I can't shake my Protestantism

[Edward_H]

If I am given that “check” of salvation, I only got the opportunity by being in Christ’s Church, and I only gained it by accepting it. If I am not in the Church, am not aware of the check being offered or do not care to have it, perhaps thinking I do not need it, then obviously I can’t accept that gift of salvation.

Think of it this way: salvation is sort of like a paycheck you get from Christ’s company (the church) for working for them. No one can work for a company without realizing it, and no one can gain a paycheck from a company without being in its employment. I can’t look at someone and think, “Well, even though he works for the Buddhist or Muslim or atheist corporations, he can still receive a check from mine.” Because it wouldn’t be right to pay people for work they didn’t do.

No. You have some things really wrong and are adding complexity.

God is your Father. Through Baptism you’ve become part of His divine family. He has given His children gifts to help them love. Word, revelation, nature, your body, the Sacraments, a family, a family structure, etc…a family room.

No checklists, no paychecks…the love of Father and family.

 

[Nabooru]

I was just using it for illustrative purposes. We don’t go to church and live a Christ-like life for any kind of spiritual paycheck.

 

[Edward_H]

There is no need for such concepts and distractions. I’ve lost track of what your objection, complaint or obstacle is to the Catholic Church, which I believe manifests the Word and Body of Christ in the fullest, most beautiful, and faithful manner, and has done so for nearly 2000 years.

 

[Nabooru]

My objection is that non-Christians can attain salvation. I can only see that happening under very rare circumstances in which the situation is juuuust right, if it happens at all.

 

[Edward_H]

My objection is that non-Christians can attain salvation. I can only see that happening under very rare circumstances in which the situation is juuuust right, if it happens at all.

Why is this your focus. It’s God’s decision. Spend your time understanding charity, humility, love of God, the value of a well given confession, the beauty of the Eucharist, your neighbor’s cancerous wife and how you can help, pray, or sacrifice for them, the relationship between the Trinity and family life.

Too many people are hung up on understanding salvation and accreting a set of rules about it…they miss charity, and service to God in the here and now.

Too many darn philosophers and not enough Josephs, and Marys.

 

[Nabooru]

An essential part of charity is concern for the souls and salvation of others.

 

[Edward_H]

An essential part of charity is concern for the souls and salvation of others.

One manifests that concern for souls through constant, natural, charity, not by concocting a complicated rule set so that they can quickly learn how feeble and arbitrary our grasp is on the subject!!

With such natural (no ulterior motive buried beneath the surface) charity overflowing in us from the Holy Spirit, these souls will be attracted to us. Friendships, real friendships, can develop, and in that circumstance a whole set of substantial conversations can occur, naturally, unlike the street corner “have you been saved” moment.

You don’t tackle intimate or substantial topics of heart and soul on a street corner…

No, you must have a friendship established. Doing the street corner technique is actually treating souls cheaply, and salvation superficially.

Charity, charity, charity…friendship…and over time when there is a trust built up and is sincere…you can start to talk about matters of the soul. And never do you try to explain the rules of salvation because we’re human and we can’t understand the mind and love of God.

 

[Nabooru]

What of what God has told us, then? It is not His will to keep us in the dark. He has told is what He wants us to know of the plan of salvation, since the days of Adam and the earliest apostles. When we are asked how may salvation be achieved, it is not our place to shrug and say we don’t know, it’s a mystery to us. We repeat what God has told us.

Does that mean He has told us everything? Of course not! But in His providence He has given us instruction on what we should be aware. Speculation outside of the given plan of salvation is an interesting theological exercise but should not be made into doctrine.

 

[Edward_H]

What of what God has told us, then? It is not His will to keep us in the dark. He has told is what He wants us to know of the plan of salvation, since the days of Adam and the earliest apostles. When we are asked how may salvation be achieved, it is not our place to shrug and say we don’t know, it’s a mystery to us. We repeat what God has told us.

Does that mean He has told us everything? Of course not! But in His providence He has given us instruction on what we should be aware. Speculation outside of the given plan of salvation is an interesting theological exercise but should not be made into doctrine.

God has told us enough to love Him…and he has given us gifts by which we can serve others.

 

[Nabooru]

God has told us enough to love Him…and he has given us gifts by which we can serve others.

I think you’re over-simplifying it. What is love rendered unto God? Is it just a good feeling? Is it obedience?

Oh well. I don’t think this is going anywhere.

 

[Edward_H]

I think you’re over-simplifying it. What is love rendered unto God? Is it just a good feeling? Is it obedience?

