Most Orthodox end up quite close to Aquinas in terms of ethics and overall philosophy:

http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php/topic,30018.90.html

Perhaps they do. But do you find me saying your view on Aquinas among laymen is unique? And do you find an orthodox forum to be an authority, especially a thread started by a catholic? A thread I have read btw. I give you that Aquinas is to prefer over other medieval thinkers like Anselm and Ockham. But it is Clear that Aquinas didnt quite get the human psyche and how it really worked. He wasn't even close to the depth of Augustine. Nor of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. He was a great intellectual and a brilliant systematic thinker and theologian. But imagine Aquinas going out for a run. Imagine him actually doing anything that intensifies the Will and thereby proves the reality of things within us that he seems to have neglected.

Plus, you have there Only two Christians basically to choose from from a list of philosophers. Do you seriously believe that a bunch of Christians who seem to understand nothing about philosophy will choose Kant, Nietzsche or Hume above Aquinas? It is enough that one says "Aquinas was a christian" and they would automatically prefer him.

But it is Clear that Aquinas didnt quite get the human psyche and how it really worked. — Beebert

I'm not sure about this, his analysis of the emotions is quite good.

But imagine Aquinas going out for a run. Imagine him actually doing anything that intensifies the Will and thereby proves the reality of things within us that he seems to have neglected. — Beebert

Why would you say Aquinas is incapable of that?

Plus, you have there Only two Christians basically to choose from from a list of philosophers. — Beebert

Sure, except that you don't get to choose amongst them, rather the choice is made for you based on how you answer some questions (not very good questions, I will admit).

Right, so in that case, intention alone wouldn't be sufficient to decide on good or evil, no? — Agustino

To decide what?

To decide what? — Thorongil

To decide whether the action/behaviour is moral or immoral.

And not the person?

And not the person? — Thorongil

Well by deciding on whether the action or behaviour is moral or immoral, we are also deciding with regards to the person no? Or do you reckon that the person is separate from the way they act?

I'm just clarifying. Now, to return to your question, you asked if it was possible to have a good intention and produce a terrible result. I agreed, but it assumes two things. First, it assumes that the good intention alone is what results in the action. It need not. To show why, let's take the example the Catechism uses from your link:

A good intention (for example, that of helping one's neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just

Here what we have is a conflict of intentions, which we might also call a conflict between different orders of volition (in the Augustinian sense). One intends to do something objectively good, helping one's neighbor, by means of something objectively bad, lying. But what is lying if not intending to deceive? Thus, one intends to do good by intending at the same time to do bad, which is contradictory and therefore unjustified. Put differently, one wills to do good as one's long term goal (first order volition) by willing the bad in the present (second order volition). So no, I don't think anything you or the Catechism says conflicts with my position.

Second, it assumes that "terrible" means "immoral." It need not. Remember that I distinguished between immoral and tragic actions. I agreed with your question because "terrible" can mean "tragic" and I took it to mean this.

One intends to do something objectively good, helping one's neighbor, by means of something objectively bad, lying. — Thorongil

I don't think it is right to say that when one lies, for example, to sexual predators or exploiters in order to protect innocents from harm, that one intends to to do something bad in order to fulfill an intention to do something good. Lying in circumstances like that is not "objectively bad" at all, it is good. What matters with moral actions is one's authentic intention to do good to the best of one's understanding.

Also, examples like Agustino's earlier one of killing someone in order to send them to heaven or whatever don't work because such an act takes no account of the wishes of the one acted upon. One's intentions towards another cannot be considered to be truly good at all unless one takes into account to the very best of one's ability the others wishes. This is the "golden rule". This is what it means to treat others as ends in themselves and never as means.

Lying in circumstances like that is not "objectively bad" at all, it is good — Janus

So, the end justifies the means?

No, intention to do good justifies the means. But bear in mind I would say an action cannot be considered to be the expression of a good intention if it takes no account of harms it might cause to innocents or even if it takes no account of substantial harms it might cause to perpetrators.

So, for example, say we lie to a pedophile about the location of a child in order to protect the child from the actions of the pedophile, it cannot rightly be said that we have harmed, or intended to harm, any innocent. If, however, we killed the pedophile, then that would be a different matter altogether.

I think that moral principles can only be given in examples like these which we understand through conscience. This would be where I would agree with Agustino, as this is a kind of 'virtue ethics' practice. It is a cultivation of phronesis, which can never be formulated as a set of general rules and principles that cover all cases.

No, intention to do good justifies the means — Janus

But you could be mistaken about what the good is.

Sure, you can only exercise what you understand to be good intentions to the best of your understanding and ability. There is no final definitive formulation of the good to be arrived at; it is better and better known through better and better understanding, intuition and conscience. Morality can never be encapsulated in any definitive set of rules; it is a living spiritual and ethical journey.

