Does Perfect Charity save the non-Believer?

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mgrfin said:
…According to St. Thomas Aquinas, Perfect Charity of our neighbor includes Perfect Charity for God. That Perfect Charity for our neighbor and Perfect Charity for God includes everything else you require. This explains how an atheist can have Perfect Love of God.
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Don’t you see the problem with what you are saying? - An athiest can not have perfect love for God - the two are mutually exlusive for crying out loud. You can not love something you don’t believe exists, you can’t love something or someone you think is not real for crying out loud. Therefore, a true athiest cannot have perfect love of neighbor - it’s as simple as that.

St. Thomas says it is impossible to please God without faith, and impossible to have perfect love for neighbor without having the love of God.
mgrfin said:
…Otherwise, what you are saying is salvation is not gratuitous - it is earned. You are saying ‘faith’ earns salvation.
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Come on now - faith itself is a gift. That’s Catholicism 101. 1st grade CCD.
mgrfin said:
…If not, please explain how you can have Perfect Love of God and be excluded from heaven. How? Just How?
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You can’t - and you can’t have perfect love of God and be an athiest.
mgrfin said:
…If you believe in Baptism by fire, and baptism of Desire - everything is included, so you get into heaven. If you shed your blood to save your neighbor - that doesn’t get you into heaven too?
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Without baptism of desire/blood or water? No.

Peace in Christ,

DustinsDad
 
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DustinsDad:
Please don’t talk down to me.

Perfect charity is directly opposed to sin. I can make a perfect act of contrition, and before I receive absolution, my sins are taken away.

Agreed?

So my perfect act of Love of God removes my sin. And charity and sanctifying grace are poured into my soul. They are there before I receive absolution for my sin.

You mean to take the side of Lutheranism which says that any good deed performed before Faith is sinful. You are saying that without faith, his Perfect Act of Love is sinful.

Not in my Church, not in my Religion, not in my Theology.

1 Peter 4:8:
“Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins”

peace
 
mgrfin said:
Please don’t talk down to me.
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Huh?
mgrfin said:
Perfect charity is directly opposed to sin. I can make a perfect act of contrition, and before I receive absolution, my sins are taken away.

Agreed?
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It’s possible. Yep.
mgrfin said:
So my perfect act of Love of God removes my sin.
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Yes, but an athiest doesn’t make a perfect act of Love of God. That’s the whole point.
mgrfin said:
And charity and sanctifying grace are poured into my soul. They are there before I receive absolution for my sin.
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The presence of sanctifying grace removes that sin - they don’t coexist. But you still need to go to confession because it is impossible for you to know if your act of love was perfect.
mgrfin said:
You mean to take the side of Lutheranism which says that any good deed performed before Faith is sinful. You are saying that without faith, his Perfect Act of Love is sinful
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I said no such thing. In fact, I even quoted St. Thomas to explain that the athiest can do a naturally good act but not a supernaturally good act.

I’m saying, along with Holy Mother Church, that without faith it is impossible to perform a perfect act of love. It’s really quite simple. Think about it, as defined by the Church the supernatural virtue of charity is love of God above all things, and love of others for the love of God.
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)
It is impossible, therefore, for an athiest to make a perfect act of love because he does not love God above all things, in fact, the athiest denies the existance of God - so nothing he does is for or out of love of God.
mgrfin said:
Not in my Church, not in my Religion, not in my Theology.
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Well, I think you are so far off the mark that I’m only going to get in trouble talking with you. I’m not delicate enough.

Peace in Christ,

DustinsDad
 
Perfect charity is a theological virtue, for it has God as its object.

