Posted on 10/28/2007 5:11:19 PM PDT by pinochet
I am a Catholic who is trying to understand Protestant history and teachings, in order to better understand the history of Christianity. There is one issue that I do not understand.
According to Protestant teachings, if a person becomes saved, are his future sins forgiven? Can a person lose his salvation? If not, can assurance of salvation become a license to sin?
If Ted Haggard had gone to be with the Lord early last year, while in the process of getting a "massage" from his male "friend", would he have gone straight to heaven?
once you receive salvation, it’s not in you to sin anymore. Jesus told Mary to go and sin no more after he saved her life. There is an art to being still and allowing the spirit to do the saving in us which is taught simply at fhu.com. It’s biblical and should be taught in all churches. If you claim to be saved yet continue to sin you are diminishing the great power of the spirit and totally watering down the meaning of christianity.
Then why would any of this really matter...if God creates someone knowing they will sin? If God is omniscient, then doesn’t that mean the person has to sin? God cannot be wrong can He?
I’m replying to #4, you should tell him.
The bible says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8)
The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 says, "18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. "
None of us is any better than any other. All of need mercy.
The only difference for any of us will be the Grace of God.
Ping to read later
My Catholic understanding of the situation:
Christ effected Redemption on the Cross by offering Himself a complete, perfect sacrificial oblation for the sins of the whole world.
He therefore becomes the Way through Whom we come to the Father, ourselves imperfect and sinful, yet we are accounted righteous (justified) in the Father’s eyes by the grace of His Son’s blood. Thus, justification in the imputation of righteousness to those who are not yet righteous but who then pledge to co-operate in being made righteous by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within them.
The final destiny of those who have proclaimed faith in Christ Jesus and who then work our their growth in righteousness in fear and trembling, whether in this life or in the next (usually both) is salvation and eternal fellowship with the saints in the presence of God.
Thus, redemption => justification => salvation
Bob Loblaw: “I have no desire to denigrate the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but, as I understand those teachings, there is an emphasis on the human activity necessary in order to achieve salvation
For instance, I think Catholic teaching is that one must partake of the sacraments of the church (confession and communion, for instance) in order to be saved. It is human activity that count for something.”
Dear Bob: that is not a clear understanding. The sacraments do not somehow multiply righteousness. That is a mechanical understanding. Rather, the sacraments are food to the soul, enabling, pardoning and sanctifying grace that the Holy Spirit imbues in us as we travel our pilgrimage. If somehow we each gained sufficient grace from one administration of the sacraments we really need continuously, then that would be fine, but the life of the Church suggests otherwise. Sanctifying grace is in no way sufficient, nor does it obliterate the free will of the recipient. The seal of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Order is likewise no gurantee against personal waywardness, selfishness and sin. At all times and all points, the individual must co-operate and freely consent at every level of being to have the benefits of the sacraments be fully effective.
It is true that faith without works is dead, and it also true that works outside of the faith are useless. It is not the accumulation of works that matters, it is the cleansing and purifying effect of God’s grace working within us that grows our spirits and builds our souls until they reflect the perfection that is Christ Jesus in His Glorified Manhood that matters. Such persons being cleansed display the works of righteousness that are the fruits of faith as strengthened and enabled by grace.
All this is to say that grace as conveyed by the sacraments is emphatically not a species of magic and that human life is a pilgrimage from which any of us can stray at any time. The race is not decided until we finish it by death, and even then we may need further purgation. Exactly how is not precisely defined but it is so indicated in Holy Scripture (not least by Peter). In the end, we must be perfect as our Holy Father in heaven is perfect before we come to enjoy the Beatific Vision and partake of eternal blessedness in the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Yes, otherwise saved doesn't mean saved.
Hope this is somewhat more definitive than muwaiyah’s topical example:
“The heretical doctrine that Christians are exempt from the obligations of moral law.
