Catholic Soteriology:Heresy?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Insignificant
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
SPH1 said:
It is the Holy Catholic Church that determines what is and is not heresy. You have no such authority whatsoever.
Click to expand...
a) The Bible would disagree with you. Priesthood of all believers…

b) If the Catholic Church alone could determine heresy, then why didn’t it do that in the time before God had to call a bunch of men from WITHIN the Catholic Church to show it its heresy?
 
Originally Posted by hoosierdaddy
But does the branch work in its own strength or does it rest in the vine? It is clear that we are to do good works, however they come as a result of genuine saving faith I believe. A two for one deal I guess.

CatholicDude>>The branches’ strength originates in the Vine, it maintains itself in the vine by “keeping His commandments” and “bearing good fruit”…nowhere does it say “faith” much less “faith alone”…thats your presumption

Faith isn’t my presumption. Scripture teaches faith. The reason you are confused is because you don’t understand that God Himself “keeps” us and CAUSES us to bear good fruit. He does this because we belong to Him through faith in His Son Jesus Christ.
 
hoosierdaddy said:
Originally Posted by hoosierdaddy
But does the branch work in its own strength or does it rest in the vine? It is clear that we are to do good works, however they come as a result of genuine saving faith I believe. A two for one deal I guess.

CatholicDude>>The branches’ strength originates in the Vine, it maintains itself in the vine by “keeping His commandments” and “bearing good fruit”…nowhere does it say “faith” much less “faith alone”…thats your presumption

Faith isn’t my presumption. Scripture teaches faith. The reason you are confused is because you don’t understand that God Himself “keeps” us and CAUSES us to bear good fruit. He does this because we belong to Him through faith in His Son Jesus Christ.
Click to expand...
First, I hate the term “saving faith”. This implies that it is your faith that saves you. Faith doesn’t save, Grace does.

Second, God can’t “cause” us to bear good fruit. That’s the whole point of Free Will and the reason for the Fall. We are given a choice to do right or wrong, God can’t “cause” us to choose either way. He will certainly give us all the Grace that we are willing to take to help us do good, but he can’t force us to accept His Grace either. Free Will. It’s important.
 
hoosierdaddy said:
a) The Bible would disagree with you. Priesthood of all believers…

b) If the Catholic Church alone could determine heresy, then why didn’t it do that in the time before God had to call a bunch of men from WITHIN the Catholic Church to show it its heresy?
Click to expand...
a.)Cite a verse from Scripture that implies the bilbe disagrees.
b.) The Catholic Church has** never** taught** any** heresy. There have been priests and bishops who have fallen into heresy; but, that does *not *equate to Magesterial Heretical teaching.
 
hoosierdaddy said:
a) The Bible would disagree with you. Priesthood of all believers…
Click to expand...
So…who has laid hands on you and consecarted you to a priestly life? It’s right there in Acts 1 Bro.
b) If the Catholic Church alone could determine heresy, then why didn’t it do that in the time before God had to call a bunch of men from WITHIN the Catholic Church to show it its heresy?
Click to expand...
Please…feel free to enlighten me as to what heresies existed that were being “corrected”.

This is bunk Brian and I will happliy refute this propaganda as you offer these alleged “heresies” one at a time. I warn you now that you will not only lose the debate, but that you will not like it.

The heretics are the guys who left the church.
Pax tecum,
 
hoosierdaddy said:
Originally Posted by hoosierdaddy

Faith isn’t my presumption. Scripture teaches faith. The reason you are confused is because you don’t understand that God Himself “keeps” us and CAUSES us to bear good fruit. He does this because we belong to Him through faith in His Son Jesus Christ.
Click to expand...
I am not sure you two disagree. There frequently is miscommunication with Christians when we assume we both are using the same definitions just because we are using the same words.

The Catholic Church fully believes that the only reason any good works are possible is because of God’s Grace which is why God gets the glory:)

Also a fundamental difference in thinking is that to think that God causes us to bear good fruit, this wording to a Catholic Christian seems to deny free will. This may not be what you mean, but this is what a Catholic can “hear”. Do you believe if one has faith, God compels a person and a person is unable to say no? This is what a Catholic hears. A loss of free will by the term Cause.

Another area of miscommunication can occur with a word as basic as faith.

While we 100% believe that the only reason good works are possible is because of His grace, we believe that just because one has faith, one will not neccessarily have good works.

Catholics have separate definitions for Faith, hope and Charity.

