"My Journey To Reformed Theology"

[Gadgeteer]

If your works impact your salvation, then by definition it cannot be salvation by faith alone.

Hi, Catholic dude!

Well, Paul says “salvation is by grace through faith, not by works”. Peter said “receive as the outcome of your faith salvation”. Where we can come to agreement (I hope), is that real faith is never without good works. That fits Matt7:16-18 (a bad tree cannot produce good fruit), and James2 (faith which produces no good works is dead/unsaved).

If you sin and need to ask for forgiveness to get those sins forgiven, this means that your works affect your salvation and that you’re not saved until you repent.

You’re right – but “repentance” is not doing a good work. In John6:27-29 they wanted their bellies filled again — Jesus told them “not to work for food that perishes, but work for food that endures to eternal life.”

They replied, “What must we do, to work the works of God?”
Jesus said: “This is the work of God, that you believe He whom God sent.”

It’s God’s work, that we work when we believe; it’s not our work. “Believe” is by definition coincident with “repent”.

One of the more serious issues Protestants find themselves in is believing that Christians don’t need to Worship God as part of salvation. In fact, Protetsants hold that Worshiping God is a non-essential part of Christian living.

I absolutely completely, AGREE with you. Too many Protestants drive down their roads of life with Jesus and the Spirit and the Father all neatly wrapped sitting on the passenger seat, always ready to help the driver if they’re ever needed. And (per verses like Gal2:20) Jesus is s’posed to be driving!

…and I see that in the Catholic world also; don’t you? My greatest success to any audience, Protestant or Catholic, is to encourage brothers and sisters to “enter within the veil to experience the very presence of Almighty God”. To truly fellowship with Him, to experience His personality and to fall in love with Him. For this is the essence of our faith – it is not a “belief”, it is a true union between Creator (Jesus!), and creature (you and me!). Only when we confront His person can we move beyond “rote” and “ritual”, and experience the true joy of having a friend like Him.

“No greater love has anyone, than to lay down his life for a friend.”
“These things have I told you that My joy may be in you, and your joy be made complete!”
“The Lord is my strength and my song, and has become my salvation!”

What will it take for us to encourage each other to get excited over Him whom we love? How do we get our hearts involved?

That is what it means to “encourage each other”…

 

[Gadgeteer]

Gadgeteer,

I say this in all charity,

Paul didn’t wear himself out warning people over and over and over and over … that division from the Church has cataclysmic effect on a person’s soul. He warned people once or twice. That’s all.

For example

Here’s what he told Bp Titus

Tit 3:
10 As for a man who is factious, αἱρετικὸν ] after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, 11 knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned.

Look at that word in Greek that in the English is “factious”. English doesn’t always give us the best wording. The link is operational.

disposed to form sects, sectarian, heretical, factious, schism ].

That’s Protestantism, no matter the stripe. It’s all those terms. No amount of Scripture quoting, can be used to justify that or anyone in it, since as one can see, αἱρετικὸν ] is condemned activity.

Re: your question Protestants going to heaven?

Let me ask you, do you believe the following conditional statement? ( conditional on one ending their dissent/schism/division from the Church)

Gal 5: dissension, διχοστασίαι, ] party spirit, 21 envy,a] drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

EVERY Protestant group, regardless of name, is in division with respect to the Catholic Church. διχοστασίαι, ]. And for 500 years, I don’t see any fix.

So given that, what’s YOUR answer to your question?

Hello, Steve. I appreciate your enthusiasm. I don’t want to “go to war” with you – I understand the position of “infallibility”. Yet, that does not accurately reflect history, does it? At one time the Church sold indulgences.
Dr Miguel Faria:

By making a monetary contribution to the church, a penitent would receive a partial indulgence not to commit further sins, while at the same time, diminishing the time period that he/she was to suffer in PURGATORY for remission of his sins. Most people do not understand that an indulgence did not cancel sins. Only a priest during a confession session could absolve a truly repentant penitent.

The best source I have found to understand this much maligned concept is Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, The Reformation: “An Indulgence, therefore, was the remission, by the church, of part of all of the temporal (i.e., not eternal) penalties incurred by sins whose guilt had been forgiven in the sacrament of penitence.”

haciendapub.com/randomnotes/martin-luther-sale-indulgences-and-reformation

Whether someone felt he could “buy licenses to sin”, or that indulgences only partly paid for sins, it still breaks what Paul said about “He has canceled and nailed our certificate of debt to the Cross”. No one can nail it any more to the Cross, than it already was by Him.

The Catholic Church also once insisted the Sun revolved around the Earth — see this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=17332

So – to answer your question, inasmuch as I see sufficient reason to accept that many Catholic brothers and sisters are truly saved and have eternal life, I see no reason to dismiss the other side, that many Protestants also understand and embody all that Scripture requires for salvation.

Mankind is imperfect; and any church is comprised of imperfect men. If “Scripture is authoritative” (as Catholics do accept), then the Apostles must have written often with sufficient authority to overcome misunderstandings. That’s the whole basis for my debates with Calvinists – without “the authority of Scripture” it becomes reduced to “I-think/he-thinks”, and as they say opinions are like noses, everybody has one…

You and I can feel strongly on certain things, in different directions; let’s not come to hard feelings, but celebrate what we have in common (Jesus!), looking forward to when He returns and there will be no more limitations because of Human imperfections. When the Perfect comes, we will know fully even as we are fully known.

(I read that somewhere…)