S
SIA
Guest
I am an ex-cradle Catholic and was for over three decades. Guess I’ve been to Hawaii AND tasted the coconuts!
- Status
G
Good_Fella
Guest
Are you sure about that? :coffeeread:
Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the Church.
Colosians 1, 24
Blessed are they who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb: that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates of the city."
Revelation 22, 14
We are not merely spectators but responsible actors and participants in our redemption. Sola Fide and Sola Christu are unbiblical traditions of men.
PAX
Good Fella
S
sola_scriptura
Guest
You’re not saying this verse supports purgatory are you?
Relying on the Bible and faith is a tradition of men? Hmmm, boy that’s really turning things on its head?PAX
Good Fella
G
Good_Fella
Guest
As you are going with your adversary (the devil or accuser) to the magistrate (God as our judge) try hard to be reconciled to him (be entirely freed from the debt of sin) on the way (in this life), or he may drag you off to the judge (God), and the judge turn you over to the officer (an angel?) and the officer throw you into prison (purgatory). I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny (achieve reconciliation).
Luke 12, 58-59
In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should be paid back all he owed.
Matthew 18, 34
I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.
Matthew 5, 26
Christ was not punished for our sins in our stead, but atoned for them by his precious blood. Nor is his righteousness imputed to our account. The pennies are in our pockets. Our opponent is the devil whose offspring (sin) we must reckon with in this life and the next before our divine Judge. If we have not sufficiently dealt with our accuser and the debt of sin in this life before we die and face our Judge, we will be temporarily kept in purgatory until we have served our sentence - paid the last penny and satisfied our debt to God. We must pay back Christ all the pennies in our pockets before we can ‘become’ truly righteous and perfect in God’s estimation.
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5, 48
We are made perfect by purification and becoming inherently righteous before God. Purgatory is reserved for those who have failed to adequately deal with Satan and sin in this life. Our sinfulness is not conveniently covered by the righteousness and purity of Christ. The early Reformers erroneously rejected the Book of Maccabees and Baruch because the doctrine of Purgatory, taught by the ECFs, and prayers for the dead conflicted with their false doctrine of Justification.
…through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison.
1 Peter 3, 19
The spirits in prison (purgatory) are the righteous souls being purified for the beatific vision in Heaven.
“Nothing impure will ever enter it (Heaven), nor will anyone who does what is shameful and deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the book of life (the pure of heart).”
Revelation 21, 27
We must purge ourselves of all the shameful and deceitful acts of our lives and be purified before we can enter Heaven. Our state of conscience will determine the length of physical time we spend in Purgatory.
…his ‘work’ will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.
1 Corinthians 3, 13
The quality of our acts are brought to light in the next world by a fire which measures our acts and purifies our souls in relation to the sinfulness of our acts. Paul is not speaking of rewarding the righteous as Protestants contend because of their denial of Purgatory.
Therefore, I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be ‘conformed’ to this world, but be ‘transformed’ (not declared or imputed righteous) by the renewal of your mind (our mind, not His), so that you may prove (be tested by fire) what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable, and perfect.
Romans 12, 1-2
We are ultimately saved and redeemed by becoming perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. We are not declared justified by Christ’s perfection but become justified by the Christ-like perfection we aspire to, by the grace of God, and that is judged acceptable and pleasing to God. If Purgatory did not exist most souls would go to Hell. But our merciful and compassionate heavenly Father desires that all of us be saved, not just an elected few.
To lessen the intensity of the fire of Purgatory or to avoid this state of existence altogether, may I recommend that Christians recite this prayer daily for the ‘infusion’ of God’s grace and the strength to cooperate with it by resisting our accuser, the devil.
Create a pure heart in me, O God,
renew in me a steadfast spirit.
Do not cast me from your presence,
or deprive me of your holy spirit.
