon, their idea of personal revelation is different than ours We believe our certainty comes directly from God, personally At least this is my understanding that other Christians believe that revelation only comes from reading scripture and that Feelings are uncertain and not worth trusting
Calm Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 (edited) 7 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: At least this is my understanding that other Christians believe that revelation only comes from reading scripture and that Feelings are uncertain and not worth trusting Do you mean something more specific than inspiration when using “revelation” here? The Catholic description of Private Revelation doesn’t match what you are describing. Edited January 26, 2022 by Calm
Calm Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 (edited) It would appear Orthodox have a more restricted definition of revelation, meaning spiritual visions. https://orthochristian.com/42352.html Perhaps Orthodox Christian can share if there is a comparable belief to the LDS personal revelation/inspiration. Another term other faiths use is “direct revelation”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_revelation Edited January 26, 2022 by Calm
mfbukowski Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 5 hours ago, Calm said: Do you mean something more specific than inspiration when using “revelation” here? The Catholic description of Private Revelation doesn’t match what you are describing. Well I was going to say "Protestant" but since we were discussing a point brought up by Navidad, I did not want to offend him by implying that he is a "Protestant"and yet all Christians supposedly believe the same thing Confusing to me.
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