Iâm trying to discern the relevance of this to the topic at hand. Not trying to be trite, but did I miss something? Maybe you posted on the wrong threadâif so, heads up!
But either he or someone else (I couldnât tell for sure) clarified that it was *explicit *faith that was not absolutely necessary. Isnât that enough to make his opinion orthodox (or at least not clearly heretical)?
Yes, I agree that this is heretical if he is speaking of human action unaided by grace. I suppose that given his insistence on starting off with Christology, and given the time pressure he was under, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was speaking of human cooperation with grace (i.e., that the rabbi in question was responding to Godâs grace in his life and not resisting it). But youâre absolutely right that he should have made this clear, and the first priest did a much better job in that respect.
I posted this information because the OP is quoting from that as a source for their interpretation of the scripture.Iâm trying to discern the relevance of this to the topic at hand. Not trying to be trite, but did I miss something? Maybe you posted on the wrong threadâif so, heads up!
No sir, Iâm afraid not. If I recall correctly, your Presiding Bishop, +Schori espouses the view you seem to be putting forth, which is that Jesus may be responsible for our salvation, but that our faith in Him need not be explicit. In other words, we could be saved by Godâs grace, apart from explicit faith in the One he sent. It would all still be because of Jesus, but it wouldnât have to include our conventional response to Jesus.
Ah! Thanks! I just didnât want you thinking you had posted to a different thread and be expecting a response in the other thread.
Excellent point!Itâs very hard to figure out what +Schori means a lot of the timeâshe is unfortunately not a very profound or nuanced theologian. Her initial remarks on this subject seemed more frankly pluralistic, but when challenged she claimed that she was teaching what Vatican II taught. Of course, as this thread demonstrates, people disagree on what Vatican II taught!
That seems to me to be very clearly the teaching of Vatican II, the Catechism, and the current Pope both before and after his accession to the Papacy. I refer you to Dominus Iesus, sects. 20-21, which clearly affirm the possibility that those who are not Christians may receive grace in a manner known only to God.
But paragraphs 846-48, drawn largely from Lumen Gentium, make it clear that this faith may not always âinclude our conventional response to Jesus.â Otherwise the âalthoughâ in the quotation from Ad Gentes wouldnât make sense. Clearly the point is that the explicit proclamation of the Gospel is *still *our calling *although *we cannot say that all those to whom it doesnât come will be damned.
Edwin: receiving grace as a non-Christian is not only possible, but absolutely necessary, as it requires Godâs grace to have faith in the first place. This is why Dominus Iesus says, "Faith is a gift of grace: âin order to have faith, the grace of God must come first and give assistance; there must also be the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and gives âto everyone joy and ease in assenting to and believing in the truthâââ
St Paul Told the Ephesians that we are saved by GraceâŚIf faith in Christ is the absolute, and only requirement then what happens to children who die before the age of reason? Or anyone else for that matter, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the old testament phrophets who did not have faith in Christ??? According to your statement they are damned!
The scriptures exist for the Church. The Church is the pillar and foundation of truth.
Edwin, I love you brother! Most people on forums tend to get under my skin with dishonest tactics (such as DD likes to use exclusively it would seem), but you are definitely refreshing!
Right. But Catholic teaching clearly leaves open the possibility that this response leading to faith might happen in ways that are not empirically perceptible in this life as explicit Christian faith. If you agree that this is possible (and indeed that there is no individual dead person of whom we can say definitively that this did not happen, unlikely though some may seem), then I have no argument with you. But if you are claiming that we know that those non-Christians who have either failed to respond to evangelism or who have not miraculously come to Christian faith in the absence of evangelism have either not received grace or have rejected it, then I disagree with you and it seems pretty clear to me that your Pope and practically all of your theologians do as well.
says that ââŚit is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological kingdom of God.â*
I think itâs intriguing and disturbing that you think that the glorious challenge of responding to Godâs grace constitutes a âbadâ situation. (If it didnât, why would you say that people who are not Christians are âin an even worse situationâ?) I think that this language betrays precisely the ungracious and fearful view of God to which classical Protestantism is a woefully deficient reaction (since it didnât deal with the root of the problem but simply tried to sidestep it by promising that God would be gracious to believers), and modern liberal theology a more pleasant but far more superficial one.
