A Taylor Marshall question

[rdj88]

Sorry but no. The Church still teaches there is no salvation outside the Catholic church and the grace given to us in baptism is God’s grace because He is the Way.

Yes, I’m saying you’re taking that teaching too literalistically. The Church is not an institution; it is the metaphysical Body of Christ. If someone is a member of the Body of Christ yet not a member of the institution of the Catholic Church, they can still be saved. Just as people who are Catholic can potentially not be members of the Body of Christ (becoming atheists, living in mortal sin, etc.), people who are not Catholic can potentially be members of Christ’s body. It’s obviously much easier with the sacraments and whatnot, which is why it’s referred to as the “privileged route.”

 

[rdj88]

If I say the the prisoners will remain in prison for a long time, then I am saying there are prisoners.

If I say “the penalty for murder is life in prison” that does not mean there is anyone serving life in person. Again a statement of the law and it’s consequences for whoever breaks it is not proof that anyone has broken the law.

why was the Church so concerned with defining the length of a non-existent punishment?

I addressed this already; please read my comments more carefully. It’s obvious why we’ve gone around in so many circles.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

CCC I. THE DESIRE FOR GOD
The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.1

29 But this “intimate and vital bond of man to God” (GS 19 § 1) can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man.

Such attitudes can have different causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious ignorance or indifference; the cares and
riches of this world; the scandal of bad example on the part of believers; currents of thought hostile to religion; finally, that attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God out of fear and flee. But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, “an upright heart”,

Yes thank you @Emeraldlady. We see from your very good post that the Church does teach that God seeks man but man has to respond, and at times rejects that call.

 

[rdj88]

CCC
1257:
“Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament.”

1258:
“The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood , like the desire for Baptism , brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.”

1260:
"Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery."63 Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

 

[Emeraldlady]

Be honest, do you really think the Popes were actually saying:

“No one is in Hell or will go to Hell but if they did (and they won’t) then they would go there forever”

Or do you think the Popes were saying that the souls that are in Hell are there forever?

Because I’m going to bet you know perfectly well what they meant, but you think because you can twist their words that you can somehow trick God into not sending people to Hell.

It’s more about addressing that inevitable hope that comes with thoroughly identifying with the rest of mankind as ‘brothers and sisters’. As family. That was a constant message of Christ, that we are all sons and daughters of the Father and have that identity to experience by growth in Christ. It was an inevitable evolution with the spread of the Gospel. I know how deeply I desire that my own family get to heaven because I love them and empathise with their struggles and flaws. That is how we have grown through Christian identity to regard the whole of mankind. It’s not a theological statement that hell doesn’t exist. It’s a spiritual expression of hope that our family of God can all come to this love of our Father eventually.

 

[Emeraldlady]

Yes thank you @Emeraldlady. We see from your very good post that the Church does teach that God seeks man but man has to respond, and at times rejects that call.

It has to be stressed though that Marshall would be wrong to state that the desire for God came from outside ourselves. Yes it was placed in us by God from our conception but it is inherently part of every person. “We are religious beings” as a mark in our creation.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can (not will) be saved.

I think you are contradicting your own comments.

It has to be stressed though that Marshall would be wrong to state that the desire for God came from outside ourselves. Yes it was placed in us by God

Yes and I would need to actually hear him say that and in complete context before I could accuse him of saying something wrong.

 

[rdj88]

I think you are contradicting your own comments

Alright… Can you please elaborate?

 

[MagdalenaRita]

Alright… Can you please elaborate?

I added bolded parts. If a person is saved by seeking God and doing God’s will what happens to those who do not seek God and do not do God’s will? What happens to those who die in a state of mortal sin, not doing God’s will?

Church teaches that we must in a state of grace when we die or we lose our souls. What good does it do for man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?

 

[rdj88]

I added bolded parts. If a person is saved by seeking God and doing God’s will what happens to those who do not seek God and do not do God’s will? What happens to those who die in a state of mortal sin, not doing God’s will?

What you bolded is within a quote from the Catechism, so are you saying you think the Catechism is contradicting itself?

 

[MagdalenaRita]

What you bolded is within a quote from the Catechism, so are you saying you think the Catechism is contradicting itself?

