It’s not limited to Catholics and Arminians…but for the record, that position is not man having more power than God…it’s God letting the creature have freedom to choose. The grace He provides is sufficient. But our acceptance of it is not always so.
Your question solicits a response from professing Christians.
Grace is necessary for you, but it is not sufficient; if it were, you would understand why salvation cannot be lost.
Exactly; the bottom line for you is is always you—what you have done, what you are doing, and you will do—God is excluded from the equation; in your theology, God only provides grace; He provides no shielding, no protection, no perseverance, no assurance.
You prove my point; your understanding of the “elect” is what they do, and not what
so you’re saying He did not create us with free will?
No, no… Our part is saying yes. Without the cross, none of anything we do has merit, without Christ we are nothing, without His cross the rituals of the Old Testament could have gone on forever and still no one goes to heaven. We teach salvation by grace just like you…it does not come from us or anything we do. You still have to say yes.
Hi Sandusky,
ROFLMAO!Yes, just look at the New York Yankees.
No; that’s not what I’m saying.
You lose your justification/salvation through your own bad performance; how is that grace?
Speak for yourself.
Alex, the OP posed the question can the elect lose their salvation?
The cause of ones salvation, from beginning to end, is God; it is not the creature; His promises, coupled with His mercy, and grace, are sufficient to save those He has chosen to save.
If that’s true, than grace is no longer grace; your understanding of grace; namely, that it is an imposition upon the person demanded by God, is not grace.
The faithful can fall. Not all the faithful are elect. This is not a question of OSAS.
Because only those who persevere to the end are the elect.
Because being a Christian does not necessarily mean that you are elect, and because not all the elect are in a state of grace at any given moment.
This isn’t a Protestant/Catholic issue. Or if it is, it’s the other way round–the idea that the elect can fall may be possible in some versions of hyper-Arminian Protestantism (in which the very concept of the “elect” is pretty much nonsensical), but I’m quite confident that it’s incompatible with orthodox Catholicism. I know that I have no business making such a pronouncement, but I do understand Catholic theology somewhat, and with regard to predestination I thoroughly agree with it (insofar as I understand it).
Well, I don’t see it. But clearly we have different ideas of what is a strained reading of the text. It is easier to show that your interpretation is completely contrary to Christian tradition and in fact makes utter nonsense of the very idea of election. You make God’s calling of none effect. (And I’m a Wesleyan, not a Calvinist–this is not a Calvinist issue at all.)Yeah, see I thought of that aspect already (even though the text says no such thing) but that makes the passage very, very awkward to me. It should have read something more like “they will try to lead away even the elect [period]” or “they will try to lead away even the elect, although futilely.”
Ok, I will let you speak for yourself and try not to make logical conclusions based on your words.
Now you know I do my homework before I speak…no need for such harsh language.
Hi
I apologize for hastily concluding that you meant by “elect” what the term normally means in theological discourse. I agree that the term can mean other things (most obviously, the word was used in the early Church and is now used again in RCIA to mean those who are about to be baptized/received, and obviously no one claims that all such people will inevitably be saved), and it could conceivably mean something different in this passage. I don’t think your argument is persuasive, but I’ll leave it there. I certainly agree with you against “eternal security,” even though I don’t think this particular passage means what you want it to say.Now you know I do my homework before I speak…no need for such harsh language.
You see, my position, if I may better articulate, is similar to the way Jimmy Akin did so in this article: *Since in Catholic theology those who will persevere are called “the predestined” or “the elect,” one might replace “perseverance of the saints” with “perseverance of the predestined” or, better, with “perseverance of the elect.”*It is Jimmy’s latter phrase than rings true in my interpretation. What I meant in the OP is that Matthew may have been using the term elect there to reference both those who will persevere and those who were in good standing (i.e. of an “elect” pedigree at the time), but would succumb to the temptors. I admit when you read “elect” in my post you probably thought I meant people guaranteed salvation. Perhaps I was not clear, but I was attempting to make sense of Matthew.
Fair enough!
You lose your justification/salvation through your own bad performance; how is that grace?
It isn’t grace. It is sin. And depending on the magnitude of the sin and the individual’s refusal to repent will determine if that person loses their salvation if that’s what you mean by “bad performance.”
That’s right, your theology is not a theology of grace, but a theology of works of law. That’s why I said to you earlier that for you, grace is necessary; however, for you, grace is not sufficient.
That is what I mean by bad performance—if you work the system, as you are told to work it, you will be saved; if you don’t, you won’t. Either way, the bottom line requirement of your salvation rests upon your performance—your works.
Yes; they refuse to repent, and they refuse to believe.
No; God chooses to save the elect; He chooses not to save those who are not saved.
No, Catholicism teaches salvation by grace. “Works of law,” as used by Paul in Romans, refers to the codes of the Mosaic law, such as circumcision. Our response to grace has nothing to do with “works of law.” It has everything to do with a different kind of works, that of James 2:24.
I’m pleased to see you acknowledge that a person’s salvation is linked to something they do.
I’m sorry, I was not able to make sense of your answering “no” to the question, followed by what I read as the exact opposite one sentence later.
