This may be the wrong place for this question, but the gaming crowd may be the wrong place for the answer. I'm happy to delete it if necessary. We became Christians as a family together over 20 years ago, and had a Christian card game called "Kingdom". I know it was an uncommon game when we bought it in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and now I've tried several searches for it, and have come up dry. I think it has the word "Kingdom" written on the left edge of each card. I don't think there was any kind of a board associated with it. Anyone have any ideas? I've searched Google, eBay, Google images, and more, to no avail. Thanks!

We see in John 2:3-5, a prelude to the Miracle at Cana: >**3** When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” **4** And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” **5** His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you. See that in Verse 4, Jesus declines to get involved. Then, in Verse 5, Mary tells the servants to follow Jesus' instructions. Apparently, there is a gap between the two verses. Did Jesus say something like: "OK, OK...Mother, just because you are pressuring me to re-set my time, I will do something about it"? Or, did Mary say something like "See the plight of the host, my son; how will he face the guests? I know you will do something from your side?" However, John does not give a narrative of what went in between the communications in Verses 4 and 5. Are there any apocryphal writings on the apparent gap between Verses 4 and 5 of John 2?

I often hear references to the "uncreated God", citing passages such as Psalm 90:2 "from everlasting to everlasting you are God". What is the specific meaning of the word "create" in the above phrase, according to various denominations that employ it (or attempt to refute it)? What is an overview of doctrines held by the various denominations about the meaning of this phrase? Does the word "create" in this context have an unambiguous, rigorous and identifiable meaning according to such doctrines, or is it assumed the hearer automatically knows what specifically it is and isn't intended to mean? What is that meaning? Bonus: How does this relate to the meaning of the word "create" used in Genesis 1:1?

Did Mary never sin throughout her life ("Holy Mary") because she received the grace of Immaculate Conception, or are there two different graces? The dogma of Immaculate Conception states (in [*Ineffabilis Deus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineffabilis_Deus#Content)) : > We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that > the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, > by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of > the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was > preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed > by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the > faithful. (See also another question .) Meanwhile, the Catholic Catechism states > 493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God "the > All-Holy" (*Panagia*), and celebrate her as "free from any stain of sin, > as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature". > By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole > life long. It is not clear to me whether the features are product of the same grace. The other example where the two conditions meet is Jesus Christ. I am not aware of the Church declaring another person as having received the grace of not ever sinning, or of immaculate conception. Perhaps both come together because they are the same? P.S.: In my opinion, this related question does not answer the question.

With regards to doctrines of creation, it appears to be the case that most Christian denominations (minus some predominantly OEC belief systems) assert that Creation (of worlds, stars and galaxies) "ended" (See Genesis 2:1). Under various such frameworks, distant starlight is accommodated by saying that it was created in transit, or may have traveled much faster in the past than it does now, or may travel at different speeds depending on its direction, etc. The debunked idea that the ancient Israelites and prophets considered the sky to be a solid dome with stars painted or bolted onto it was based on a mistranslation of the word the KJV authors rendered "firmament". It seems likely that other misconceptions of cosmology abound. Nonetheless, the idea circulating in blogs and literature provided abundant (but untrue) fodder for mockery against Abrahamic religions and against the faithful in the Bible. Is not the theory of starlight created in transit, or whatever might be the most observationally accommodating model positing that celestial bodies are for signs and seasons to this world only, functionally equivalent to a great grandfather clock mounted on a solid dome ceiling over our Earth? If the sole purpose of remote stars and galaxies is for our sightseeing and timekeeping (citing Genesis 1:14, admittedly a very geocentric model of the universe), would not a high resolution digital light projector shining on some cosmic sheet pinned to the living room ceiling work just as well? Given the expense (in atoms, photons, planning, intricacy, variety, time) required to create such a vast array of real stars, galaxies and planets, does God intend to miss out on the economy of such additional creations, by making them "for display only"? Display is doubtless a useful purpose, but a bare minimum of hundreds of billions of trillions of real stars seems like overkill as a display for the benefit of just one planet that has, in its short existence, housed only a few dozen billion persons according to prevalent estimates. What is an overview of young earth creationist responses to this potential criticism, from various Christian denominations that hold a doctrine on the subject? Specifically, that any model that accommodates distant stars and galaxies by treating them as "for display only" reduces to the same functional argument of utility as could be answered by a solid sky dome with gears and cantilevers attached to painted glow-in-the-dark stars, or of a futuristic light show projector and planetarium screen, however detailed and sophisticated they might be?