There is no final definitive formulation of the good to be arrived at; it is better and better known through better and better understanding, intuition and conscience. — Janus

A Christian might not agree with that, insofar as this is exactly what the 'revealed word' is supposed to be. On the other hand, in the Buddhist world, the Vinaya is indeed a 'definitive set of rules' for the monastics. It is true, however, in a broader sense, that the Dharma (Buddha's teaching) is in the end 'a raft to cross the river', rather than a final destination. Nevertheless, one ought to beware of 'the dogma of no dogma'.

There's another point, which is that 'you never know what is good for you'. This is amplified past the point of reason in Calvinism, but the fundamental principle is, again, something found in many different spiritual traditions: that as long as one acts from self-centredness and ego (and, who doesn't?) then you can't even aspire to the Good. Everything you choose, everything do you, will be tainted by self-interest. That, I think, is the inner meaning of Augustine's 'Love, and do what you will' - by that I take him to mean, that love itself is the sacrifice of ego.

Incidentally there's quite a good encyclopedia article on the perennial philosophy here.

Well, I was only explicating what the Catechism passage says. I myself am undecided on whether the end can ever justify the means. Most of the time, I don't think it can, but I am well aware of the famous objection about telling a lie to save someone, a version of which you have presented above.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the end never justifies the means, I might invoke the principle of double effect once again to respond to your example. This means that it is the pedophile who is the cause of his being lied to, not the person who lied. An ordinary lie is freely told to deceive the innocent, and is thus wrong, but a lie told to a pedophile when a child's life is on the line is not freely told and not told to an innocent person, but to a criminal.

Everything you choose, everything do you, will be tainted by self-interest. That, I think, is the inner meaning of Augustine's 'Love, and do what you will' - by that I take him to mean, that love itself is the sacrifice of ego. — Wayfarer

Isn't it a matter of degree, though, and not an 'all or nothing' thing? It seem obvious to me that different people are more or less self-interested or loving, and that the same person may be more or less loving at different times and in different situations. There is no absolute perfection in humanity.

as one acts from self-centredness and ego (and, who doesn't?) then you can't even aspire to the Good. — Wayfarer

Here again, it is not all or nothing, I would say. People act more or less from ego. If we could not aspire to the Good, and come to understand it ourselves through firstly discursive thought, and then conscience, intuition and finally wisdom, then there could be no hope whatsoever of any redemption.

So I am not saying there are no general principles of morality, but that real situations may present us with circumstances wherein we are forced to contravene one general moral principle or the other in order to act morally at all. The principles can only ever be guidelines to be mediated by wisdom, not hard and fast rules. So I would say the "dogma of no dogma" is not really all that relevant to what I have been saying.

Think of the Bodhisattva (or was it just a monk, I can't remember?) who is said to have had sex with a woman because she desired him so greatly that he believed she would have killed herself if he did not. Or what about the story of Abraham and Isaac?

There is no absolute perfection in humanity. — Janus

As we're discussing religious philosophies, as a matter of fact, this is exactly what Christ is supposed to be. Take it or leave it but it's is a fundamental principle of Christianity. Not that I'm preaching - it's simply a matter of definition.

The broader point, however, is one which is represented in 'the perennial philosophy'. I mean you could take one of the Gospel sayings - 'not my will, but Thine, be done' (Luke 22:42) and find equivalences in many different religions. The principle is, that the ego or one's sense of self, is what has to be surrendered or laid down, in the spiritual life. So the active agent, the intelligence, that then comes into play, by this act of self-renunciation, is what is named and conceived very differently in those different traditions, as a higher intelligence, or as spirit, or as 'the Christ within'; but I think that the outlines or dynamics can be traced in all of them.

So rather than arguing about whether 'Christianity is better than Buddhism', what this kind of comparative approach seeks to do, is to understand how some of these fundamental principles are represented in different faith traditions. That did help me, for example, to come to a new understanding of my own hereditary religion.

As we're discussing religious philosophies, as a matter of fact, this is exactly what Christ is supposed to be. Take it or leave it but it's is a fundamental principle of Christianity. Not that I'm preaching - it's simply a matter of definition. — Wayfarer

That's true, but I think Christ's perfection is understood to be a special case that is due to his divinity. Some Christians do not believe that Christ was God Incarnate, and I doubt such Christians would, in consequence of that belief, have any consistent grounds for thinking him to be perfect.

I agree with the rest of what you say, and i wouldn't want to argue that Christianity is "better than Buddhism" per se; although I do find it to be more in accordance with my own thoughts about the human condition, it resonates more with me that is, and therefore i will say that I think it is closer to the truth; the truth as I perceive it to be, of course.

