Split:OSAS (from Father Corapi ... on Baptism & Protestants)

[WMM]

**James, you are as good as dead in your sin; there is no way semantics is going to change the truth that God gives 100% saving grace at one time; you are proof of the the fact that it is 100% or 0%; otherwise you could never write such nonsense as the post above; much less speak for guanaphore.

**

It it true God offers each of us salvation as a gift, but we as ungrateful children often turn our backs on that gift.

He gave us all free will and He will not save anyone against their will.

Praise the Lord! God gives us second chances, not seven times, but seventy times seven times and more.

This is why we must continually pray and ask for God’s forgiveness for our sins and transgressions and avail ourselves of the sacraments.

Christ instituted the sacraments so that we, sinful men, might be saved. They were a part of His divine plan, along with His sacrafice.

***Our God is slow to anger, rich in mercy.

Jesus, I trust in you.***

 

[Seeking12]

**Matthew 7:21-23 **"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, **but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven (this sounds like “works” to me) **. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.

**James 2: 14-26 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? ** If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?

You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.” See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route? For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

***The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Do not persist in your unbelief, but believe.***

Justified before whom with works? God or men? If you get this correct it should shed new light on everything here.

 

[Seeking12]

The Catholic Church has God’s Truth. He presented it to His Apostles who in turn, presented it to other men in continuous succession. The Paraclete then lead them into all truth whenever difficulties in doctrine arose. Why would we abandon God’s Truth?

We want to see you in heaven as well.

Can you abandon that which you do not have?

 

[CentralFLJames]

Can you abandon that which you do not have?

Seeking12, no one is going to say you can’t use a few polemics here and there to put a lil zing into your arguments. But the problem has been you have made no intellectual or spiritual arguments whatsoever - you just toss out raw naked insults and opinions like holy hand grenades with nothing at all to back it. That is an insincere way to prostelize and engage in christian dialog; and it’s not even civil behavior by secular standards. We are not here for your entertainment or to make you feel relevant.

There is a lot of good talent here at CAF and some very scholarly people who can engage in you in productive 2-way dialog and benefit your insights and also those others who are quietly reading here to learn. Why not try to get something out of this encounter rather than just generating emotions and trying to provoke uncharitable replies? Catholics have shown remarkable restraint. I tend to be more forceful than others and quickly try to reduce the arguments to their core essence. I have some patience issues. In that I may have deserved some push back - but others here have been very patient with you.

I hope you can get something out of our substantial time other than selfish entertainment. What a waste of talents and good insight. You are starting to look like a troll.

James

 

[SteveGC]

Seeking12, no one is going to say you can’t use a few polemics here and there to put a lil zing into your arguments. But the problem has been you have made no intellectual or spiritual arguments whatsoever - you just toss out raw naked insults and opinions like holy hand grenades with nothing at all to back it. That is an insincere way to prostelize and engage in christian dialog; and it’s not even civil behavior by secular standards. We are not here for your entertainment or to make you feel relevant.

There is a lot of good talent here at CAF and some very scholarly people who can engage in you in productive 2-way dialog and benefit your insights and also those others who are quietly reading here to learn. Why not try to get something out of this encounter rather than just generating emotions and trying to provoke uncharitable replies? Catholics have shown remarkable restraint. I tend to be more forceful than others and quickly try to reduce the arguments to their core essence. I have some patience issues. In that I may have deserved some push back - but others here have been very patient with you.

I hope you can get something out of our substantial time other than selfish entertainment. What a waste of talents and good insight. You are starting to look like a troll.

James

Hear, hear.

And I’m sitting here wondering if Seeking would still use this immature method of debate if he realized that the longer he stays here and does so, the more entrenched Catholics become in their faith. In some ways I hope he stays and rants on with his nonsense…indeed it emboldens me in our Church, having the absolute opposite effect Seeking wishes his efforts to have. Oh, the irony.

 

[Seeking12]

OK - let’s test your theory for rationality at the boundary conditions and see what come out of it from the Protestant point of view.

