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Anesti33
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So you are saying that there is nothing extraordinary about the Immaculate Conception, and there are thousands, millions of Immaculate Conceptions that we just don’t hear about?
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Montrose
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That is not what is being said. If you had read the Church teaching I quoted just two above you will see that the Church teaches God is not bound by his Sacraments.Rubee:
So you are saying that there is nothing extraordinary about the Immaculate Conception, and there are thousands, millions of Immaculate Conceptions that we just don’t hear about?
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Rubee
Guest
Do you disbelieve St. John was sanctified in his mother’s womb? Does it somehow violate the immaculate conception that God did that for him? Of course not. The two are not the same. What they DO have in common, though, is that God got rid of (in St. John’s case) or prevented (in Our Lady’s case) original sin without using the sacraments. St. Thomas Aquinas in fact taught that this was something God did at least one other time besides these two in the Bible:
That St. John and Jeremiah were cleansed of original sin – The witness of Scripture
In Summa Theologica III, q.27, a.6, St. Thomas considers whether Jeremiah and St. John the Baptist were sanctified in the womb and cleansed of original sin before their birth. At first it might seem like this is a grace reserved specifically to the Blessed Virgin Mary, but St. Thomas affirms that, based on the witness of Sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church, we ought to maintain that these prophets were likewise freed from original sin before their birth.
In fact, in the Western (Latin) church, we consider even St. Joseph, too (!), foster father of the Lord and the Blessed Virgin’s husband, to have MOST LIKELY been thus sanctified, given scripture gives him the “holy/just man” descriptor and given his role and closeness to the Lord and his Blessed Mother.
In addition, we have examples right in the Gospels, of souls receiving justification/salvation/sanctification through a different means than water baptism. Consider the harlot of whom Christ himself said, “Because she has loved much, her sins, THOUGH MANY, are forgiven her.” Now, who gave this woman a Christian/Trinitarian WATER baptism? Yet we have our Lord right there declaring her forgiven ALL her sins. Do you believe him? Where did she get such perfect charity, powerful enough to make her holy in the Lord’s eyes, besides his own sanctifying grace?
The point is: We have PLENTY of evidence of God doing for souls directly, of his own volition, exactly what he does for us through the church in baptism and the other sacraments. As I said already, per the plain light of reason as well as the church’s own teaching, we cannot pretend that God is bound to the activity of the church so that he’d be powerless to do himself, in his own sovereign freedom, what the church fails to do through her members.
The church derives her power and authority to save from God; God doesn’t derive his power and authority from the church.
The absolute most you can say is that God HAS NOT TOLD US of a different means to save besides what he’s given us in the church (the sacraments), so we don’t know for sure but we hope he supplements the church’s activity in his own divine, wise ways he has not chosen to share. But the thing is, he DOESN’T need to share what he does himself, only what the church needs to know to fulfill the mandate God has entrusted to and empowered her to fulfill.
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Anesti33
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You didn’t answer my questions.
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Rubee
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I did. You asked if there are millions of immaculate conceptions. Unless you have trouble understanding, you know the answer just from looking at the first three sentences alone of my post. Here’s mine, since your question assumes that if anyone other than Mary receives grace outside baptism it counts as an affront to the Immaculate conception:
Given my extensive post exhaustively dispelling the basis of your question (itself a strawman) and answering you! (“Of course not!”, said I in black and white writ), I’ll assume you’ve read and simply don’t have a response to the points I made.
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OneSheep
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Okay, is having your heart “in it for the money” a true position, or a false one?
Well, you haven’t answered any questions about what was going on in his mind, so your statement is “He knew what he was doing because I said he knew what he was doing.” It’s a circular argument, but if it works for you, I’m not going to pursue it further.
If you actually want to do something other than state brute facts, you might try answering my questions.
In the mean time, my statement stands that he did not know what he was doing. Peter observed that Simon thought he could buy the gift of the Spirit with money, which is an untruth. When a person believes an untruth, they certainly do not know what they are doing, just as those who hung Jesus did not know what they were doing. They believed Jesus was disposable, of no value.
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BigBoom
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What you’re doing is limiting God’s justice. God is both perfect mercy and justice. You can’t have one without the other.Julius_Caesar:
That would limit God’s mercy. Think of it this way: God knows our choices before He even creates us, but He lovingly creates us anyway. Does God choose to create a person he plans to never forgive because the person will never repent? Does God hold eternal grudges, yet asks people to forgive everyone?
It leads to an image of a “sinister” God, as described by Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict)
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Julius_Caesar
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I like how you left out self deception.
Really good.
Simon knew exactly what he was doing. He had insight from Philip and Peter and John. He saw the Holy Spirit descend on the Samaritan Christians.
You’re just making excuses for him.
