No one is dragged kicking and screaming into Heaven. This is accomplished by God changing the wills of His elect, not by God suggesting that we use our inner goodness to overcome our sinful nature. If it is totally up to the free will of the individual (and the Church), as you say, how can you be sure that all of the elect will reconcile? You can't. The men of the Church are not infallible and the elect are not infallible. Only God is. ....... Your quote from 2 Cor. 5 supports my side. It is God who does the reconciling, not men by their inner good choices, and not the men of the Church through their superiority and higher class.
Yeah, right. "bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world" cannot possibly be about the Eucharist. What a thought.
That is salvation by ritual sacrament. The thought is that this isn't Biblical. By this standard uncounted millions of Catholics are doomed because they either do not participate, or they do so while unworthy. However, I'm sure you can provide a shortcut around this problem.
The manna had everything to do with their physical arrival to the Promised Land, it prefigured our arrival to the Kingdom of Heaven, with which the Eucharist has everything to do.
The connection is that God provides for ALL of our needs, physical and spiritual. It is not that God gives us physical food, but we take care of our own salvations by choosing to participate in ritual sacraments.
Yes, these verses say exactly that: that the work of Christ in the elect will be carried to completion.
But you turn it around to mean that the elect carry on the work, God peers through His crystal ball to see who performed, and then elects them. Phil. 1:6 says the opposite, God will carry on the work to completion.
A fresh-eye reading of 2 Peter 1:2-11 does not allow for the interpretation that all this work on the virtues is only there to remember something his reader forgot. If that were the meaning, St. Peter would simply say, "don't forget to partake of that divine nature you've received when you got saved; it's in the kitchen cabinet on the right...".
No one claimed that is the only point of the passage. First, the fresh-eye reading does not lead to one thinking he has been given a divine nature, so that's a problem right there. But right to the point:
2 Peter 1:9 : But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
I assume that your take is going to be that only past sins were forgiven because Christ only did a partial on the cross. (It was typical of Christ to only go half-way in the actions He took.) But verse 4 tells us that we are to rely on God's precious promises, and those promises in scripture do NOT tell us that we need to continually reacquire salvation after losing it over and over. If that were the meaning then God would have said "But now you have lost your salvation which I promised was secure. Now do further works to receive the blessings of men, that they may restore you."
We are not sure indeed. This is why 2 Peter speaks of making sure one's calling and election.
That [John 6:52] is salvation by ritual sacrament
Salvation by sacrament, yes. This is what the verse says.
uncounted millions of Catholics are doomed because they either do not participate, or they do so while unworthy
They still can rely, with the uncounted Protestants and the unbaptized, on the boundless mercy of Christ, but yes, indeed, deliberate withdrawal from the sacraments of the Church is a grave sin.
not that [...] we take care of our own salvations by choosing to participate in ritual sacraments.
The scripture says the exact opposite: "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day" (John 6).
But you turn it around to mean that the elect carry on the work, God peers through His crystal ball to see who performed, and then elects them. Phil. 1:6 says the opposite, God will carry on the work to completion
"12 ... with fear and trembling work out your salvation. 13 For it is God who worketh in you" (Phil 2). The distinction between the elect working and God working is artificial; however, there is no scripture that says that God violates the free will of the elect as He leads them.
the fresh-eye reading [of 2 Peter 1:4] does not lead to one thinking he has been given a divine nature
No, it plainly says that one has been given to partake in the Divine Nature.
your take is going to be that only past sins were forgiven because Christ only did a partial on the cross
No, simply that the passage says "past sins", and I read what is written, because I am Catholic. The fact that St. Peter refers to the past sins in that verse indicates that the passage is not an extravagant reminder of already secured election, but an exortation to good works, and hardly the only one in the scripture at that.