Questions For Catholics

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Watch out, VociMike, here comes the “He was never truly saved to begin with” retort! DUCK!:eek:
Yeah. But that’s OK, since my point really is that OSAS means nothing if one cannot absolutely know that one is actually one of the saved. My answer to “He was never truly saved to begin with!” is “But you are?” 🙂
 
I have been asking dear Roman Catholics, so faithful and loyal to their Religion to explain to me what exactly is the official doctrine of the religion of Roman Catholicism concerning “HOW TO GET SAVED” and/or “HOW TO BE SURE THAT SOMEONE WHO IS A ROMAN CATHOLIC WILL GO TO HEAVEN”?
I was really hoping that someone would provide official Roman Catholic Doctrine on this topic, say from the Roman Catholic Catechism, for example.
HERE ARE MY MAIN QUESTIONS:
Is Salvation through the Roman Catholic Church?

Of course​

Is Salvation through Good Works??

Of course​

Is Salvation through Water Baptism??

Of course​

Is Salvation through Mary??

Of course​

Is Salvation through Religious Sacraments? ?

Of course​

Are they necessary for salvation?

Of course - see rest of post 🙂 . A question for you, dear brother in Christ 😃 :​

If someone drives his family to Disneyland, do they get there:
  1. By travelling
  2. By car
  3. Because the man takes them
  4. Because they want to travel
  5. Because they are on holiday
  6. Because Disneyland exists
  7. Because they are a family
  8. Because the man knows how to drive
  9. Because the road can be driven on
  10. Because they want to go to Disneyland
  • or by some combination of these or other possibilities ?
What some people overlook, is that though it is (sort of ) easy to grasp certain basic ideas in the Christian faith, the ideas they are made up of are many, rich, profound, & complex. Turning on a computer, & is no reason to ignore complicated things such as electronics: far from it - without the complex electronics, there could be no computer to turn on. The “easy” stuff implies a lot of answers to a lot of profound questions. As is to be expected, if God is indeed revealed in Jesus Christ. That is why Christian doctrine is so hard to sum up in easy headlines - that is why there is theology, & doctrinal staments, & creeds. Christian faith is a lot of things - but it is not shallow; the doctrines in God’s revelation are far too interconnected for that to be possible.

Salvation has many causes:
Jesus Christ
His Death
His Love
His Cross
Baptism
the Church he founded
the Glory of God
the saving purpose of God
  • & several thousands of others.
In a similar way, this post is caused by:

me
my fingers
the keyboard of this PC
your question
this website
this forum
your post
electricity
the invention of home computing
Microsoft
Bill Gates
the shop this PC comes from
God our Creator
my nervous system
your nervous system
hand-eye co-ordination
  • and other causes too numerous to mention. Causes are of many kinds - God causes the Bible, yet so did the human authors; as did the grace of inspiration; they are not unrelated or conflicting, because God is the total Cause of all created things; including human beings, the Bible, inspiration, etc.
…continued…]
 
Yeah. But that’s OK, since my point really is that OSAS means nothing if one cannot absolutely know that one is actually one of the saved. My answer to “He was never truly saved to begin with!” is “But you are?” 🙂
:amen:
 
Yeah. But that’s OK, since my point really is that OSAS means nothing if one cannot absolutely know that one is actually one of the saved. My answer to “He was never truly saved to begin with!” is “But you are?” 🙂
Great point! 👍
 
…continued…****]

So to say “X causes salvation” is not incompatible with saying that Y causes salvation - X may very well be caused by, or cause, Y (or they may both cause, and/or be caused by something else.

God is a Creator of infinite greatness & inventiveness - He is entirely capable of making thousands of things work together to bring about His saving purposes. That is why there is a Bible, a Church, sacraments, preaching, a God made man, a Death of Christ, a Resurrection, a calling to salvation, & so on. Why are you a Christian ? Because God worked through human beings to tell you of His Gospel. If you have saving faith - it is because God worked through a vast variety of causes to give you it. The Gospel didn’t preach itself, or the Bible write itself, or the books of it put themselves together - all these good things come from God, their Creator, Who alone directs & governs all things for the Glory of His Name.

