P
Pax
Guest
Only in your eisegetical dreams and your mischaracterizations of Catholic teaching can you possibly say such things.
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S
sandusky
Guest
They don’t cause me heartburn, but they do burn you when you claim they support your position, and they don’t.
And yet you insist on quoting Henry.
I think they’re bogus opinions driven by doctrine.
And yet you cite Henry as though he does support you. Dishonest?
M
moondweller
Guest
Really? According to the Catholics on this thread in John 15 Christ is threatening His Apostles that if they don’t bear fruit, literally, to Hell with them. That’s a “different gospel” than Paul’s. “Gospel” means “good news,” but it’s hardly good news, when Christ sends His own to Hell, is it?
According to the Catholics on this thread men are saved by grace but condemned to Hell for breaking any of the 10, or not bearing fruit. Sounds like a salvation based on works to me, and in that “gospel” though the words “faith” and “grace” are used, they have no substance.John 3:14-18 “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted upA direct reference to the cross and His redemptive work.so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
"For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."But according to these Catholics one is saved (escapes Hell) through fruit bearing."He who believes in Him is not judged;"Rather, he who does not bear fruit is condemned to Hell fire."he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."Rather, he who does not bear fruit is judged, condemned and burns in Hell.
The truth is, men are condemned because they would not believe. John 15:1-8 is not about salvation. It’s not even about damnation. Salvation and damnation are based solely on belief and unbelief.
P
Pax
Guest
Once again you do not know what you are talking about. This evening I’ll detail your errors by way of scripture if someone else doesn’t beat me to it.
P
Pax
Guest
The Concise Commentary agrees with me. If you don’t like that fact, then don’t blame me…blame your protestant commentators, editors, etc. Their inconsistencies and errors are not of my making.
O
Odell
Guest
I asked you if faith is all that the fathers will encompasses you assumed I did not think faith was part of the will at all. I told you faith is the fathers will but thats not all moondweller your missing about 90% of the rest of the good news
Let me introduce you to the other 90
“whoever loves has been **born of God **and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (Jn 4:7-8).
John also speaks against loving the world, warning that if one is to do this “the love of the Father is not in him” (2:15)
I wonder if the love of the father has anything to do with the will of the father
in 1 Corinthians 13:2, Paul writes, “if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” This, beyond all doubt, proves that man cannot be saved by faith without love.
The demons believe God, and they believe in God, but they do not love God, so they do not know God, so they are not justified. This was true also, at least for some time, of Adam and Eve after the fall. Abraham believed God, and he loved God, so he was justified. The same is true of Moses. They were the friends of God.
Im glad you acknowlegs that simply bowing before something does not mean they actually worship Im also glad that you see that mearly confessing with your lips Jesus is lord will gurantee you will enter the kingdom of heaven.
The demons lack love moon
I thought you where the doo-doo covered in snow. Im not doo-doo im a friend of God
Do you know God moondweller?
So back to
not everyone who calls me lord lord will enter heaven but the one who does the will of my father
If you dont love moon your in deep doo doo because love is the will of the father.
dening the grace of God whos in deep doo doo?
Moon if you choose not to love as Christ loves you are rejecting the fathers will. It has nothing to do with working for a reward.
B
BRB
Guest
M.D. … you are correct in your interpretation above.
And, amazingly … SOME Catholics agree with you 100%. I think Pax does too … he just is ‘working’ his way to the ultimate truth. 
As Providence often provide us … today there is a podcast on web of a well known Catholic Priest who backs you up.
Link: www.presentationministries.com Program is Aug 19… entitled “What you need to do to go to hell”. Its 10 minutes in length. By Father Al Lauer … sadly he died in 2002, of liver CA. Program is widely heard on EWTN Catholic Radio.
He teaches Catholics must be Born Again. [quoting him] “not Good, but Born Anew” … “salvation is not about being Good” … so the rebirthed Father teaches us in this tape message.