Perfect charity is not a natural virtue. Natural virtues are acquired by frequent repetition of the same act. Supernatural virtues, like the theological virtues, are infused directly into the soul by God.

peace
 
It was said many times but I think we need to repeat it again.
  1. Your example is about an atheist. Act of charity, as you define it, **cannot **be done by an atheist. (An atheist cannot love God, atheist rejects God) Therefore the fact he saved a girl is not an act of perfect charity. Therefore, ceteris paribus, he would not be saved.
  2. It’s baptism of blood. It is never called baptism of fire. Baptism of blood must include martyrdom for the faith of Christ.
  3. No matter what we are doing, we still need to get baptized and and join the Church.
A person who dies without baptism (by water, or in rare cases by blood and desire) cannot enter heaven because of the Original Sin on his soul. Dogma

Council of Trent
CANON V.- If any one saith, that baptism is free, that is, not necessary unto salvation; let him be anathema.
**
John 3:5**
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

Also there is no salvation outside of the Church (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus) and that is a dogma of the Catholic Church. It is objectively gravelly sinful to reject Christ and not join the Church and a person who doesn’t do so cannot be saved (only a person who would be truly ignorant without fault of his own may have a chance to be saved). Dogma

Faith in Christ is also necessary for salvation because Jesus is the only door to our salvation. Dogma

John 14:6
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

I’m not saying that this is all you need, but these are necessities.

Obviously, an Atheist (that is if one dies as one), whatever he does in his life, cannot be saved.
 
GandalfTheWhite said:
Obviously, an Atheist (that is if one dies as one), whatever he does in his life, cannot be saved.
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Of course, we do need to take into account invincible ignorance. I think mgrfin has a point only if we are talking about an atheist who is invincibly ignorant of the faith. However, if that is the case, then perhaps it is best not to refer to him as an atheist but to refer to him as (as I think somebody once put it) an anonymous Christian.
 
I think that Perfect Charity can save neither the believer or the non-believer. I also think that the two ‘sides’ of this argument may be closer then they appear (or maybe not).

The central point is that Christ saves whoever is saved. An act of Perfect Charity does not save you, and neither does Baptism and a life lived in accord with Church teachings. Christ saves everyone that is saved. The reason we need baptism, and the reason the rest of the sacraments are helpful, is that baptism washes away the stain of original sin, and reconciliation and the other sacraments assist us in keeping charity in our hearts and keeping us open to the acceptance of grace. If we follow every jot and tittle of the external visible Church teachings, but do not have love and accept God’s grace we are not saved. But can we have that love and accept grace without believing? I think this is the real question behind the question of whether charitable acts by a non-believe have any saving effect.

The short answer is no, the long answer is maybe they help indirectly. We do not know that state of anyone’s soul. But I while I don’t think that acts of charity save anyone in and of themselves, I believe that it is possible that the non-believer’s act of charity is a response to the natural law written on his heart by God. His act is a response to the ineffable yearning he feels to be united with God, even if he does not know that is what it is. This act of opening of himself to charity and yielding to God’s law may be viewed as an implicit baptism of desire, a spontaneous act of love for God (even if not fully understood by the unbeliever) and an implicit acceptance of God’s love and grace in return. If this act is followed with a return to a self-driven life, then clearly grace was not extended or was rejected. If this is part of a lifetime of living out Christ’s commandments, in spirit if not in name, then I think that this person has received God’s grace, mysteriously extended through His Church, despite the unbeliever’s ignorance of it.

That is my understanding of how unbelievers may be saved. Their acts of charity and love cannot save them, but they can help them to be open to saving grace, demonstrate implicit baptism of desire, and may be a sign that grace has been accepted despite the person’s ignorance of its name.
 
reluctant_saint said:
Of course, we do need to take into account invincible ignorance. I think mgrfin has a point only if we are talking about an atheist who is invincibly ignorant of the faith. However, if that is the case, then perhaps it is best not to refer to him as an atheist but to refer to him as (as I think somebody once put it) an anonymous Christian.
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I don’t see how anyone who would fall into the “invinble ignorance” exception to the rule and would fulfill all the other “criteria” for salvation could ever be an atheist. We must understand that atheism is a denial of any diety and a person must seek God to be saved. The two are directly contradictory to each other. Also I believe that God would reveal His existence to a person who would seek him, tried to walk in his footsteps, follow his own conscience while avoiding any mortal sin.
 
