So just what are the beliefs that are mandatory for salvation

[tweetymom]

I know satan tempted Jesus for 40 days straight, so does the devil send demons out to tempt us?

Well I am sure Jesus does not tempt. He does allow the devil too as He did Job. Sometimes we are tempted to perfect us.

 

[JRKH]

Well I am sure Jesus does not tempt. He does allow the devil too as He did Job. Sometimes we are tempted to perfect us.

I would say that we are always tempted to perfect us. Temptations and sufferings are things that allow us to see how much we rely on God and give us the opportunity to draw more closely to him.

Peace
James

 

[TEPO]

Well I am sure Jesus does not tempt. He does allow the devil too as He did Job. Sometimes we are tempted to perfect us.

Thanks.

 

[TEPO]

So with addictive sins – are we only forgiven when we are able to completely refrain from the sin, or are we forgiven if we are sorry?

Also, how can we be SURE that God has forgiven us?

 

[tweetymom]

I would say that we are always tempted to perfect us. Temptations and sufferings are things that allow us to see how much we rely on God and give us the opportunity to draw more closely to him.

Peace
James

 

[schaick]

Well I am sure Jesus does not tempt. He does allow the devil too as He did Job. Sometimes we are tempted to perfect us.

James 1
13When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.

 

[paul_c]

The Devil tempts us and God allows it. This is God’s plan. Life is a test to see whether we will chose heaven or hell. Every minute of every day you make decisions that either add grace or take it away depending on whether you show love or not. You can reset through the sacrament of reconciliation and start again, through God’s mercy.

As for the inter-relations between the theological virtues, here’s what the catechism says:

II. THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES

1812 The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man’s faculties for participation in the divine nature:for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive, and object.

1813 The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

• Faith

1814 Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith “man freely commits his entire self to God.” For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work through charity.”

1815 The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it. But “faith apart from works is dead”: when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body.

1816 The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: "All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks."Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: “So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

Hope

1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” “The Holy Spirit . . . he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.”

1818 The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.

1819 Christian hope takes up and fulfills the hope of the chosen people which has its origin and model in the hope of Abraham, who was blessed abundantly by the promises of God fulfilled in Isaac, and who was purified by the test of the sacrifice. “Hoping against hope, he believed, and thus became the father of many nations.”

1820 Christian hope unfolds from the beginning of Jesus’ preaching in the proclamation of the beatitudes. The beatitudes raise our hope toward heaven as the new Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through the trials that await the disciples of Jesus. But through the merits of Jesus Christ and of his Passion, God keeps us in the "hope that does not disappoint."Hope is the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul . . . that enters . . . where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.” Hope is also a weapon that protects us in the struggle of salvation: “Let us . . . put on the breastplate of faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” It affords us joy even under trial: “Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation.” Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire.

1821 We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere “to the end” and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God’s eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ. In hope, the Church prays for “all men to be saved.” She longs to be united with Christ, her Bridegroom, in the glory of heaven:

Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end.

 

[paul_c]

Charity

1822 Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.

1823 Jesus makes charity the new commandment. By loving his own “to the end,” he makes manifest the Father’s love which he receives. By loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of Jesus which they themselves receive. Whence Jesus says: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.” And again: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

1824 Fruit of the Spirit and fullness of the Law, charity keeps the commandments of God and his Christ: “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”

1825 Christ died out of love for us, while we were still “enemies.” The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself.

The Apostle Paul has given an incomparable depiction of charity: “charity is patient and kind, charity is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
“If I . . . have not charity,” says the Apostle, “I am nothing.” Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, “if I . . . have not charity, I gain nothing.” Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues: “So faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the greatest of these is charity.”

1827 The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which “binds everything together in perfect harmony”; it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love.

1828 The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. He no longer stands before God as a slave, in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him who “first loved us”:

If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children.
1829 The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest

 

[JRKH]

So with addictive sins – are we only forgiven when we are able to completely refrain from the sin, or are we forgiven if we are sorry?

Also, how can we be SURE that God has forgiven us?

to answer you second question first. We can be SURE that God has forgiven us when we are SURE that we we are sorry.