He quote CCC #1036 [where the Church defines hell & how one ends up there] …Hell is defined as resulting from our ‘definitive self-exclusion in COMMUNION with God’ — which befalls those who ‘never convert [by rebirth] to Christ, chosing to stay as they were in sins’
So … MD has a ‘base hit’ … and the Catholic Priest advances MD to third base. Can Sandusky [or another] connect, and get MD home ?
B
BRB
Guest
CD …
What these verses really point up to us is the fact that ALL are called to Christ … by the Law written on our hearts. Many will at first readily accept the Gospel message, but then fall away w/o becoming TRUE BELIEVERS. They turn back from the plow … when they discover they must Covenantally Bond their will to Christ’s authority and kingship.
Remember the words of Christ “Many are called, few are chosen”.
Many come to Christ … anxious to accept Christ on their ‘own terms’ [by doing their own ‘good’ works,etc] Christ allows all who hear the Good New a period of time to put down strong roots in Him. To bond to him via H.S. in true belief & faithful devotion. And, to bear fruits befitting of our calling in C.J.
Those [as in Parable of wheat & tares] that don’t bond or get rooted in Christ … wither away, branches are removed from God’s Eternal Tree of Life. Those that do get REBIRTHED to Christ by faithful discipleship will bear fruit … and Christ will maintain his faithful flock [Those He ‘ultimately’ CHOSES] til the end.
S
sandusky
Guest
Pax said:
But Pax, it’s your position that in Hebrews 6, those described as having apostatized are Christians—New Creatures in Christ.
But Henry, in his Concise Commentary, which is devotional in nature, leads with his conclusion:**The humbled sinner who pleads guilty, and cries for mercy, can have no ground from this passage to be discouraged, whatever his conscience may accuse him of. Nor does it prove that any one who is made a new creature in Christ, ever becomes a final apostate from him.**Furthermore, in his unabridged, and unconcise and complete Commentary Henry says this:
Henry Hebrews 6:**These lengths hypocrites may go, and, after all, turn apostates. Now hence observe, [1.] These great things are spoken here of those who may fall away; yet it is not here said of them that they were truly converted, or that they were justified; there is more in true saving grace than in all that is here said of apostates. [2.] This therefore is no proof of the final apostasy of true saints. These indeed may fall frequently and foully, but yet they will not totally nor finally from God; the purpose and the power of God, the purchase and the prayer of Christ, the promise of the gospel, the everlasting covenant that God has made with them, ordered in all things and sure, the indwelling of the Spirit, and the immortal seed of the word, these are their security. But the tree that has not these roots will not stand.**Please explain how it is you’ve come to the conclusion that Henry agrees with you that those who apostatize are New Creatures in Christ, when he’s clearly saying the opposite?
B
BRB
Guest
These indeed may fall frequently and foully, but yet they will not totally nor finally from God; the purpose and the power of God, the purchase and the prayer of Christ, the promise of the gospel, the everlasting covenant that God has made with them, ordered in all things and sure, the indwelling of the Spirit, and the immortal seed of the word, these are their security. But the tree that has not these roots will not stand.[/indent]?
A tremendous apologetic statement you have found for us
alittle off topic … but, since Pax threw the pitch, you advance MD.
2 Runs score.
M
moondweller
Guest
Here’s a Catholic who seemed to understand the true gospel taught by Jesus and Paul. This kind of Catholic is very rare, but they do actually exist.
**Code: ZE05121621
Date: 2005-12-16
Father Cantalamessa’s 3rd Advent Sermon (Part 1)
The Righteousness That Comes From Faith in Christ**Here is the novelty that distinguishes the Christian religion from any other. Any other religion draws out for man a path to salvation by means of practical observations and intellectual speculations, promising him, as a final prize, salvation and illumination, but leaving him substantially alone in achieving the task. Christianity does not begin with what man must do to save himself, but rather with what God has done to save him. The order is reversed.
It is true that to love God with all your heart is “the first and greatest of the commandments,” but the commandments are not primary, they are secondary. Before the order of commandments comes the order of gift and of grace. Christianity is the religion of grace! If this is not taken into consideration in interreligious dialogue, the dialogue would be able to do no more than generate confusion and doubts in the hearts of many Christians.