Faith is the intellectual assent only. Intellectual assent only is usually not what a non-Catholic means when they use the word faith.
from Justification by Faith alone by James Akin

Thus the Catholic Church normally expresses the core essences of these virtues like this:
Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us . . . because he is truth itself. (CCC 1814)
Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. (CCC 1817)
Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. (CCC 1822)
Click to expand...
We need to tread carefully because what we think are “universal” christian terms, really are not defined in the same manner.

Maybe we do disagree, but I thought I would post this to try and help see if we can understand each other better:)

God Bless,
Maria
 
The old Protestant/Catholic difference over “imputed” vs. “infused” righteousness might help shed some light on the issues here.

Catholics believe, as several posters have mentioned already, that Jesus came (and comes to us individually) not merely to cover over our sins and get us into Heaven, but to make us the sort of people who could live in Heaven. (I suspect many Protestants also believe this, though the justification/sanctification distinction may cause us to argue a lot over terminology differences. Certainly there is plenty of scriptural warrant in Paul’s frequent talk of “being transformed” and the “new man/old man” distinction that the justified experience.) That’s also where purgatory comes in – not as the part of salvation we provide for ourselves (for there is no such thing) but as the place or stage where God completes our sanctification once we’ve died. After all, if we are sinners (though saved ones) in life, but perfectly righteous in Heaven, there must be some kind of transition where we go from “redeemed” to “perfected.” (Protestants who hold to the “snow-covered dunghills” notion of justification – pure legal imputation of righteousness without any actual improvement in our spiritual state during our Christian walk – must surely wrestle with this oddity even more than Catholics do.)

We also tend to believe (though I’m not sure if it’s dogmatic teaching or just a common assumption) that there are rewards to strive for beyond just “getting into” Heaven – that the degree of an individual saint’s experience of Heaven may vary depending on his or her “progress” in life. I have seen Protestant Bible commentaries that mention a similar notion – indeed, they are often defending “faith alone” for justification proper by explaining the “crowns” and “prizes” Paul speaks of earning as further distinctions among the blessed, beyond basic salvation. My favorite illustration, which I’ve seen attributed to St. Bernadette’s older sister, is that the Christian’s life determines the size of his or her “receptacle” for God’s love in Heaven. Thus, one saint might have a soul that’s the equivalent of a thimble, another of a bucket; both will be filled with the love of God, but the latter has trained his soul to receive more of the infinity that God has to offer.

Thus, the “merit/reward” aspect of good works could be looked upon as a natural consequence rather than a deliberate reward that we “earn.” Much as many Christians think of Hell as a natural consequence of sin rather than a deliberate punishment inflicted by God, the “reward” for good works may likewise be a natural result of “stretching one’s spiritual muscles” rather than literally being something that God hands out to good little children.

In any case, as others have pointed out, the whole thing is grace from beginning to end. Yes, we must safeguard a role for free will, but as St. Augustine wrote, “When God crowns our merits, He crowns His own gifts.” I suspect Protestants may be quicker than some Catholics to appreciate this perspective. Just as God freely chooses to justify me based on the acts of Jesus, God also freely chooses to reward me for acts that are, in origin, His own – “Not I, but Christ in me.”

As for the “once saved, always saved” issue, I suspect that a viewpoint change might reveal that we are in closer agreement than it appears. Even Protestants who embrace eternal security have to deal with the reality of the seemingly Christian who fall away – usually by insisting they were never saved in the first place. Though Catholics tend to think more of salvation as “turning on and off” throughout life via mortal sin and repentance, it may be that the former view is more accurate from God’s eternal perspective. God, after all, knows who perseveres to the end and who does not; there are no “might haves” or “would haves” for Him. So even if Catholics insist that a saint “would have” gone to Hell had he perished during a brief period of unforgiven mortal sin, or that the fallen-away Christian “would have” gone to Heaven had he died before apostasizing, both of those are counterfactual statements. (By counterfactual I mean not “wrong, even as conditional statements” but “referring to a reality that does not, in fact, exist.” To a mortal perspective, there was always a chance Augustine could have gone to Hell had he perished in his wild days, but that did not actually happen, and God foreknew from the beginning that it would not.)

In his thought-experiment about Heaven and Hell, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis suggests that when we have achieved God’s eternal perspective, we will realize that we have “always” been in either Heaven or Hell, though the winding course of our lives as we experience them may have suggested that our ultimate fate was in question many times. Of course, C.S. Lewis is not authorized to make doctrine for any denomination, but I have always found his illustrations of the eternal perspective to give much food for thought.

