Message from @Deleted User
Discord ID: 323710272940277771
The political spectrum is only so versatile
I can already predict the Marxist arguments.
What are they?
"If you are not for complete public ownership, you are with the bourgeoisie"
Does that criticism hold any weight?
Only if God doesn't exist.
If God exists, it changes the whole social dynamic, as quoted in above passages.
The Church is not publicly owned. If it was it would be destroyed.
Yes, the hierarchy of the church is essential to it's survival.
This is way Aquinas is so important. He uses natural reason to prove that God exists. Basically constructing a material basis for His existence. Marxists have no counterargument, They have to dismiss it as an abstraction or a spook etc.
*"Putting it succinctly, Christ's Church has no intention of yielding ground to her avowed enemy, atheistic communism, without a struggle. This battle will be fought to the end, but with the weapons of Christ!"* Encyclical On Guiding Principles of the Lay Apostolate by Pope Pius XII to the Second World Congress of the Lay Apostolate, 1957
The tradition of scholasticism in the church is a very important one.
It's allowed the Church's theology to be built and strengthened over a period of 2,000 years
Aquinas never could have done what he did without the Church fathers, and going back even farther, aristotle.
When you linked Compendium of Theology, I couldn't believe what I was reading. It is a remarkable achievement that singlehandedly persuated me that Christianity does indeed have intellectual nerve.
The image of Christinaity being a backwards and anti-reason comes mostly from the modern day manifestation of cultural Christianity. It's particularly evident in protestantism.
At first it was extremely disjointing. Up until this point I thought such an achievement was impossible. You are right, Luther ruined everything.
I searched high and low for a coherent counterargument, and found none. I was met with strawmen and stabs in the dark which are individually very weak.
There's a reason most atheists don't really bring up Aquinas.
Like a deer in the headlights. That was me.
"It's an obscurity" "What could a fat virgin possibly know"
lol
Or better yet, "He was from the 13th century!"
TJ sodomized himself with a banana.
Go figure.
He did worse
Abused a mentally ill girl
Just smoke more pot, man.
Herbal relativism.
Never heard that one
Neither had I.
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So at the moment, I cannot refute Aquinas, who also uses reason, following the existence of God, to defend private property. Therefore I cannot freely follow Marxism or Socialism.
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Or should I say, I cannot hold both ideas to be true simultaneously.
This is the line in the sand.