So these many causes you’ve listed do not cancel each other - they are all gifts of God, of different kinds; all work in different ways to the single result, that God is glorified. Not because He lacks anything, but because we do. We need to have reasons to want God (!); so He gives them; & He brings us to Him by them. ##
Is Salvation something I can be “assured of” by being a good Roman Catholic?

One is not saved because one is a good anything - salvation is wholly from God. It’s irrelevant whether one is RC, Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Campbellite, JW, LDS, Muslim, Jain, Buddhist, a devil-worshipper, atheist - you name it: salvation is entirely from God. Even to desire it, is God’s gift - it is in no way something that God owes any man. Salvation is so completely, fully, truly God’s, that there is nothing in it which is not wholly from His grace. **Not **for our sake, because we are good (!); but solely for His Glory. The church is not our Body - it is the Body of Christ; it exists for His Glory.​

The suggestion that salvation in any begins with man, & does not depend wholly on God from start to finish, is absolutely contradictory to the Catholic faith.

Does man have any part to play ? Yes. Once justified, we are enabled to play a part within it. One of several wrong pictures would be, that the justified & God are like two rivers flowing together to make a larger river - for all of our salvation, in all its parts at every moment, is entirely the work of God. It is entirely through grace that we are saved - for even to work, is a grace. The good works of the Christian flow entirely from the work of Christ in us through the power of His Spirit in obedience to the Father - they are not our “good idea” that we suggest to God or add to work of Christ (!!!), for Christ’s work is perfect in all possible respects.

Instead, our good works are a realisation of the obedience of Christ to His Father, as shown forth in us His creatures. Our activity in His Body, is not, & cannot be, in any respect separate from His. IOW, He works - & we are given grace to share in His working: our causality, is taken up into His, so that His obedience empowers us, & becomes ours. We remain created, but His Uncreated Love operates through our activity, so that we receive the infinite reward which His obedience deserves. IOW, we are able, in a true sense, to merit; our ability to do so has nothing to do with works before justification - they are worthless for justification. We merit only after we have been taken up by grace into the Body of Christ - the Bible is not attacking good works or merit which come from no source but Christ working through His members, but works done on a different basis, that of human self-sufficiency. IOW, it does not attack the Catholic teaching. ##

[continued]
 
[continued & ended]

As for assurance - this is a very complex matter; partly because there are at least two different answers in the NT. The Church is not entitled to ignore either, but tries to take both into account.​

The Church teaches that there are “signs of predestination”. And, we have hope; in God, His faithfulness, & a thousand more things. So the idea of Catholics as thinking they have to rely on themselves for salvation, though not by any means entirely false, is far from being a faithful picture of Catholic teaching. There is enough evidence for it to be a plausible stereotype of Catholics - but it is no more wholly true than the corresponding stereotype of Calvinists (say) as gloomy kill-joys who believe that God is the author of evil & that they can live like heathens because they believe in salvation by faith alone.
People often quote a single sentence from the Council of Trent to show “what the RCC teaches about assurance” - this is about as sensible as quoting Calvin’s “horrible decree” sentence, & treating it as a full statement of Calvinist belief in predestination. What the CC condemns, & must condemn, is not the same thing as what she positively teaches. Some kinds of assurance we cannot have - such as that based on presumption. But the CC nowhere says we cannot hope in God, have faith in Him, or love Him. Far from it - they are essential to us.

It is terribly important for us to get past the one-sided stereotypes.

Obviously one would need to show the Biblical basis for the way in which this thinking fits together. But one can’t say everything in a post or two. ##
 
Faithful Catholics do not walk around all the time fearing that they will go to Hell. Such a thought would be a trivialization of Catholic teaching. And what is so terrible about fear? We stand in a magnificent fear because “fear of the Lord” is a gift of the Holy Sprit, to be treasured. A faithful Catholic knows that separation from God, especially irrevocable separation (i.e., Hell), is the worst thing that can possibly happen to him and he “fears” it with a supernatural, holy fear that is quite unlike natural, or servile, human fear.

