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KathleenGee
Guest
Repeating Guanaphore…Catholics do not believe in saying such: “I believe in Jesus Christ, therefore I am saved.”
For us, growth in Christ, is a life long walk of conversion. With the Blessed Mother as our companion, we climb the Mountain of the Lord, Who is no other than Jesus Christ. Another interpretation of the Mountain…is the heap of our sins…
As a convert told me many years ago, she found Catholics spending more time focusing on their own sanctification rather than contending with Protestants.
For us, growth in Christ, is a life long walk of conversion. With the Blessed Mother as our companion, we climb the Mountain of the Lord, Who is no other than Jesus Christ. Another interpretation of the Mountain…is the heap of our sins…
As a convert told me many years ago, she found Catholics spending more time focusing on their own sanctification rather than contending with Protestants.
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Christian_Unity
Guest
Baptism does symbolizes the gospel and our changed life in Christ. Therefore, when the gospel is preached, we grow in grace through faith in what Christ has done for us by His life and death on our behalf.
What does Paul reveal in Romans:16-17 - The Righteous Shall Live by Faith
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith,as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
I’m not sure how baptismal regeneration works for Catholics. It seems Paul and the other Apostles teach that through the proclamation of the gospel and receivng that news by faith is how God the Holy Spirit regenerates us. Do you guys first received the truth of the gospel by faith and later receive the sacrament of baptism at a later time to complete your rebirth? I believe John the Baptist was born again in his mother’s womb without the sacrament of baptism.
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KathleenGee
Guest
The other point as a Catholic, and the essence of Catholicism is communion…entering into the life of the Holy Trinity and subsequently with each other.
Jesus Christ is the Author of unity, not us and our understanding or take on things. So we empty ourselves and enter deeper into the mystery of faith in the of the Church, not the Ecclesiastics or movements of themselves.
Likewise, our approach to Sacred Scripture is not parts…like I witness when others take a line out of Scripture and use it for some means of self-profit. We approach Scripture as the Word of God Who comes to a gathering of people, people who have history, people who fail and prosper. So we don’t take parts out.
Every line of Scripture is connected to each other. So it is all about context. We look at Scripture from its whole content…and in essence the summation of Sacred Scripture is Jesus Christ, Logos…and all is fulfilled and made complete as seeing the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and our participation in it as our greatest work we can do…stand with Jesus Christ wounded but triumphant uniting us with Him before the Heavenly Father in heaven.
The Mass connects heaven and earth. We participate in it. We are justified by Christ, and nourished by the sacraments…Jesus being the Tree of Life in Genesis Whose fruit Adam and Eve could eat, but refused…but the Tree of Life was visible to them when they were expelled from the Garden but not permitted to go near it…
Catholic faith transcends text of Scripture and brings us into the life of Christ Himself.
Jesus Christ is the Author of unity, not us and our understanding or take on things. So we empty ourselves and enter deeper into the mystery of faith in the of the Church, not the Ecclesiastics or movements of themselves.
Likewise, our approach to Sacred Scripture is not parts…like I witness when others take a line out of Scripture and use it for some means of self-profit. We approach Scripture as the Word of God Who comes to a gathering of people, people who have history, people who fail and prosper. So we don’t take parts out.
Every line of Scripture is connected to each other. So it is all about context. We look at Scripture from its whole content…and in essence the summation of Sacred Scripture is Jesus Christ, Logos…and all is fulfilled and made complete as seeing the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and our participation in it as our greatest work we can do…stand with Jesus Christ wounded but triumphant uniting us with Him before the Heavenly Father in heaven.
The Mass connects heaven and earth. We participate in it. We are justified by Christ, and nourished by the sacraments…Jesus being the Tree of Life in Genesis Whose fruit Adam and Eve could eat, but refused…but the Tree of Life was visible to them when they were expelled from the Garden but not permitted to go near it…
Catholic faith transcends text of Scripture and brings us into the life of Christ Himself.
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KathleenGee
Guest
ChristianUnity, seeing your depth of thought, I would recommend to you a great site,
www.calledtocommunion.com
www.calledtocommunion.com
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Christian_Unity
Guest
What does the Apostle Paul tell the jailer of what he must do to be saved? What does Jesus tell what works must we do to be saved?
The sacraments, like hearing the word, are a means of grace. I was baptized a month and one day after I was born. As a result, I was received into God’s grace. Through the sacraments - the Lord’s Supper, Holy Absolution - and hearing His word I have grown in that grace and through faith am justified.
Jon
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Christian_Unity
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Thanks for the link. This one is very good too.
calledtocommunion.com/2012/05/joshua-lims-story-a-westminary-seminary-california-student-becomes-catholic/
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KathleenGee
Guest
It is how you define Christ…and to limit yourself to a ‘reformer’, when the Council of Trent corrected all that leading to sin prior to the Reformation, you are following a tradition of perspective that is very limited.
Christ comes to us and restores us…it is a lifelong process…salvation only to those who endure in His will, carrying the Cross, are detached from things, and serve those in one’s daily life.
Our vocation in life is holiness and to have special concern for the poor. You have to go back to ancient times and see how the bishops directed believers. They were called upon to nurse the dying and bury the dead, risking their own lives, in times of plagues and war.
You have to lose your life to save it.
Christ comes to us and restores us…it is a lifelong process…salvation only to those who endure in His will, carrying the Cross, are detached from things, and serve those in one’s daily life.
Our vocation in life is holiness and to have special concern for the poor. You have to go back to ancient times and see how the bishops directed believers. They were called upon to nurse the dying and bury the dead, risking their own lives, in times of plagues and war.
You have to lose your life to save it.