No, you are contradicting the catechism. Earlier you said there is a reasonable hope that ALL men are saved but the quote you gave from the catechism says those who do God’s will and seek God can be saved, not will be saved but can be saved. There are definitely those who do not do God’s will or seek God, meaning that it is very possible they will not be saved, so you are posting something from the catechism that contradicts your earlier comment.

 

[Jen7]

No, he is saying that there is nothing in them that naturally (nothing in their essential nature) that seeks God. They have some amount of Grace in them, but that Grace is all external. None of it comes from within them. The definition of man does not include “seeks after God”. A man may seek after God or he may not, but he remains a man regardless.

I have always thought man, by nature, “had eternal longings in him” (from Shakespeare’s “Cleopatra”). I thought he DID seek after God - or at least an Uncaused Cause / Supreme Being by nature. I am completely confused by this concept that he does not. Isn’t a “pull” toward the eternal part of what distinguishes man from the animals??

 

[Jen7]

Seeking after God is simply the cooperation of man with Grace. Without Grace, we could not seek after God because the thirst for God is not a part of our essential nature. We are not defined as “creatures who seek after God”.

If we say that man has an essential desire for God than we must say that man has some good in him that is separate from God.

So it’s not possible that GOD built in the desire for us to seek him?? What happened after the Fall then? Before it, man intimately knew God… after it did his nature change or did he just loose grace so completely that he literally cannot even want/seek God without God’s unique gift of Faith (I was going to say “without God’s help” - but we don’t do anything without God’s help, since he holds us in existence. Or is supernatural help a completely different beast?)

 

[MagdalenaRita]

The CCC has been the spine of what I know and teach. I have a very advanced catechetical degree. But it is founded in the CCC. Marshall has shaken me deeply as a catechist. I don’t want to lead others astray. It matters to me if I can/should explain that all men are in some sense being pulled toward God… or not. I have always believed this and always taught it.

I suspect if you are teaching kids and teens you have a good Catholic curriculum. I would continue to follow that.

Also, going back and listening to Taylor Marshall’s youtube video on Nouvelle théologie, he is speaking of the denial of original sin and the theory that man is born knowing there is a God and automatically being pointed to God without the need of belief or obedience.

CCC 405 original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice,…
Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

 

[Jen7]

I don’t think so. Natural Law has natural ends. Supernatural ends require the gift of supernatural Grace.

If you don’t mind my asking what is probably a very basic question- what are some examples of “natural ends”? Are they ever different from the “natural ends” of animals? I’m driving at- “what makes man different from the animals that is not also “grace”?’

 

[Jen7]

What?
From the Catechism:
“The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation.”

The natural law is not “natural” in the sense that you’re implying. It’s a divine light God has placed in us Himself.

But Taylor Marshall would probably say this quote is tainted by modernism.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

“what makes man different from the animals that is not also “grace”?’

Man is created in the image and likeness of God. Animals are not. Animals are not born with original sin, nor do they sin, so they would not need the grace that cleanses them of sin.

 

[Jen7]

It actually says that this divine light teaches us to avoid wrong and do right. It does not say that man has, as part of his essential nature, a desire for the Beatific Vision.

Well how could he, since the actual Beatific Vision is known to us through revelation? But can’t he seek / long for… I don’t know… eternity, an eternal love, divine intimacy? Aren’t these things a man could wish for and long for even before knowing they exist?

 

[Jen7]

I will quote another part of the Catechism:

“The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself.”

I haven’t misrepresented anything. What you’re doing is rejecting clear and explicit statements made by the Magisterium in favor of what some guy on YouTube says.

The guy on YouTube seems to be directly saying the CCC isn’t Magisterium when it says this. I LOVE this quote. But TM seems to say it’s wrong. If it is, I really want to understand why.

 

[Jen7]

It has to be stressed though that Marshall would be wrong to state that the desire for God came from outside ourselves. Yes it was placed in us by God from our conception but it is inherently part of every person. “We are religious beings” as a mark in our creation.

This is what I was taught. I would love to know very specifically why Marshall believes it is wrong. You state he is wrong - but I wish to know why. And not from the CCC, because he has a big problem with the CCC.