Sola Scriptura -- what is the actual authority?

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Michael16 said:
That implies to me that someone could potentially “ go through the motions “ sincerely believing they have a saving faith; while in reality they didn’t. Assuming innocence and sincere intent and the person in question isn’t attempting to deceive himself and others.
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I believe these people know in their hearts that they haven’t truly been converted. They outwardly are Christian but The Spirit never testifies with their Spirit that they are the Children of God.
Michael16 said:
Under these conditions, it’s impossible to establish with any certainty when and if someone has a saving faith.
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Isn’t that what the Catholic church teaches?
Michael16 said:
Now, in your theology, “ deconversion “ should be impossible.
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That is why I put “de-converts” in quotes. It may be a de-conversion in appearance when in fact there was never a conversion. Even one who falls into sin doesn’t de-convert because they didn’t convert themselves. God converted them by an act of His Spirit.
Michael16 said:
God killing us in our sins as a method of corrective discipline? Even before we have a chance to repent?
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I believe that God gives His children many chances to repent. But if the Child is stubborn and refuses then God’s discipline gets more and more severe.
Michael16 said:
That preacher teaches paradoxically that God will prevent us to continue in sin; yet kill us when we refuse to repent after we sin.
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Physical death for the Child of God is a glorious thing. It is the ultimate deliverance from the battle between the flesh and the Spirit. If a child is immersed in sin and God choose to remove him from the world then it is an act of mercy on the person immersed in sin. Isn’t physical death a deliverance from sin?
 
lanman87 said:
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Isn’t physical death a deliverance from sin?
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What basis do you have for this thought?
Sin and death are the wages of sin. Death itself is not a deliverance from sin.n
Life is the conquering of sin.

Through Christ’s living, dying, and rising, we have deliverance from sin.
It’s about life.
Christ is the eternally “lively” one, who has an indestructible life force. And this is why Christ’s participation in death, his “coming through” death, is effective for us.
Baptism is saving for us because Christ is life itself, plunged through the waters of death and back up. In Baptism we are immersed in the saving life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
 
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🤔

Here’s a comparison of the two systems:

Yours:

Saving faith in Christ fundamentally rewires the soul in a profound conversion experience. This conversion results in the impossibility of the Christian ever to lose this saving faith and to never sin again. Only the person himself knows whether or not he truly converted as fruits can be deceiving.

Yet: Post conversion, a Christian can sin and continue in sin and even refuse to repent. God disciplines the sinner in an escalating fashion until the death penalty is imposed.
Or: The sinner only appeared to convert and thus deceived others knowingly.

Regardless of having saving faith or not having saving faith; a Christian goes to heaven. Even an unrepentant sinner can go to heaven.

The Catholic system:

In Baptism, we die and are reborn in Christ.
We live a sacramental life of faith and works staying within a state of grace to the best of our ability. When we mortally sin, we confess our sins to a priest in Confession and thus we return to a state of grace.

Upon death, we have reasonable expectations upon the fate of the soul. If the Christian died without mortal sin, the soul at least makes it to purgatory. If the soul lived a life of heroic holiness, virtue and charity; the soul goes to Heaven. That’s a Saint. If the soul died under mortal sin, the soul ( Unless somehow the soul repented at the moment of death ) is reasonably expected to go to Hell.
 
Michael16 said:
Lol, HopkinsReb. What did I get wrong?
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OSAS folks don’t believe that people don’t sin ever again after their conversion experience.

They do believe that either:
  1. They were forgiven in advance for those sins at the moment of their conversion, or
  2. The truly regenerate will always have apologized for those sins by the time the die
 
🤔 I thought I was drawing a logical conclusion based on what I knew of their theology at the time. Sorry.
 
Michael16 said:
🤔 I thought I was drawing a logical conclusion based on what I knew of their theology at the time. Sorry.
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Not the first time in this thread.

You repeatedly went after the Lutherans’ supposed belief that the Eucharist is just symbolic after being corrected. You repeatedly framed sola scriptura as meaning “if it’s not in the Bible, it can’t be believed,” despite having been corrected several times.

Once would come across as a simple mistake. Repeatedly comes across as disingenuity.

Try this: instead of trying to phrase their argument in the manner easiest to refute, try phrasing it in the manner hardest to refute. You’ll be a lot more convincing, you’ll sharpen your own arguments, and they won’t feel like they’re being condescended to.
 
Michael16 said:
Okay, Reb. Point taken. How do I do that?
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Think through the basic points of their positions and try to come up with a version of it that’s defensible.

Take OSAS, for example. Lanman isn’t an idiot. It’s patently obvious that Christians sin all the time. There’s no way that Lanman, who, again, isn’t an idiot, could believe that Christians never sin again after they convert. So that obviously can’t be what he’s getting at. If OSAS were that patently silly, almost nobody would believe in it. There has to be some meat there. Find the meat, wrestle with it, and then argue against that, not your first impressions.
 
🤔 Kind of like Saint Thomas Aquinas and how he’d state thesis-antithesis-synthesis?
 
He was schooled enough in Catholic sotierology to write a book on it.

But it’s also possible to educate one’s self into imbecility.

I do believe he loved the Lord, though. And i hope he passed in a state of grace.
 
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