Posted on 12/29/2006 4:47:11 AM PST by cowboyfan88
Edited on 12/29/2006 8:32:56 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
****Do you think people need to be baptised or do you think all they need to do is believe? ***
I believe baptism is a ceremonial thing and has nothing to do with actual salvation (as I have fought many a battle here on FR over it).
Run a check on my posts here at FR and see.
If Cornelius was not saved yet filled with the Holy Spirit that is what I would call two masters.
Salvation doesn't imply we will never sin again.
The landmark is merely the baptism of the spirit.
It is only nauseating for somebody who believes they can discern and judge who is saved and who isn't. Only God knows our heart.
Well, fair enough. If that's your stance and you've 'been there, done that' on different posts and threads then I suppose that we will have to disagree.
Happy New Year.
***I suppose that we will have to disagree. ***
Al least we can part on good terms and not like some that say that "their" baptism and method is the only right baptism.
Well, I believe one should be baptised if one has the opportunity, because I believe it is what Christ instituted. But, reading Scripture and the Catechism, there is a baptism of desire.
I also believe that Christ instituted the Church and the Sacraments.
And I agree that we can, and should, part on good terms.
See you around.
I know you believe you are guided by the Holy Spirit which makes mounting an argument a rather unpleasant and, likely, unworkable task.
So, brother..I will just say I love you and I pray the Holy Spirit does guide you to the Church Jesus established.
God Bless you
These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said: Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he may give eternal life to all whom thou hast given him. Now this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now glorify thou me, O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee.
I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given me out of the world. Thine they were, and to me thou gavest them; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known, that all things which thou hast given me, are from thee: Because the words which thou gavest me, I have given to them; and they have received them, and have known in very deed that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them whom thou hast given me: because they are thine: And all my things are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.
And now I am not in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name whom thou has given me; that they may be one, as we also are. While I was with them, I kept them in thy name. Those whom thou gavest me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture may be fulfilled. And now I come to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy filled in themselves. I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world; as I also am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil.
They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth. 18 As thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for them do I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me;
That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, as we also are one: I in them, and thou in me; that they may be made perfect in one: and the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast also loved me. Father, I will that where I am, they also whom thou hast given me may be with me; that they may see my glory which thou hast given me, because thou hast loved me before the creation of the world. Just Father, the world hath not known thee; but I have known thee: and these have known that thou hast sent me.
And I have made known thy name to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them.
* Brother, you are bringing me another Gospel. I reject it
Revolutionising within the form of orthopraxis, they did to their Churches what the phylloxera louse did to vineyards.
For over FIFTEEN CENTURIES, Christians Worshipped as Malachias prophesied and Christ Commanded.
Christian Worship was - and still IS in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches - about the action of Jesus. Working through the Priesthood He established, Jesus, as both Priest and Victim, offered/offers Himself as the Pluperfect Sacrifice of the New Covenant as an act of Propitiation.
Jesus also offered/offers Himself to us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Pluperfect meal of the New Covenant. That is how Jesus communicates His Divine life to us and that is how we advance on the road of Theosis. God became man so man could become God, as the great Saint memorably summarised the truth.
We Christians, as members of the Royal Priesthood, gathered/gather with the Ordained Priest at the altar and joined/join with Him in offering ourselves, our prayers, works, joys and sufferings and that offering was/is joined to the Pluperfect Sacrifice of Jesus and the innumerable angels, gathered about the Altar, take that Pluperfect and acceptable offering to the Altar in Heaven.
Once the protestant revolutionaries had completely denuded the vineyard and chased Jesus out of the Sanctuary, there was no need of a priest. He was treated as a pest; an annoyance; an unacceptable accretion who, in the sick and twisted ideology of the Heresiarchs, was superfluous.
So, emptied of the actions of Jesus, the protestant revolutionaries filled their churches with a hymn sandwich - the work of man; a sermon sandwiched between hymns. It was/is solely the work of man. And only man.
Where once the odor of Sanctity permeated the Sanctuary, there was/is now but bloody rags, the work of man having supplanted the actions of Jesus, and worship was killed, Jesus dethroned and man, ascending into the sides of the North like Satan, substituted a service for the Eucharist/Divine Liturgy/Mass.
Bereft of the actions of Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour, the services of man are worse than a poor substitute. They reflect the triumph of Satan who used the 16th Century Satanic Mini-me's to chase Christ out of the protestant churches. The ego-maniacal revolutionaries had to have Jesus decrease so their oral traditions could increase.
The sad truth is that hundreds of millions of well-intentioned Christian protestants have never had the truth preached to them in words that will prick their ears and make them sit-up and take notice.
I am preaching it to them now. The hour is late. Time is running out.
