Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
>>How do you know you were regenerated BEFORE your baptism?<<
By the fruit produced from it. By the fact that my heart was rent and I saw my sin for the first time as the vile and nasty thing it is. By the fact that my desires, opinions, and convictions started coming from a different viewpoint.
I was regenerated in February - I wasn't baptized until August of the following year. My baptism was a public profession of my belief to other believers, it did not save me or convict me.
>>I never said that the Church is the Word of God<<
No, you alluded that Christ did not establish the Bible, he established the Church. I showed you that the Word was alive from the very beginning.
>>I am not talking about the building, but the Apostolic Church, which is a community of believers who continue in the Apostolic succession.<<
Thank you for clarifying, but be sure to note to whom you're giving the credit for not only salvation, but also the fruit that is produced.
We've had this conversation many times before, but I do agree that the type of predestination represented by strict calvinistic groups does get a lot of negative attention. A lot of it is probably unfair attacks, but there are others who simply disagree and do so respectfully.
CS Lewis' idea of an inviolable framework would not violate anyone's free will, but I've had many staunch calvinists agree that everyone has free will. Some are just "so demented" they'd say, that they've got no interest in choosing anything good. They'll only and always choose their way to a depraved life.
>>I think there is a certain degree of arrogance in presuming that you know better than the Church.<<
I think there's a certain degree of idolatry in holding up man-centered traditions over the Word of God. I'm not accountable to the Church, I'm accountable to Christ.
Men are fallible - the Word of God isn't.
>>If I am saying something contrary to the teaching of the Church, by all means correct me.<<
The very fact that you hold your beliefs to the standard of the Church, and not the Bible tells me a lot about your faith.
If I am saying something contrary to the teaching of the Bible, by all means correct me.
Calvin talks about man's free will so I doubt if you can get around the idea of "free will" entirely. When Reformers talk about man not having a "free will" it is in relationship to the inability to choose good. God's Spirit leads us to all truths. As believers we either listen to God's Spirit or follow after our lusts.
I'm sure I've read C.S. Lewis' view but at the moment I have a brain crap. I'll have to research it. But seeing how C.S. Lewis was a Catholic I'm sure it would fit within his paradigm. It does not and should not fit within the Protestant's paradigm.
From what I can tell, Protestantism denies all secondary causes, at least in the order of grace. They deny free will or assert irresistible grace, making man purely passive and not personally responsible in the work of his sanctification. This loses sight of the ability of the creature to act and merit.
God creates us as real, substantial existences, inseparable but distinct from Himself. As Catholics, we are not pantheistic - we are not robotic extensions of God. To say we have no free will distinct from God is to fall into pantheism. As real, substantial existences who, as upheld by Him, we are capable of copying or imitating His creative acts and producing effects of our own.
God is actively present in all of His works, enabling them in order of second causes to act and sustaining them as the subject of His own acts. God works within us, giving us the power to will and to do, but the actual willing and dooing are OUR OWN, both in the order of nature and of grace.
Although we can do nothing without Christ (John 15:5), it DOES NOT FOLLOW that what we do by Him and for Him is not our doing. And although it is grace that does it, grace dwelling within us, elevating us above our natural selves, and giving us more than our natural power to do, it DOES NOT FOLLOW that grace does it WITHOUT the participation of our own activity or concurrence of our will. Grace sustains us as an actor in the order of secondary causes, enabling us to do what would infinitely exceed our powers alone. But the doing is OURS, as is the merit and the reward (or demerit and penalty).
We are able to merit only by virtue of His gratuitious gifts, but that does not deprive us of the ability to merit, because those gifts are PRECISELY what gives us the ability to love or to obey the will of God.
Thus, when I or the Scripture discusses good works as James, or Paul discusses love in Corinthians, it is understood that God is the primary cause who moves within me the ability to do what I normally cannot do. But being a distinct creation, I can bring about a secondary cause with the aid of God. Thus, I can say that I, while abiding in Christ, have done a good deed of merit. Thus, we see an act of love as a cooperation between God and ourselves.
How can I emulate jo kus that I might be saved?