Although we know that nothing can snatch us out of the hand of God, there is no promise that we cannot jump out of it by an act of our own free will. God will never take away our free will because without it, we cannot love. And the first commandment is to love God.

Short, clear, precise, accurate, to the point, looks at both sides of the question - very nice post 😃 👍

 

Of course​

Of course​

Of course​

Of course​

Of course​

Of course - see rest of post 🙂 . A question for you, dear brother in Christ 😃 :​

If someone drives his family to Disneyland, do they get there:
  1. By travelling
  2. By car
  3. Because the man takes them
  4. Because they want to travel
  5. Because they are on holiday
  6. Because Disneyland exists
  7. Because they are a family
  8. Because the man knows how to drive
  9. Because the road can be driven on
  10. Because they want to go to Disneyland
  • or by some combination of these or other possibilities ?
What some people overlook, is that though it is (sort of ) easy to grasp certain basic ideas in the Christian faith, the ideas they are made up of are many, rich, profound, & complex. Turning on a computer, is a single “easy” action - but no reason to ignore complicated things such as electronics; far from it: without the complex electronics, there could be no computer to turn on. The “easy” stuff implies a lot of answers to a lot of profound questions. As is to be expected, if God is indeed revealed in Jesus Christ. That is why Christian doctrine is so hard to sum up in easy headlines - that is why there is theology, & doctrinal staments, & creeds. Christian faith is a lot of things - but it is not shallow; the doctrines in God’s revelation are far too interconnected for that to be possible.

Salvation has many causes:
Jesus Christ
His Death
His Love
His Cross
Baptism
the Church he founded
the Glory of God
the saving purpose of God
  • & several thousands of others.
In a similar way, this post is caused by:

me
my fingers
the keyboard of this PC
your question
this website
this forum
your post
electricity
the invention of home computing
Microsoft
Bill Gates
the shop this PC comes from
God our Creator
my nervous system
your nervous system
hand-eye co-ordination
  • and other causes too numerous to mention. Causes are of many kinds - God causes the Bible, yet so did the human authors; as did the grace of inspiration; they are not unrelated or conflicting, because God is the total Cause of all created things; including human beings, the Bible, inspiration, etc.
…continued…]
 
"VociMike:
Your question is like asking “what is the absolute minimum I can do to be married and to have absolute assurance that I will stay married for the rest of my life.”

Real relationships don’t work that way. In a true, loving relationship, you don’t look to have the emptiest relationship with your beloved, but to have the fullest relationship. One can only have the fullest relationship with Christ here on this earth by being a faithful and committed member of the Catholic Church. Everything else is to be separated from Christ to some degree or another.
What he said. 😃
HERE ARE MY MAIN QUESTIONS:

Is Salvation through the Roman Catholic Church?
It is not recommended that you follow the teachings of any church other than the one that Christ Himself set up, with Peter as its first chief shepherd. (John 21:15-19)
Is Salvation through Good Works?
St. James, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, tells us in his letter that “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17)
Is Salvation through Water Baptism?
St. Peter himself teaches us that “baptism now saves you.” (I Peter 3:21)
Is Salvation through Mary?
Had she said “No,” to the Angel, would we today be saved?
Is Salvation through Religious Sacraments? Are they necessary for salvation?
Jesus Himself told us, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life everlasting, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:54-55)
Is Salvation a combination deal, a little help from God and a lot of effort on my part to earn salvation?
It’s an eternal relationship with God. This relationship can be going well, or it can be going badly. God is faithful, and there are many ways that we, too, can be faithful.
Is Salvation something I can be “assured of” by being a good Roman Catholic?
You have a much better chance if you are than if you are not, I think. 😉
 
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