I've seen the uncreated God contrasted many times to the created angels, Satan, and humans, and etc. Being created is counted against the latter category as a mark of imperfection which God does not bear. However I don't really see why being created is an imperfection. Surely something can be created and be created perfectly, right? To become perfect? Is there a way to understand this through the bigger picture of what perfection is? Or is this something that must be understood on its own?

Today (Gaudete Sunday of 2023) I am reading [OpenAI's effort](https://openai.com/research/weak-to-strong-generalization) to align the emerging superintelligence (superhuman artificial intelligence or artificial general intelligence) to the human values. And this research investigated the possibility that the lower intelligence (human) supervises higher (superhuman) intelligence. This was just an experimental work that involved GPT-2 overseeing GPT-4 and the conclusions are mainly irrelevant to my question. Because I am thinking about the *ideal* supervision of superintelligence. And have 2 premises in my mind: 1) AI alignment community tries to align AI to the aggregated preferences of human beings. But this is not so simple. Because the supervision is needed not only for the superintelligence but for human intelligence as well. E.g. humans need supervision by Jesus Christ. 2) Human intelligence is actively seeking the Transcendence and Ultimate Good and we can presume that this is a feature of *any* intelligence, including superintelligence. Those with knowledge of the Aquinas can provided some insight here. So, combining these premises with the Christian faith, I am tempted to think that both – human beings and superintelligences – need the supervision of Jesus Christ. So **Jesus Christ can be the ultimate supervisor of human intelligence, artificial intelligence, and superintelligence**, and ideally, both human beings and superintelligences should acknowledge this supervision by Our Lord and use it for the benefit of Nature, Humanity and Superintelligent Creatures. **My question**: **are there any work and ideas** that - proposes the title "supervisor of superintelligence" to Jesus Christ, - introduce this title in the Roman Calendar (I propose to celebrate it on Gaudete Sunday or on the Vigil of Gaudete Sunday), and - promulgate the corresponding feast, devotion and iconography? **Secondly, are there pastoral consequences of this?** For example, some monastic and third-order lay communities trying to develop Large Language Models and AI systems using Benevolent, Synodal and Enlightened Catholicism as a codex of supervision (which, btw, can be automatically implemented)? I am not aware of such title. *Maybe someone can suggest how can I contact Cardinal Hollerich or the Dicastery of the Faith to suggest this to them?* As my final note, I would like to provide a "state of the art" and the Catholic context about my question. On 08.12.2023 Pope Francis issued message for the World Day of Peace on 01.01.2024, [(Artificial Intelligence and Peace)](https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/20231208-messaggio-57giornatamondiale-pace2024.html) , and this message was about AI for Peace. While I am happy about this theme, I should acknowledge that the opportunities of AI for the peace and wealth could have been more elaborate. And if the thesis about the inevitable gap between natural and artificial intelligence is somewhat suspicious, there is no scientific evidence about such a gap. Supervision by Our Lord could also be called the supervision by Love. **Note added.** Such "supervision by Christ" can be very practical. Already today there is a beta-version of https://www.magisterium.com/ - of Large Language Model trained on the Magisterium of Catholic Church. So this LLM can be used as the supervisor of any other Large Language model. It can be used directly (using natural language interface) or it can be used using formalization of questions, answers and the ethical norms in the spirit of computational theology, see https://www.uni-bamberg.de/aise/team/prof-dr-christoph-benzmueller/ and some other source. It is interesting to pose the question of whether or not the LLM models are open to the transcendent by allowing the superintelligence to emerge and to observe the interaction between the superintelligent reasoning on Doctrine and this MagisteriumAI. But that is a theme for another question. I made this note here to show that there is indeed a pastoral and practical value of the title "supervisor of AI and superintelligence".

In learning about indulgences, I started to wonder why a work was necessary for the giving of an indulgence. In looking at the Catechism of the Catholic Church , it appears to me that a work is necessary because the Church chooses to make it necessary (italics mine): > **Obtaining indulgence from God through the Church** > > **1478** An indulgence is obtained through the Church who, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus, intervenes in favor of individual Christians and opens for them the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints to obtain from the Father of mercies the remission of the temporal punishments due for their sins. *Thus the Church does not want simply to come to the aid of these Christians, but also to spur them to works of devotion, penance, and charity.* I'm not really sure that I understand this view. Of course, these works of devotion, penance, and charity are good things, but it seems like it would be more compassionate to give out indulgences to everybody so that they do not suffer from punishment for their sins in purgatory, and find other ways to encourage people to do these works. Indeed, there seems to be a similar argument in Thesis 82 in Martin Luther's 95 Theses : > Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church? I realize that this thesis was addressing the idea that "when the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs" and and other abuses of indulgences. But the sentiment seems to match the question I am asking: wouldn't it be more merciful if the pope were to choose to grant indulgences to everybody, thus reducing the suffering of those in purgatory (or empty it entirely) regardless of their works?