Not sure if this is merely a cultural thing because I was raised in a secular family, never went to church except on special occasions such as baptisms and marriages, and first became interested in spirituality through reading Zen texts, and particularly the Bhagavad Gita, and working in the context of Gurdjieff's teachings (not to mention extensive explorations of hallucinogens/entheogens).

Some Christians do not believe that Christ was God Incarnate — Janus

Well, I don't think it's possible for them to disbelieve that and still be Christians. That's the core of Christianity almost.

I think that is for the most part the most common Christian view; but there are alternative interpretations. Have you heard of 'the Cosmic Christ' for example? As far as I understand the idea the Cosmic Christ is the divine-in-incarnation and is universally present in Creation. So, Jesus would have been one who fully realized the divine in himself; and we can all potentially realize the same. This understanding is incompatible with the doctrine of atonement. The idea of atonement makes no sense at all to me, although I acknowledge it is a predominant view among Christians.

I think that is for the most part the most common Christian view; but there are alternative interpretations. Have you heard of 'the Cosmic Christ' for example? As far as I understand the idea the Cosmic Christ is the divine-in-incarnation and is universally present in Creation. So, Jesus would have been one who fully realized the divine in himself; and we can all potentially realize the same. This understanding is incompatible with the doctrine of atonement. The idea of atonement makes no sense at all to me, although I acknowledge it is a predominant view among Christians. — Janus

Yes, of course, I have heard about it - that was quite common with the Theosophical Society and also Steiner's movement if I'm not mistaken. There's also many other less esoteric forms of non-Trinitarian Christianity which take the same principles.

However, the early church fathers and the earliest records that we have show that the earliest Christians did believe that Jesus was God and claimed to be God.

the earliest Christians did believe that Jesus was God and claimed to be God. — Agustino

I don't know if that is at all certain. I have noticed a very interesting book on Amazon called When Jesus became God, which argues that

The Gospel narratives may suggest that Jesus was divine, but they do not insist upon it. Hundreds of years after Jesus' death, the Church councils made Jesus' divinity a central tenet of belief among many of his followers. When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christ's Divinity in the Last Days of Rome by Richard Rubenstein is a narrative history of Christians' early efforts to define Christianity by convening councils and writing creeds. Rubenstein is most interested in the battle between Arius, Presbyter of Alexandria, and Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. Arius said that Christ did not share God's nature but was the first creature God created. Athanasius said that Christ was fully God. At the Council of Nicea in 325, the Church Fathers came down on Athanasius's side and made Arius's belief a heresy.

Also it shouldn't be forgotten that one of the causes of the Great Schism was the argument over whether Jesus was the same substance (I would say 'being') as the Father.

Jesus did say such things as 'I and the Father are One' but whether this amounts to him declaring that he actually is God, is another matter altogether.

The idea of atonement makes no sense at all to me, although I acknowledge it is a predominant view among Christians. — Janus

As I understand it, the Orthodox churches do not accept the 'doctrine of vicarious atonement', i.e. that Jesus 'died for our sins', which is fundamental to most Protestant churches. Of course, they accept the Atonement, but they interpret it in a different way to the Protestants.

All of these questions are, however, theological rather than philosophical in nature.

Jesus did say such things as 'I and the Father are One' but whether this amounts to him declaring that he actually is God, is another matter altogether. — Wayfarer

Check out Jesus` reaction (after the resurrection) when St. Thomas says, "my Lord and my God".

We seem to have circled back around to the thread's topic, all without my prompting. Well done, gentlemen.

So rather than arguing about whether 'Christianity is better than Buddhism' — Wayfarer

I have a question on this point: are you opposed to arguing about not just whether one religion is "better" than another, but whether one religion possesses the fullness of truth?

As I distinguished in my OP, there is obviously truth in religion, but the more interesting and important question, for me, is whether any particular religion is true. The comparative approach is drearily academic. It has no existential import, and it leads nowhere, since there is no such thing as "religion in general" to convert to. There are only religions, plural. A neutral observer, such as myself, can notice and appreciate the similarities between religions, but this doesn't affect my life one iota. It merely adds to the pile of facts that I know, leaving unfulfilled the yearning for wisdom, which is more than simply knowing a set of facts.

Whatever else religions may be, they are surely wisdom traditions, vehicles not simply for the accumulation of bland, discursive knowledge, but for personal transformation and for better states of knowledge. It doesn't seem possible to experience these things without being on the inside of a religion. But the desire for them can't be made the primary reason one converts to a religion. That reason ought to be because it is true. Unless one is reasonably confident of the latter, then attempting to experience the former will be impossible whether inside or out. On the inside, one would be forced to lie, and on the outside, one would be forced to coldly appropriate. Either way, the cognitive dissonance would be too great to give one any peace, which, in part, is precisely what one is seeking. This is why the search for whether any religion is true ought to come first and the search for similarities between religions second, which in fact will follow as a matter of course from the first.

