We're solving a puzzle. We have a box with pieces. When the pieces are put together, we will have a beautiful finished product. The manufacturer guarantees that the pieces are all there.
Along comes a dear friend who loves to do puzzles together with us. He has a box with pieces in it. The picture on the box certainly looks similar. But his box does not have the same manufacturer's guarantee. And his puzzle has 500 pieces.
He insists on mixing his pieces with those from our box, arguing that we will still get the same picture. But now instead of a 500-piece puzzle, we have 1000 pieces.
Along the way, our friend, who is a real puzzle buff, finds the same picture in another box, and we repeat the process, but now we are trying to assemble 1500 pieces, when the original 500 would have gotten the beautiful picture we want.
Of course, the Catholic Christian says that the second and third boxes do have the manufacturer's guarantee. But even if it were so, a simple puzzle has grown unnecessarily complex.
Paul said that the scriptures were able to make one wise unto salvation. From that point on, my premise becomes that scripture is sufficient to salvation when applied.
Well articulated.
Okay, you’re really trying to get over on this puzzle analogy, and I understand why, but you are literally boxed in logically. You need to accept that.
The purpose of the puzzle analogy was to accomplish one thing and one thing only, that is to refute your statement from post 1812.
“If scripture provides the things that produce completeness in the believer, as the passage clearly says, then it is sufficient, even if the word “sufficient” doesn’t appear.”
The above quote is a non-sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the premises. The puzzle analogy demonstrates this by showing “that which produces completeness is NOT ‘sufficient’ in and of itself.”
And yes, Paul did say the Scriptures were able to make you wise unto salvation. You go on to extend that by saying the Scriptures are sufficient to salvation when applied, but that’s the hitch. Just because you know it (wise), doesn’t mean you can do it (apply).
That takes grace.
I’m not saying you can’t get the grace you need right where you are. What I’m telling you is that for twenty years I lived in spiritual torture because I didn’t get the grace I needed to realize the promise of freedom from the law of sin and death as Paul explains in Romans 7, but I received that grace through the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus in the reception of His Most Holy Eucharist.
Now I can finally say along with our beloved St. Paul “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
OF course, we WILL have to burn you at the stake, but I'll let you eat some of the marshmallows I bring before you expire. (or perspire, or whatever.)
I think this: The notion that God loves us, because, well because He does and it's a free country.... That is VERY hard for us, in our fallen state, to hold onto.But I also know they do not hear it anywhere else, no matt4r how excellently it is preached. It just seems to take an extraordinary act of the Holy Spirit to wake up each individual to the amazing truth of the Love of God.
It was as a (mostly) Calvinist Episcopalian that I believed, preached, and prayed about the love of God. And somehow that led me to Rome.
God says, "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still." I think the right understanding of all askesis and piety is tht it is learning how to be still in the confidence and peace that arises from believing that the Lord will fight for us and we have only to be still.
There may be language about indulgences and how this or that prayer or Rosary or Novena or whatever is rich in graces. And, s a matter of fact, I believe a lot of that stuff, having (unless, as is possible, I delude myself) But underlying all my piety is a conviction which can be expressed in a number of ways: "It's ALL gift," is one; "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still," is another.
But you win the metaphor of the night prize.