Posted on 05/02/2008 2:09:51 PM PDT by Augustinian monk
The door prizes must have been fabulous, they kept coming back year after year!
You are on to something. This is Why Evangelicals are Returning to Rome!
**snort**
My only rewrite of that line would be to delete the word "fully."
None of us has all the answers. Perfect understanding simply in not in our DNA. And none of us truly knows any heart other than our own, and even that is sometimes difficult to really understand. We are all susceptible to self-deception.
Trinitarian belief that Christ died for our sins and paid for them in full is the lynch-pin that unites the Christian faith. Anyone in possession of this belief has most likely been gifted by God with His grace to understand and believe.
So, given my Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ, I am then forced to apply my own Reformed beliefs. Those would be that God ORDAINED that Catholics BE Catholics! :) No matter how vociferous my disagreement with their theology is I don't know how to avoid this fact.
And of course we can't avoid it. God has placed each of us where we're supposed to be today. Tomorrow, God willing, that place will be closer to Him than yesterday.
That is, as of this minute. God can always dispense further sanctifying grace at His leisure. :)
Amen. Exactly as He does for each member of His family.
The point of all this is that YES, Catholics and Protestants, in my view, are looking at the same core from different angles.
The actual question then becomes how much are each of us permitting something to distract us from that singular, uncluttered, God-glorifying view of His grace?
Is calling Mary a "co-redeemer" something that diffuses the glory of God alone and sends it back to the creature? I believe it is.
Is calling priests "another Christ" something that obscures our view of the only mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus? I believe it is.
Is believing that we are justified by works when Scripture tells us we are justified by the faith of Jesus Christ a real impediment to more "fully" understanding God's will and purpose in our lives? I believe it is.
Like everyone else around here, I have family and friends who are Roman Catholic and I love them dearly and have always felt we share the Christian perspective. But from my experience on these threads these past few years I've seen our real and tangible differences, and I am less confident of the RCC as a true expositor of God's word and will than I ever was before reading the many errors the RCC preaches, only a few of which I mentioned above.
But primarily I worry that the RCC teaches its members to disregard the Holy Spirit as a personal means of God instructing, leading and comforting His family. Instead the RCC teaches the Holy Spirit speaks to the magisterium and the magisterium then speaks to the congregation through the priest and the sacraments and finally God is filtered down to the individual believer.
How much of that is denying the Holy Spirit's work in our lives? I honestly don't know.
Likewise, so much in the Catechism of the Catholic Religion denies the correct definition of justification and instead almost mocks the grace of God by saying men's own good works help to justify their sins when we are told time and again in Scripture that Christ has justified the ungodly one-time on the cross and thus paid for the sins of His flock in full.
CCF: 1821 -- We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere "to the end" and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ.
Whose work are we being rewarded for -- our own or Christ's work on the cross?
To say our own good works earn God's approval rather than believing our good works are 100% the result of God's grace working through us by the indwelling Holy Spirit, according to Christ's righteousness imputed to us and not our own, again seems to deny the Holy Spirit's role and purpose in our lives.
And again this gets back to the incorrect definition of justification by the RCC...
1) According to the RCC, initial justification comes by baptism, whereas the Bible tells us justification is by faith alone.
2) According to the RCC, adults must prepare for justification through both faith and good works, whereas the Bible tells us God justifies the ungodly sinners who believe; therefore good works are the result of salvation, not the cause of it.
3) According to the RCC, the justified are themselves beautiful and holy in God's sight, whereas the Bible tells us the justified are in Christ blameless before God and holy.
4) According to the RCC, justification is furthered by good works and sacraments, whereas the Bible tells us justification is the imputation of the perfect righteousness of God. Only in and by and through Christ is the believer made complete.
5) The RCC teaches that justification is lost through mortal sin, whereas the Bible teaches just the opposite and that all those whom God justifies will be saved from His wrath.
6) The RCC teaches that once the believer's justification is lost through mortal sin it can be regained through the sacrament of penance, whereas the Bible teaches there is no "second justification." Those whom God justifies, He also glorifies.
As so many have said, a Scriptural understanding of why we are justified by Christ and how this transforms our lives goes to the reason we believe in the first place. Saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God's glory and the welfare of His family.
