Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: daniel1212; CynicalBear; WVKayaker; Elsie; Running On Empty; metmom; boatbums; caww
you fail to express what we are supposed to assumed, or you are looking for a way to avoid admitting a contradiction by taking the offense

I can't really parse this, but I surely took no offense. Did my last couple of post explain it to you or do you still perceive a problem of communication? In short:

1. Baptism is a sacrament that saves (removes past sin) by its own work. Since there is but one Church, there is but one Baptism, the Catholic one. Excepting wholly irregular baptisms by fringe Protestant groups, or "baptisms" not meant to bring a person to Christ at all, and of course excepting pre-Christian ablutions, including St. John's, every one today who gets baptized is a born-again new Catholic creature, regardless of his own theories.

2. When Protestants speak of "born again" they mean by it a certain faith experience. This is where the misunderstanding is. If a Protestant is validly baptized, he is, in the eye of God, a Catholic faithful. If he is invalidly baptized, for example, "baptized" a second time, or not using the proper Trinitarian formula, or not in water, etc. -- but has a faith experience which he likes to describe as "born again" then he is not Catholic and likely is under a lure. Without an examination of his soul it is impossible to tell if his experience is good for his faith or bad for his faith.

3. People do not get "saved" once and for all. They live their entire life and in the end they are judged. The duration of their life is preparation for that moment. If they use their life so that they learn to imitate Christ and carry their own cross, they will be saved and will be Catholic in heaven, and will have life everlasting. Otherwise, they cannot be saved. Protestant theological fantasies are nothing but an obstacle in this life journey. For example, if one is baptized validly, but regards it as "a denial of Rome's baptism", well, then his state of grace will last for about five minutes, and then he is lapsed and needs a Catholic conversion, which will use necessary sacraments to put him back in the state of of grace, and we all pray for him and sorrow for him till such time.

4,541 posted on 01/05/2013 4:28:09 PM PST by annalex (fear them not)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4540 | View Replies ]


To: annalex; CynicalBear; WVKayaker; Elsie; Running On Empty; metmom; boatbums; caww
Baptism is a sacrament that saves (removes past sin) by its own work. Since there is but one Church, there is but one Baptism, the Catholic one...

Your argument is based on one fallacy after the other. That Rome is the one true Church is begging the questions, and it remains that Prot baptism is a denial of Rome, as it attests that born again with personal repentance and faith, not paedobaptism on proxy faith and not cooperation with grace dispensed by Rome from her Treasury of merit, though he/she expresses that faith in baptism and following the Lord.

Excepting wholly irregular baptisms by fringe Protestant groups, or "baptisms" not meant to bring a person to Christ at all,

"Irregular?" The reality is that the idea that baptism makes on born again is the fringe belief, and it is hardly tenable that Rome's broad affirmation of Protestant salvation has simply these in mind, nor does is fit your scenario in which you attempt to make baptized Prots into Catholic in attempting to avoid the charge of self-contradiction.

If he is invalidly baptized, for example, "baptized" a second time, or not using the proper Trinitarian formula... but has a faith experience which he likes to describe as "born again" then he is not Catholic and likely is under a lure. Without an examination of his soul it is impossible to tell if his experience is good for his faith or bad for his faith.

So from Prots not being born again and part of the body of Christ then (when challenged) we go to Prots being Catholic at baptism, to likely not being born again because they did so because they were born again with a salvation experience, often after infant sprinkling (yet it is such converts manifest the most fruit. As for the proper Trinitarian formula, that was a matter of some variation early on.

These evangelical believers are what best fits your description of those whom you tried to make Catholic at baptism, not some Anglican or other minority groups (i can provide figures), and few Prots intend to do what Rome intends in baptism, and or where baptized as Catholic, and thus it remains that most are essentially denying Rome by their baptism.

People do not get "saved" once and for all. They live their entire life and in the end they are judged.

What the Bible teaches that they are now "saved," present tense, having passed from death to life, (Eph. 2:8; Jn. 5:24) so that, like the contrite criminal, the entire church of true believers, if Christ returned, would be forever with the Lord, or otherwise with Him at death. (Lk. 23:39-43; 1Thes. 4:17; cf. 2Cor. 5:8; Phil 1:23) And the Holy Spirit provides for assurance, based on "things which accompany salvation," (Heb. 6:9) that one presently possesses eternal life, (1Jn. 5:13), by which the apostle knew the election of believers. (1Thes. 1:4ff)

Yet, salvation being by a faith that follows, and is rewarded, (Heb. 10:35) they are exhorted against drawing “back unto perdition” in unbelief, (Heb. 10:38,39) and having “an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God,” against which apostasy they are warned. (Heb. 3:12; 10:25-39; Gal. 5:1-5) And thus God chastens wayward believers in working to bring them to repentance, “that we should not be condemned with the world.” (1Cor. 11:32).

For example, if one is baptized validly, but regards it as "a denial of Rome's baptism", well, then his state of grace will last for about five minutes, and then he is lapsed and needs a Catholic conversion, which will use necessary sacraments to put him back in the state of of grace.

Rather, if he does not regards his conversion as a denial of Rome's baptism - which typically never evidenced manifest Scriptural - regeneration, there is doubt of his salvation, while (if i may digress) this issue honestly is an an example Catholic interpretation of Rome.

For behold the gracious words which Rome uses to for ecumenical purposes, speaking of how she "is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian," though they do not "profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter," To whom also God "gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood." "For men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect"." And that "Saints come from all the Churches and Ecclesial Communities" and all Christian Communities have martyrs for the Christian faith.

Yet since hardly any of those she so broadly appeals to, such as " honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal" [hardly Anglical types], including those in ecclesial communities [code word for [non-Orthodox, churches)," intend to do what Rome imagines her baptism does, and re-baptized Catholics abound in them, then (according to the traditional view) this field is so minute as to make such words of little to no effect, or theoretical at best.

But who can blame these attempts to define what seems to have been meant to be taken broadly into such a narrow or theoretical sense? For indeed Rome's past autocratic self declaration of her supremacy and exclusion of salvation to all who were not in her bosom and in formal subjection to her can sound so absolute as to sometimes seem to exclude the Orthodox (depending on what not committed to Peter's successors in Rome means). In consideration of such it makes the sedevacantist Catholic schism look honest when they assert there is a contradiction btwn these and other past and present statements.

Other RCs interpret Lumen Getium and like statements more broadly than their traditional counterparts, but the reality is that no matter how much the magisterium is promoted as providing clarity, there is much room for interpretation in its teaching, with parameters of course, but room enough for quite different views on many things, besides the areas in which there is no official teaching (and just what is "official" itself finds disagreement.)

4,572 posted on 01/05/2013 8:27:25 PM PST by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4541 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson