Ticket to Heaven

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There have been a lot of good replies here to your question/analogy from Saturday. I agree with the poster who said it seems as if we are all agreeing with the same thing; namely that salvation comes from God alone, that it is His grace and nothing else that can save us. I think a previous poster was dead on target when saying that maybe the big difference in opinions here is not how we are saved (grace) but if we can lose our salvation subsequent to receiving that grace. Is this true?

Your child’s analogy was good, but did not address my argument of living a holy life as God’s way of giving us free choice. Your son did not have a choice in the matter of being. That was an issue decided between God, your wife and you working together within the sacrament of Matrimony.

If you stretch your analogy a bit and think of God as the parent of our salvation (actually I kind of like that title!), then you see that God has done something for us that we do not do for our kids, give us the choice to accept Him. I would suggest that asking us to live a holy life (through faith and works) is how He has us manifest the choice we make to accept Him as our savior. It is not a choice we make one time, when called up to the front of the Church in response to a call by the Preacher, but a choice we make and affirm every day forward.

Again, its hard for me to argue your posts because it seems we have much to agree to on how we get to Heaven (through Grace). The question may really be, “Do we get to Heaven through Grace by accepting Christ as our savior or do we get to Heaven through Grace by accepting Christ as our savior and manifesting that choice for the rest of our lives by living a holy life of faith and good works?”

BTW, hope your mother is OK. She is still in my prayers.
 
I am doing this from memory so it may not be complete from a teaching of Scott Hahn

How do we know we are God’s Children?

We are called by His name. Christian
His wife is my Mother. Mary is spouse of the Holy Spirit
His children are my brothers and sisters. The saints and fellow Christians.
I live in his house. The church
I eat at his table. The Eucharist
He corrects me.
We celebrate together. Feast days
I inherit.

I know there were 10 but I can only think of these.
 
Vincent said:
**…**To reiterate, the Council of Trent asserts that someone who is not justified cannot work his way into Heaven…Let me try to clarify it:
  • The good works that the Holy Spirit produces in a child of God is a **consequence **— not the cause— of having been made a child of God in the first place.
  • The consequence of good works that the Holy Spirit produces in a child of God is also a **cause **of the increase in the life of being a child of God that he ***already ***has received.
…It must be remembered that all is a gift of Grace. God giving you the life of divine sonship is a gift of Grace. The life of divine sonship producing good works is a gift of Grace. God rewarding good works with an increase in the life of divine sonship is a gift of Grace. Living the obedience of faith working through love is a gift of Grace. And finally, God bringing us into the promised inheritance of eternal life is a gift of Grace…
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Vincent:

Thanks for your hanging in here with me.

What i think you are saying is that a Catholic DOES work his way to heaven (or, more accurately, God produces the desire & power for a Catholic to work his way to heaven), but only after he has been justified. One might say that God’s grace (or undeserved love) causes an increase in the life of being a child of God (or a godly or holy life) which causes eternal life.

I’m not sure, but do i understand you correctly?
 
Peg, Charles & Pax:

Sorry, i’ve been busy, but i’ll read your posts thoughtfully & see if i understand what you are saying, too.

