Split and Edited Title: Catholic Vs Baptist Soteriology Discussion

[Benadam]

ok, if sight is faith’s better half and it’s a given that there are those who have and will see God and hate him nonetheless, how can faith alone be salvific?

I’m reminded of the rich young man Jesus spoke too. Jesus never even mentioned faith to him. He obviously had faith in Jesus and believed every word Jesus said to him.

 

[mgrfin]

ok, if sight is faith’s better half and it’s a given that there are those who have and will see God and hate him nonetheless, how can faith alone be salvific?

I’m reminded of the rich young man Jesus spoke too. Jesus never even mentioned faith to him. He obviously had faith in Jesus and believed every word Jesus said to him.

I understand your argument, and I agree with it, however, the damned will be deprived of the Beatific Vision. It is God who hates the damned, not vice versa.

peace

 

[Benadam]

I understand your argument, and I agree with it, however, the damned will be deprived of the Beatific Vision. It is God who hates the damned, not vice versa.

peace

Peace.

I agree, God does not waste Himself on those who exist in a state of eternal rejection.

but, like a dead faith they will have a dead vision. I’m thinking that just as a dead faith does not lead to sanctification the damned’s vision of God does not end in their beatification. Likewise, the fallen angels possessed the vision of God but their vision did not end in their beatification. Christ said no one has seen God but He has seen God, before He was beatified.

 

[Theodore]

As I read Aquinas, faith that is a gift of God does have a kind of love (which bridges the gap between opinion and certainty), but it does not in and of itself include the infused grace of charity which saves. That is an additional gift that “forms” faith.

This is my one real disagreement with Catholicism on the issue of justification. I think faith and love are one act; I believe that living faith and dead faith are two fundamentally different things; I believe that dead faith is identical to the faith of demons; and therefore I do not think that dead faith is a gift of God. It follows from these things that I believe that the faith that is a gift of God is lost whenever a person commits a mortal sin (though I think there are fewer mortal sins than traditional Catholicism holds, and it would have to be an extremely grave and extremely deliberate sin to break one’s relationship with God by a single act). This opinion (that faith is lost with every mortal sin) is explicitly condemned by the Council of Trent.

I should add that my position (particularly with regards to the faith of demons) is more compatible with the plain meaning of James than the traditional Catholic position (which distinguishes dead human faith sharply from the faith of demons, the latter not being a gift of God and not really faith at all).

Edwin

Faith is not lost, but sanctifying grace is. Every mortal sin cuts you off from God, and needs to be confessed in order to make grace flow again, and no council has ever taught to the contrary.

 

[mgrfin]

Contarini:
Edwin,

St. Paul tells us that the just man lives by faith (1Rom 1,17), and we are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus (2 Gall iii, 26). Before Christ can sanctify us and make us sons of God, we must receive him and believe in his name.
It might seem that this insistence on the function of faith were akin to the Protestant theory of Justification by faith. But Catholic doctrine is very different. Luther held that faith alone brought Justification, to the exclusion of all good works. Good works were impossible according to his theory of the essential corruption of human nature. And the very faith that he extolled was not so much an intellectual assent to the divinity of Christ, and to the Redemption, as a personal persuasion that our sins are ‘covered over’ and no longer imputed to us.
Luther placed a fundamental importance on recognizing Christ as our Redeemer, but this must not blind us to essentially vicious character of his theory, which leads logically and inevitably to disregard of the laws of good conduct. We must not treat our Savior as a cloak to cover our own sins. He is our hope and our life, of whose fullness we have all received. But it is not by Lutheran faith this his grace comes to us
The first element in Justification is actual grace. No man can have faith in Christ unless the grace of God first draw him. It is for man to accept this grace or reject it… If he accepts it, he is led on to make a true act of faith. With belief in his heart of the doctrines of the Redemption, he is moved to hope in God and to love him, and to turn his heart away from sin. Under the influence of actual grace, a soul is prepared for Justification. It is not a matter of faith alone, but of faith which leads to hope and love and genuine sorrow. Faith is the foundation of the whole process, as Trent puts it, “the beginning, the foundation, and the root of all Justification. (sess 6, chap 8).

peace

Today is the Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross

 

[loscampos]

Romans 11:22

“there is graciousness, then, in God, and there is also severity. His severity is for those who have fallen away, his graciousness is for thee, only so long as thou dost continue in his grace; if not, thou too shalt be pruned away”