- Justification and conversion
When Jesus said: “Convert, and believe in the Gospel,” he was already teaching justification by faith. Before him, conversion always meant “to go back” (in Hebrew the same word is used for both “convert” and “to go back”: the word “shub”); it meant to go back to the broken alliance by way of a renewed observance of the law.
Consequently, conversion has a principally ascetic, moral and penitential meaning, and is achieved by changing how one lives. Conversion is seen as a condition for salvation; the sense is: Convert and be saved; convert and salvation will come to you. In the mouth of Jesus this moral meaning passes to a second plane (at least at the start of his preaching), with respect to a new significance, until now unknown.
Conversion no longer means to go back, to the old alliance and to the observance of the law; it means rather to take a step forward, to enter into a new alliance, to hold onto this Kingdom that has appeared, and to enter into it. And entering it by faith: “Convert and believe” does not mean two different and successive things, but rather the same action: convert, so as to believe; convert believing! “Prima conversio ad Deum fit per fidem,” writes St. Thomas Aquinas: “The first conversion to God consists in believing.”[4]
“Convert and believe” means therefore: Pass from the old alliance, based on the law, to the new alliance, based on faith. The Apostle says the same with the doctrine of justification by faith. The only difference is owed to what had happened, meanwhile, between the preaching of Jesus and Paul: Christ had been rejected and led to death for the sins of man. **The faith “in the Gospel” (“believe in the Gospel”) now takes shape as faith “in Jesus Christ,” “in his blood” (Romans 3:25).**He seems to get it.
C
Church_Militant
Guest
Here’s a Catholic who seemed to understand the true gospel taught by Jesus and Paul. This kind of Catholic is very rare, but they do actually exist.
**Code: ZE05121621
Date: 2005-12-16
Father Cantalamessa’s 3rd Advent Sermon (Part 1)…
He seems to get it.**Yeah, but you don’t.
You found the first part. Father Cantalamessa’s 3rd Advent Sermon (Part 1), but I don’t guess you bothered to read any further huh? Father Cantalamessa’s 3rd Advent Sermon (Part 2)
And then of course, there’s the thread where this was hashed out when Fr. C first preached it. Is “Faith Alone” alive and well in some parts of Catholicism?
Very old news…
M
mikeledes
Guest
John 15:2
**2"Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. **
What makes you believe that the fruitless branch is “positionally” in Christ?
John 15:6
** 6"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. **
What makes you believe that the withered branches are “positionally” in Christ? How is that indicated in the passage?
According to you “in Christ” is the believer’s position. So when Christ says we must abide, abide in what? “Abide” means to continue or remain in a state, condition, or location one has already entered. Christ says abide in me!. Not abide in my church or abide in mere fellowship, but abide in Him. In other words, He’s saying that branches must remain in Christ, which you have defined as the believer’s position. Please explain how someone who does not remain in Christ can stil be saved?
Christ makes it quite clear what He means by abiding:
4"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
To abide in Christ means to remain or continue to be an integral member of His body, just as branch must remain an integral member of the the vine. How can you cease to be an integral member of Christ’s body and still be saved? A branch cut off from the vine - because that’s what *not *abiding in a vine means - cannot bear fruit because it no longer has life within it. It’s been cut off from its source of life and hence it dies (withers). The clear language of this passage ('taken away", “thrown away”) is that the “branches” in question have been removed from the Christ the True Vine, as would happen to fruitless branches in viniculture. Otherwise, the metaphors would absolutely make no sense. What does “taken away” or “thrown away” mean to you?
To be continued…
M
mikeledes
Guest
Now earlier you said:
Now you say thay the idea of eternal damnation in John 15:6 is all mine. Since it is the figment of my imagination, can you explain why other OSAS or Calvinist Protestants, such as anti- Catholic apologist James White, see it as a clear reference to eternal damnation and are consequently forced to interpret the fruitless branches differently? You now have the benefit of looking at the respected Matthew Henry Commentary’s explanation of John 15:6. Apparently Matthew Henry was imagining things as well. Can you please explain why the language used to describe the fate of these withered branches exactly corresponds to the language He uses regarding eternal damnation (gathered, thrown into the fire and burned), found in passages like:
Matthew 13:39-40, 49
**… and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.
40"So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.