Protestants must return to the Church - be it Orthodox or Catholic (y'all know my druthers) so they can reclaim their rightful heritage, Worship God as Jesus Himself Commanded us to do at the Last Supper/First Mass, and to enter the Ark of Salvation, outside of which is but satanic shark-infested water where one's soul is imperiled and drowned.
"While you may consider these as part of Christian worship, I do not. I believe I would have a number of early church fathers agreeing with me."
Just as a matter of curiosity, which Fathers do you believe opposed the veneration of the saints?
By the way, I personally don't hold by purgatory or indulgences, but you do know, don't you, that a belief in indulgences predates the establishment of the canon of the NT?
Only God knows who is saved and therefore who will sit next to him in the next life. No human knows.
Proclaiming it out loud is the heighth of arrogance; pride comes before the fall.
Acts 16:31 says: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved..." Notice again that it doesn't say, "Believe and you will someday be saved." It rather says, "Believe...and BE saved."
The "Once Saved, Always Saved" doctrine is fundamentally flawed. The perfect example of how this doctrine is false is Judas Iscariot. He believed in Jesus Christ, walked with Him, was one of the Twelve and was given the same powers from Him as the others. Yet what Christian believes that Judas Iscariot went to Heaven?
How can we be assured of our own salvation if St. Paul wasn't (1 Corinthians 9:27)? Salvation is not a "one time" event, but an ongoing process until "the end" (Matthew 10:22; 24:13; Mark 13:13).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses the issue of Salvation.
161. "Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. [Cf. Mk 16:16 ; Jn 3:36 ; Jn 6:40 ; et al.] 'Since 'without faith it is impossible to please (God)' and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.'']"
162. "Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: 'Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.' [1 Tim 1:18-19 .] To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; [Cf. Mk 9:24 ; Lk 17:5 ; Lk 22:32.] it must be 'working through charity,' abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church. [Gal 5:6 ; Rom 15:13 ; cf. Jam 2:14-26.]"
Thank you for stating your true perspective. You have no interest in the love of Christ with out your being right first. That is obvious.
What I would like the Catholics to stop doing is pretending that there is any other way to heaven, yet saying Protestents have no salvation, as you just did. Because if I am presenting another Gospel then you are obligated by St. Paul in Galations 1:8-9 to declare us eternally condemned and a follower of demonic teaching. The Counsel of Trent stated this clearly; 146 times declaring any not supporting their tradition to be anathema.
The Word Anathema comes with all of the below associated with it:
"Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive _____ himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment." This is the ceremony of Anathematization according to the Catholic Church.
Why wont you declare what The Catholic Church has already? Do you not believe the products of your church?
Please state this clearly for everyone to understand so that we are not decieved.
If you are trapped in a works based theology it is hard to understand. Judas lacked FAITH.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses the issue of Salvation.
Just as the catechism also states:
424 Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church.
Okay, a challenge:
1. find any Church Father, East or West, who objected to asking the intercessions of the saints.
2. find three.
While you're hunting, you can muse on the fact that they are not dead, but alive in Christ, even if their souls in paradise are not yet reunited with their bodies, and puzzle over why the Martyrdom of Polycarp, written at most
70 years after the Gospel of St. John (and perhaps as little as 30 years) speaks of the martyred bishop's bones as being "more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold" and his receiving the "crown of immortality".
I'll address the honorifics given to the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary in a later post once you rise to the challenge. (We Orthodox have a *really* long list of very flowery ones in the Akathist Hymn, normally sung at Small Compline during Great Lent, which starts quite early this year.)
As to purgatory and indulgences, you'll have to get a defense of those from the Latins, we Orthodox object to both, and have from well before Luther raised hue and cry against them (cf. St. Mark of Ephesus's Refutations of the Latin Chapters Concerning Purgatorial Fire--which, alas, seems to not be available online. The one English translation I know is published as an appendix to Fr. Seraphim Rose's The Soul After Death).
The whole article--and indeed the whole protestant notion of 'assurance of salvation'--turns on a faulty understanding of Greek verb tenses. English has not equivalent of the aorist tense, which indicates an action begun in the past and ongoing in the present. The nearest one can get in English is the slightly awkard "are [or am] being saved", which only suggests continuing action in the present.
Being aware of when the Evangelists or Apostles (or Our Lord as recorded by them) are using the aorist tense can be important to correct Scriptural exegesis. There is, for instance, a passage in one of St. John's Epistles, where he speaks of Christ being made known in 'the water and the blood', and uses the aorist tense. This makes it clear that he is referring to the ongoing action of the Holy Mysteries of Baptism and the Eucharist, rather than the flow of water and blood from Our Lord's side on the occasion of His Saving and Ever-Memorable Death.
Your post 159 is a good question. I picked up my catechism to look for an answer, here's what I found.
CCC 846
"Outside the Church there is no salvation"
How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his body.
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation; the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.
This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will s they know it through the dictates of their conscience-those too may achieve eternal salvation.
"Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith whithouth which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."
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