just go chronologically
early kierkegaard is best kierkegaard but nowhere near as popular
Why Christianity?
Never read nietszche, if you wanna post a few arguments of his that you found compelling I'll shoot them down.
actually i take that back i didnt realize fear and trembling was published the same year as either/or
either way still go chronologically
Nice. Can you give some thoughts on the infallibility of the Bible? That's almost the only thing I have left to deal with before I can call myself Christian. I.e as it is now I have problems with accepting some parts of it
Bible infallibility is a Protestant thing since they assert that the Bible is the sole source of authority. A better way of putting it is that the Bible contains everything you need to know to attain salvation, and the stuff in there is the stuff God wanted you to know. Apart from that you still need to take into account the fact that it was written by human authors and the purpose of the writings is to drive home a point.
The shit that happens in the bible are mysteries. They are not space magic, the thing that makes miracles miraculous is that they happen. However, they happen in such a way that there is no violation of the physical system, hence the bush burned and was not consumed. Since God is subsistent he expresses himself in the very natural principles that would seemingly not permit his entry. Yet they do permit his entry because he is those very principles.
The bible is 'infallible' because it was divinely revealed, there's a truth in there that we have not been able to exhaust yet.
Once napoleon took the crown from the pope's hands and placed it on his own head as if to coronate himself, and the pope said "I know what you're trying to do, you're trying to destroy Christianity. Well it won't work, because the Church has been trying to do that for nearly two thousand years and we haven't succeeded yet."
So it's not that the bible is infallible like a law is infallible, but that there's something in there that is inexhaustible and even renewable, such that there has never been any idea that was so convincing and so contrary to Christianity that the world would abandon Christianity in favor of it, and to say that this is because people are deluding themselves is an act of sheer naivete.
Thanks fellas.
What about the idea that the Bible is the *only* such source?
And Christianity being the *only* way to know God?
I feel there is so much wisdom in other schools *as well*.
There is, just read maimonides, avicenna, avveroes etc.
Mind you, there's a reason why avveroes is depicted lying at the feet of Aquinas in the Gozzoli painting.
Does buddhism have a point? Sure, but it's incomplete. In buddhism you could for instance stab somebody and still be a fine buddhist because in reality morals are personal and the universal truth is that it was not you that stabbed the guy but that causality aligned in such a way as to drive the knife into him etc etc. Of course in Christianity people have killed for God or for the Church or holy land or whatever, but this differs because it is always an attempt at morality, even if it is a failed one, and since we are human we are also bound to fail, but the truth of Christianity can't fail, we only fall short of it.
Whereas for example buddhism can fail us at a fundamental level with this impersonality/nirvana stuff.
TL;DR Go find out senpai.
No, infallibility of the Scripture is a Catholic dogma.
The thing that Luther and subsequently all protestants and now a lot of Catholics got wrong is that faith is a belief. It's not. Faith is doing the will of God, making his will your own and acting upon his will. A leap of faith is for a Catholic an interesting idea, but in the end, nonsense. You don't need to take a leap because the truths such as the natural law and existance of God lead you to him as well as his own light which illuminates us, much like how Plato described it. But accepting these things is a problem for us because we see things like moderns and we need to go back to how these problems were seen before the 16th century. Empiricism (to stave off the skience thumping atheism, I'm talking about the belief that only the empirical is true), deterministic materialism and utilitarian ethics must be rejected, and we must start seeing things in a very different way. We cannot go back to Jerusalem without seeing things like they were seen by the apostles, which is for us today very hard. To do this you will need a lot of reading, it will take a lot of time and it will take years. It's still going on for me and I try my best. Faith isn't something you take up because it feels nice, in fact, don't go in it for comfort and expect hardship. The Catholic faith isn't a /pol/ like political ideology that gives you values and white children and a strong state, if you enter it because of things like that, you will only delude yourself. user before spoke of how Jesus is a paragon of virtue, which should in itself mean nothing to you, it's not about being nice. To take up faith must mean to take up your cross and reject the humanist view of Christ. He's not a guru and a teacher, he is the second person of the trinity, God himself, being itself, eternal truth.
cont.
As for reading, here's a list, chronological:
Republic, Symposium, Laws, Meno, Phaedo, Apology by Plato,
Politics, Nichomachian Ethics, Categories, De Anima, Metaphysics by Aristotle
Alongside this read History of Philosophy by Fredrick Copleston, vol 1
Jesus of Nazareth by Benedict XVI. and Confessions and City of God by st. Augustine
John Henry Newman wrote the definitive work on why Christianity is necessarily Catholic in Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine.
This should help you understand the Scripture better, especially the importance of the OT, which is a roadblock for many.
Summa Contrra Gentiles is the best point to start with Aquinas, but only after reading Aquinas by Ed Feser and History of Philosophy by Copleston vol 2
Contemporary Catholic philosophy is very strong, especially ethics, best authors are Alasdair MacIntyre and Elizabeth Anscombe. Their most famous works (After Virtue, Whose Justice, Which Rationallity? and Human life, action and ethics) are good entry points, even may serve the best place to start this whole possible journey
Important spiritual works to read, best before sleep, with only a few pages to internalise it:
Immitation of Christ, Diary of st. Faustina, Dark Night of the Soul, Interior of a Castle, Science of the Cross,
Important fiction would include Flannery O'Connor, Chesterton, Gene Wolfe, Dostoevsky, Shusaku Endo, Grahm Greene.