Paul worte this to people who were alerady “saved”, in a state of grace - a grace they could lose, becoming “unsaved”.

a section from Karl Keating in Catholocism and Fundamentalism p 174

 

[mgrfin]

Edwin

Catholic Justification
(cont’d)

For the unbeliever (not-yet-Christian), actual incorporation in Christ is brought about by Baptism, bringing grace and life to the soul. It is thus that a man ‘puts on’ Christ. But Baptism presupposes the living faith in Christ. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark 16,16). Sometimes the soul is justified before the waters of Baptism have flowed over it, for faith can inspire a love and a sorrow for sin so intense that Christ does not wait for the sacrament of initiation, but draws the soul to himself and makes it one with him.

Faith is also necessary for the man who has lost the grace he once had and turns again to God. For the first there is Baptism, for the second there is Penance, but neither is of any avail without faith. Faith is necessary for every Sacrament, whether it restores a man to friendship with God, or increases the grace already possessed.

St. Thomas: ‘the sacraments are certain signs which profess the faith by which a man is justified.” (Summa III, Q 61, a.4) But they are more than signs of faith. They are signs of the inner grace which is produced in the soul, and of this grace which they signify, they are at the same time the instrumental causes. But, without faith, they will not achieve their effect.

peace

 

[mgrfin]

Edwin

Catholic Justification (3)

Faith and hope are theological virtues because they have God for their object. As long as charity and grace are present, then these virtues must be also. But they do not depend on charity as the other virtues. We can believe a person, and hope in him without loving him. They are not perfect virtues because they lack the ‘form’, which is necessary for perfect virtues, but they are true supernatural virtues, though they are ‘dead’. Faith can be destroyed only by a sin against faith, and by such a sin, hope is also destroyed, for hope depends on faith.

Take a person who has equal amount of all virtues. If he falls into sin, he loses all except faith and hope. These stay at their same level, and when grace returns through repentance, faith and hope will be at a greater level than the others. Every fall means a reduction to zero of the others, excepting faith and hope.

St. Thomas reckons the virtues to the fingers on the hand, which though different in size, are proportion to one another.

I agree with you that there is a difference between ‘living faith’ and ‘dead faith’ (faith without the form of charity).
Faith is not lost by mortal sin, excepting a sin against faith. I don’t believe there is such a thing as “faith of demons’ for in the damned there can be no virtue at all. Demons have knowledge of God, but not faith in Him. We are told ‘the devils believe and tremble’, but this is not even the even the dead faith which the sinner may have had at the point of death. God cannot infuse virtue into those who are irretrievably separated from Him.

peace

 

[Theodore]

Edwin,

St. Paul tells us that the just man lives by faith (1Rom 1,17), and we are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus (2 Gall iii, 26). Before Christ can sanctify us and make us sons of God, we must receive him and believe in his name.
It might seem that this insistence on the function of faith were akin to the Protestant theory of Justification by faith. But Catholic doctrine is very different. Luther held that faith alone brought Justification, to the exclusion of all good works. Good works were impossible according to his theory of the essential corruption of human nature. And the very faith that he extolled was not so much an intellectual assent to the divinity of Christ, and to the Redemption, as a personal persuasion that our sins are ‘covered over’ and no longer imputed to us.
Luther placed a fundamental importance on recognizing Christ as our Redeemer, but this must not blind us to essentially vicious character of his theory, which leads logically and inevitably to disregard of the laws of good conduct. We must not treat our Savior as a cloak to cover our own sins. He is our hope and our life, of whose fullness we have all received. But it is not by Lutheran faith this his grace comes to us
The first element in Justification is actual grace. No man can have faith in Christ unless the grace of God first draw him. It is for man to accept this grace or reject it… If he accepts it, he is led on to make a true act of faith. With belief in his heart of the doctrines of the Redemption, he is moved to hope in God and to love him, and to turn his heart away from sin. Under the influence of actual grace, a soul is prepared for Justification. It is not a matter of faith alone, but of faith which leads to hope and love and genuine sorrow. Faith is the foundation of the whole process, as Trent puts it, “the beginning, the foundation, and the root of all Justification. (sess 6, chap 8).

peace

Today is the Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross

You summed it up nicely. Even Satan himself acknowledges Christ as Lord and Master but since there is no Charity (i will not serve) he was condemmed to hell.