Anybody interested in a apologetics debate?

[Blackshirtproud]

I would observe that every Christian denomination points out a means by which the reconciliation between God and man achieved by the Paschal mystery is brought into the lives of individual’s down through history. Conversely no denomination really thinks Jesus’ work of salvation is absolutely self-sufficient and all-sufficient such that we wouldn’t even need to know about it let alone do anything.

The fact is Jesus sacrifice is all-sufficient to save/reconcile us by the means He chose. Confession, we hold, has been revealed as the ordinary means for this.

If the priest you encountered meant in objective redemption all has been forgiven, he is right but it still has to be assimilated through faith. If he meant, now that you have made your good confession it is all forgiven, he is right.

I see , now it makes more sense what he was saying.

 

[Blackshirtproud]

It’s a matter to applying the forgiveness won by Christ on the Cross to a particular person for particular sins.

It’s not unlike being given a winning lottery ticket as a Christmas present. You didn’t do anything to earn it. The ticket has already been purchased in the past. The drawing is in the past. But you still have to go to the store and collect the winnings.

Similarly, Christ died for the forgiveness of your sins. You didn’t do anything to earn it (its a grace). Christ has already died (and is risen!) and atoned for all sins, but you still have to go to the store and collect the mercy (i.e. have it applied to you).

Remember, Christ’s death is powerful enough to atone for all the sins of all the people who have ever and will ever live, but not all those sins will be forgiven because not everyone is willing to accept forgiveness (i.e. not everyone is saved).

Thanks, I really like that lottery analogy.

 

[animalis]

I would make use of Ch. one of Bk. four contained in S. Irenaeus’s Against Heresies - I gave it a quick read so I am not sure at this point how to render it useful.

 

[dmar198]

I would make use of Ch. one of Bk. four contained in S. Irenaeus’s Against Heresies - I gave it a quick read so I am not sure at this point how to render it useful.

I think you could render that chapter useful in this context in this way: according to St. Irenaeus, the command to acknowledge only one Being as “Father” is a way of teaching us to be monotheists. According to Irenaeus, the Gnostics believed that there were multiple beings above God whom they called lords and fathers, and, although the Gnostics were not around when Jesus was alive, their teachings were largely based on the Greek and Roman philosophical systems that were current in the lifetime of Christ. Therefore, Jesus may have been telling us not to listen to these ideas when He said that only God should be called Father. If that is the case, this command is basically a statement intended to endorse monotheism, not to prohibit the religious and secular fatherhood of parents and priests, and therefore to use it in that way is to take it out of context.

(Anyway that’s one way of trying to render that chapter useful in this context. It needs work, because the passage says not to call people “on earth” your father, and, if I’m reading Irenaeus correctly, that’s not what the Gnostics did; they called other supposedly heavenly beings “fathers” and “lords.” But I think there’s something in the passage worth exploring, so if anyone can bring it out in a better way, get to it! )