Thanks for your assistance. It will get through this dim wit yet! 😉

Blessings to you,
Christopher
 
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Charles:
…I agree with the poster who said it seems as if we are all agreeing with the same thing; namely that salvation comes from God alone, that it is His grace and nothing else that can save us…
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Yes, i certainly agree with this; as does St. Paul, for he says “…by grace you are saved, through faith…” By God’s undeserved love we are saved, through trusting in Christ. One might say the primary cause of our entrance into heaven is God showing unreasonable love toward us, as it is love for the unlovely, desire for the undeserving, compassion for the corrupt. My opinion is you are right on, Charles!
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Charles:
…I think a previous poster was dead on target when saying that maybe the big difference in opinions here is not how we are saved (grace) but if we can lose our salvation subsequent to receiving that grace. Is this true?..
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I have not really argued one way or another that once a person is adopted as a son of God that he has the ability to walk away. It is worth noting that many protestants do not agree on this issue & even consider it, what St. Augustine would call, a non-essential (by non-essential i mean an issue that Christians may, & perhaps even should, debate, but should never divide over). John Calvin, of course, believed that God’s grace was irresistible to the point that once a person responded to it he had not the power to resist. John Wesley (who was the founder of the Methodist denomination) on the other hand, did not agree with Calvin at all. I choose to not take either side on the issue, as this non-essential would lead us away from the more important essential truth of what causes us to get to heaven.
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Charles:
…Your child’s analogy was good, but did not address my argument of living a holy life as God’s way of giving us free choice. Your son did not have a choice in the matter of being. That was an issue decided between God, your wife and you working together within the sacrament of Matrimony…
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True. (Although, i think you meant to say that my “son did not have a choice in the matter of BECOMING.”) I guess that is why St. Paul used the analogy of adoption rather than birth. I suppose a person even in ancient Roman society may have had some freedom to decline an invitation to be adopted into a family. Smart guy, that Paul; he’s a tough act to follow!
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Charles:
…If you stretch your analogy a bit and think of God as the parent of our salvation (actually I kind of like that title!), then you see that God has done something for us that we do not do for our kids, give us the choice to accept Him. I would suggest that asking us to live a holy life (through faith and works) is how He has us manifest the choice we make to accept Him as our savior. It is not a choice we make one time, when called up to the front of the Church in response to a call by the Preacher, but a choice we make and affirm every day forward…
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I must confess you seem to be right. It’s likely both a u-turn on the road of life & a daily decision not to turn back.
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Charles:
…Again, it’s hard for me to argue your posts because it seems we have much to agree to on how we get to Heaven (through Grace). The question may really be, “Do we get to Heaven through Grace by accepting Christ as our savior or do we get to Heaven through Grace by accepting Christ as our savior and manifesting that choice for the rest of our lives by living a holy life of faith and good works?”…
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You hit the nail right on the head, Charles! That is THE question for which i am searching for an answer. Do you have any thoughts to shed light on the answer to this question?

Also, thanks for your prayers. She is not well, but is home, & the cardiologist is not able to see her till August.
 
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Peg:
…How do we know we are God’s Children?

We are called by His name. Christian
His wife is my Mother. Mary is spouse of the Holy Spirit
His children are my brothers and sisters. The saints and fellow Christians.
I live in his house. The church
I eat at his table. The Eucharist
He corrects me.
We celebrate together. Feast days
I inherit…
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Thanks, Peg.
 
Pax:

Thanks for the Scriptures; they give me something to think about. I find it interesting that sanctification in most of these passages is referred to in the past tense.

I’ve always thought of it as a way of describing a present, or future, event. I’m not sure if this will help the conversation along, but what do you think?

Blessings,
Christopher
 
Does anyone have anything that will help answer the last question Charles brought up in his most recent post, above?

I think this is really the main question i’ve been failing to articulate.
 
Interestingly enough, salvation/justification is also talked about in the past, present, and future tenses in scripture. This is something worth pondering especially in light of what it says in James 2:26 where we are told “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.”

The interesting thing about this statement is how James compares the relationship of faith and works to the relationship of the body and spirit. Pondering this verse may answer your question as it was posed by Charles.
 
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Socrates4Jesus:
You hit the nail right on the head, Charles! That is THE question for which i am searching for an answer. Do you have any thoughts to shed light on the answer to this question?

Hmm, well, I’d say for starters that there are 70 some odd posts here that address the question and answers to it to one degree or another! 🙂

However, let me start again by stating my position which is that we are saved by accepting (our choice) Christ as our savior (the offered grace) and we manifest that choice by living a holy life.

I’ll at least initially define a holy life as a life of faith in God and of works defined by God as good. I also want to state that I see faith actually as a subset of good works since it is in fact something we do.