IMO either a member of the RCC will be led out of the errors of Rome and into the light of the truth, or he will be forgiven his errors just like all redeemed Christians are forgiven all their sins and errors -- by being acquitted through Christ's atonement on the cross alone by God's unmerited, free mercy alone.
But you do not ascribe to that term the correct meaning.
Is calling priests "another Christ" something that obscures our view of the only mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus? I believe it is.
But you do not ascribe to that term the correct meaning.
In both prongs your false dichotomy supposes errors where there are none (except perhaps in your misunderstanding).
I have no doubt that the Catholic Church of your imagination is diabolical. The problem is that the Catholic Church of your imagination IS NOT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OF REALITY.
It does not. Martin Luther was so concerned by this that he added the word "alone" to Romans 3:28. Nasty stuff, that.
In fact, it says exactly the opposite.
The RCC teaches that justification is lost through mortal sin
While you guys teach that someone who dies in an obvious state of unrepentant serious sin was "never really saved in the first place". However, such people often think they're saved, and people around them think they're saved, so what you are really confessing when you say that is that you can never be sure that anyone is "really saved".
According to the RCC, adults must prepare for justification through both faith and good works
Nope. Sorry. All Trent says is that one's will, "moved and excited by God" cooperates and assents to the grace of justification and is not merely passive.
And whereas the Apostle saith, that man is justified by faith and freely, those words are to be understood in that sense which the perpetual consent of the Catholic Church hath held and expressed; to wit, that we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all Justification; without which it is impossible to please God, and to come unto the fellowship of His sons: but we are therefore said to be justified freely, because that none of those things which precede justification-whether faith or works-merit the grace itself of justification. For, if it be a grace, it is not now by works, otherwise, as the same Apostle says, grace is no more grace. -- Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, chapter 8
Please. It is the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
...denies the correct definition of justification...
It denies the heresies of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Machen, et al.
...and instead almost mocks the grace of God...
In your opinion mocks your definition of the grace of God.
I don't think I need to go on.
Perhaps I will anyway, I have not decided.
Still happening, isn’t it?
If that's "blasphemy," then it was also blasphemy when St. Paul told the Corinthians that God was appealing (to them to repent) through him, or when he said, in another place, that now it was not he who lived, but Christ living through him.
I think "blasphemy" to you is a synonym for "paraphrasing Scripture that I don't much like or use".
Hah! Those Calvinist handcuffs go on so easily ... one "click", and you're caught in the paradox of your own theology! (Cue sinister black-robed inquisitor cackling demonically ... ) :-)
Seriously, thanks to you and AG for a ray of light amidst the darkness.
CCC 2016 The children of our holy mother the Church rightly hope for the grace of final perseverance and the recompense of God their Father for the good works accomplished with his grace in communion with Jesus. Keeping the same rule of life, believers share the "blessed hope" of those whom the divine mercy gathers into the "holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
AND
Perseverance in faith
CCC 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." 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; it must be "working through charity," abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church.
Oh yes.
No blasphemy. All who repent do so because God has given them new eyes and new ears and a new heart with which to know their salvation has been won for them by Christ on the cross.
Nor is it blasphemy to know that we now live not for and by and through ourselves, but for and by and through Jesus Christ alone.
And that fact means there is no other mediator between God and men, but Christ Jesus, and that there is no "co-redeemer." Christ on the cross, alone.
Too bad the RCC doesn't teach those two Scriptural truths.
Amen and well said, my sister.
I’m assuming then that you never ask a friend or loved one to pray for you, nor do you pray for others.
How about this one from the RCC catechism?
2010 -- Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.
"...we can then merit for ourselves..."
As I said, a complete misunderstanding of what our justification by Christ is and does.
And as if this isn't bad enough, the catechism adds insult to injury by saying "we can merit for ourselves and for others..."
LOL. Which of course, harkens back to the lie of purgatory and prayers for the dead.
"For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." -- Matthew 12:37
Rom 15:30 I beseech you therefore, brethren, through our Lord Jesus Christ and by the charity of the Holy Ghost, that you help me in your prayers for me to God,
Asking his brethren to pray for him?
Necromancy is forbidden in the Bible.
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