Hi John,

What you say about the deity of Christ are indications, not proofs. Nobody can prove that Christ is or is not the God. To deny His deity is no less an act of faith than to accept it. If one wants to follow only what can be proved, he is obliged to accept that Christ may be the God.

Now, if a person is after truth, what would he do first, than investigate the origin of life, the identity of God, etc., and if there exists even one possibility that Christ is the God, by what motives should such a person ignore this possibility?

In your case, when your faith brought you to accept Christ, the case of the bliss about which the Gospel says, it is important to not forget that this is a bliss not by itself, but because it brought you a real way, it brought you closer to a truth you must prove for yourself, by meeting with Him. When that happens, then you will have real knowledge and complete bliss, but even then you will not be able to convince those who are closed to truth. They still can say that you see illusions, ghosts, etc. It doesn't matter. Just speak with whomever wants to hear and is after truth and not after prejudices.

After reading properly again over all your replies in this thread, George i finally see what you are saying. :)

And my next question is... how?

How does one know Christ?

How does one meet with Him?

Through prayer?

"Experience of truth is necessary"... how do i experience this truth? How do i know that this 'truth' is true?

Is not some kind of belief necesary before any kind relationship is developed with God? One needs to believe in God to know Him.

Or is the invitation you brought up before exactly what is says:

taste and see that the lord is good.

Are we infact being invited to 'try' believing in Christ?

then invited to 'try' having a relationship with Him?

and then we will truly, after partaking in his goodness, see that he is God?

Or am i missing the point?

Also in a previous post you talk about people wanting to be Muslim etc... but what sort of Person would choose not to have a relationship with God; when they know him already? (as i would expect people do before they are born?). In this case all aspects of belief are taken out of the equation because the person already knows God.

John.

I was thinking precisely what you ask, that I forgot to tell you something very important: we can not and must not try to do anything in order to have this meeting. Suffices to have the will, and He knows the right time to come - as a thief in the middle of the dark, unexpected. Each time He comes, is equally unexpected, and while He can come many times in a short period, He can also let many years pass without any appearance at all.

Even to believe in Him is not necessary for His coming. Faith is necessary for a man to begin elevating his will toward God, but it is not necessary for His coming. Did Paul believe when Christ appeared to him? On the contrary, he was against Christians. But obviously he must have had qualities and sensitivities that made him capable of receiving Him, surely a sincere devotion to God. Sincerity means that he was more after truth, than under an ideology.

For your last question. All of us saw Him when we were created, and all of us have denied Him. This is why we are down here. It is unbelievable, how can one deny Him, yet this is what happened - but not without a possibility of change. If we were sure on our denial, we would be where demons are. We are now in some kind of a middle-place, a temporary condition and a chance to return to Him. Papacy expects a www.ellopos.net/search/google.asp?gkw=Purgatory" target="_blank">purgatory after death! This is the purgatory, where we are now, and who among us shall be cleaned, is not certain.

Reading all this, I get the sense that Niels makes a mistake in confounding faith and reason, and from there, asserts that faith is inferior to reason.
But, can we assume that everything that Plato says is perfect, as John said? Is Plato an apostle of reason? If so, why even listen to him and follow him? By doing so, we would indeed destroy reason.

Plato did not prove all of what he said, because, to him, those things were realities. Nowhere is it proven that the Ideas are real, yet the philosopher devised his entire cosmology around them. Similarly, he does not give proof that the soul, before birth, chooses his fate, and is punished or rewarded after death. Those things are to him a fact, the only possible reality. Plato also tells us in book II of the Republic, that God can only be good, and that he cannot change forms, for doing so he could only take a lower form, which is impossible. Yet, once again, nowhere are these assertions proven.

Asserting faith as the antagonist of reason is certainly a product of the enlightenment. The word 'reason' did not have the same meaning in Greek philosophy as it did (and does) in Modern Europe. As George so often repeats, Christianity is first and foremost the experience of divine truth. Now, such experience cannot be proven. It is an experience of the inner aspect of man, an experience that cannot be comprehended.

I would tempt the explanation that this experience, in the various Western christianities, has been obliterated, buried under form and aspect. This mystical aspect, however, has been preserved intact in Orthodox Christianity. It certainly requires a certain amount of understanding, and giving up our common notion of what faith and reason are, to understand this mysticism.

"Is belief irrational?" In other words, is faith irrational? But, Niel, you did not give us what exactly you meant by 'faith' and 'reason.' Do you mean that faith and belief is that which cannot be seen, proven, that which is irrational? But in that case, even modern science is a form of faith and belief, for not all things can be proven. What, after all, tells us that quantum physics is the description of a reality? What even tells us that mathematics are real? Why not, then, believe, following Dostoevsky, that "two times two makes five is sometimes a nice little thing?"

I would like to know what George thinks, on what does Plato mean by reason? Does he mean the liberation from the passions, which impair our ability to think? Or did he mean something else? I doubt, however, that he had in mind what we moderns, say what reason is--the tool of positivist science.

Since this thread is for Baptism (not that we are very far away), I think a new one is necessary now that we concentrate on Plato. Your post very demanding, I can't contribute right now more than a possible start of an answer, at www.ellopos.net/elpenor/koinonia/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=425">Plato, Reason, Philosophy.