The holy life is to be lived forward from the time God’s grace is accepted (even though his life only lasted a few hours after accepting grace, we believe the man on the cross did enter Heaven, so from his acceptance forward we would say he lived a holy life). A holy life would include the sacrament of baptism (I believe it’s fair to mention that here as it has been discussed in this thread already).

A person who is not living a holy life has not really chosen to accept God’s grace. If they die in that state they do not go to Heaven. Not because they didn’t do good deeds, but because by not living a holy life they did not truly accept God’s grace.

God asks us to live a holy life because he loves us. He wants us to be free, even to the point of being free to choose his grace (the ultimate, eternal freedom if you will). In order to give us a true choice he asks us to do something (live holy lives) as a manifestation of our choice.

So, God is your ticket to Heaven. Your holy life is the ticket punch that shows you got on board.
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Socrates4Jesus:
Yes, i certainly agree with this; as does
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St. Paul, for he says “…by grace you are saved, through faith…” By God’s undeserved love we are saved, through trusting in Christ. One might say the primary cause of our entrance into heaven is God showing unreasonable love toward us, as it is love for the unlovely, desire for the undeserving, compassion for the corrupt. My opinion is you are right on, Charles!

Again, I consider faith to be a work defined by God as good (excuse the circumlocution, I just feel like saying something different than “good works” for a change, and also want to emphasize that I consider God to be the ultimate arbiter of what is good.).
 
Christopher:

Thanks for thinking it through.

To recap, first Catholics are reborn as children of God, in which God promises them the inheritance of eternal life.

And then I would rather put it this way, paraphrasing St. Paul in Philippians 2:12-13:

Catholics work out the promised inheritance of eternal life with fear and trembling, for God is at work in them, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
And then, after death, Catholics enter into their inheritance of eternal life, which was promised to them the moment they were reborn as children of God.
 
Greetings Socrates and All:

Let me start by echoing the sentiments previously expressed by others; namely, that this is a rocking good thread and I’m very impressed by the charitable tone of the discussion. I’ve been lurking with fascination for some time, wanting desperately to add something of value, but being intimidated by the quality of the knowledge and eloquence of such “apologists extraordinaire” as Vincent, Charles and Pax. I will leave the scriptural proof of the Catholic theology of justification and salvation to them – they need no help - but I would like to attempt to provide some different things to think about.

First, let me say that I have a very personal interest in this conversation. I, like you Socrates, was a cradle Catholic who left the church in my teens believing it to be unnecessary, irrelevant and completely devoid of the love of Christ. In a story that I could write a book about, my wife converted and I “re-verted” this past Easter after 20 years as happy, active members of a Lutheran congregation. Like so many other conversion stories, I went kicking and screaming, wanting desperately to confirm my adolescent rejection of the Church; instead, the more I studied, the more truth and beauty I found in the Catholic faith. I now find myself hopelessly in love with Christ and His Church, while I pray for guidance in how to evangelize my fallen away parents who brought me to the Church and the sacraments in the first place.

So Mr. Socrates, I’m flexing my apologetics muscles on you for the first time. I apologize in advance if any of my presumptions regarding your thoughts and feelings are incorrect; I admit I am reading into your statements a bit. Here we go:

• You started this thread by posing the question, “What do I have to do to get into heaven?” By stating it this way you seem to accept that God does require something (a “work”) of you in order to gain salvation, you are just down to discerning if His sole requirement is to accept this salvation by believing in it, or if you have to believe in it + “live it” through some form of works, good deeds, following the rules, etc.

• It seems very important to you to somehow know with certainty that you are “saved from hell” as you have so often put it. Because you can’t know with certainty if your less than perfect works are pleasing to God, and because you must be able to know with certainty that you are saved, these works must not be necessary for salvation. You have so far based your claim that we can know for certain that we are saved on 1John 5:13. Some great, biblically based points were made countering the claim that we can be infallibly certain of our salvation and you haven’t really responded to them.
(Continued)
 
• I think a real key to opening your mind and heart on this issue is going to be letting go of this notion of knowing for certain that you are saved. Even the high and mighty Catholic Church, with all its history, authority, claims of infallibility and claims of binding and loosing ultimately concedes the sole knowledge of who is saved to God. “Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved” (CCC – #2005, emphasis added)

