This shows either a complete misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of Catholic belief. Catholics do not believe that we get to Heaven by earning enough brownie points to make up for our sins. Rather the difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Protestants believe that we are saved merely from the penalty of sin while Catholics believe we are saved from sin itself, i.e. the disorder of the soul that turns us away from the love of God to the selfish love of self.
Protestantism falls into the same legalistic trap as the Pharisees. They view sin as merely an external violation of a legal precept given by God. For the Pharisee reparation is made by the Temple sacrifices. For the Protestant reparation is made by the penal substitution of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Thus while man is still left with a corrupt soul God accepts the sacrifice of Jesus as the payment for the debt of sin. It is this legalistic view of salvation that causes Protestants to think that Catholics believe that there is something lacking in the merit of Jesus sacrifice when they do not hold to salvation by faith alone.
Catholicism rejects this purely legalistic view of salvation and holds that we are saved from sin itself. For Catholics the merits of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross opens up to us the grace of God that will actually change the disorder of the soul which is sin. That this is what God wants from us is clear from the declaration of Jesus on the greatest of the commandments:
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40)Paul likewise shows the necessity of love, and not just faith, for our salvation:
If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.… So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3,13)The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches Justification thus:
1987 The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism: (Rom 3:22; cf 6:3-4)Justification therefore is not merely the imputation of God's justice but the act of God by which we receive his grace that makes us just, reflecting the love of God. This is completely unmerited and a gracious gift of God but one with which we must cooperate.But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:8-11)1988 Through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ's Passion by dying to sin, and in his Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body which is the Church, branches grafted onto the vine which is himself: (Cf 1 Cor 12; Jn 15:1-4)[God] gave himself to us through his Spirit. By the participation of the Spirit, we become communicants in the divine nature. . . . For this reason, those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized. (St. Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 1,24:PG26,585 and 588.)1989 The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting justification in accordance with Jesus' proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Mt 4:17) Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high. "Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. (Council of Trent (1547):DS1528)1990 Justification detaches man from sin which contradicts the love of God, and purifies his heart of sin. Justification follows upon God's merciful initiative of offering forgiveness. It reconciles man with God. It frees from the enslavement to sin, and it heals.
1991 Justification is at the same time the acceptance of God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. Righteousness (or "justice") here means the rectitude of divine love. With justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts, and obedience to the divine will is granted us.
1992 Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life: (Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1529)
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus. (Rom 3:21-26)1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:When God touches man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God's sight. (Council of Trent (1547): DS 1525)1994 Justification is the most excellent work of God's love made manifest in Christ Jesus and granted by the Holy Spirit. It is the opinion of St. Augustine that "the justification of the wicked is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth," because "heaven and earth will pass away but the salvation and justification of the elect . . . will not pass away." (St. Augustine, In Jo. ev. 72,3:PL 35, 1823.) He holds also that the justification of sinners surpasses the creation of the angels in justice, in that it bears witness to a greater mercy.1995 The Holy Spirit is the master of the interior life. By giving birth to the "inner man," (Cf. Rom 7:33; Eph 3:16) justification entails the sanctification of his whole being:
Just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. . . . But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. (Rom 6:19,22)
That the forgiveness of our sins is dependent on more than just our faith is clear in what Jesus says after giving us the Lord's Prayer:
If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. (Matthew 6:14-15)Even after faith we must have the love of neighbor to forgive them their transgressions against us in order to have God forgive us.
Speaking of "a complete misunderstanding or a misrepresentation"....
When a human is born from above, God puts His Holy Spirit life in them. They are then and forever more a member of His family with the Righteousness of Christ imparted to them by adoption. If a person is not born from above, they will strive to obtain the Life of God in them and never achieve it that way. There is only one Way, by faith and no works will ever be good enough in your flesh to merit even in the tiniest portion what ONLY God has and ONLY GOD can place in you. We see the evidence of that at Pentecost and in the House of Cornelius, where none of the Catholic means to salvation were necessary to have God’s Life come into those listening who believed the message that Jesus is the ONLY means by which we must be saved.
Bkm
As you know the catechism is not an infallible work ..it is subject to change and revision
You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40)
And as you know ..this is as impossible to keep as are the 10 commandments that flow from it
What Catholics have is not a Savior.. they have a Probation officer
Protestantism falls into the same legalistic trap as the Pharisees. They view sin as merely an external violation of a legal precept given by God. For the Pharisee reparation is made by the Temple sacrifices. For the Protestant reparation is made by the penal substitution of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Thus while man is still left with a corrupt soul God accepts the sacrifice of Jesus as the payment for the debt of sin. It is this legalistic view of salvation that causes Protestants to think that Catholics believe that there is something lacking in the merit of Jesus sacrifice when they do not hold to salvation by faith alone.
So much so wrong and so little time......
First off, born again Christians know they are saved not only from the penalty of sin, but the power of sin as well, because we DIED to sin in Christ Jesus. Since we are dead to sin, it no longer has nay power over us.
We are regenerated, given new life in Christ, being made NEW creatures in Christ, not merely reformed ones. Having a new nature given us by the Holy Spirit makes us free from sin. In every way.
Christians know that the heart is what God sees and that sin is conceived there before it ever shows in the actions.
That is the reason that we know it is impossible to attain the righteousness that God requires. The Beatitudes address that.
God cancels the sin debt we owe in a judicial act of forgiveness, and gives the believer a new heart and mind, gives him spiritual life, and adopts him permanently into His family, FOREVER.
We enter a personal relationship with God as our Father, not a servant relationship where payment is demanded for wrongs done, as Catholicism teaches. And it does teach that. The sacrament of confession demands penance, and Catholics believe that sin not forgiven by God can be burned off by suffering in purgatory. THAT is absolutely a works based system.
We are not merely open to the grace that God has available to us, we walk in it constantly as it is lavished on us by God through faith, not doles out in stingy little parcels through religious performances.
Works based religious system.
Jesus tells us that the work of God it to believe on Him, to have faith.
Catholics tell us it's something else, that faith isn't enough.
I'll go with Jesus over the corrupt and immoral Catholic church.
Excellent post.
Help me out here, are you saying a saved person is then not forgiven or that a person is still striving along the path to obtain salvation and must do this work of forgiving others in order to obtain a degree of forgiveness they earn by foregiving others?
The critical and fundamental insistence that justification is a process like sanctification is entirely negated by the mouth of God as Jesus Messiah is entirely eradicated by the following Scriptural passage:
"Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
Luk 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (Lk. 18:10 -14 AV)
The response to a saving faith is instantaneous justification, and in this passage it is in the perfect tense: The repentant confessing faithful stands saved and justified instantaneously, with everlasting effect, while the works-doer cannot earn his way into Jesus' favor, and Jesus clearly points this out to his disciples.
So be it, and take heed. You can scratch out Post #24 on this.
I will be using this as an example of displaying false salvation doctrine to my students, actually today.