Help with the most infuriating sentence

[Nelka]

When protestants I know say “they probably weren’t saved in the first place”.

I hear this so much and unless I say that God wouldn’t make someone think they are saved when they weren’t I just don’t know what to say.

Thanks.

 

[pianistclare]

When protestants I know say “they probably weren’t saved in the first place”.

I hear this so much and unless I say that God wouldn’t make someone think they are saved when they weren’t I just don’t know what to say.

Thanks.

You can say. “a better way to say it would be: perhaps they weren’t really convicted of their Christian beliefs”.

What’s the context of this conversation?
Who is the “they” ???

 

[Lily_Bernans]

When protestants I know say “they probably weren’t saved in the first place”.

I hear this so much and unless I say that God wouldn’t make someone think they are saved when they weren’t I just don’t know what to say.

Thanks.

I just reply with the truth: “We don’t know who is saved and who is not. That judgment is up to God, not us.”

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

• Were they talking about themselves or someone else
• No-one knows who’ll be saved except God
• Such people have no concept of true evangelising nor of the catechetical journey nor of the Kingdom economy (last 21 verses of Proverbs, parable of talents, talk of widows and orphans and servants, talk of crowns)
• A few of the people who talk like that are reasonably solid in some ways but with a few mental blockages and faulty concepts. God can work through them in spite of that! But a great many are spouting hot air that is hugely damaging and misleading to hundreds of millions. God actually saves people by getting them to drop out of that sort of stuff, I think.

Anyway being saved is not necessarily the be all and end all. He may call some of us to go beyond that for the sake of others (He has got a unique ambition for each of us). It’s not up to the sort of people you describe to limit the faith of those they come into contact with.

Best is to pray under our breaths that God will take control of the situation and that these people’s hearers will be sure to hear from God their true call and not be confused by something else.

 

[Crusaderbear]

That’s Gods call, not yours or mine.

 

[whatsmyname]

I’m don’t really understand what bothers you about the sentence, but I’ll explain how I understand it.

Many Protestants believe you are saved by faith alone through grace alone at a certain point, often when you pray the sinner’s prayer asking for forgiveness for your sins and asking the Lord to live in your heart.

They do not believe you are saved by works, but they do believe the evidence that you have been saved is that you will begin to live a good Christian life, doing good works and trying not to sin.

Therefore, when someone who had claimed to be saved later begins living a sinful life and stops doing good works, it logically follows that they were never saved in the first place. If they had been, they would have continued to live a good Christian life.

Catholics have a different belief in how and when one is “saved” so it would not logically follow that a Catholic living a depraved life is necessarily unsaved.

 

[Beryllos]

If they are speaking of someone still living, you could say that as long as he/she lives, there is still time for him/her to be saved. Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His mercy endures forever.

 

[St_Francis]

I never had a chance to discuss this with a Protestant, but many years ago there were a couple of scandals (Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker).

So, how does a OSAS advocate explain the man who “is saved,” dedicates his life to being a minister, and then falls big-time --runs off with another’s wife or similar-- that man really really really thought he was saved at first, to the point he became a minister. Then he fell. Was he never saved, then? If he had died before the major sin, where would he have ended up? And under these conditions, how can any of us know we are saved until the end of life?

 

[GEddie]

The problem is no-one is saved during their human life.

So your Protestant friends are coming from a mistaken perspective.

ICXC NIKA

 

[whatsmyname]

I never had a chance to discuss this with a Protestant, but many years ago there were a couple of scandals (Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker).

So, how does a OSAS advocate explain the man who “is saved,” dedicates his life to being a minister, and then falls big-time --runs off with another’s wife or similar-- that man really really really thought he was saved at first, to the point he became a minister. Then he fell. Was he never saved, then? If he had died before the major sin, where would he have ended up? And under these conditions, how can any of us know we are saved until the end of life?

I can only speak from my protestant background. We would never have considered Jimmy Swaggart or Jim & Tammy Fay Bakker real ministers or real Christians in the first place. We would have considered them to be televangelist con artists, and lying, stealing, and adultery would kind of be expected of them. I was totally unfamiliar with the concept that anyone might think those type of t.v. hucksters were authentic believers until I came to the Catholic Answers forums and found out they are considered the very model of Protestant Christianity by some Catholics.

As for a non-t.v. personality pastor who runs off with someone else’s wife, it would probably depend on the situation and the person. If the person resisted all calls to repentance and counseling, yes, he’d probably be put in the never saved category. If he repented and submitted to counseling, yes, he’d still be considered saved even if it were too late to save his marriage.

Again, just my experience. There are too many types of Protestants to claim my experience is the same as anyone else’s.

 

[Beryllos]

The problem is no-one is saved during their human life.

Indeed, with that in mind, once we are saved (in the afterlife), we are always saved.

 

[Bestil_Andno]

When protestants I know say “they probably weren’t saved in the first place”.

I hear this so much and unless I say that God wouldn’t make someone think they are saved when they weren’t I just don’t know what to say.

Thanks.

“They probably weren’t saved in the first place” usually comes from those who hold to OSAS.

It kind of seems to me that using that phrase to refer to a person who we/they/somebody “thought” was once saved speaks against the entire OSAS position.

For if some people who we thought or do think are saved can then fall away and we can say “they probably weren’t saved in the first place”…well…we do not know that one day we ourselves might be the person who people are looking at and saying: “poor chap…probably wasn’t saved in the first place.”

We don’t know that we won’t commit a horrible falling away. Nobody can know that about their future. We hope we don’t. But we don’t know that.

So it seems to me that the only time that we can know if someone was OSAS…is when they have made it to their deathbed and/or died and, looking back, we can see that they did not have that horrible falling away.

It seems like OSAS doesn’t hold until we can look back on a person’s life near the moment of their death. So it really doesn’t offer the assurance some people think that it does.

But even then, as others have already said above, only God really knows that state of a person’s soul at all points during their life.