• You quote John MacArthur saying, “We are saved by grace through faith alone, but not a faith that is alone.” Forgive my bluntness, but if this is the essence of sola fide, then I think it’s “game over”. If we are saved by faith alone, but a true saving faith must have works, then how is that any different than faith + works? Either you need faith + works (Catholic) or you need works to prove that your faith is a “saving faith” (Evangelical). Either way, works are necessary for your salvation. I really think that sola fide proponents are making a distinction without a difference here. Because this is the article on which Protestantism “stands or falls” it is defended with great vigor and tenacity. I have read MacArthur, Sproul, Gerstner, etc. and maybe I’m just too dense, but as badly as I wanted to believe sola fide, I just couldn’t and can’t see it.

• You seem to feel that your salvation somehow hangs in the balance of which side of this issue you choose to accept. You state in a previous post that others have told you that by trusting in your works you jeopardize your salvation. The Catholic teaching is that we can trust neither our works nor our faith but only God and his free, undeserved grace for our salvation.

• So, because only God ultimately knows the fate of our souls with certitude, I have found the emphasis in Catholicism to be on growing in grace. Through the sacraments, prayer, scriptures, the Mass, the saints, Mary – all the riches of the Church, we are able to grow as God’s sons and daughters; we conform our will to His and truly become holy. Instead of dwelling on “How am I saved, how am I saved?” The Catholic says, “Yeah, I believe I’m saved – now what?” Justification is not a single declarative act, but a process of becoming a child of God and growing in holiness as we cooperate with Christ’s redemption of all humanity.

(Continued)
 
This post is already way too long and I’ve been working on it for two days, so I’ll hold off on the whole issue of authority and why anyone’s personal discernment of scripture should trump the unchanging interpretation of the Church Christ established two thousand years ago.

One final piece of advice from my experience: You can’t get all the way through this with your head. At some point your heart will take over and finish the job. For me it happened the first time I went to Mass and truly saw the beauty of Christ’s sacrifice in the Eucharist. I encourage you to do the same if you haven’t already. Without ever meeting you, I feel and believe that you, like me, are and always have been Catholic in your heart and soul. My prayers and my love are with you as you work through this.

Steve
 
Welcome Steve and welcome home! One of the things I have held over from my evangelical days is a love of testimonials. Thanks for sharing yours! Please keep jumping in, too!

I read Galatians this evening during my adoration hour at our church. I came away believing that when Paul speaks of works of the law he is not speaking of the good works we have been describing here. It is possible that some people have fallen into the “faith alone” argument because of a misinterpretation of what St. Paul meant in Galatians about faith, grace, and works of the law.

Works of the law were works that were intended to merit eternal salvation seperate from Grace. Some would argue (myself included) that one of the purposes of the law was to show us the impossibility of being saved through our own works. As I and others have stated, God’s Grace is needed for salvation. Paul repeatedly mentions that we are not saved by the law or by works of the law in Galatians. I do not believe this contradicts James and other sources that allude to the need for good works. Good works and works of the law are not synonymous.
 
Steveroz,

You say your post was too long and that you spent a couple of days on it. Well, this may be the first and last time I disagree with you. Your post was not too long. Furthermore, if you spent two days writing the post, it was certainly time well spent.

Welcome aboard 👍
 
I think i understand.

So would you say, then, that i should do my best to obey every command to which Jesus expects me to submit?

And to you think that even the commands that seem nearly impossible to comply with (such as the difficult ones He gave during the Sermon on the Mount) He is able to give me the power to do?
 
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Socrates4Jesus:
I think i understand.

So would you say, then, that i should do my best to obey every command to which Jesus expects me to submit?

And to you think that even the commands that seem nearly impossible to comply with (such as the difficult ones He gave during the Sermon on the Mount) He is able to give me the power to do?
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Yes! That’s the power of God’s grace and why the saints throughout history are truly our heros - they did these things
 
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