Isfatherwrong?:
I understand your point, but let’s also acknowledge I have been speaking of Christ as the source from the beginning. Let’s also acknowledge that in some sense, words or “confession” are fruit (see Matthew 13) by which we may make reasonable judgments.
True, I’ll grant that coming to these forums and participating in this discussion is a pretty good sign that your faith is genuine. In fact, given the fact that the discussion has been charitable for the most part, I’d say that these words could even meet the Catholic/Biblical standard of “faith working through love”
Isfatherwrong?:
I think we both admit that doubt is not a good thing, right?
This is an interesting question. My first reaction is that if one were wrong, then doubting one’s self would be a good thing. But, I decided to search the Bible for the word “doubt”… it’s used surprisingly few times. The one time in the Old Testament (Deut. 28), it’s listed among the consequences of sin. In the Gospels, when Peter is walking on water and falls, Jesus says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”. Later He says, “If you have faith and do not doubt, then even if you say to this mountain ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will be done.”
So Biblically, the ideal is to have 100% secure confidence, which expresses itself through such things as walking on water and moving mountains. But given that I rarely see those miracles among fellow Christians, and we all suffer the affects of sin, I would say that such perfect confidence is very rare, if not nonexistant. As you said, where there’s faith there’s works, like fire and smoke. So if one were to claim “I have the highest level of human confidence possible,” (and criticize another church for not granting such confidence) then they’d better be walking on water and moving mountains, or else their words do not correspond to reality.
When I was Lutheran, I thought that my faith was 100% correct and secure, much like when I was eighteen I thought I knew everything. Had I never doubted my faith, I never would’ve been open to the possibility that another church’s theology was more Biblical than my own. Now that I’m more mature, ironically, I’ve come to realize that I have a lot to learn. I could be wrong about some critical aspect of the faith. I may need to be purified after my death. I may not have the best understanding of Scripture when I interpret it myself. Those statements are signs of humility as much as they are doubt, and they cause me to rely all the more on the Church which is the Body of Christ. When the Catholic Answers tract says “we cannot have an infallible certitude of our own salvation”, it’s saying,
"I do not consider that I have made it [salvation] my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, and straining towards what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Let those of us who are mature be thus minded; and if in anything you are otherwise minded, God will reveal that also to you."
(Philippians 3:13-15)
Thank you for your encouragement. I am still not sure about the Sacrifice of the Mass as practiced by Rome (we talk of the Eucharist as being more something we receive from God and how we can only offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, flowing from the perfect righteousness of Christ Himself that He in fact gives us in baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper!), but you and I see eye-to-eye on this other issue, which I with Luther, say that the Chuch stands or falls on - the doctrine of justification.