Is this still about Christ opening the gates of heaven? I don't know how you aren't understanding this: That's not all there is to it. Our Lord did open the gates of heaven, but He didn't stop there. Some Catholics find the explanation given in the Baltimore Catechism deficient because the answer doesn't go far enough.
This business of conflating isolated (or at least unrelated) sentences into caricatures of doctrine really serves no useful purpose except for the confusion of the ignorant.
Catholics do not teach or believe that Jesus saved them, they believe he made them savable ..keep the OT laws and the laws of the church and do good deeds and God owes ya salvation
I don't know how you can write that with a straight face. You are introducing a false dichotomy there. What He makes savable, HE then saves.
I really think a lot of this sort of confusion comes from CCD folk and other teachers trying to impart dogma in developmentally inappropriate ways.
It impresses me that ‘the Philosopher’ wrote that ethics cannot be taught to the young. I think when the Faith is taught to people too young for theology they end up with too mechanical and simplistic an understanding.
We are talking about the Love of a living God, far more alive and freer than our imaginations can conceive. But the depiction of our belief here is not one of heart in dialogue with Heart. It is not even one of Master taming beast. It is rather one of something like a vending machine.
It is as if, were I to say, “When I kiss my wife she kisses me back,” they would then insist that I think I buy her kisses with mine. And once I say,”Well, sort of, in a way, I guess,” they triumphantly say, “See? Works righteousness!”
> “What He makes savable, HE then saves.”
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No, Whomever the Father gave him, them he saved. (Past tense)
The job has been finished for 2000 years.
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What else did Jesus do? Does He save all men?