Does perfect charity save the non-believer? I would have to go with Christ’s own words on this and when you look at Matthew 25, Our Lord seems to be very explicit on how he will judge us at the end of time.

So believing that what Jesus told us in Matthew 25 I would say there is absolutely no doubt that perfect charity saves the non-believer.
 
TOME said:
Does perfect charity save the non-believer? I would have to go with Christ’s own words on this and when you look at Matthew 25, Our Lord seems to be very explicit on how he will judge us at the end of time.

So believing that what Jesus told us in Matthew 25 I would say there is absolutely no doubt that perfect charity saves the non-believer.
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Were the sheep unbelievers?
 
mgrfin said:
Please don’t talk down to me.

Perfect charity is directly opposed to sin. I can make a perfect act of contrition, and before I receive absolution, my sins are taken away.
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Not without God’s grace, you can’t - for without God’s grace it is absolutely impossible even to wish to want to think about even thinking it may be possible even to imagine doing so.​

There would be no injustice if God were to grant not one grace to any creature whatever. By rights, every single one of us ought to be roasting. As the Church pray in the Mass: “…Do not give us what we truly deserve…”. And there is the Veni Sancte Spiritus:
  • Sine tuo numine
  • nihil est in homine,
  • nihil est innoxium.
  • Without your Godhead,
  • there is nothing in man,
  • nothing is harmless.
Agreed?

So my perfect act of Love of God removes my sin. And charity and sanctifying grace are poured into my soul. They are there before I receive absolution for my sin.

You mean to take the side of Lutheranism which says that any good deed performed before Faith is sinful. You are saying that without faith, his Perfect Act of Love is sinful.

Not in my Church, not in my Religion, not in my Theology.

1 Peter 4:8:
“Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins”

peace
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How are even the best of actions not unclean, when set beside God’s Purity ? It would not be difficult to quote several holy people to this effect - such as Cardinal Newman:​

  • It is the sight of God, revealed to the eye of faith, that makes us hideous to ourselves, from the contrast which we find ourselves to present to that great God at whom we look. It is the vision of Him in His infinite gloriousness, the All-holy, the All-beautiful, the All-perfect, which makes us sink into the earth with self-contempt and self-abhorrence. We are contented with ourselves till we contemplate Him. Why is it, I say, that the moral code of the world is so precise and well-defined? Why is the worship of reason so calm? Why was the religion of classic heathenism so joyous? Why is the framework of civilized society all so graceful and so correct? Why, on the other hand, is there so much of emotion, so much of conflicting and alternating feeling, so much that is high, so much that is abased, in the devotion of Christianity? It is because the Christian, and the Christian alone, has a revelation of God; it is because he has upon his mind, in his heart, on his conscience, the idea of one who is Self-dependent, who is from Everlasting, who is Incommunicable. He knows that One alone is holy, and that His own creatures are so frail in comparison of Him, that they would dwindle and melt away in His presence, did He not uphold them by His power.
    The rest can be read here:
  • newmanreader.org/works/occasions/sermon2.html
    The unbeliever knows nothing of that.
 
GandalfTheWhite said:
I don’t see how anyone who would fall into the “invinble ignorance” exception to the rule and would fulfill all the other “criteria” for salvation could ever be an atheist. We must understand that atheism is a denial of any diety and a person must seek God to be saved. The two are directly contradictory to each other. Also I believe that God would reveal His existence to a person who would seek him, tried to walk in his footsteps, follow his own conscience while avoiding any mortal sin.
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And “without faith, it is impossible to please God”:​

**
**
 
Gottle of Geer;3171631QUOTE:
You sure do like to quote.

While quoting, please get it right. The correct name of the hymn is:

VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS (Come Holy Ghost)
by Rabanus Maurus (776-856). (Sung whenever the Holy Spirit is solemnly invoked, like the laying on of hands in ordination to the Priesthood)

“Without Thy Godhead nothing can,
have any price or worth in man,
nothing can harmless be.”

