no poking fun?OMG…He is one of those…Pope’s the Anti-christ…We worship Mary and and Saints…etc…All we can do is pray for him.
Omigosh!! It’s the :yawn: Boettner list!!!:yawn: How often have we all heard this:yawn: one??:yawn:
Paul here is relaying his experience with the law as a sinful man. Since we all agree that Jesus Christ is the “Incarnate Word”, the law of God is equivalent to the commandments of God, and the Word of God. Jesus is the incarnation of the Law! And He died on the cross as the despised commandment (BTW think about what love He had for us to do that)
Continued in the next post
And the indwelling Spirit of God (which is the law written in our hearts) is necessary to induce repentance of sin.
With ALL of that in mind… we now come to the last point given by the Council of Trent that occurs before salvation…
So my previous statement stands…
Only one of us can be right about salvation… therefore, one of us has been deceived and made to believe we have been indwelt with the Holy Spirit and experience a personal relationship with Christ.
Ah, but Bibleapologist doesn’t believe in Prevenient Grace, obviously. Which leaves him in exactly the predicament that you describe–He is forced (a la Alice in Wonderland) to believe in six impossible things before breakfast.
Well, but that’s the problem. Your previous statements are a terrible lot of nonsense that have nothing whatsoever to do with Catholic teaching.
falling over your own feet in the darkness! No more stench of 
burning whale blubber! Shocking!!
Naughty, naughty!! Off with their heads!!!)
“Gospel According to:whacky: Lorraine Boettner”…)Wow, just wow.
Yeah, I did…That’s how I found out he is proclaiming the ravings of L Boettner as truth…
I much prefer Protestants who don’t copy and paste their list of straw-men arguments and false dates/proclamations from Tim Lahey and Jack ChickOh yeah… they don’t check their own sources to see if they are correct. Part of that is that to anti-Catholics, the only history that they know is the little bit that happens to them (since reading about it would entail study from sources that might not be Bible based!
) and then they try to pass off their own propaganda as fact. As a result they miss it when someone comes along who bothered to do their own homework (Like this man here!) and just blows them all outta the water. IMO liars and intellectually lazy people should never try to engage in apologetics because it makes their ignorance glow in the dark like a radioactive accident.
Contray to the popular a-C propaganda…Catholics do indeed bring a brain to their religion and think for themselves.Thank you for acknowledging that.
I understand your point here. Please understand this. In the current context of our conversation, we do not teach that justification occurs after baptism. We teach that it occurs in baptism. (Outside of the context of our immediate discussion, Catholics believe that justification and sanctification increase throughout our lives…what Protestants typically limit to sanctification…but that is neither here nor there for our purposes, which, I recall, is centered on being “born again”).
I understand what you are saying. Your claim that this is biblically where salvation occurs, though, is not true. All I need to do is pull out Romans 13:11:
St. Paul clearly does not view salvation through the lens of it being a one-time event. Period. So it cannot be limited to a specific “now”.
I’m affraid that, though I get what you’re saying, it is hardly proof in the least. The person is raised to hope and loves God because he has received faith through hearing and recognizes God for who he is, Love Himself.
It’s true that God’s position towards sin has been revealed to that person, by hearing in #1. That in no way necessitates a justification. And what cause? Perhaps a recognition that one does recognize that he has not the same perspective as God and doesn’t have a union with him.
As the Council states, grace precedes everything. God’s grace has empowered the free repentance of the individual. But so far, the HS has not been infused into the person.
The funny thing about this list, even if it weren’t such a joke, is that it would prove what the rest of the non-tinfoil-hat-wearing world knows; the Catholic Church is older than the protestant whose main dogmas of bible alone/faith alone were unheard of before the reformation (and they’re unscriptural but I guess that’s another thread)
You’re gonna have to show me where the bible says the indwelling of the Spirit is necessary for repentance. I can show you where it says grace is necessary, but not the indwelling.
He certainly was justified before he was warring with his flesh. Otherwise how would he fight? But that doesn’t make your case. He could just as easily have been justified in baptism.
Every person, saved or unsaved, not only has the right, but the duty to obey God’s commands.
Uh no, the only means of obedience to the Law is union with Christ. But obey the law we must.
Uh no. The entire law (and by the way, I do not mean the Mosaic Law) is necessary for all humans, and that does indeed include baptism.
Uh, no. Obedience to God is a saving act. God has willed that justification should come to us through baptism. I obey him.
Well, it’s true that one of us is right. But I am less convinced that God is bound by your stick diagrams for the salvation of the world.