If one is suffering from an “addiction” to some sin, or to many sins, there will be cycles of repentance and failures followed by repentance. Our forgiveness sort of follows along with this cycle. BUT - So long as we keep “coming back” to God, so long as we keep struggling to improve, to finally be free of the sin, so long as we don’t give up on ourselves, God will not give up on us.
This is where the being truly sorry comes in. St Catherine in the Dialogues calls it “Perfect contrition”. If we are perfectly contrite, we are sorrowful, grief stricken, that we offended God. We wish to do all we can not to sin again. We refuse to make excuses for our sin. We just confess our sin, our weakness and our need for God’s mercy and His strength.

Peace
James

 

[Carlan]

As to Belief and Faith - that is what I have been strugling with.
Paulc seems to be on this wavelenght too. Perhaps he can expound a bit and enlighten us both.

Peace
James

Two cents worth, Human trust and human faith would be based on human knowledge.
Religious faith would be our accent to a mystery we cannot understand.
Love and Peace, Carlan

 

[JRKH]

Two cents worth, Human trust and human faith would be based on human knowledge.
Religious faith would be our accent to a mystery we cannot understand.
Love and Peace, Carlan

Nicely put.
I must admit that I have found much help in the writings of the Mystics like Catherine of Sienna. Ther is a wonderful introduction to this in a book called “The Fulfillment of All Desire”.
It helped me tremendously.

Peace
James

 

[Carlan]

Nicely put.
I must admit that I have found much help in the writings of the Mystics like Catherine of Sienna. Ther is a wonderful introduction to this in a book called “The Fulfillment of All Desire”.
It helped me tremendously.

Peace
James

Thank you, Can you give me Author and publisher, Carlan

 

[JRKH]

Thank you, Can you give me Author and publisher, Carlan

**Here is an Amazon Link **

Peace
James

 

[spockrates]

Mr Spock, A Christians faith is believing that we will rec’ salvation , we have been given the means of gaining that salvation , our hope is in receiving that which we have not yet rec
'ed salvation and resurrection, Stop complicating things! Peace, Carlan

Yes, I have a way of complicating things. Or perhaps I have a way of showing things are not as simple as they first seem?

 

[spockrates]

Suppose we use a different term for Judgement and Condemnation. Suppose we use one of todays popular terms. - Logical consequences.
God has out of His love provided us with Free will. He will not force us to Love Him and to desire to be with Him.
Out of Love he has provided choices for us. He has provided us with a clear path and a clear choice. The path of Love or the Path of Hate. He has even provided us with an example of perfection in Christ Jesus Our Lord. - BUT He does not force us to choose one or the other. Thus when we Choose to deny Him we Choose Hell.
God, being our Loving Father, accepts our Choice and gives us what we ask for.
So do you think that this Loving Father is being to lenient and should “force” anyone to go to heaven when they don’t want to??

You know me, James, I’m just wondering out loud!



In answer to your question, I’d say that your love and mine would not be as fine if we had no freedom to choose. But at the moment I’m not wondering whether Hell is just or whether we have free will. I’m just curious what you think about the idea that every act of God is an act of love. Do you think, as I do, that perhaps not every act of God is loving?

 

[spockrates]

The devil/satan believes/knows there is a GOD.

Faith is surrendering to your belief.

Would you say, schaick, that one who surrenders her belief is one who trusts?

 

[schaick]

Would you say, schaick, that one who surrenders her belief is one who trusts?

I think you need to add **to **your belief - surrendering **to **your belief.

Surrendering your faith is giving up on it.

Yes, I would say surrendering to your belief is trust.

 

[spockrates]

I think you need to add **to **your belief - surrendering **to **your belief.

Surrendering your faith is giving up on it.

Yes, I would say surrendering to your belief is trust.

Yes, I agree. It would seem, then, that *trust *is a requirement go be saved from separation from God after death. For St. Paul the Apostle tells you and me:

It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

(Ephesians 2:8-10)

 

[spockrates]

I suppose the question to answer, then is this: In who, or what, or who and what should one trust?

 

[JRKH]

You know me, James, I’m just wondering out loud!



In answer to your question, I’d say that your love and mine would not be as fine if we had no freedom to choose. But at the moment I’m not wondering whether Hell is just or whether we have free will. I’m just curious what you think about the idea that every act of God is an act of love. ** Do you think, as I do, that perhaps not every act of God is loving**?

Nope - I would never agree to this. God is always Loving. His Love is never a false Love. His Love - flowing toward us in unconditional. It is not God’s Love that fails but ours. Then we must simply accept the “logical consequences” of our failure.

Peace
James