Psalm 51, 10-11
“According to the believer, through great discipline, divesting himself of the passions, passes to the mansion which is better than the former one, viz., to the greates torment, taking with him the characteristic of repentance from the sins he has committed after baptism. He is tortured then still more - not yet or not quite attaining what he sees others to have acquired. Besides, he is also ashamed of his transgressions. The greatest torments, indeed, are assigned to the believer. For God’s righteousness is good, and His goodness is righteous. And though the punishments cease in the course of the completion of the expiation and purification of everyone, yet those have very great and permanent grief who are found worthy of the other fold, on account of not being along with those that have been glorified through righteousness.”
Clement of Alexandria, ‘Stromata, 6:14’ [post A.D. 202]
“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you in all truth; for he will not speak on his own, but whatever he hears; and he will declare to you the things that are coming.”
John 16, 12-13
Jesus did not wait until the 16th century to send the Paraclete to a private individual named Martin Luther. :nope:
PAX
Good Fella
G
Good_Fella
Guest
Revelation 22, 14 is contravened by the false Protestant doctrine Sola Fide and Sola Christu. Christ does not wash our robes for us, but he has made it possible for us to wash them ourselves by the infusion of God’s grace through the merits of his precious blood. We become righteous before God by washing our robes clean. If our robes are not clean enough by the time we pass on, our purification is completed in Purgatory. Nothing inherently unclean enters Heaven. We are not covered by Christ’s washed robe. Nor are we merely spectators of our redemption. Your tradition is of men, for it is based on your fallible private interpretation of Scripture. You are spiritual orphans outside the one Apostolic Catholic Church.
PAX
Good Fella
S
sola_scriptura
Guest
So you advocate Pelagianism? The idea that we ourselves, not the grace of God, moves us to holiness? And I am the spiritual orphan? Okay …
D
distracted
Guest
one time i was talking to another Catholic and was talking about this friend (ex) who left the Catholic Church… This statement just popped out of my mouth, without me feeling the need to think about it much… but i think it was the total truth…I am an ex-cradle Catholic and was for over three decades. Guess I’ve been to Hawaii AND tasted the coconuts!
I said that ex-Catholics are the worst of all…
And you know what, after all the years since i said that, i have not once taken it back…
You will accuse me of judging you. Go ahead… your choice… but i used to be a fallen away Catholic myself… and i have known them…
Case in point: Hitler… I rest my case… (not that he was ever much of a true Catholic… but in any case, he left the Church & converted to Lutheranism)
D
distracted
Guest
God isn’t going to sanctify anyone without his cooperation… God gave us free will… I believe he helps us when we are searching for him but kinda lost… but he helps us by putting certain peole in our lives, certain events, certain thoughts… He does not do it for us… He wants to love him (and his Son) by choice… .
D
distracted
Guest
Christ did not do it all for us as individuals. His sacrifice was complete but WEe are not complete…
He did what he was supposed to… Now it is up to us to do something: accept Him and what He did… and apply it to our lives… apply it to our daily choices…
If i know that some prayer or activity will increase grace in my life but i… say, sit @ home & watch worldly TV shows instead…which take me further form Christ… That is not something Christ does… but my own choice… and i will lose grace (closeness to my Savior) because of such a choice… That is
what is missing from Christ’s sacrifice : OUr choices…
S
sola_scriptura
Guest
And of our own efforts we can never be complete. Only through Him are we complete.
Up to us or up to God? Is grace really grace or just a helping hand?
There is nothing missing from Jesus’ sacrifice? Indeed God is never responsible for our falling away; but we are never responsible for our own salvation — see my point?
S
SIA
Guest
I never said that we are not to apply him to our daily lives. That is called faith my friend. If we have faith in him, then we follow him. i never suggested otherwise. This all supported by Scripture. But, ultimately, he died for all of us, bottom line. Nothing we could ever do could make us look good in front of God. We need Christ to interceded for us.
G
Good_Fella
Guest
We wash our own robes clean by freely accepting and cooperating with the grace of God. God’s grace is not just a mark of God’s favour towards us; it is also a source of power and strength in our spiritual lives, through which we become ontologically transformed. Paul exhorts the Romans to refuse to conform to the spirit of this world and to die to the sins of the flesh. Our minds and hearts must be transformed if we hope to ever be saved. An interior change is required of us. Augustine did not believe man is totally corrupt inside. He was convinced that a residue of divine goodness remained in our fallen nature, since we were created in God’s image. This divine spark within us makes us open to responding to God’s grace, which we are free to reject as was Adam. We must take a responsible part in our salvation, since we are responsible for our fall.