From that article:
I don’t think the problem here is that we’re not understanding your statements. Many of us are former Protestants, some of us from the very form of Protestantism that you now practice. We understand your statements. The simple fact is that your statements have very little historical or biblical warrant, if any at all. Your argument amounts to, “Accept my teachings because I’m sent by God to interpret the Bible correctly for you.”
Let me first say here that I see a bit inconsistency between the argument you’re about to make (which is sophistic, to say the least) and your signature, wihch says “Intellectualism is overrated.” If your intention is to prove that statement by example, bravo; but if it’s to prove your point above, you’ll have to make a stronger argument to get anyone to deny 2,000 years of historical Christianity.
Biblically, salvation occurs in the past (we are saved), in the present (we are being saved), and in the future (we will be saved). You have no biblical warrant for saying absolutely that one particular point is the point at which “salvation occurs.” Perhaps your claim is that this is the point at which salvation begins, a point with which I can agree, with one condition: that you recognize that at this point, no internal, organic change has happened to the human: he is still in his sins, he is still not indwelt by the Holy Spirit. I condition my agreement by these points because the Bible clearly states that baptism is the point at which a person’s sins are washed away, the point at which the Holy Spirit first indwells a person.
Here’s your first fallacy. The Law of God is not equivalent to the Word of God, either written, spoken, or in the form of the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ. Much of the Bible is not the Law. Jesus cannot accurately be described as “the incarnation of the Law.”
Another fallacy: you presume that the Spirit of God cannot work in men whom He hasn’t indwelt. What biblical or logical warrant do you have for such a claim?
And this is just ridiculous. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Obedience to God is never a circumvention of Christ. In fact, obedience to God is itself enabled by Christ’s sacrifice and is an expression of the grace received from Christ.
Certainly not. Even the gentiles, who don’t by nature have the law, show a law written on their hearts.
Not at all. The Catholic teaching that baptism is ordinarily necessary for salvation is simply a reaffirmation of the biblical and apostlic understanding baptism is the means by which God dispenses the grace of justification to a person. You don’t seem to understand that God can dispense His grace however He chooses. In the Bible we see Him using matter to dispense grace: the touching of Jesus’ cloak, Peter’s shadow, Paul’s handkerchief, the laying on of hands, etc. Baptism is simply God’s chosen ordinary method for dispensing the grace of justification.
That’s your big gripe? WHEN it happens? This certainly seems like a departure from the OP of “ARE Catholics born again”? A departure hardly worth the effort, BTW. Nonetheless, you have repeatedly been shown Scripture which links the ACTUAL “washing away of sins” through Baptism. To believe what you are claiming above is to discredit Scripture among other things. Lets not forget Titus 3:5-8 “…he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy spirit (this parallels John 3:5 perfectly and confirms that “born of water” is identical to “the bath of rebirth” which is baptism), whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life” This language confirms Catholic theology and renders your interpretations lacking IMHO.
Too many holes. “receiving faith by hearing the Word” seems to exclude God’s Grace as the precursor to being disposed to hear that Word. I have to reject your characterization because it is poorly worded and unclear. “…free will moves toward God” again seems to obviate God’s Grace and must be rejected.
Sorry, but you are excluding the necessary obedience which God has required “repent AND be baptized, everyone of you for the forgiveness of your sins…” Baptism is an act of faith and God has not only required us to obey, but he has also shown us its necessity by being baptized himself. The bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy spirit is when it occurs, but it is not instantaneous, complete and permanent - see above. There are exceptions if one can not be baptized by water, but such are exceptions and not the rule.
Point taken regarding the Catholic belief of justification and when it occurs…
In the context that this scripture was written; Paul was encouraging the saints in Rome to be busy about the Lord’s work, because “the night is far spent”, and “the day is at hand”… meaning the day of our salvation… not the salvation of which we have previously experienced, but the day of our salvation.
You also stated…
Romans chapter 7 is a testimony by Paul about the repentance that he continually enacts in his own flesh. The repentance that necessitates salvation (and what I understand the Council of Trent to have realized in point #3), is a repentance of a mental state manifested in a concession to God’s design for salvation… Hence, there are two types of repentance which is why I asked that Turtullian’s work on repentance be read.
Thank you for acknowleding that. You are right, he could just as easily been justified in baptism, if we were only considering Romans 7 alone. But the whole issue is whether or not justification can actually occur at baptism. Again, my point is that it cannot… based on which type of repentance is necessary for justifcation… A repentance of the will (or concession to God’s design for salvation); or repentance of sin (or a physical act of changing one’s behavior to put away sin).
They thought by obeying the commands of God, there were in “right standing” (or justified) with God. But they obviously were not.
This is why I oppose the doctrine of “Baptismal Regeneration”. It is a work (or repentance of sin), to attempt to gain justification.
