[Cronos]

Harley - you normally talk sense, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you haven't read what the Catholic Church declares about grace namely (and this is from the Catechism)

Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life

The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism

This clear enough that we do and have had a clearer idea of grace than before the various non-Catholic movements?

And don't say "Protestants simply..." -- that's not true for the wide range of contradictory beliefs that go under the label Protestantism - the Christian Scientists, the Oneness Pentecostals, the ELCA, the PCUSA, the SBC all differ in what they mean, so you can't use that umbrella term

[Elsie]

...you haven't read what the Catholic Church declares about grace namely (and this is from the Catechism)

It's not that we HAVEN'T read what your teaching guide says about 'grace', but that we HAVE read so many OTHER things that your chosen religion has said about 'grace'.

[Democrat = party of treason]

“Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life”

No, Grace is NOT “help”. God does NOT “help” us get redeemed, HE REDEEMS US, period. Even the faith necessary TO BELIEVE is given us by God. We have NOTHING to do with our redemption. The call of God on ones life is answered by repenting(changing ones mind) and using the free gift of faith God gave us to believe on Him and be born again. Grace is wholly imparted and bestowed upon us by God, whereby He counts the sacrifice Jesus made on the Cross and the blood shed By Him for us to be applied to us and in our place.

“The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism”

Grace is a gift of God to believers who have repented and turned towards Him. The original sinful dead to God spirit that we all inherited from Adam is born again into a spirit alive in Crist. We were NOT sinners because we sinned, we were born sinners because the spirit we were born with was sin stained, and unable to commune with God.

It is quite obvious just from this thread why the teachings of Catholicism is mostly incompatible with God’s simple plan for salvation. Building walls of crazy over explained, and mostly wrong and over complicatedly defined, edicts for its followers to attempt to wade through in order for them to work out their own salvation is just not what God’s free gift of Grace is.

[HarleyD]

The Catholic Church have two understanding of grace. There is actual grace which you provided the definition for. Then there is the sanctifying grace which you are not mentioning. It is this sanctifying faith which the Catholic Church feels one needs to do in order to maintain their salvation. Thus one has to replenish this grace through the Eucharist, indulgences, and other works defined by the Catholic Church. It is these types of works that Luther rally against and said the Church was in error.

I'm not interested in what other Protestants have to say on the matter no more then what you would feel some liberal Cardinals would have to say on Gay marriage. The only true source of information is from the Holy Scriptures themselves. It plainly states (among other places):

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

We see here that grace is a ONE time act by which WE HAVE BEEN SAVED. There is no "sanctifying" grace nor is there anything that we must do to merit that favor. Nor does it state anywhere that grace comes to us through Baptism as you indicated in your post. God grants us His grace and we respond to HIm through our works. But we don't work to keep His grace.

If we received grace BECAUSE of Baptism are you saying that God does not give grace UNTIL one is Baptized? How one answers that question shows whether they believe in works as a method of salvation. It just underscores my (and Luther's) point.