This is why the search for whether any religion is true ought to come first and the search for similarities between religions second, which in fact will follow as a matter of course from the first. — Thorongil

I have previously described that my approach to religion was originally through the quest for spiritual enlightenment (Janus and I have a lot in common in that respect). At the time - late teens and 20's - had you said I was interested in religion per se, I would have denied it. To me, 'religion' was the ossified remnants of past truths, which had lost its vitality and relevance by being repeated by followers who didn't understand its original meaning; 'crystallised into dogma', I would have said. I thought that religion had originally arisen from maverick individuals who stepped outside what I called the 'consensus reality' and realised the state which is symbolically referred to as being 'the Kingdom of Heaven', Nirvāṇa, Mokṣa or liberation. Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, D T Suzuki, Alan Watts and Krishnamurti and the Adyar Bookshop were all central to this phase in my development. I was also deeply moved by one of the 'ur-texts' of the New Age, R. M. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness. He says that religious revelations describe a state of being which humanity is evolving towards, a state which is as far above ordinary human consciousness as we are now above animals. His book also was cross-cultural, aimed at showing that the state he called 'cosmic consciousness' was a constant that varied only in its cultural trappings. Ergo, my attitude was generally 'counter-cultural' - Theodore Roszak's books Where the Wasteland Ends and The Making of a Counter-Culture were also big influences. I was convinced that the mainstream understanding was fatally mistaken. (In that I haven't changed.)

I can see a lot to criticize with this now, although I will still defend it, on the grounds that it does provide a paradigm within which religious truths are 'truths of experience'; they are 'experiential', even if not 'empirical' in the ordinary sense. That is why I earlier posted the Huston Smith diagram. The different traditions all depict the 'topography of the unknown' - the landscape of spiritual realisation, as presented in the writings of numerous sages, seers and traditions.

As I indicated in my first (sarcastic) response, this mitigates against the atheist argument: that religions, generally, are all exclusivist, and contradictory. Atheists will generally argue that each tradition says that it alone possess the Ultimate Truth - and yet they all disagree with one another. What better evidence that they're all talking malarky? Whereas, in this 'experiential' view, what we see in the 'testimony of sages' are glimpses of a genuinely higher domain of truth:

The "perennial philosophy" is ...defined as a doctrine which holds, first, that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; secondly, that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; third, that the sages of old have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and finally that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Edward Conze

A reader review of Huston Smith's book Forgotten Truths

there are "levels of being" such that the more real is also the more valuable; these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within. On the very lowest level is the material/physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels. On the very highest/deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute -- that is, God [or in Buddhism, the Dharmakaya].

Basically this book is an attempt to recover this view of reality from materialism, scientism, and "postmodernism." It does not attempt to adjudicate among religions (or philosophies), it does not spell out any of the important differences between world faiths, and it is not intended to substitute a "new" religion for the specific faiths which already exist.

Nor should any such project be expected from a work that expressly focuses on what religions have in common. Far from showing that all religions are somehow "the same," Smith in fact shows that religions have a "common" core only at a sufficiently general level.

None of this mitigates against Christianity, per se, although it plainly can't be reconciled with the idea that Christianity is the only true religion; and I think that attitude is very deeply embedded in Western culture. It is one of the reasons that Western culture seems to oscillate between fundamentalism and atheism; you either accept the one true faith entirely, or you reject it completely, and it's all a matter of belief. How many of the debates about religion on this and other forums are underwritten by that implicit view?

But as far as individual practitioners are concerned, if they can put that 'triumphalist' attitude aside, I think they are fully justified in accepting that their particular path is indeed THE path, and the only one that is needed, even if others exist.

__//|\\__
Wayfarer

__//|\\__
Wayfarer — Wayfarer

Namasteeee

"There are as many paths to God as there are souls on the Earth." (perennialism)
Although it is a bit magniloquent sentence, i can say that it epitomizes a perennial position.
On the other hand, the paths in question are different (or cognate) traditions whom people can follow, then i can say that without traditionalism, perennialism turns into a kind of unamenable syncreticism. All new age bullshists comprises of this type of unamenable manners. We can compare traditions with different kind of architectural systems. All of them are tested, practiced and developed throughout ages, they contained experiences of ages and if you decide to construct any kind of building you would practice one of them. If you are a master, you can devise new one, possible.

However, there is no doubt that all masters are not real masters, some of them are false and this is another subject. Without a reliable path(tradition), you can not reach the goal. Because of this reason, most of well-known perennialist ( such as Sayyed Hussein Nasr or Rene Guenon) are also traditionalists.

I think, i said last words. Impressive :)

Hey Pacem, didn't notice your post until now. Agree with you. I bet you and are probably about the only two people on this Forum to whom the names you mentioned will mean anything ;-)