There are many more people that you would be better off emulating than me. Check "Butler's Lives of the Saints". Ask them to pray for you and me that we may, indeed, become better followers of Christ.
The Reformers were confused in that they couldn't understand "secondary causes". By claiming that man has no free will and is irresistibly moved by grace, you are beginning to stray into Pantheism - the idea that everything is God. By making man an extension or robot of God, this destroys St. Augustine and many other's concept that man, while moved by the primary mover, CAN also be a secondary mover. This is possible in the natural as well as the supernatural realm. We cooperate with God to bring life into the world. And we cooperate with God to bring love into the world.
Regards
Regards
The Church says that God is preparing you to receive His Spirit, to confess faith in Him, a preparation for Baptism. Adults don't become baptized until the Spirit begans to prepare them by repentance and such. But this is not regeneration. Regeneration, as the Scripture notes, is the washing of our sins, not being sorry about them.
My baptism was a public profession of my belief to other believers, it did not save me or convict me.
Scripture clearly tells us that through Baptism, we are buried with Christ, our sins are forgiven, we become new creations, not before. All the repentance and such was preparation that God worked within you to accept Baptism.
No, you alluded that Christ did not establish the Bible, he established the Church. I showed you that the Word was alive from the very beginning.
Christ did not establish the Bible. But the Bible is not the WORD of God in its true ontological sense. Jesus Christ is the WORD of God, not the Bible. The Scriptures are a sacramental sign of God's presence, His recorded words to us. The Scriptures were not "alive" from the beginning. Again, Christ left to us a Church, a community of men led by the Apostles with the commission to preach and teach and baptize, not to write a Scripture that would be read outside the Church's interpretation of it! We highly treasure the Scriptures, but it is not the entire word of God, nor is it the WORD of God.
Thank you for clarifying, but be sure to note to whom you're giving the credit for not only salvation, but also the fruit that is produced.
Catholics don't deny that Christ saves us! We say that He chooses to save us THROUGH the Church. We receive His Body THROUGH the Church. We hear His words THROUGH the Church. We are forgiven of deadly sins THROUGH the Church. We are brought into the Church THROUGH Baptism performed by the Church. God continues to call people to Himself THROUGH the Church. The Church is the means by which Christ extends His work of redemption to all men.
Regards
So the act of immersion into a pool of water has disposed the need for the blood of Christ?
I'm saved by His work on the cross, not by being dipped in water.
>>Catholics don't deny that Christ saves us! We say that He chooses to save us THROUGH the Church. We receive His Body THROUGH the Church. We hear His words THROUGH the Church. We are forgiven of deadly sins THROUGH the Church. We are brought into the Church THROUGH Baptism performed by the Church. God continues to call people to Himself THROUGH the Church.<<
It seems to me you've replaced the Holy Spirit with the church.
Again, you appear to be setting the works of men above the indwelling Spirit.
That is a rude, incorrect, snide and argumentative statement.
"Most Protestants" are Christians who seek to follow Christ, to pick up His cross and emulate His walk because Scripture tells us that is exactly what God demands from us. Do you doubt that?
And it also tells us to kneel to none but Christ.
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." -- Matthew 15:8-9"This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
ALL the works of the Church rely ENTIRELY on the works of Christ! Baptism is only effective BECAUSE of the redemptive death of Jesus Christ. The visible works of the Church merely make present what Christ is doing invisibly (since grace cannot be seen directly).
I must not being doing a very good job of expressing that. Sorry.
Regards
CS Lewis was an Anglican.
It was Tolkien who was Catholic.
??? Pantheism is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent God; or that the universe, or nature, and God are equivalent. There is nothing even remotely suggesting this. The Reformers simply said that God is sovereign giving His grace to whomever He so wills.