Oh well. I don’t think this is going anywhere.

Important to get love right. It’s not a feeling. It’s an act of the will. Self-donation. Feeling can accompany acts of love sometimes, though we should never act on that expectation, since it’s a selfish intention.

God knows we operate better with simplicity.

So He gave us the image of His Son on the Crucifix to help us remember how simple love is. Willing self-donation.

 

[Swami71]

While I appreciate what you’re trying to say, the way it is typed and presented makes it hardly understandable for me. I do apologize but I can’t make much sense of it. Perhaps someone else can handle the topic a bit simpler for me?

Privately, I think the only reason that the current RCC accepts that non-Christians can attain salvation is because of pressure from modern political correctness. It makes me think of when Dominus Iesus was issued and some took offense at its declaration that other religions are gravely deficient, so a sort of appeasement was immediately shored up about how anyone who follows the Beatitudes will be saved.

In the ACNA church I currently attend, there’s no gentle stepping around the issue. We admit fully the need to evangelize others - including Muslims and Jews, even if that doesn’t make everybody comfortable. We are not hard-cord fundamentalists - we don’t threaten people with hell, although we know it’s there. We simply tell the truth.

*Romans 10:13-18 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.

If there is no one to preach the gospel, how can faith come?
How do you know what is the word of God from which faith comes if not by the testimony of some human being?*

This I do agree with, so you see my problem. Paul is saying that those that who cannot believe cannot call on The Lord. It emphasizes our need to evangelize, not pretend as though all religions are the same, or should work in tandem with each other. We shouldn’t trust that someone is doing enough good or believing in the right sort of things just enough without knowledge of Christ. They would have to live an absolutely extraordinary life to survive without him.

Why do you have such a problem with reasoning? If you answer those questions as they were put you would be able to reason and know what I was saying.

Do you not know that God made you to think?

If a wife is to be subject to a human husband, why would you find it troubling to submit yourself, as scripture directs to the Pope?

I gave you the Scriptures as well, so how is it you are unable to understand?

As for this issue of evangelization, why does it bother you to find that God saves by grace and not by works?
God does not need baptism to save, only you need it.

Romans 2: 11-12 For there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;

You have knowledge of what God declares you are to do, be baptized and repent … stay faithful till the end of your life … and you shall be judged by that law …
Is it too much for the God who desires all to be saved to rightly judge those whom aren’t as Blessed as you?

Answer these questions … Their answers are the answers to your questions.

 

[Swami71]

I think you’re over-simplifying it. What is love rendered unto God? Is it just a good feeling? Is it obedience?

Oh well. I don’t think this is going anywhere.

Can it be a real love which is only feeling or emotional?

If your mom or dad only cared for you when they felt like it/had a good feeling, would that be them loving you?

Paul said love fullfills the entire reqirement of the law. Jesus said the first commandment is to love God with everything you are(heart, mind, soul and strength). And to love your nieghbor as yourself.

Hardly an over simplification.

If you love … not just have a selfish or “good feeling” … how can you treat another in a manner you would not selfishly desire to be treated?

 

[Swami71]

When we are asked how may salvation be achieved, it is not our place to shrug and say we don’t know, it’s a mystery to us.

But in His providence He has given us instruction on what we should be aware. Speculation outside of the given plan of salvation is an interesting theological exercise but should not be made into doctrine.

What plan of salvation do you mean?

What speculation do you refer to?

 

[Swami71]

My objection is that non-Christians can attain salvation. I can only see that happening under very rare circumstances in which the situation is juuuust right, if it happens at all.

So you mean to say that aborted babies are in Hell?

 

[Nabooru]

An aborted baby has not had any opportunity to sin, so they have no need of redemption. But once you’re out of the womb and possess reason, you are accountable for what you do. The wages of sin is death.

I have no issue with those who are too mentally underdeveloped in order to even understand the concept of sin and salvation from the consequences of sin, being saved. But the fact is every other reasonable person on this earth has sinned. Good works cannot save you - if that were the case, the Muslim would be saved via zakat, or the atheist through giving blood. Good works don’t “negate” or “balance out” the sin. There’s no such thing as karma. A sin isn’t a debt we can pay off eventually by making incremental payments. A sin can only be washed away through the blood of Christ. And that blood of Christ - that grace - is to be accepted.