Protestant Conversion Scenario
You assert that the only “must do” happens during initial acceptance of Christ. So when a person who attends a Protestant revival tent (or other like altar-call venue) while under the influence and inspiration of all the good-ol foot-stomping and hand-clapping gospel music and the loudly shouted gospel verses by the preacher at the podium suddenly becomes convinced through emotion, personal reason, or intimidation (peer pressure) that they really must confess “I believe” - is this all that’s required? So after this person shouts “I finally really do believe in Jesus hallelujah!” and runs up and grabs the microphone and gives his testimony at the altar call (and gets dunked in the baptismal booth at some point) - is this the only required work? From then on its all God’s job and work from here and the newly saved person should do nothing that might appear as “works” out of fear that anything he does might offend God and be taken as not trusting in God?

OK. So let’s say thats the general gist of what you are saying for Protestants. Let’s now use a case from a Catholic perspective that is an easy case.

Catholic Conversion Scenario
Let’s say an adult (not religious) strolling in the park on a Sunday morning hears the local Catholic Church bells chiming and overcome by the pretty sounds goes to investigate. He enters the Catholic Church and finds all these people in the Catholic mass praying and worshiping God and is impressed that all seem to be at peace and appear to be authentic in their outward signs. So he becomes stirred in his heart decides to sit in the back and just watch. He comes to believe that this is true worship and afterwords inquires with the priest to learn more about becoming Catholic. After a period of preparation (1 year) and instructions in the faith he accepts Jesus as his personal savior during the baptismal rites and agrees to be baptised.

Now in your theology are both of these people equally saved at this point?

Can the Requirements be Exceeded? Do good works become evil?

If the Catholic is on equal footing with your Protestant at this point does the Catholic invalidate his salvation by deciding he would like to go volunteer at the hospital and do some good works for God? How about if he goes to confession to confess that he angrily screamed an obscenity at the drunken teenager who almost killed him and his family as the kid ran a red light in his car and he feels terrible about that? Does the Catholic lose his salvation for wanting to pray daily and going to mass and receiving the eucharist? Does the Catholic lose his salvation for fasting and doing things that he thinks help him get closer to God and overcome his faults because works are evil?

**The bottom line are works evil? Is there no good work?
In your personal theology and belief does the Catholic “believer” lose his salvation for exceeding the requirement **for just “believing” or does his works prove that he does not really believe? What is your judgement in this and do you think God has a similar standard of judgement?

Or do you believe that its impossible for a person who calls himself Catholic to be a “believer”?


James

James,

What are you doing; you need to go to some different protestant churches; remember there are at least by last count on this forum 38K; so to stereotype all Protestant churches without doing your research to get a statistical reference is quite illogical. The pretty church bells…LOL

**Actually; God works one heart one person at a time; their is no Church of Christ, but rather the church of Christ. He does not respect the person or the denomination.

Your term just believing is correct; the real question is what is “believing”? That would mean to a person a profession that is empty, for anyone can say they believe; like the demons for example, but to believe in Jesus is putting your faith and trust in Him, believing Who He claims to be, which is King of Kings; which in turn means you will be the Kings subject and you will trust Him for your care and protection and no one else for salvation.**

 

[CentralFLJames]

James,

What are you doing; you need to go to some different protestant churches; remember there are at least by last count on this forum 38K; so to stereotype all Protestant churches without doing your research to get a statistical reference is quite illogical. The pretty church bells…LOL

**Actually; God works one heart one person at a time; their is no Church of Christ, but rather the church of Christ. He does not respect the person or the denomination.

Your term just believing is correct; the real question is what is “believing”? That would mean to a person a profession that is empty, for anyone can say they believe; like the demons for example, but to believe in Jesus is putting your faith and trust in Him, believing Who He claims to be, which is King of Kings; which in turn means you will be the Kings subject and you will trust Him for your care and protection and no one else for salvation.**

OK - Great! I knew you would take the dichotomy of the revival tent vice the Catholic Bell Tower as the bait to respond. Now we are starting to get somewhere. Bravo.

Now can you actually answer my question? Can a Catholic lose his salvation by believing then doing good works? I know that Luther at one time in his anti-Catholic polemics actually compared works to the devil and thought monastic orders were demonic for trying to serve God. Ironic that he was from a monastic religious order himself. I wonder if he was trying to warn us of his Catholic proclivity to work hard that would lead him to perspire to make his quill pen insert the bogus word “alone” into the bible to get “by faith alone” where the manuscripts do not contain the expression?

