Are you saying that when you were Protestant, you were taught that you could lie, steal, sleep with your neighbor’s wife, and even murder someone just for fun, throughout your entire life, and it was irrelevant to your salvation because you had been Baptized and/or confirmed???
Did I say that this is what I was taught? I mean, let me know because I’m pretty sure when I was typing, it was me doing the typing, and not someone else who might’ve been taught all that. Here’s what I did say…
the concept is centered around the erroneous notion that salvation is a one-time past event and that there is nothing you can do from that one event until you die that will remove heaven from being your eternal destiny.
Ginger2:
Then why do Protestants try to avoid sin and why do Protestants teach you need ask to God’s forgiveness, go to the injured party and ask forgiveness and make amends and be reconciled???
I also didn’t say this is how protestants
behave…merely what some of them are
taught. My, you are taking this to extremes. I don’t personally know a single protestant that lives their life in reckless abandon because of this false doctrine. All I know is that it IS taught…and it IS false.
Ginger2:
OSAS must have been invented by Catholics, as Luther never taught it.
No, it is still taught in a large number of protestant communities…the reason you don’t see it is because no one labels it as such, and no one ever raises the teaching to the extreme you are trying to take it to. No one preaches “hey, come on down and give your life to Christ…take ya 30 seconds…then go have an illicit affair, lie cheat and steal to your hearts to desire, and just live it up man, cuz yer saved!”. But just because it’s not taken to the extreme like this does not mean that it is not a dangerous teaching. What it does is lower people’s sensitivity to what sin is, and their perception of when they enter into it. It’s not to say protestants are more sinful than Catholics…it’s to say that they’re less sensitive to it because deep down they are resting on Christ to automatically forgive them for their sinful behavior. As a result their guard is down much of the time, especially for the smaller, pesky, daily sins. Most are quite capable of avoiding the most obvious and agregious of sins (like murder and adultery), but smaller sins are often not accounted for, and over time, it is these smaller sins that go unrepented and unconfessed (and likely forgotten) that can quickly lead to larger and larger sins…further and further separation from Christ…and in some, ultimately lead them back to enslavement in them. Again, some Catholics are no better, but because the Church teaches us that salvation is a process, and judgment comes at the end, not the middle, and what reconciliation really is, and what the Eucharist really is…the average Catholic is much more in tune with all sins, can recognize them while they’re happening, and often before. They are more continuously mindful of when they have offended God, and hence make more punctual efforts to reconcile. This is my personal experience as I relate back to my non-Catholic life, and compare it to today. I feel I have extra-sensory perception of sin, and I feel that is truly a blessing, and necessary for a full relationship with Christ.
Looks like I struck a sensitive nerve with you, Ginger. I do apologize, but no one here is trying to tell you what you believe. I’m just telling you that OSAS, in essence - not in name, is taught abundantly in non-Catholic churches all over the world…but it is not done in an overt, ‘license-to-sin’, extreme manner you are suggesting. It is a by-product of teaching that salvation is a one-time event, and that that declaration of eternal life is unchangeable, even by the very person who possesses it. Does it affect all protestants negatively? Not a chance. But I believe it ill-equips most of them to recognize sin and the near occasions of it, and makes them much more susceptible to falling into sins without repentance.
Misunderstanding happens in the Catholic Church, too.