And the revelance of this verse to your answer is?

peace
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mgrfin said:
Gottle of Geer;3171631QUOTE:
You sure do like to quote.

While quoting, please get it right. The correct name of the hymn is:

VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS (Come Holy Ghost)
by Rabanus Maurus (776-856). (Sung whenever the Holy Spirit is solemnly invoked, like the laying on of hands in ordination to the Priesthood)

“Without Thy Godhead nothing can,
have any price or worth in man,
nothing can harmless be.”

And the revelance of this verse to your answer is?

peace
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I think you need to work on your Latin translation.

The most common translation I’ve heard is.

“Where you are not, man has naught,
Nothing good in deed or thought,
Nothing free from taint of ill.”

But I have just whipped out my Latin dictionary and I will give you a literal translation.

Without your will
Nothing is in man.
Nothing is innocent.

The word innoxius, -a, -um can mean either harmless or innocent, so that’s a matter of interpretation.

Likewise the word numen, numinis can mean will, consent, divinity, divine power, or divine will. I think for contextual reasons numen, numinis is best literally translated as will, but it might, by extention, be best translated as grace.

The point being that it is impossible for man to do anything good whatsoever unless God wills it.

In short, that means that charity does not save. God saves.
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Grand,
I believe in Matthew 25, the “Sheep” are those who perform acts of charity and Christ makes no mention of their status of being believers or not.
 
reluctant_saint said:
mgrfin;3171769:
I think you need to work on your Latin translation.

The most common translation I’ve heard is.

“Where you are not, man has naught,
Nothing good in deed or thought,
Nothing free from taint of ill.”

But I have just whipped out my Latin dictionary and I will give you a literal translation.

Without your will
Nothing is in man.
Nothing is innocent.

The word innoxius, -a, -um can mean either harmless or innocent, so that’s a matter of interpretation.

Likewise the word numen, numinis can mean will, consent, divinity, divine power, or divine will. I think for contextual reasons numen, numinis is best literally translated as will, but it might, by extention, be best translated as grace.

The point being that it is impossible for man to do anything good whatsoever unless God wills it.

In short, that means that charity does not save. God saves.
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My Latin is just fine. I know what ‘noxius’ means, and innoxius means. I also know that in this case "numen’, means “will” and does not mean “grace”.

His act of charity saved him through the merits of Jesus Christ.

BTW faith is a gift. Nothing of your own doing.

peace
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Gottle of Geer,
I liked your literal translation and while I am expressing just my personal reflections I think your translation and the couple of notes you provided provides a real light for the answer to the question of this thread.

For me, I would use your suggestion and translate the word “Numine” as “Grace”. I consider it the better word because when I think about what is God’s “Will” for his cratures (man) is, my answer is his will is to be in communion with us and we with him. Now, if I consider what “Grace” is and understand grace as “Someone” (God’s Life) rather than just an abstract something analagous to electricity, then “grace” expresses the communion between God and Man all the better (which is also why I prefer “Full of Grace” to “Most highly favored” - but that is a different thread).

I also like the word “Innocent” instead of “Harmless”. Too often I think we consider being innocent in a negative way, namely, being free from guilt or evil. However, I consider evil itself to be a lack, that is, evil is a lack of the “Good”. So instead of seeing innocence as a lack of evil I consider innocence to be a fullness (of the Good). So I prefer to use the word innocent in the translation:
Without your grace (your life)
Nothing is in man
Nothing is innocent (nothing exist in the Good)

In the first letter of John, John teaches us, all love originates from God, God loves us first and the good that we do is and must be our response to God’s love that we experience. So isn’t a non-believer who is living a life of charity actually responding to the presence of God’s life and love in him or her? And isn’t this the lesson Christ taught us through Matthew 25?

So again, thank you for your translation and your posting of Cardinal Newman’s thoughts.
 
TOME said:
Gottle of Geer,
I liked your literal translation and while I am expressing just my personal reflections I think your translation and the couple of notes you provided provides a real light for the answer to the question of this thread…
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De gustibus.

peace
 
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