Your last line is intriguing:
“;which in turn means you will be the Kings subject and you will trust Him for your care and protection and no one else for salvation.”

Let’s get past the trust thing and assume we all trust God. I want to go forward with the idea of good stewardship and being a good “subject”. Do not subjects of the King traditionally SERVE the king? We do know from scripture that Jesus abhors luke-warm Christians - but does He mean luke warm in belief or luke warm in commitment to serve? I think the latter. We MUST SERVE or we have a token faith with no substance - a lip service faith of the sort Judas had when he kissed Jesus on the cheek as he betrayed him.

It seems to me that loving and serving requires actions of the heart - that is works that are indicative of a real relationship that backs up the words of faith and proves it.

True - no one can serve and earn any merit but also true no one can not serve if one Loves God. Impossible.

James

 

[BRB1]

Seeking 12 …

By what ways do you continue to receive Grace ?

Is the Grace you receive imputed or infused ?

 

[tobinatorstark]

Thats between you and the Lord. One thing I do not do is add or take away from God’s Word. I am not going by what the church says but the Word of God.

But the Bible you have, has taken from the word of God and added to it. The NKJV is missing the 7 deutrocanonical books of Tobias, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, Baruch, 1 and 2 Machabees. Also the NKJV has added to Matthew 6:13. I have a friend who is a Luthern and he agrees that the 7 deutrocanonical books belong in the Bible. I assume you do not have a Catholic Bible. You wouldn’t have the Bible in book form if it hadn’t been for the Catholic Church. It devised the canon in 382 and was reaffirmed in 391, 397 and 1546 among other dates.

 

[WMM]

Justified before whom with works? God or men? If you get this correct it should shed new light on everything here.

Why would you even need to ask this question?

Is it not obvious?

I do not seek justification from other men, but from God.

 

[sodak]

Why would you even need to ask this question?

Is it not obvious?

I do not seek justification from other men, but from God.

This is a very common ploy to twist the words of James - Justification before men - where are those words in the Bible? It is God that we seek, not the approval or justification of other men…

 

[Church_Militant]

I stand on the Word of God and nowhere in this passage do I read that you are to confess your sin to a priest. Maybe you missed it but this passage is talking about restitution and confession between two individuals.
John MacArthur Study Bible
Matthew Henry’s commentary
J.Vernon McGee commentary

Better check again, there is a lot more to confession of sins in New Testament Christianity than you seem to have noticed.
"I Find No Sacraments In the Bible" he said.
Catholic Confession
Scriptures About Penance

As for the question of Baptism…**Who REALLY Preaches “A Different Gospel”?
**

 

[WMM]

Then how is it grace if you need works? Please explain.
Ephesians 2:8-9 says "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, {it is} the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. "

You boast in your works. Another gospel and not good for the soul.

How do you reconcile what this says compared to what you believe?

For a man who states he holds the Bible in such high regard, you seem to be very selective in the Bible passages that you believe.

Is not the whole of the Bible the inspired word of God?

Are you one on those who hold James to be a “straw epistle”?

Is Matthew a “straw Gospel”?

Mathew 7 and James 2 are very clear in what they state.

The quotation in Matthew are the words of Jesus himself.

Whose words to you hold in higher esteem - Jesus or Luther?

***Luther was simply wrong in his interpretation.

Luther had to add the word “only” in his version of the Bible after the word “faith” because it was not there originally to justify his position.***

 

[WMM]

Can you abandon that which you do not have?

Does this mean, then, you can never abandon the Truth?

 

[Church_Militant]

Thats between you and the Lord. One thing I do not do is add or take away from God’s Word.

I am not going by what the church says but the Word of God.This is not quite true.

You believe that the Bible is the final authority on all things Christian do you not? Essentially, you would say that you agree with this definition of the formal sufficiency and perspicacity of the scriptures, wouldn’t you?

So IMO, you do indeed add to the scriptures your own selection of the teachings and interpretations of men within the last 500 years since Sola Scriptura is not a doctrine that is found in the Bible anywhere. It is only found in the teachings of men who take it and try to force that interpretation onto a selection of scriptures that an objective reading does not support.

John MacArthur Study Bible
Matthew Henry’s commentary
J.Vernon McGee commentary

Does this then mean that you agree with everything that these 3 men teach? Why do you accept their interpretations when you also tell us that you are, (by the Holy Spirit) to rightly interpret the entire Bible. Something is very wrong in the way that that comes out.