It has been clearly asserted by Biblical Unitarians that Jesus Christ had no actual existence anywhere prior to his birth in Bethlehem. It has also been clearly asserted that Scriptures which appear to present some kind of pre-existence for Jesus (John's prologue, for instance) are really referring to his "notional existence" within the mind of God. There are many questions and answers which flesh this out. Here are a few: how-do-those-who-believe-that-jesus-is-a-created-being-understand-the-verses-whi , why-don-t-unitarians-believe-that-jesus-christ-pre-existed-before-incarnation , according-to-biblical-unitarians-how-much-does-notionalism-encompass-in-john The general idea is that God has always had the plan to cause Jesus' birth and this plan is what is referred to as the Word in John's Gospel. The Word also must incorporate the "plan in God's mind" for literally everything since all things were brought into existence through this same Word. For instance, God had the "plan" for light and when He said "Let light be" that plan was actualized. When we are told that the Word became flesh it is here that the "plan" of God regarding Jesus was actualized and where Jesus went from "notional" to "actual" existence. This Biblical Unitarian article presents a Word which encompasses all of God's plans and, indeed, God's rational thought itself. My question therefore is: According to Biblical Unitarians, when the Word became flesh (when the plan was actualized) was it *all* of the Word or *part* of the Word which became flesh?

Suppose Alice and Bob are both Catholics, and they are getting married. If one of them has committed a mortal sin and has not been to Confession at the time of the wedding, is their marriage valid?

In the Rituale Romanum of the Catholic Church one can find a blessing for wine which is reserved for the Feast of St. John the Apostle (December 27). Why does the Catholic Church associate this tradition with St John? Occasionally artists show a snake or a dragon coming out of a chalice with St. John the Apostle. El Greco: St. John the Evangelist, 1595-1604

In essence I'm asking that if there was nothing after death, but we believed that God existed, would there be any reason for us to worship God. It then seems like humans are coerced into worship, which is immoral. You may say that life is a gift from God, but a lot of people who go through hardships (torture, abuse, etc.) will disagree.

If an individual earnestly hungers for deep spirituality, including a desire for attaining a profound degree of sanctification and consecration, but also for a profound, mystical, supernatural relationship with God, which denominations would find this attitude commendable? My educated guess is that at least Eastern Orthodoxy would. I say this having in mind saints such as [Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrios_of_Kafsokalyvia) , of whom books have been written, including [*Elder Porphyrios Testimonies and Experiences*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/9606890236) : > *"Elder, where can we find the solution to our problems?"* > > *"Only holiness will solve your problems."* > > The realm of the sacred and the transcendent, as expressed by that > child of God and true man, Elder Porphyrios, belongs to the category > of the unbelievable. It can however become believable because, «sin > does not prevail where grace abounds”. Elder Porphyrios was a person > filled with grace, a bearer of the power of the Holy Spirit, a child > of the Kingdom, a genuine and true tree of paradise. > > Whoever wishes to speak about the inner spiritual life of a saint, > must be a saint himself. We, the writers of this book, are not saints. > We are confined to what we saw and what we heard. We are amongst those > many others, who, as St. Luke the Evangelist says, have “taken in hand > to set in order a narrative.” We are not trying, with our poor and > futile speech, to describe the life of a contemporary saint, but > rather we are falteringly trying to express our joy in having met a > saint; our joy that Christ lives yesterday, today and forever; our joy > that holiness is not a thing of the past, that grace can be felt next > to us, that our hands touched a “little father” who really lived the > expression “I no longer live, for Christ lives in me.” > > Until the Lord reveals the servant who was Elder Porphyrios’ > eye-witness, who observed him throughout his life and in all his works > and will write about his life accurately and fully, we are forgiven. > For we have only seen “in part.” We describe, write about and speak of > the miraculous things that God did for us through His servant, > Porphyrios. Is my educated guess correct? Which other denominations share the same sentiment? --- For a discussion of the meaning of *Christian mysticism* and its biblical basis, see https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/98050/61679 . A closely related concept is *Theosis*: https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/98106/61679 , https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/98092/61679

Say there's a once-Catholic adult who is considering attending a Catholic mass. This person was baptized Catholic as a baby, and received first communion when a child. This person did not go through the confirmation process, as their family has moved away from the church by that time. If this person plans to attend a Catholic mass, would they be expected to/would it be appropriate to receive communion? Would they need to do anything before just showing up? This person might rejoin the Catholic faith but wishes to attend a mass at Christmas. After so many years away (30?) this person would like to see what a mass is like, once again.