Usagi
 
The priesthood of all believers was applied first to the Old Covenant People of God and they still had a ministerial priesthood. They had the high priesthood, the minsterial priesthood and the universal priesthood (or priesthood of all believers).

Why would anyone think that it would be any different with the New Covenant People of God?

Jacobaer
 
Usagi said:
The old Protestant/Catholic difference over “imputed” vs. “infused” righteousness might help shed some light on the issues here.

Catholics believe, as several posters have mentioned already, that Jesus came (and comes to us individually) not merely to cover over our sins and get us into Heaven, but to make us the sort of people who could live in Heaven. (I suspect many Protestants also believe this, though the justification/sanctification distinction may cause us to argue a lot over terminology differences. Certainly there is plenty of scriptural warrant in Paul’s frequent talk of “being transformed” and the “new man/old man” distinction that the justified experience.) That’s also where purgatory comes in – not as the part of salvation we provide for ourselves (for there is no such thing) but as the place or stage where God completes our sanctification once we’ve died. After all, if we are sinners (though saved ones) in life, but perfectly righteous in Heaven, there must be some kind of transition where we go from “redeemed” to “perfected.” (Protestants who hold to the “snow-covered dunghills” notion of justification – pure legal imputation of righteousness without any actual improvement in our spiritual state during our Christian walk – must surely wrestle with this oddity even more than Catholics do.)

We also tend to believe (though I’m not sure if it’s dogmatic teaching or just a common assumption) that there are rewards to strive for beyond just “getting into” Heaven – that the degree of an individual saint’s experience of Heaven may vary depending on his or her “progress” in life. I have seen Protestant Bible commentaries that mention a similar notion – indeed, they are often defending “faith alone” for justification proper by explaining the “crowns” and “prizes” Paul speaks of earning as further distinctions among the blessed, beyond basic salvation. My favorite illustration, which I’ve seen attributed to St. Bernadette’s older sister, is that the Christian’s life determines the size of his or her “receptacle” for God’s love in Heaven. Thus, one saint might have a soul that’s the equivalent of a thimble, another of a bucket; both will be filled with the love of God, but the latter has trained his soul to receive more of the infinity that God has to offer.

Thus, the “merit/reward” aspect of good works could be looked upon as a natural consequence rather than a deliberate reward that we “earn.” Much as many Christians think of Hell as a natural consequence of sin rather than a deliberate punishment inflicted by God, the “reward” for good works may likewise be a natural result of “stretching one’s spiritual muscles” rather than literally being something that God hands out to good little children.

In any case, as others have pointed out, the whole thing is grace from beginning to end. Yes, we must safeguard a role for free will, but as St. Augustine wrote, “When God crowns our merits, He crowns His own gifts.” I suspect Protestants may be quicker than some Catholics to appreciate this perspective. Just as God freely chooses to justify me based on the acts of Jesus, God also freely chooses to reward me for acts that are, in origin, His own – “Not I, but Christ in me.”

As for the “once saved, always saved” issue, I suspect that a viewpoint change might reveal that we are in closer agreement than it appears. Even Protestants who embrace eternal security have to deal with the reality of the seemingly Christian who fall away – usually by insisting they were never saved in the first place. Though Catholics tend to think more of salvation as “turning on and off” throughout life via mortal sin and repentance, it may be that the former view is more accurate from God’s eternal perspective. God, after all, knows who perseveres to the end and who does not; there are no “might haves” or “would haves” for Him. So even if Catholics insist that a saint “would have” gone to Hell had he perished during a brief period of unforgiven mortal sin, or that the fallen-away Christian “would have” gone to Heaven had he died before apostasizing, both of those are counterfactual statements. (By counterfactual I mean not “wrong, even as conditional statements” but “referring to a reality that does not, in fact, exist.” To a mortal perspective, there was always a chance Augustine could have gone to Hell had he perished in his wild days, but that did not actually happen, and God foreknew from the beginning that it would not.)

In his thought-experiment about Heaven and Hell, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis suggests that when we have achieved God’s eternal perspective, we will realize that we have “always” been in either Heaven or Hell, though the winding course of our lives as we experience them may have suggested that our ultimate fate was in question many times. Of course, C.S. Lewis is not authorized to make doctrine for any denomination, but I have always found his illustrations of the eternal perspective to give much food for thought.

Usagi
Click to expand...
Nice post! And welcome to the forums. Your presence will surely add alot here!
 
