One worry I havr about the Catholic faith is that I see a lot of emphasis on miracles, which I think would astonish a lot of atheists and agnostics if they had the interest to look at it, and trust in the sources for those evidence. Hinduism is also known for this, and obviously occult practices and witchcraft is also real. But once you're past the point of incredulity, which I am, I would be interested in learning more about the framework that is used to discern between genuine holiness and deception.

Orthodoxy has a word for deception, "prelest", for example, and there are guidelines to not communicate with or pay attention to apparitions when they appear or to be skeptical of them, and to be mindful of whether the encounter is producing the fruit of repetance and humility, or if it produces pride— as a way of discerning if it is from God or something else. I have an orthodox friend who says thr miracle of Guadalupe which converted Mexico over night was genuine, but recent (relative to the age of the Church) saints displaying stigmata or the eucharist blossoming hear tissue in a test tube are treated with less eagerness. I'm not sure how this compares to the Holy Fire in Jerusalem, which is probably our most famous miracle.

I am also interested in the relationship between reason and trust, which I haven't figured out yet, since in the Christian worldview, reason is fallen, which I think denotes the danger of over-rationalizing the faith at least, but I am astonished by things like thr Christology unearthed by the Ecumenical Councils, which is only really motivated when the Church is forced to answer heresies with the Grace of correct explanations, so I don't quite understand the impulse to proactively crank the engines of reason, so to speak, to systemize things in the way the Latins have done.

This is the Orthodox perspective I've picked up in the past few years, but I am in awe of the feeling of irreducible belief that I think this touches on.

The attempt to “rationalize” and discover what this higher intuition is saying might look like rejecting reason, even if temporarily. But I think it underscores what is really meant by “rejecting reason”— that understanding the true meaning of a logical argument requires a vigilant process directed by a higher moral directive, to ensure nothing “evil” is laundered through it.

The ecumenical councils were in some ways the means by which they imprisoned and cut away what is valid (according to some presuppositions) to leave only what is sound (according to the presuppositions of the apostles).

It is the opposite of enlighenment carte-blanche thinking, to take a multivariate attack on delusion through reason anchored in a legacy of wisdom. Too bad the schism broke our understanding of this, but it is still preserved in Eastern Orthodoxy.

To me, this means they differ on major categories: corporate, individual, divine, and temporal.

    Evangelicals: we must agree to a common *subset* of beliefs
    Catholics: we must agree to allow contradictory belief systems under the primacy of a single “politically” unifying belief
    Orthodox: we must agree to unite under one belief system

church fathers say that creation fell because of the fall of man

> Without the finality of death, life seems to lose its meaning. Not only do we need to die, we are compelled to die, we should die

deadlines help. the soul is eternal and there is a deadline for the body

> [Job] somehow reconciles this tragic finality with transcendent faith

he later falls into despair when things get worse, who wouldn’t, but he is made well after he is humbled. this golden moment of humility forges him into a true person, winning him heaven not death

“If you die before you die, then when you die you won’t die.“ Death to the world is the last true rebellion.[1]

[1]: https://deathtotheworld.com

We have to remember that the letter and spirit of the law can grow apart over time, and loopholes are often gamed before that naturally happens anyway. So obviously we still need judges to keep the "spiritual" aspect of intent alive, so that evil isn't laundered through technicality.

"Literal" should really be a concrete thing, but it does feel strangely connected to a problem that has existed since Sola Scriptura, up to Gödel's theorem. I think about this everytime software and law collide. That article on "what color are your bits"[1] also comes to mind.

[1]: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

What does this mean?

A larger and more devastating argument I've heard recently is that in order to even create logical statements, you need to be arguing from a worldview that can give an account for the existence of logic that isn't arbitrary (e.g. not "it just is"). And the argument goes that if you can't justify the existence of the tool, you can't justify its usage. This is devastating because if you believe it, then you suddenly must recognize that something prior to and higher than logic must exist in order to inform you of its existence, and it is not subject to the bounds of any logical system founded arbitrarily, but becomes the means by which logic itself coheres into something meaningful.

One way to discover that we necessarily have worldviews outside of logic is to look at a statement like this, and realize it appeals to something outside of logic (feelings) to critique how someone else is only pretending to follow it.