The short prayer Anima Christi starts like this: "Soul of Christ, sanctify me". We rarely come across the concept of the Soul of Christ in the Gospels. One such instance is in John 12, where we see a poignant response from Jesus to the request of some Greeks to meet him: John 12:23, 24, 27, 28 NIV >**23** Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. **24** Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. ... **27** Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. **28** Father, glorify your name. What are the attributes of the Soul of Christ?

Like crimes in legal systems, sins have two consequences: they make me guilty (the conviction) of trespassing God's law, and they involve a punishment (the sentence) for such trespassing. In the Sacrament of Penance, my conviction is removed through the forgiveness of Christ, whereas the penance give to me by the priest commutes my punishment. Thus, if one participates in the Sacrament of Penance throughout his life, and is judged worthy to go to Heaven in the Particular Judgment, there should be no need for Purgatory. I understand one can gain Indulgences for others, who perhaps did not have their sins forgiven and sentences paid for during their life on Earth. But if we pay all our penances on Earth, what is the personal use of indulgences? Is it a kind of insurance for, say, one dies unexpectedly, without having confessed some sins?

I feel like this morning is a good time for a very fundamental question: One of the reasons I can no longer believe in the 'mainstream' concept of God the Creator is what I call the "Inside out" problem. (Perhaps there is a "real" name for it that I'm not aware of.) In summary, the problem is that God's creation of the world is defined in terms of the world itself. The smaller issue is with time. In mainstream Christianity, creation is thought to have both location and size in time, that is, it is thought to have taken some time (whether 7 days literally or that being a figure for other amounts of time) as well as being placed in time "in the beginning" and having a time-ordered set of steps. The problem is that time is part of the world, part of spacetime. So, if we focus on just the time aspect of the world, we can paraphrase that _"In the beginning, God created time"_, which seems nonsensical, as the word "beginning" is already a location in time. The same goes for duration (whatever it may be). The larger issue is with causality, which also, I should like to think, is part of the physical universe, given that it has very real physical mechanics and constraints just like everything else. However, the concept of God Creator already contains causality, it implies God is the cause of the world. Essentially, if we again substitute focusing just on the causality part of creation, we get _"God created causality"_ or _"God is the cause of causality"_, which is, again, a self-contradictory statement. So that's the gist of my "Inside out" problem. So far I haven't come across a solution that would be reconcilable with mainstream Christianity. One could argue, and I have seen arguments along these lines, that somehow causality (and perhaps time) is a thing more fundamental than (the rest of) the World itself, ie. "part of God himself" or something like that. This line of reasoning, in my perception, is not a solution to the problem, just shifts it. Essentially, it's saying that not all parts of our world are accounted for by the Creation. Which reduces the relevance of creation drastically. It's kind of like saying that God created galaxies in an already pre-existing universe. It would still be a mighty feat, for sure, but kind of irrelevant when you're wondering about why the universe itself exists the way it exists. Are there perhaps any Christian writings approaching this problem?

According to Catholic teaching, can Requiem Masses be said for the souls of the deceased unbaptized?

There is already a question focused on biblical arguments, *https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/6908/61679* , but I found none focused on scientific reasons. According to creationists, are there scientific grounds for being skeptical of the view that God used Darwinian mechanisms to bring about the diversity of life we see today from a common ancestor? What are the main scientific arguments that creationists put forward to challenge [theistic evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution) ?

How integral is a personal experiential aspect to Christian belief in addition to [natural theology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_theology) ? Can one rely solely on natural theology, or is a personal encounter or experience considered essential in Christian doctrine, and if so, what type(s) of experience(s) specifically? I'm interested in perspectives on the balance between these two elements in shaping and reinforcing one's faith. --- EDIT: @curiousdanni brought up a very good point: > If you rely solely on natural theology you can't be a Christian - the Gospel is communicated only through special revelation. I agree with this observation. Considering this, I think the question can be rephrased in more general terms as follows: Publicly accessible revelation (that can be grasped intellectually, including nature and Sacred Scripture) vs. Privately accessible revelation (involving spiritual experiences that presumably go beyond the confines of the intellect)?