PAX
Good Fella
S
sola_scriptura
Guest
G
Good_Fella
Guest
I’m afraid Augustine would disagree with you. He believed and taught that we are initially justified by faith, but faith is completed and perfected through good works done by the grace of God. Faith is not completed by faith through a mere demonstration of good works that must accompany faith as a sign of that faith with no genuine human merit involved by the exercise of human free will. Our justification is brought about by an infused as opposed to imputed righteousness. Augustine rejected the heretical notion that we can perform good works and stand righteous before God apart from his grace. But he never denied the importance of our free cooperation with God’s grace, as neither do I. The idea of the partiality of God’s grace being granted to a selected group to the impotence of human free will is a Protestant one that encompasses the false doctrine of Sola Gratia. Neither Augustine nor Paul believed that we are saved by faith and grace alone.
“Now for the commission of sin we get no help from God; but we are no able to do justly, and to fulfill the law of righteousness in every part thereof, except we are helped by God. For as the bodily eye is not helped by the light to turn away there from shut or averted, but is helped by it to see, and cannot see at all unless it help it; so God, who is the light of the inner man, helps our mental sight, in order that we may do some good, not according to our own, but according to his righteousness .”
Augustine, ‘On Forgiveness of Sins and Baptism, ll:5’
Augustine believed that human beings are inherently good, but a sinful nature inhibits us from doing what is good and righteous before God. We are creatures with the power to see, but we cannot see while stranded in a dark room. The light of God’s grace enables us to see and thereby do what is righteous in accord with the will of God and out of a genuine love of God. Through a free act of faith, by the grace of God, we may wash our robes clean as did the martyrs before us, who emulated the love of Christ. The martyrs have been rewarded because they freely acted out of love of God. Their sacrificial deaths are not merely indications that they have been elected and predestined for glory. God does not reward those who cannot genuinely love him or freely refuse to love him. But his grace does help all of us who possess the predisposition to love and freely express that love by a righteous deed in accord with his will. We have been created in God’s image, and God is good. The goodness that lies buried beneath our sinful nature and is obscured by the powers of darkness is brought to the surface by the help of God’s grace.
" ‘No man can come to me, except the Father who hath sent me draws him’! For he does not say, ‘except he lead him,’ so that we can thus in any way understand that his will precedes. For who is ‘drawn,’ if he was already willing? And yet no man comes unless he is already willing. Therefore he is drawn in wonderous ways to will by Him who knows how to work within the very hearts of men. Not that men who are unwilling should believe, which cannot be, but that they should be willing from being unwilling."
Augustine, ‘Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 1:19’
Augustine did not believe that man is totally corrupt. If that were so, man could not already be willing to accept and cooperate with God’s grace. Those who have no faith are the ones who willingly reject God’s offer of grace. God does not deprive anybody of his offer so that only the elect are saved, for God is just.
For the grace of God has appeared saving all, and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires.
Titus 2, 11-12
Do not ‘conform yourself’ to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that ‘you may discern’ what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.
Romans 12, 2
First of all then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgiving be offered for everyone…This is good and pleasing to God our saviour, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth.
1 Timothy 2: 1-4
“Lest the will itself should be deemed capable of doing any good without the grace of God, after saying, ‘His grace within me was not in vain, but I have laboured more abundantly than they all,’ he immediately added the qualifying clause,‘Yet not I, but the grace
of God which was with me.’ In other words, ’ Not I alone, but the grace of God with me. And thus, neither was it the grace of God alone, nor was it he himself alone, but it was the grace of God with him . For his call, however, from heaven and his conversion by that great and most effectual call, God’s grace was alone, because his merits, though great, were yet evil.”