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Christian_Unity
Guest
Okay, I understand the Catholic view of infant baptismal regeneration. However, people come into faith later in life instead of infancy. So those who did not grow up in a Catholic household, are people born from above prior to being baptized through the sacraments? Can Protestants be born from above by hearing and receiving the gospel prior to partaking in baptism, or partaking in a symbolic baptism as an ordinance later in life?
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guanophore
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How is this “obvious”? Should I assume this, since you do not identify yourself as Catholic?
I am curious how you interpret the Scriptures that refer to baptismal regeneration.
Valid sacraments require valid apostolic succession. The Reformers separated from that authority during the Reformation.
I answered this above, but I will add here that His grace flows through nature, and human conscience as well. God is not bound by the Sacraments that He instituted for us. He has promised to meet with us in them, but He can meet with us outside them as well.
Yes, this is the basis for the Catholic practice of Lectio Divina.
No. Catholics read and receive grace through the Scriptures always in unity with the Sacred Tradition (faith that was passed down to us from the Apostles. We never are separate and apart from the sacramental life of the Church. On the contrary, we understand what is written THROUGH that life. This is why Catholics understand the Scriptures so differently than Protestants. We read them through the lens of the faith that produced them, rather than separate and apart from it. The writers of the NT were Catholic, and practiced the seven sacraments. They wrote the scriptures from that context. Reading them apart from that faith takes them out of their context.
Yes, but it is the Holy Spirit that does the changing.
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Christian_Unity
Guest
I don’t limit my beliefs to Protestant reformers since I do believe in remnant theology, meaning the chosen redeemed ones started way before the incarnate Christ in redemptive history. I believe OT saints were saved by the same gospel as NT saints, because it all points to the person and work of Christ on behalf of those whom God intends to save. We certainly receive some of the same truths as defined in the ancient ecumenical creeds, same Apostles, and other shared theologians like Augustine.
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Christian_Unity
Guest
Let’s take a break brothers and sisters in Christ; after-all, this is a Catholic Forum discussion site dominated by a Catholic perspective and viewpoint.
How do you know that faith does not start, for the infant, at Baptism?
Scripture says “he that believes and is Baptized shall be saved”. This is not an order of operations, so to speak, because in Matthew 28 we are told to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20** teaching **them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
In Matthew 28 says baptize first, then teach. Its both/and. There’s no need to set scripture against itself. Further, the apostle says, “Baptism now saves you.” So, for the infant, Baptism saves.
Jon
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guanophore
Guest
Where do you find this concept in the Scriptures?
This is all well and good, and very Catholic, of course, but you did not answer the question. If grace flows through baptism, how does that happen, if baptism does not regenerate?
Just like Jesus taught the Apostles it would.
Acts 22:15-16
16 And now why do you delay? Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.’
This is what you have been taught, so this is how it seems to you. The Apostles taught differently. You have been contaminated by Calvanism, as systematic theology developed 1600 years after the Apostles committed the One Faith once for all to the Church.
No. We believe that Jesus taught we are born again in baptism.
Yes, this is part of Catholic Sacred Tradition.
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jmcrae
Guest
Actually, he was explaining the Lutheran view of baptismal regeneration …
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guanophore
Guest
Jesus taught that we are born again in baptism, and this has been the constant teaching and practice of the Church. God, however, can regenerate a person anyway He wants, just as He did John the Baptist before he was born.
I believe many Protestants have a baptism of desire, just as we would say of the catechumens who may perish before sacramental baptism can be administered. The question would be, if Jesus instituted that it be done this way, why would any committed believer fail to obey Him?
As has been said, most Protestant baptisms are really Catholic, since they have the valid form and matter. The Church recognizes all Trinitarian baptisms done by our separated brethren because they intend to do what Jesus commanded. Yet for us it is not “symbolic” only but efficacious.
1 Cor 6:10-11
11 And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
I like Fausett’s commentary on this verse:
BAPTISM
baptism with water is the visible laver of regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
(from Fausset’s Bible Dictionary, Electronic Database Copyright (c)1998 by Biblesoft)
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KathleenGee
Guest
Becoming members of Christ’s mystical body is only the first step.
The next step is encountering Christ in the life of the Church through our cooperative participation in the Mass, the Word and Sacraments. I am a cradle Catholic, and was baptized when I less than 4 weeks old.
I have misused the graces Christ has given me by being involved with worldly distractions, have had my share of confusion by such distractions, and have had times of tepidity and materialism. I thank God He has given me time to get back on the right track. But I am not assured of my salvation but can only depend on His mercy for me.
The next step is encountering Christ in the life of the Church through our cooperative participation in the Mass, the Word and Sacraments. I am a cradle Catholic, and was baptized when I less than 4 weeks old.
I have misused the graces Christ has given me by being involved with worldly distractions, have had my share of confusion by such distractions, and have had times of tepidity and materialism. I thank God He has given me time to get back on the right track. But I am not assured of my salvation but can only depend on His mercy for me.
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KathleenGee
Guest
The sacraments are non-arbitrary concrete signs of Christ present and active and always present for us.
The sacraments are accessible to us and take us deeper into the mystery of faith. Our participation in the mystery of faith does not in any way cause us to think we are earning our way into heaven.
The sacraments are accessible to us and take us deeper into the mystery of faith. Our participation in the mystery of faith does not in any way cause us to think we are earning our way into heaven.
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guanophore
Guest
After you take a break, you can use the “view first unread” at the top of the thread to pick up where you left off.Let’s take a break brothers and sisters in Christ; after-all, this is a Catholic Forum discussion site dominated by a Catholic perspective and viewpoint.
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