 

[WMM]

I stand on the Word of God and nowhere in this passage do I read that you are to confess your sin to a priest. Maybe you missed it but this passage is talking about restitution and confession between two individuals.
John MacArthur Study Bible
Matthew Henry’s commentary
J.Vernon McGee commentary

Perhaps this link will help you find out the Biblical basis if confessing one’s sins to a priest and information on the other six sacraments.

catholic-convert.com/Portals/0/SacramentChart.pdf

God love you.

 

[Seeking12]

Originally Posted byQuote=Seeking12] View Post
Justified before whom with works? God or men? If you get this correct it should shed new light on everything here.

Why would you even need to ask this question?

Is it not obvious?

I do not seek justification from other men, but from God.

**I’m asking about works; do works show justification before God or men? ACTS 24:16 “In view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience {both} before God and before men.” If you read the rest of this you will see Paul was doing works to be justified before men.

Works are the fruits of righteousness that are visiable for all to
see.

"Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

the very works that I do–testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.

"If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me;

Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.

just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. But He does before men, right?

But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,

who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,
**

 

[Seeking12]

It is best if we focus on dealing with his arguments and not on him personally.

He has so far shown error in several of his posts, especially in his denial that God has called all men to salvation, which is plainly stated in the New Testament.
1st Timothy 2: 1 I desire therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men: 2 For kings, and for all that are in high station: that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all piety and chastity. 3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, 4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: 6 Who gave himself a redemption for all, a testimony in due times.

A great many n-Cs like to quote to us verse 5 above, but look at the context of what S12 contradicts.

**If God called all men, then all men would be saved. right?
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined {to become} conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

The ALL is the problem here, what is the All? He has called all men from all nations, tribes and tongues; the Jews and the gentiles; there will be the called of all nations, tribes and tongues in His presence.**

 

[Seeking12]

OK - Great! I knew you would take the dichotomy of the revival tent vice the Catholic Bell Tower as the bait to respond. Now we are starting to get somewhere. Bravo.

Now can you actually answer my question? Can a Catholic lose his salvation by believing then doing good works? I know that Luther at one time in his anti-Catholic polemics actually compared works to the devil and thought monastic orders were demonic for trying to serve God. Ironic that he was from a monastic religious order himself. I wonder if he was trying to warn us of his Catholic proclivity to work hard that would lead him to perspire to make his quill pen insert the bogus word “alone” into the bible to get “by faith alone” where the manuscripts do not contain the expression?

Your last line is intriguing:
“;which in turn means you will be the Kings subject and you will trust Him for your care and protection and no one else for salvation.”

Let’s get past the trust thing and assume we all trust God. I want to go forward with the idea of good stewardship and being a good “subject”. Do not subjects of the King traditionally SERVE the king? We do know from scripture that Jesus abhors luke-warm Christians - but does He mean luke warm in belief or luke warm in commitment to serve? I think the latter. We MUST SERVE or we have a token faith with no substance - a lip service faith of the sort Judas had when he kissed Jesus on the cheek as he betrayed him.

It seems to me that loving and serving requires actions of the heart - that is works that are indicative of a real relationship that backs up the words of faith and proves it.

True - no one can serve and earn any merit but also true no one can not serve if one Loves God. Impossible.

James

James, As simple as I can put it, “good works” are the result and the evidence of a person being saved, not the means by which they are saved or hold onto that salvation. if you are truly saved, you will never lose it. But you Church teaches otherwise; which is another gospel.

 

[Church_Militant]

**If God called all men, then all men would be saved. right?
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined {to become} conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

The ALL is the problem here, what is the All? He has called all men from all nations, tribes and tongues; the Jews and the gentiles; there will be the called of all nations, tribes and tongues in His presence.**

It’s really very simple, so I don’t see why you don’t get it because I showed you what the New Testament says. You are the one that says that the Bible is the final authority for all things Christian, correct?

Does the passage I cited tell us plainly that 3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, 4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. or not?

The New Testament plainly tells us why some do not come to Christ.

John 3:19 And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil. 20 For every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. 21 But he that doth truth, cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God.

Also Matthew 13:1-23