49"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous,
50and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. **
In your interpretation, who does the gathering and the throwing into the fire in John 15:6?
The analogies Christ makes are very simple and clear:
God Bless,
Michael
So I’m assuming that you interpret withers or dries up as a reference to losing the power to bear fruit. Can you please explain how they lose this power without having lost it’s life, since life equals power?
Now you say thay the idea of eternal damnation in John 15:6 is all mine. Since it is the figment of my imagination, can you explain why other OSAS or Calvinist Protestants, such as anti- Catholic apologist James White, see it as a clear reference to eternal damnation and are consequently forced to interpret the fruitless branches differently? You now have the benefit of looking at the respected Matthew Henry Commentary’s explanation of John 15:6. Apparently Matthew Henry was imagining things as well. Can you please explain why the language used to describe the fate of these withered branches exactly corresponds to the language He uses regarding eternal damnation (gathered, thrown into the fire and burned), found in passages like:
Matthew 13:39-40, 49
**… and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.
40"So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.
49"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous,
50and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. **
In your interpretation, who does the gathering and the throwing into the fire in John 15:6?
The analogies Christ makes are very simple and clear:
- Christ is the Vine
- Just as branches are members of a vine, all those incorporated into Christ are members of His body.
- Just as in viniculture the vinedresser removes fruitless branches from the Vine, the Father takes away from Christ those branches that do not bear fruit.
- Just as a branch must remain or continue to be in the Vine in order to have life and thus bear fruit, the Christian must remain or *continue to be * in Christ in order to have life and hence the power to bear fruit.
- Just as in viniculture a branch that is cut off, dries up- as in death - is discarded and burned, those that do not remain in Christ will wither because they have been cut off from the source of life. The end of those who have no spiritual life is eternal damnation. Hence, as John 15:6 clearly states, the “dried up” branches will be gathered (by angles), thrown into the fire and burned.
God Bless,
Michael
M
mikeledes
Guest
For those who believe that “fruitless” branches are true Christians, I would like to know how you respond to the above question - which has remained unanswered. Matthew Henry doesn’t answer it because he has a very different explanation.
God bless,
Michael
B
BRB
Guest
Here is the novelty that distinguishes the Christian religion from any other. Any other religion draws out for man a path to salvation by means of practical observations and intellectual speculations, promising him, as a final prize, salvation and illumination, but leaving him substantially alone in achieving the task. Christianity does not begin with what man must do to save himself, but rather with what God has done to save him. The order is reversed.
It is true that to love God with all your heart is “the first and greatest of the commandments,” but the commandments are not primary, they are secondary. Before the order of commandments comes the order of gift and of grace. Christianity is the religion of grace! If this is not taken into consideration in interreligious dialogue, the dialogue would be able to do no more than generate confusion and doubts in the hearts of many Christians.
- Justification and conversion
When Jesus said: “Convert, and believe in the Gospel,” he was already teaching justification by faith. Before him, conversion always meant “to go back” (in Hebrew the same word is used for both “convert” and “to go back”: the word “shub”); it meant to go back to the broken alliance by way of a renewed observance of the law.
Consequently, conversion has a principally ascetic, moral and penitential meaning, and is achieved by changing how one lives. Conversion is seen as a condition for salvation; the sense is: Convert and be saved; convert and salvation will come to you. In the mouth of Jesus this moral meaning passes to a second plane (at least at the start of his preaching), with respect to a new significance, until now unknown.
Conversion no longer means to go back, to the old alliance and to the observance of the law; it means rather to take a step forward, to enter into a new alliance, to hold onto this Kingdom that has appeared, and to enter into it. And entering it by faith: “Convert and believe” does not mean two different and successive things, but rather the same action: convert, so as to believe; convert believing! “Prima conversio ad Deum fit per fidem,” writes St. Thomas Aquinas: “The first conversion to God consists in believing.”[4]
“Convert and believe” means therefore: Pass from the old alliance, based on the law, to the new alliance, based on faith. The Apostle says the same with the doctrine of justification by faith. The only difference is owed to what had happened, meanwhile, between the preaching of Jesus and Paul: Christ had been rejected and led to death for the sins of man. **The faith “in the Gospel” (“believe in the Gospel”) now takes shape as faith “in Jesus Christ,” “in his blood” (Romans 3:25).**He seems to get it.