Augustine, ‘On Grace and Free Will, 5:12’
God’s grace helps bring to the surface the good that lies in each of us. And so we may wash our robes clean by the helping grace of God as we grow in sanctification. By the help of God’s grace we may become righteous. We are not declared righteous by being covered with Christ’s clean robe on account of being totally “depraved” and corrupt in our humanity. We cannot be ontologically transformed with the help of God’s infused grace unless we are first willing. Paul does exhort us not to “conform” ourselves to this world but to allow God’s grace to “transform” us so that we do what is pleasing to God for the completion and perfection of our justification in faith.
" ‘I have fought,’ says he, ‘the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.’ Now, in the first place, these good works were nothing, unless they were preceded by good thoughts. Observe, therefore, what he says concerning these very thoughts. His words, when writing to the Corinthians, are : 'Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God."
Augustine, ‘On Grace and Free Will, 7:16’
I never said that we can do it alone. I said that we can do it by accepting God’s grace and cooperating with it. Our free and wilful response to God’s grace could not happen unless there still is some good deep down inside us that needs to rise to the surface and shine in God’s favour with his help. My position is Augustinian and does not contravene the dogmatic declarations of the Council of Carthage.
PAX
S
sola_scriptura
Guest
This segways into the doctrine of justification and sanctification, which is expanding the topic a bit – but I’m game for it.
I do not know exactly what Augustine had to say about this. However, I will offer my own view. I believe righteousness is both imputed and infused, let me explain by paraphrasing an analogy used by Piper:
Let’s I’m a father of a teenage boy. His room is a mess and I tell him he can only watch this evenings football game if his room is clean. However, my boy went out to hang out with some friends and shoot some hoops, he got careless, lost track of time, and forgot to come home in time to clean his room before the football game. I go into his room an hour before the game and notice his room is still a mess, so I clean his room.
He comes home a few minutes before the game and realizes he forgot to clean his room. He sincerely apologizes to me; and I say no problem. I only said you’re room has to be clean – I never said you had to clean it, so you can watch the game.
Crediting his apology as a substitute for a clean room is like justification (imputation). Cleaning the room is sanctification (infusion).
for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).
God is at work in the elect, both to “will and to do.” This doesn’t mean we’re robots, or we walk around entranced awaiting a discernible divine instruction, or that God is a puppet master.
Here’s the Arminian view – which I myself once held:
- God gives all people an equal opportunity at salvation through His prevenient grace.
- Predestination is based purely on God’s ability to see the future.
- God gave all an equal measure of grace. He then looked down the tunnel of time to see who chose Christ and who did not. This means God’s choices were really made by us not Him. This makes our God out to be a reactive God who passively sits back and looks in His hourglass to see if we will elect ourselves. God is now our cheerleader not God.
But as for you, man of God, shun all this; aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses (1 Tim. 6:11-12).
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).
I’m convinced as well. No one can tell me that we are not to have the level of confidence of Paul. I say anyone who doesn’t – has a weak or at least an incomplete faith. If we think we might not endure then it’s more likely we won’t. When confidence is lacking the devil has an opening. Here’s witness to the confidence of Paul:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).
There were few men who uttered such glorious and inspiring words. Paul fought the good fight and finished the race because he was completely convinced; and he profoundly urged all in Christ to have this same confidence.
No one ever said “to the impotence of human free will.” We are not puppets. However, you’re diluting the power of grace by your mode of thinking.
God does not tempt, lest any man try and blame God for his sins. I would never dare infer such a thing.
D
distracted
Guest
No, i don’t.
D
distracted
Guest
Why don’t you admit defeat?
Protestantism was defeated before it even began. It was defeated on the Cross 2000 years ago.
S
sola_scriptura
Guest
Another anti-protestant bigot who wears sheep’s clothing? I bet you would revel at the destruction of our churches – kind of like the Pres. of Iran dreams of wiping out Israel. The sad thing is I’m sure you’re really deluded into thinking this is how a Christian should think and talk?
C
cazayoux
Guest
Distinction.
Traditions of men are not bad.
Traditions of men that are against the word of God is bad.
A tradition of men would be Wednesday night bible study.
Not a bad thing at all.
michel
S
sola_scriptura
Guest
No argument here
- Status