The term first came into use at the Protestant Reformation, when it was employed by Martin Luther to designate the teachings of Johannes Agricola and his secretaries, who, pushing a mistaken and perverted interpretation of the Reformer’s doctrine of justification by faith alone to a far-reaching but logical conclusion, asserted that, as good works do not promote salvation, so neither do evil works hinder it; and, as all Christians are necessarily sanctified by their very vocation and profession, so as justified Christians, they are incapable of losing their spiritual holiness, justification, and final salvation by any act of disobedience to, or even by any direct violation of the law of God. This theory for it was not, and is not necessarily, anything more than a purely theoretical doctrine, and many professors of Antinomianism, as a matter of fact, led, and lead, lives quite as moral as those of their opponents was not only a more or less natural outgrowth from the distinctively Protestant principle of justification by faith, but probably also the result of an erroneous view taken with regard to the relation between the Jewish and Christian dispensations and the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Doubtless a confused understanding of the Mosaic ceremonial precepts and the fundamental moral law embodied in the Mosaic code was to no small extent operative in allowing the conception of true Christian liberty to grow beyond all reasonable bounds, and to take the form of a theoretical doctrine of unlimited licentiousness. “
". . .workout out our own individualized interpretation of the Scriptures and their application to real life."
To Khomiakov that would have sounded a lot like 'every man his own Pope'. It sounds a lot that way to me.
We Orthodox don't work out our own interpretations--we accept the Apostolic Faith as it has been handed down by the Church from the time of the Apostles.
There is an amusing story from my old priest (now the Provost of St. Vladimir's Seminar) illustrated this: he and a number of other Orthodox priest were in a class for the Pittsburg Seminary's Orthodox D.Min., and the protestant faculty member teaching one of the courses proposed as an exercise that each member of the class (all Orthodox priests) write out their 'own personal creed'. The assembled all took out paper, and dutifully wrote, each one writing out the Nicean Creed (the original--no filioque), so that except for variations of quick v. living and spoke v. spake the texts turned in were all word-for-word identical.
Hey, dude, there is nothing scoffing about asking a real question. You should not expect an attack unless you have already given one. I shall continue to feel free to ask civil and honest questions at any time and if you attack me again, the war will be on.
Bless you my conservative friend. Perhaps you can remember the values that we have in common, such as Duty, honor and country. Perhaps we even share family values.
Interesting. Thanks.
Quite interesting. Of course, all history interests me.
Bless you and have a wonderful day!
A great response to those who have a tendancy to slip into legalism by performing works to assure them their salvation is Romans 11:6.
Rom 11:6
(6) And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.
Salvation is by His grace, through faith alone in Christ alone.
Your post involves a confusion of the persons of the All-Holy Trinity, and perhaps an error in Christology.
The Fathers teach that what He (Christ) is by nature, we are to become by grace. (cf. 2nd Peter and Christ’s own quotation of the psalm verse “I have said ye are gods” for the Scriptural basis).
Grace, however, involves the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, not union with the Divine Logos, the second person, who is Christ—save in the sense that the Church, bound together by the Spirit is His mystical body, and we are united to His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.
Even so, even in Christ Himself, His human will did not ‘merge’ with the pre-eternal Word. That is the error of monotheltism—an attempt to compromise between Orthodoxy which upholds the unity of Christ’s person and the duality of His natures, human and divine, with monophysitism that holds His humanity ‘merged’ with His divinity—and error for which Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and Pope Honorius of Rome were anathematized by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
Forgiveness is different than salvation. Two different issues.
Reconsider 1st John Chapter 1.
If my sins are forgiven, I'm saved. If not, I'm not.
1 John 1 is not on subject.
I’m sorry your priest friend said that. It implies that one can take independent action while only in the spirit and awaiting the Resurrection to Life. That is not so, so far as I know, so there cannot be further sin after the death of the body. Anything that is purged in Purgatory is then purified away (as in fire), but no opportunity to commit further sins.
1st John 1:9 clearly indicates post salvation sin is not forgiven of the sinner at the time of salvation, rather the sin has already been redeemed, man reconciled to God, God’s wrath propitiated, and sin atoned, but forgiveness still occurs in post salvation sin after the sin is committed and only at the time of confession and repentance.
Read 1st John.
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