There are probably still people out there who haven’t been made aware of Christ, but the number is very, very small and dwindling fast. What happens to them, we cannot know - but that doesn’t mean we should just assume they’re in the free and clear. We still need to spread the Gospel. Saying that you live in an environment hostile to the Church is no excuse. Every day hundreds if not thousands of people are martyred for the faith in those nations opposed to it. Are those committing the killing not responsible for their actions, even if their hearts were so full of hate there was no room left for Christ? The Holy Spirit is everywhere available, it’s just that some people have so hardened their hearts that they will not let Him in.

Suppose this. An Iranian has heard of Christianity and “knows” on some level he’s supposed to condemn it, yet at the same time is curious as to what it’s all about. He begins to learn, keeping it a secret, to the point of being genuinely intrigued, and considering its claims as true. If that person dies in such a state, I would say IMO they will be saved. However, if that person sees Christians as a lower-class people and their religion as corrupt, as their government tells them, and never thinks to question it or even consider it permissible for others to convert or follow it, I, personally, venture to say that person cannot be saved, no matter how much charity they perform.

See how my thinking is very, very Protestant?

 

[Swami71]

.

See how my thinking is very, very Protestant?

Actually that is not very Protestant. Even Calvin and Luther believed in a doctrine of Original sin for David in the Psalms spoke of being formed in Iniquity. Ps 51:5

And as Romans 5 declare, For by one man all have sinned …there is none without sin … even those in the womb.

Only the Doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and that Jesus was born sinless are the only exceptions to that … not even the aborted babies get a free pass from the truth that all have fallen short of the glory of God by sin romans 3:23 …

So no you are not Protestant on the comment that babies have not sinned and are safe from condemnation thoughts … Such a belief is a form of a heresy known as Antinomianism … While there is wide agreement within Christianity that “antinomianism” is heresy, what constitutes antinomianism is often in disagreement. The term “antinomian” emerged soon after the Protestant Reformation (c.1517) and has historically been used mainly as a pejorative against Christian thinkers or sects who carried their belief in justification by faith further than was customary.[2] For example, Martin Luther preached justification by faith alone but was also an outspoken critic of antinomianism, perhaps most notably in his Against the Antinomians (1539). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomianism

As for your other two points you ignore the scripture teaching in both Act 17:27 and Romans 2 … which I have already quoted and questioned you to logically answer.

Romans 2:12-13 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

Which clearly states that any who have not heard will be judged without the Law/gospel … but you who have heard are of no excuse for disbelief or Protestant thinking.

You have heard and are a rebell in as much as you hold on to Protestantism. Protest the Church of Christ and her teachings no longer.

 

[Nabooru]

I’m not sure if that’s what Romans means. If it were so, it would be better not to evangelize, so unbelievers would not be judged to a higher standard. To read it plainly, it simply says they will perish without the law. That can be taken as either a neutral statement, especially considering that Paul’s meaning of “law” usually refers to the Jewish law - in that case, he would be saying that Gentiles who die outside of the Jewish fold, without a knowledge of Jewish law, would die just as they always had - in ignorance of God’s law. It could also be interpreted negatively, that they do not have the gift of the law.

Long story short, it simply says they perish. It doesn’t say anything about their salvation or damnation.

 

[Swami71]

I’m not sure if that’s what Romans means. If it were so, it would be better not to evangelize, so unbelievers would not be judged to a higher standard. To read it plainly, it simply says they will perish without the law. That can be taken as either a neutral statement, especially considering that Paul’s meaning of “law” usually refers to the Jewish law - in that case, he would be saying that Gentiles who die outside of the Jewish fold, without a knowledge of Jewish law, would die just as they always had - in ignorance of God’s law. It could also be interpreted negatively, that they do not have the gift of the law.

Long story short, it simply says they perish. It doesn’t say anything about their salvation or damnation.

Did you forget verse 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people’s hidden works through Christ Jesus.

That speaks of the Great Thone Judgement. Or do you like a Protestant skip verses that make your point of view look foolish?

There are places in scripture where the word of God, aka Bible, is refered to as being the Book of Law or law. And in the context of what Paul is pointing to here, it is not Jewish traditions or customs or any Jewish law … he is refering to the word of God.

As for your comment about evangelizing being a foolish endevour … your right … the preaching of the cross is foolishness … to those who are perishing … a stumbling block to those who are seeking a legalistic salvation.

BTW. when are you going to answer my other questions?

 

[Nabooru]

I’m not answering questions because you’re being aggressive and still hard to follow. Honestly I would really like to discuss this with a more level-headed poster.