Another solid ‘bible’ Catholic showing up to hit for Paul’s Team.
A Priest no less !! What will the Hebrew legalites do now ?
Beat their breasts, whip their scapulars, mortify the flesh
Score another Run for MD. True ‘reformation’ is happening in the Church. Unification is nearer than we thought.
Before long a wise Pope will desire to ‘make covenant’ with the Protestants … and many will accept his offer and rejoin the Universal Church. All the typology to support is in the OT.
Indeed, Benedict is an expert on Luther … knows him & his works better than anyone. Could it be the German Benedict who makes this first move towards Ecumenical reunion ?
M
mikeledes
Guest
I am looking forward to it. BTW, here’s a refutation of the OSAS/Calvinist take on Hebrews 6 from a Classic Arminian website:arminianperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/perseverance-of-saints-part-5-hebrews_07.html
God bless,
Michael
M
mikeledes
Guest
Since you are in agreement, perhaps you can explain how a person does not remain in Christ and still be saved? Or are you saying that someone that is no longer a member of Christ’s body, a branch removed from the True Vine, can still be saved?M.D. … you are correct in your interpretation above.
As Providence often provide us … today there is a podcast on web of a well known Catholic Priest who backs you up.
Link: www.presentationministries.com Program is Aug 19… entitled “What you need to do to go to hell”. Its 10 minutes in length. By Father Al Lauer … sadly he died in 2002, of liver CA. Program is widely heard on EWTN Catholic Radio.
He teaches Catholics must be Born Again. [quoting him] “not Good, but Born Anew” … “salvation is not about being Good” … so the rebirthed Father teaches us in this tape message.
He quote CCC #1036 [where the Church defines hell & how one ends up there] …Hell is defined as resulting from our ‘definitive self-exclusion in COMMUNION with God’ — which befalls those who ‘never convert [by rebirth] to Christ, chosing to stay as they were in sins’
So … MD has a ‘base hit’ … and the Catholic Priest advances MD to third base. Can Sandusky [or another] connect, and get MD home ?
God Bless,
Michael
B
BRB
Guest
No, its impossible ! A plant [wheat or tree] either grows to produce its fruit … or it dies. Anyone not rooted in Christ … belongs to the other evil spirit, by default.
We are simply saying Christ knows our hearts better than we do. He knows who has allowed the H.S. to conform their lives to Him. We all get a fair chance to make him #1 … to put down our roots into his. Some don’t … and fall back into their old habits of living, never to produce fruit.
Who here has never planted a tree in your yard ? We all know the 1st year or two the tree is struggling to stay alive and establish its new root system. Some trees will do so … and in year 2 or 3 will start to exhibit great growth. Some won’t … and will die.
Didn’t Christ tutor his Apostles for 3 years … to fully establish them in their faiths ? I say after 2-3 years, we either prove True Believers or get pruned away, as unsuitable disciples.
Christ taught ‘unless a seed falls to the ground and dies …it cannot be reborn and grow to maturity’. We must die into Christ’s Calvary death … and be reborn into his eternity. He nourshes his disciples via H.S. He fertilizes us … to improve our growth chances. Still, many will fall back into unbelief and die … having never gotten firmly rooted into Christ.
M
mikeledes
Guest
The problem with this analysis is that the branch is rooted in Christ:
**2"Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. **
He says every branch in me. Besides, a branch is a member of a Vine, hence if th person were not a member of the body of Christ he would not be referred to as a “branch.” A false professor can never be described as being in Christ.
So how do you interpret John 15:6?
6"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
What does “abide” mean? What does “thrown away” mean? What does “dries up” mean? Who are the “they” that does the “gathering”? What does “cast into the fire and burned” mean?"
God bless,
Michael
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