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OneSheep
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OneSheep:
I refer to the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The purpose of justice is mercy. When there is a conflict between justice and mercy, mercy is the bottom line.
I did not at all. We have different layers to address, and you have not answered the questions on the most superficial layer. Are you ready to give it a try? Did Simon actually believe money could buy the gift, as Peter stated, or did he not?
You can answer “yes” or “no” and elaborate, but simply to say “he knew what he was doing” over and over proves nothing. Once you answer yes or no, we can go into the next layer, self deception.
“Making excuses” for someone means trying to reframe what someone has said or done in a way that absolves them of blame. I am not trying to absolve Simon of having done something that was wrong. As a reminder, we are trying to determine if he could have possibly known what he was doing. Jesus made that determination concerning the crowd, and we can call upon the gift of understanding to do the same. Jesus did not say that what the crowd was doing was right, but he understood (stood among) the crowd’s thinking, and saw that they were blind. But first, like I said, a person has to be open to the possibility that there is something to be understood, otherwise no understanding can take place.
Are you going to try to understand, or would you rather not? Understanding, by itself, is not the same as acquittal, if that helps!
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Julius_Caesar
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I also like how you leave out Matthew’s other parables like the Great Feast, the Tenants, the Ten Virgins, the Talents, and other parables that don’t suit your view.
So Peter made a circular argument, as did Luke the inspired author.
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OneSheep
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None of those conflict with “the purpose of justice is mercy” when applying the Catholic approach to interpretation of scripture.
Neither Peter nor Luke said that Simon knew what he was doing. Peter said that Simon thought that he could buy the gift of the Spirit, and he pointed out the error in that. These are not circular arguments.
It sounds like you would rather not support your position because you are not answering the most simple questions. So as it stands, Simon did not know what he was doing, just as the crowd who hung Jesus did not know what they were doing.
And while I can support this point by eliminating all the alternatives, an excellent guide for all the faithful when addressing such issues is this one:
This discipline is not limited to the living. While I can prove through elimination that Simon did not know what he was doing, that process of proving involves “going places” that you do not want to go, as you have shown by consistently avoiding answering my questions. That’s okay, but at the very least the faithful are to give favorable interpretation to any person’s words, deeds, and motives.
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Julius_Caesar
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They conflict with your interpretation when you deny that forgiveness and salvation are conditional.
Talk about an argument based on thin air.
Simon was instructed by Philip. He saw the Holy Spirit descend on believers.
Seems like he did know what he was doing. He wasn’t a lost lamb but a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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Montrose
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Sorry but what does all of this have to do with the thread title “May Catholics Endorse Universalism”?OneSheep:
They conflict with your interpretation when you deny that forgiveness and salvation are conditional.
Talk about an argument based on thin air.
Simon was instructed by Philip. He saw the Holy Spirit descend on believers.
Seems like he did know what he was doing. He wasn’t a lost lamb but a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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Julius_Caesar
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The answer is, has been and will always be, No.
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OneSheep
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I confirmed “this interpretation” with a priest/scripture scholar a couple weeks ago. God loves and forgives unconditionally. When there are conditions, they are imposed by the sinner.
I’ve already addressed this.
Okay, are you ready to answer the question, then? Peter said that Simon thought he could buy the gift of the Spirit. Did Simon think this, or did he not? Do you believe what Peter said?
I said, somewhere up there, that people don’t know what they are doing when they sin. It appears that the Emperor objected.
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Anesti33
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OneSheep
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Correction: As Pope Francis says, God always forgives us. If I am thinking that God has not forgiven, it has to do with the projection that God only forgives as much as I do, in a limited way. God’s mercy is unlimited, so no condition on His side will occur.
From the cross, Jesus forgave unrepentant, unforgiving people.
Think of it this way: Jesus calls us to be perfect, as God is perfect. Since Jesus calls us to forgive anyone we hold something against, without condition, then perfection is in the form of unconditional forgiveness.
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Anesti33
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“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
That is a petition, asking the Father to forgive them.
Mt 26:24 The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
Mt 18:6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
It seems Jesus similarly knew who was worthy to be consigned to Hell.
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OneSheep
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I addressed this earlier. Since Jesus is part of the trinity, the petition is granted in its asking. The trinity wills to forgive.
There is suffering of punishment for those the Father cares for, which is all of us.
Exactly. But the punishment is all meant to convert the sinner, for the benefit of the sinner. You can check the CCC for the purpose of punishment.
This goes against Catholic theology. People are not consigned to hell, they choose hell. I love the way one priest put it, “If a person actually chooses hell, they do so screaming and kicking against God the whole way”. It is against God pulling the other direction!
God wills that we all join Him in heaven.
You might have missed this since we posted at the same time:
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Anesti33
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Are you so invested in squishy happy fun ball theology that you can’t admit what a word means?
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