“However, I heard my local Bishop talk about it at Confirmation just recently, and he used the term, “born again,” in giving an understanding to what people experience when they accept the faith they have received.”
As a bishop, he must have been reinforcing the age-old Catholic teaching that we become new people in Christ, as practicing Catholics. That’s traditional. He could not have meant it in the same sense as born-again Christians. To them, what is meant by being ‘born-again’, is that the Christian, having read certain passages in the Bible, usually as a discerning
adult, particularly those common to Saint Paul’s writings concerning salvation through faith alone, feels himself or herself suddenly filled with grace, after making certain, Biblically-based affirmations, and declares himself or herself
‘saved’, as in being forgiven of all sin, and admitted into Heaven in advance of dying.
That condition, in this person’s opinion, is
permanent, and
acquits that person from the penalties of all future sin, in *this *life. The Catholic Church considers this theory and practice wrong, theologically, and teaches something quite different. The bottom line is that Catholics are not to believe in any such
guarantee of salvation in this life. Salvation is determined by God, on Judgment Day, which comes
after death, and no time before. As long as we are
alive, we are capable of sinning, and whenever we sin, we are subject to the consequences therein. There is no such thing as being ‘acquitted’ in this life, of all sin, and admitted into Heaven in advance of our death.
It’s complicated, and ties into many other theological concepts, such as free will versus predestination, child-baptism versus adult baptism, sacramental theology versus a strictly Biblical theology, Church authority versus ‘sola scriptura’, etc., etc. It also has a lot do to do with the intellectual geneology that bound together Saint Paul, Saint Augustine and Martin Luther. All three were legally trained before becoming clerics. All three were rather obsessed with incorporating into Christianity legal concepts and definitions, obsessed with grace and the perception of God as a courtroom judge. It’s no coincidence that Luther was an Augustinian monk, one who developed most of his revolutionary theology based on his interpretation of Saint Paul.
The issue of salvation highlights and defines the fundamental differences between Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, differences which are
still unreconciled, and probably always will be because of their ontological nature and huge ramifications on all Christian worship and psychology.
