Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
Amen.
Thx for the pings.
Vlad: "Were you once Catholic? Unless you were the anathemas don’t apply to you. You knew that right?"
Why don't they apply? Trent was convened because of Protestantism, and the anathema canons all start with "If ANYONE". I mean, wouldn't spiritual cursing fall under that "always and everywhere believed" thing? Are you saying if I held my current beliefs 100 years ago I would be cursed to hell by your church, but today I am not?
(And I know that at the time of Trent, all I had to do to have my cursing to hell removed was to convert to Catholicism. IOW, "convert or die". Hmmmm. :)
(And I know that at the time of Trent, all I had to do to have my cursing to hell removed was to convert to Catholicism. IOW, "convert or die". Hmmmm. :)
Thanks FK. I should have asked those excellent questions at the time that blather was posted. As my ex-RC husband reminds me, he was taught in parochial school that the anathemas of Trent actually call up the demons from hell to curse those who believe in justification by faith alone and those who believe in the assurance of their redemption by Christ on the cross.
One has to wonder what kind of organization curses someone who believes the words of Christ Himself.
Prov 1:7 : The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Prov 2:6 : For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
Amazing that you furnish clear Scripture which says God gives knowledge and understanding and wisdom, and still some are blind to it.
As God wills.
And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." -- Colossians 3:9-11"Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;
Perhaps some don't believe in the gift because they have not been given the gift.
In the macro-sense, "everything" is God's will. But in the micro-sense God never wants anyone to sin, God wants all to be saved, etc. Similar ideas are big picture/small picture and outward call/inward call. So, God did not force Judas to betray Jesus, and since Jesus taught all not to sin, God did not want it. However, for God's bigger plan the betrayal was necessary, so God DID "want" it.
Is that not good works in God’s eyes - the assisting of the elect towards recognizing their status and eternal salvation?
No, only a believer can do something "good" because it was with a heart for God. A believer and a non believer can both help the same little old lady across the street, but only one was a good work in God's eyes.
But if the Reformed claim that good works is evidence of salvation, how does that provide evidence to us if only God understands whether it’s good works or not.
A fair and good point. We can't be sure. If I see a man doing what look like good works to me, I can't know if they are good in God's eyes. That's why it is only evidence as opposed to proof. Perhaps we should say "possible evidence".
How do you separate your own selfish wants from the want to obey God?
My own selfish wants defy scripture. I have them, and it is a struggle. To combat those desires I have such as scriptures, prayer, church, family, friends, and all that Holy Spirit does for me.
Mark: ***What happens if one of the elect simply neglected to do good works?***
FK: ***That can’t happen, simply on a definitional level.***
Says who? Whose definition?
Says God:
Eph 2:8-10 : 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
I include 8 and 9 to show who "we" is. This is a big picture passage, so we can either thwart God's will (plan) or we cannot and God gets what He wants on a macro level. So, in the normal course, the elect WILL do good works as an echo of being saved.
If you truly believe, how can you go through lapses in faith?
First, we live in an imperfect world and we were never promised that we would be immune from any sin after becoming believers. Second, if as believers we COULD NOT go through lapses in faith then there would be no room left to grow in our faith. We would in fact be perfect. God could have set it up that way, but for His own reasons He obviously did not choose to do so. He wants us to grow.
Scripture says that none can snatch them out of His hand, not that they cannot walk away - the goats and those who sin boldly.
Unbelievable. So you would draw a Biblical distinction between a believer snatching himself out of God's hands and him walking away? I'd love to hear how that works.
It also doesn't say that by saying "abracadabra" the power of the universe is transferred into the hands of the believer and he becomes his own God. I assume because it doesn't say that, that you believe it must be true anyway. :) I find that an alarming number of the most important Apostolic beliefs rely totally on what the Bible DOES NOT say. Two other examples are Mariology and Eucharistic theology.
FK: ***I look at the realities of our children and how we shape them as parents. One classic example is having a small child “help” with something. Even though the actual help was negligible we still thank them and they feel like they have contributed.***
I’m sorry but I really don’t get this analogy.
Jo Kus and I went through this one a long time ago. It's a perspective issue. Imagine a little girl seeing her mother pulling out ingredients and putting them on the kitchen counter. She asks what mommy is doing and mommy is going to bake a cake. The little girl wants to help. The mother might let the little girl open a package and maybe even stir a little bit, but she's not going to let the girl near an electric mixer, and never even close to a hot oven. When the cake comes out of the oven the little girl says: "Look mommy, we did it!" The mother smiles and nods in approval.
