We NEED Him, not just sometimes, but at ALL times. This is one of my biggest disagreements with the Latin faith.
We say otherwise? WHO does? Show me the sonofagun! I need some target practice.
I keep saying everything we have is gift. I have taught and preached (before the Vatican smacked down us lay-preachers) that if God were somehow to turn his gaze from us, as the psalmist in a desperation I quite understand asks, we would go up more quickly than a spent match. Not even a cinder left.
From a truly humble web < href="http://www.rockhousefarm.com/vftalk.shtml">site, with lots to be humble about
[H]ere's an excerpt from a very interesting little book, Karl Adam, Roots of the Reformation:Yeah, that's just about grace and stuff, but it seems to me really to be about everything. Whatever we may be said in any respect to "have" we do not in fact have. It may be "in us" but it sho' ain't ours. Such justice as we may "have" "dwells in us by faith and hoe", and anything else we "have" is a gift maintained by the constant giving of God, with whom it is always "Yes!"In fact, the phrase "salvation by faith alone" has never been alien to Catholic theology. It was in fact always Catholic teaching that we can only be saved by Christ alone, that is is only God's unmerited, unmeritable grace that lifts us out of the state of sin and death into that of divine sonship, and that even the so-called "meritorious acts" which the redeemed perform in the state of justice are only "meritorious by grace," attributable, that is, the the love of Christ working in us and through us. Insofar as the justification of man is God's work alone, we could speak with Luther of "extrinsic" justice. It is indeed also interior and personal. Luther too, in that same commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, affirms that this extrinsic justice "dwells in us by faith and hope," that it is "in us" though it does not belong to us (in nobis est, non nostra), that it thus, according to the Council of Trent, "inheres" in justified men (atque ipsis inhaeret, sess, 6, cap. 7, can 11).
"Yes" as in, yes you may inhale, yes your lungs and hemoglobin may carry out the oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange, yes, the blood will carry the oxygen to wherever it's needed, and yes, when it gets there it will do some good." and so forth. The "Evangelical poverty" undertaken by some is, inter alia, just a kind of prophetic "sign" for the rest of us, that we live from one instant to another by God's favor alone.
We say otherwise? WHO does? Show me the sonofagun! I need some target practice.
It's just the way the free will position is presented. If all Jesus did was make it possible for us to come to Him, and if God never interferes, then, presumably, we come to God "on our own". I infer from that that we don't "need" Him for that decision, although every Catholic would say we absolutely need Him to get to that point. We would say that we need God for all of it.
It has to do with the parent-child analogy throughout the Bible. My impression is that the Catholic view is that we are respectful adult children, that is, we can still be greatly influenced by the parent, but are relatively independent. We see ourselves as relative toddlers, still fully dependent for everything.
[H]ere's an excerpt from a very interesting little book, Karl Adam, Roots of the Reformation: " In fact, the phrase "salvation by faith alone" has never been alien to Catholic theology. It was in fact always Catholic teaching that we can only be saved by Christ alone, that is is only God's unmerited, unmeritable grace that lifts us out of the state of sin and death into that of divine sonship, and that even the so-called "meritorious acts" which the redeemed perform in the state of justice are only "meritorious by grace," attributable, that is, the the love of Christ working in us and through us." ......
Looks like it could be a good read. :) If more folks spoke like this our disagreements would be much less.