Faith, then, as well in its beginning as in its completion, is God's gift; and let no one have any doubt whatever, unless he desires to resist the plainest sacred writings, that this gift is given to some, while to some it is not given. But why it is not given to all ought not to disturb the believer, who believes that from one all have gone into a condemnation, which undoubtedly is most righteous; so that even if none were delivered therefrom, there would be no just cause for finding fault with God. Whence it is plain that it is a great grace for many to be delivered, and to acknowledge in those that are not delivered what would be due to themselves; so that he that glorieth may glory not in his own merits, which he sees to be equaled in those that are condemned, but in the Lord. But why He delivers one rather than another,—"His judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out." [Rom. 11.33.] For it is better in this case for us to hear or to say, "O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" [Rom. 9.20.] than to dare to speak as if we could know what He has chosen to be kept secret. Since, moreover, He could not will anything unrighteous.
Augustine, A Treatis on the Predestination of the Saints
Hmmmm....as near as I can tell in researching Lewis' writings, Lewis argued about free will in The Problem With Pain. That's as close as I can find on this subject. It is not considered one of Lewis best works but that may have nothing to do with his argument on free will. It is one of his earlier works. I do remember reading the book many, many years ago but I no longer have my copy nor do I remember the book.
I say that one is BEGINNING to stray into Pantheism, because your view does not give creation the ability to bring about secondary causes. Thus, creation is an extension of God which has no inherent ability to act apart from it.
The Reformers simply said that God is sovereign giving His grace to whomever He so wills.
Does God giving man the ability to procreate (cooperate in creation) intrude on His sovereignty? If not, why then do you claim that when man cooperates in the spiritual realm, it infringes on God's sovereignty? If a woman says she can give life through the means that God has given her in the natural sense, what is to keep us from saying that a Christian gives "birth" to good deeds based on the graces that God has given us? That it is "our" work? In both cases, we cooperate in God's creative work.
Regards
"Humans are authors of evil."
Well what about Lucifer/Satan? Is he a being created by God or a figure of man's imagination?
I think I do understand your idea of a pure inner disposition, and the need for love not to come from a selfish source. I still do not understand the works-for-pay idea as a distinction that is used to explain that all the deeds done by Catholics to attain salvation do not count as works. Even regarding love, I know from personal experience that sometimes love can be real work. :)
Since "works" are specifically mentioned several times as not counting toward salvation, I reason that this must be teaching against some idea held by some at the time. I am unaware of any commandment or early Christian belief that we are to work for pay to attain salvation. OTOH, if we take a plain-meaning definition of the word, such as "the production of effort toward a desired goal", then that would teach against a common belief of the time, that we are saved under law. This makes more sense to me.
The Spirit and mortal sin cannot coexist. ... He has given up his rights as an adopted son - although this may be temporary. God will continue to work to bring this person back to Him.
If mortal sin equals "disqualifying" sin, then I agree with you on that part. You have said that God wishes all of us to be saved, and that God respects our choices even if they eternally doom us.
So there is a great clash between the will of God and the will of man. Who will win? You seem to say "win some lose some". Sometimes God "wins" and gets what He wants, and sometimes man "wins" (double quotes). I just see God as being so much stronger than that. I would say that God always gets what He wants because He is God. That's why I think that God does not forsake the elect, even if some of them temporarily stray.
First of all, "death" in the Bible is not defined in the way you seem to be defining it.
I've understood for some time the difference between physical and spiritual death. I know that we exist forever regardless of our destination. I still think my analogy holds.
You brought up the example of your influence with an older child. I think the analogy fails there because once the child is grown, you do not have the power to force decisions on him. I assumed the relationship between a parent and minor child because the parent does have power. (Of course God always has full power.)
If my fifteen-year-old wanted to join a cult, then I would forbid him out of my love for him. I would use whatever force was necessary. I would do this in my complete and secure knowledge that I know what is best in this matter. I am comparing this to what God does for the elect. Once saved, God will not allow His elect to fall away enough to forfeit salvation. He will use whatever force is necessary, and this is done on His authority of knowing what is best and in accordance with His divine plan.
I respectfully disagree that God sees us as adult children. I'm pretty sure that He sees us as young children (dumb as sheep) who have no idea what is best for them on anything. :)
#760 included you onl because you were part of the thread. I never thought you were using "works" in any other way. Th response was to our friend P-Marlowe. Sorry for the confusion.
I infer my belief that God saves only the elect from what you just said. While the blood of Christ is sufficient to save all men, it is, to borrow a word, only efficacious to the elect.
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