Church_Militant said:
Welcome to CAF o honorable rabbit.😃

Nihongo wa sukoshi o hanashimasu. Anata wa? 🙂
Pax domini sit semper vobiscum.
Click to expand...
E.E.N.S said:
Anata wa Nijon-jin desu ka?
Click to expand...
Church_Militant said:
Ie Amerika-jin arimasu. Watashi wa karate do gakusei deshita. Wakarimasu ka?🙂
Click to expand...
E.E.N.S said:
Hai wakarimasu. 😉
Click to expand...
Cranch said:
Lie, wakarimasen. Nihon go wa, wakarimasen. (had to look that up) 😃
Click to expand...
Okay guys. Quit showing off;)
 
rciadan said:
a.)Cite a verse from Scripture that implies the bilbe disagrees.
b.) The Catholic Church has** never** taught** any** heresy. There have been priests and bishops who have fallen into heresy; but, that does *not *equate to Magesterial Heretical teaching.
Click to expand...
a) Yes. 2Peter 2
9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

b) Ok.
 
SPH1 said:
It is the Holy Catholic Church that determines what is and is not heresy. You have no such authority whatsoever.
Click to expand...
hoosierdaddy said:
a) The Bible would disagree with you. Priesthood of all believers…

b) If the Catholic Church alone could determine heresy, then why didn’t it do that in the time before God had to call a bunch of men from WITHIN the Catholic Church to show it its heresy?
Click to expand...
rciadan said:
a.)Cite a verse from Scripture that implies the bilbe disagrees.
b.) The Catholic Church has** never** taught** any** heresy. There have been priests and bishops who have fallen into heresy; but, that does *not *equate to Magesterial Heretical teaching.
Click to expand...
hoosierdaddy said:
a) Yes. 2Peter 2
9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

b) Ok.
Click to expand...
I wanted to point out that the Catholic Church does in fact teach that we are all part of the priesthood of Christ.

1546Christ, high priest and unique mediator, has made of the Church "a kingdom, priests for his God and Father."20 The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly. The faithful exercise their baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his own vocation, in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation the faithful are "consecrated to be . . . a holy priesthood."21
But just as in scripture where we can see that not all were called to *teach *in this holy priesthood, the Catholic Church has those in the Priesthood whom serve the communtiy of all in the “common” priesthood.

This is completely biblical. Christ taught that he who leads, will serve others.

:bible1: Luke 22:24-26 says.

24]
A dispute also arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest.

25] And he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors.
26] But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.

We also see that not all are called to the same jobs. We all have different gifts. Not all are called to serve the common priesthood of all believers. Only certain men are. This is your belief also, yes? While we are all part of the holy priesthood, not all are called to minister to that priesthood, correct? Not all of Christ’s followers are preachers in you church?

And because of this, those who “lead” the common priesthood, would be the ones whom if believers had an issue with each other, they would “take it to the Church” and they will decide who is right, using scripture (and sacred tradition;) ) to guide their decision. We also see in scripture that if there was a disagreement or if it was unclear as to WHAT should be taught, it was NOT all of the holy priesthood, all believers who made the decision, it was the apostles and the “faithful men” who had been chosen to teach who got together and decided an issue. (see acts, specifically Acts 15)

While you obviously believe that your pastor and Church would be a better judge of what is heretical than the leadership in the Catholic Church, your church, probably, does not believe that just any believer in Christ has as much authority or understanding as the pastor to declare what is heretical and what is not. Doesn’t mean they should not be listened to, but they lack the authority to make official declarations that would be binding of all.

So from our interpretation of scripture, you being part of the common priesthood, have no more authority to declare what is heresy and what is not heresy than, in fact, I do. It is the leadership of the Church that makes that decision and we believe this is clearly shown in scripture also.

I can go back and cite scripture for each claim I make, but I assume that you are familar with the scripture that I am talking about as relates to having different gifts, called to different jobs, and “taking it to the church”. If not or if you wish me to cite exactly for other reasons, I will happily search through and find the exact scripture:) (Time is almost up right now so, I skimp in actually citing the exact verse:o )
God Bless,
Maria
 
DesertBrother said:
I’ll say. That was one humdinger of a post!
:clapping:
Click to expand...
Thanks! And thanks, everyone else, for the welcomes.

I must admit, I don’t actually speak Japanese. The truth is, my husband calls me “Bunny” as a pet name, and I use the less-cutesy Japanese form as a message board name. :o

Usagi
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top