From the little girl's perspective she REALLY helped and the end result was really partly due to her efforts. However, from the mother's perspective we know that the girl's help was not only unnecessary, but if anything slowed the process down. The mother allowed the child to think she was really helping. The deeds of the child were in reality a fiction as to contributing toward the creation of the cake.
I say it is similar with us and God. Our salvation is the cake, which would have been made perfectly if we were never in the kitchen. But like the mother, God lets us participate, under full supervision. He gives us the ability to "come to our own decision" to accept Christ into our lives, so we feel like we did it. However, the truth is really that we had nothing to do with it.
One has to wonder what kind of organization curses someone who believes the words of Christ Himself.
= = =
A nutty cult, of course. They’ve labeled themselves quite accurately. They just didn’t realize that’s what they were doing.
You wrote:
“Why don’t they apply?”
You’ll see.
“Trent was convened because of Protestantism, and the anathema canons all start with “If ANYONE”. I mean, wouldn’t spiritual cursing fall under that “always and everywhere believed” thing?”
1) Trent was not held because of Protestantism. Calls for a council had been common for more than 70 years before the creation of Protestantism.
2) Protestantism was considered a heresy at that time because almost all those who were Protestants were once Catholics. It was not viewed as a separate religion.
“Are you saying if I held my current beliefs 100 years ago I would be cursed to hell by your church, but today I am not?”
I am saying no one who was always Protestant is bound by canon law the same way a Catholic who falls into the heresies of Protestantism is.
“(And I know that at the time of Trent, all I had to do to have my cursing to hell removed was to convert to Catholicism. IOW, “convert or die”. Hmmmm.”
1) There was no “convert or die” principle or policy.
2) Anathemas cursed no one to hell. The Church has never had nor claimed to have such authority. You seem to be as faulty in your knowledge of what an anathema as other poorly catechized Protestants. You might want to do some research.
It is also the encyclopedia of Pharisaical Christianity.
It makes no difference, you see, because as long as you believe in Christ you can go to nudie bars. That's why Luther reminds us that even if you commit countless fornications a day, it is all "paid for" on the Cross.
It is a true miracle that, given human nature, not everyone is Protestant!
Really? St. Paul writes in Rom 6:2 "We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" And Luther teklls us to "sin boldly" and not worry.
Well, Kolo is a better source to tap, but ginosko does not necessarily mean knowing in the sense the Protestants claim. It certainly does mean, among other things, that we may know of something, and not that we know it.
If you have a rudimentary knowledge of the French language, do you "know" French? Some people would be arrogant enough to say yes. It all depends how high do we raise the bar and on the context of what's said or written.
In verse 19, +Paul says "because that which is known about or of God (theou) is evident within them." In the context of his writing, he speaks of knowing of God through the veidence of Creation, the way we know that if we see a house there must be a builder who raised it. But that does not mean we know the builder!
The point he was making is that even though people are aware that God created the world, based on the veidence of creation, some people still don't honor God. There is nothing in his writing here that suggests we know God inside and out.
The closest to knowing God is through Christ in the Gospels.
LOL!
I love these discussions! They get you to go back and actually look at what Scripture says and what history reveals. Under that "always and everywhere believed" banner I've learned a lot of it is just not true, but it's been said so much everyone just thinks it is true.
For example, haven't we all heard "well we gave you the Scriptures". Not true, the Scriptures were recognized very early on and it wasn't until Trent that the RCC actually made an official declaration.
Another example, "we are the church that was founded at Pentecost". Only true if you are including all believers in Jesus Christ. The mono bishophoric system didn't begin to emerge until after the end of the Apostolic Era.
The problem seems to be getting our RC posters to admit that something hasn't been "always and everywhere believed". I'm guessing that admitting their church has not told the truth about something is to hard to come to grips with.
Both are, first because in justice God recognizes the act as objectively good, and second, because anything good that people do is an expression of faith in Christ, however badly recognized by the doer. When an atheist helps a woman across the street, he is at that moment guided by the light of Christ.
Our salvation is the cake, which would have been made perfectly if we were never in the kitchen. But like the mother, God lets us participate, under full supervision. He gives us the ability to "come to our own decision" to accept Christ into our lives, so we feel like we did it. However, the truth is really that we had nothing to do with it.
