Who gets to decide?

[CarpeDiem88]

[b]Amen[/b] and the picture has been seen.

[james]

I hope that humility is not being confused with doubt in this discussion.

While it is true that the saints generally exercised great humility, I do not believe that they doubted the formation of their consciences.

Having well formed consciences, the Saints had a clear perception of their unworthiness due to sin, not due to any perceived lack of formation of their consciences.

A conscience can be said to be properly formed in proportion to it's ability to perceive truth. A conscience that perceives truth does not doubt.

Humility is a virtue. Doubt is not a virtue.

Edited March 28, 2005 by james

[Paphnutius]

Who was talking about doubt?

[james]

[quote name='Paphnutius' date='Mar 28 2005, 12:47 PM'] Who was talking about doubt? [/quote]

The question was asked, "Can a person assess for himself/herself that (s)he truly has a rightly formed conscience? "A number of people have expressed their opinion by answering this question in the negative.

The consequence of that supposition is that one must always doubt the formation of their conscience because they are unable to assess whether their conscience is properly formed.

This leads to a number of problems. If one doubts the formation of their conscience they, in turn, doubt their ability to perceive truth. If a person cannot perceive truth then they cannot truly believe anything regardless of whether the church teaches it or not, for if one cannot perceive truth, how can they perceive that the church is true?

Seeing this supposition taken to it's logical end, one can see that it results in total doubt. So to answer your question, no one mentioned doubt specifically, but it was implied.

Edited March 28, 2005 by james

[Paphnutius]

Oh ok...

It seems like Jeff, hot stuff, and I expressed in the positive. One can assess one's rightly formed conscience so long as it is just that, rightly formed. What one realizes, then, is not how rightly one is formed, but what one is lacking to being rightly formed. Just how unformed one is. If it is about percieving truth, then one recongizes the truth of their own sinfulness, failings, etc... This does not mean they doubt they have a rightly formed consicnece, it is just what one reveals. At the same time however, on recongizes that he is coming closer to Christ, but always keep before him just how far he is from Christ. That is truth. The perception of the truth of our distance from God leads to humility, knowing oneself truly. This also is a perception of the truth of God's love for the individual because of who the individual is, and the is expressed in salvation. I still dont see how Jeff or hot stuff was implying any doubt.