Pericles - regarding your return comments on my use of the word encounter - >>Encounter is the mystery of the Resurrection whereby across the millennia persons in every era experience the encounter with the Risen Lord<<

The encounter is an event with a person, something happens.

Saul (Paul) was on his way to arrest troublesome Jesus followers in Damascus with instructions from the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. He was a faithful, prayerful Jew. This single most encounter altered his understanding to provide new horizons and certainly a decisive direction. From persecutor to preacher and fellow traveller. All other travels, letters, escapes etc in Paul's life flowed from this one direction changing encounter.

The encounter with God, through Jesus Christ the Risen Lord, is without plan or method. That it can happen today in peoples' lives is the mystery in the Resurrection. You feel the real as must have been experienced by Paul and earlier, those fearful followers of the dead Jesus in the locked upper rooms. Yet the ground of faith needs to be prepared, through an active desire and longing, or indeed inner emptiness, that is expressed in prayer, in whatever form.

So the whole Christian mission is to lay the ground for the encounter with God. That is the great pearl of value, the hidden treasure for those seeking. And along the way it does a whole lot of good.

Regarding the secular and the sacred. The cultural secular has been absorbed into the Christmas pageants for as long as I know. Whilst the focus is on the mystery of gift and relationship there has always been a lot of fun along the way.

Barren secularism and its hard hearted adherents start from fun and work back to create a pure environment. It simply does not work.

""Saul (Paul) was on his way to arrest troublesome Jesus followers in Damascus ... Paul's life flowed from this one direction changing encounter.""
Posted by boxgum, Monday, 20 December 2010 3:27:31 PM

So the story goes - some say it was epilepsy, some say he fell off his horse.

The story has Paul having written ideological epistles to followers as far-flung as Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, Phrygia, Anatolia, and Thessalonica. Paul is alleged to have met Peter and the gang, yet the gospel stories had not been written.

Paul is a zealous christian, preaching the christian message...but actually says nothing about the message that this Jesus preached? Is this not remarkable? A message without the founder's message? Without a single saying?

Even when the saying would clinch an argument or press home his message? So many times he skips over what the gospels later said Jesus taught, and quotes the Old Testament.

Early preachers were often at each other's throats, desperately jostling with each for the religiously correct high-ground, often building their epistles around backbiting. Yet Paul repeatedly passes over opportunities to bring quotes to bear that would carry the ultimate authority. The Corinthians, Ephesians, Romans etc know nothing about the founder of their religion who walked recently among only the peoples of distant Judaea and Galilee.

Another irony is there is no evidence for Paul outside the Bible, either.

I’m curious about this, Boxgum...

<<Catholic Tradition places faith and reason as standing side by side, informing each other in the fullness of truth in life and death. They extend and restrain each other.>>

Could you explain how Catholic tradition places faith and reason side-by-side and how they inform each other and extend and restrain each other?

I’ve seen this claimed on OLO a couple of times before; the trouble is, every time I ask someone to expand on what they mean, they seem to disappear

Good one AJP.

It's very hard to know how the Vicar of God could possibly join the dots between those two disparate terms.

Seems there is no reason in Faith, except to keep yourself in the dark, from Reason.

But, if you ask someone with 'Faith' they can only trot out the pat response, which it sounds like you've been getting.

They reckon science and religion are hand and glove too.

Funny, eh?

I keenly anticipate another Bolter AJP.

That doesn't clarify much, boxgum.

>>The encounter is an event with a person, something happens.<<

You haven't actually addressed the key point, though.

If you accept that Paul's encounter didn't actually involve "the risen Lord" in person, did the same apply to those disciples in the closed room?

I fully expect that you are going to tell me that yes, the disciples in the locked upper room actually met, face to face, "the risen Lord" - which of course is proof that he was, indeed, risen.

But that no, Paul did not actually meet "the risen Lord" in person.

It was just an "encounter".

The mental gymnastics that individuals are obliged to endure in the process of picking and choosing which bits to believe, from the smorgasbord of explanations employed in the justification of religious belief, are indeed astounding.

McReal, Boxgum, Rhian, and others:

The historicity of Jesus is a fascinating question and I look forward to continuing research by skilled historians into the matter. Nevertheless, for me as a Christian the question of whether or not Jesus trod the earth is not central to faith. The Jesus narratives are one of the windows or doorways through which I can approach the mystery of the Divine. It matters not that they may not be historically accurate. When it comes to spiritual nourishment, facts are mainly irrelevant; it is the metaphorical, symbolic and imaginative that offer access to the spark of God that shines deep in our unconscious.

As for the question of the relationship between reason and faith, I would say that, in as much as “reason” means logic, faith provides a premise and reason works from that basis. The objections fly thick and fast when some people don’t agree with the premise. So it boils down to what mode of perception one uses to apprehend the premise at the outset. In the main faith does not use the empirical mode, which relies on the bodily senses. It uses the “intuitive”, by which I mean a channel of perception which fastens onto symbols and analogies rather than empirical objects. It’s a road towards inner reality — i.e. that in the human unconscious.

There’s much more I would like to say on this but it must wait for another day. I hope I’ve given you something worth thinking about.