The analogy is quite acceptable, but not the conclusion. The mother bakes the cake in the first place in order to teach the girl how to love others. If the girl was not moved to help, the cake may still end up in her belly, but that cake would not be likened to salvation if the girl did not attempt to participate in its baking.
Note that you chose a cake, something important because of its use in a celebration. This is a good analogy because the celebration requires the right attitude from the girl. The girl participated in the work of the baking just like a Christian will participate in the work of the Father on his soul, to culminate in the celebration of the beatific vision. Had you chosen something only important for its nutritional value, like a ham sandwich, the analogy will be with divine providence feeding our bellies perhaps, but not with salvation.
Exactly!
God has written onto EVERYONES hearts the Law of Love. Even a person who has never heard of Jesus Christ can "know" this law. If a person loves, He abides in Christ.
God is not just good, but goodness itself. Where there is goodness, there is God.
***A believer and a non believer can both help the same little old lady across the street, but only one was a good work in God’s eyes***
If she didn’t want to cross the street, neither one did a good deed! :>)
Well, I suppose one could make a case with David, but I am guessing that you are talking about the accounts of God killing whole towns and villages, etc. They were NOT His children. But there are tons of examples of God acting as a personal beloved Father in the OT. Three are God providing a ram to Abraham at the key moment, God leading the Jews out of Egypt in response to their prayers, and God testing the mettle of His son Job, and then MORE than fully restoring him.
FK: I truly believe that God wants to have this type of [personal] relationship with us rather than one where we are a drone reporting through ten layers of hierarchy to get to Him.
I respect your belief, and I believe it is genuine, but where do you find that in the Bible?
Thank you. I would say that I find this type of relationship EVERYWHERE in the Bible. In the OT, God communicated directly to His prophets. He didn't lead them as we might lead a pet. He talked to them, personally. Not only that, but He interacted with them, as opposed to issuing commands and then leaving. He suffered their idiocies and played them along. Even though it was presumably a waste of His time, He still "worked" with them.
And then, of course, we have Jesus. For Jesus, being 100% God, to have personal relationships with His followers was nothing new. It was just in a new form, and even more personal. He cared about His disciples in ways that we fully recognize. He ate with them, sang with them, cried with them, and laughed with them. Except for taking a wife, it just doesn't get any more personal. Jesus COULD have been a very impersonal King, but He WANTED to have personal relationships with them then, and with us now.
I think, once saved-always saved means that a believer pushing old ladies to their death remains saved, no?
In all fairness, to put it in the context of the Reformed theology, they were not His children because God ordained them before they were even born not to be His children. They couldn't be His children even if they wanted to! And, because they were not His children, they were human cattle for slaughter.
Once dehumanized, the destruction of God's refuse in the Old Testament genocides become God's "justice."
Three are God providing a ram to Abraham at the key moment
Another way of looking at that is that what the OT God did to Abraham was cruel and sadistic. God would have known Abraham's faith and that Abraham's love for God was stronger than for his son. God did not have to test Abraham to know that.
God leading the Jews out of Egypt in response to their prayers
From the Reformed point of view, that is an oxymoron. The Reformed can't say that payers change what God predestined. If the prayers were predestined, then the Jews prayed not because they wanted to but because they had to. And God did not "respond" to their prayers, but simply did what His "plan" envisions would happen, since obviously even God is helped captive by His own "plan."
God testing the mettle of His son Job, and then MORE than fully restoring him
God had no reason to test Job. God would know what's in Job's heart. God was making a bet with Satan, who said he could make Job curse God.
What I see in all this is Zeus, not Christ, not even a foreshadow of Christ. What I see is a deity that acts like a man would, a God made in man's image.
For Jesus, being 100% God, to have personal relationships with His followers was nothing new
Christ had a very select group of followers, a dozen of men and a few women, that you could say had any personal interaction with Him, none of which was a friendship of any kind, but a strict relationship. He told them what, when and where to do, where not to do, where to go, where not to go, how to pray, etc., etc. That was a very relationship. I never thought of my relationship with my teachers and professors as "personal," although I spent a good part of my days and years with them.
God is not out chum. St. Thomas' words "You are my Lord and my God" does not have the possessive meaning Protestants and Baptists assign to it. He is our God, but He is not ours. Rather we would be His.
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