Featured IF Water baptism requirement for salvation, another Gospel?

I bet thunkingstiff has 'MINN KOTA' tattooed on him. :smilewinkgrin: :laugh:

 

No defensiveness here, the thing is, your questions were leading as if I made statements that I didn't make.

Your being persecuted statement is a given, yet in context of my actual post there was nothing concerning the apostolic times...yet...I do not believe that every person baptized were all true believers.

Good question. Why do you think people get baptized yet aren't born again nor believers?

 

But as James says Action completes Faith

. I agree with you that it is Faith which saves however Faith is not faith unless its acted upon. Is it not true?

 

No, action proves faith, it doesn't complete it.

We aren't saved by faith, we're saved by grace.

 

I'm sorry I don't get the referrence. I'm sure its funny. I just don't get it. Can you explain it to me?

 

But that's what the Apostle James says.

Grace leads us to faith. So yes you're right.

 

Actually James is arguing action proves faith.

 

Google it then you can :laugh: :tongue3: :thumbs:

 

I used the apostolic time because that was the context of when that verse was actually spoken. It wasn't spoken in the modern context.

I don't know why non-believers would choose to be baptized. In the modern context which is vastly different from the context of when the bible was written I can speculate certain things but they wouldn't have applied two thousand years ago. Such as Baptism is such a societal accepted practice people would do it just to be a part of a group of people they wanted to be with. Or they had a rootless emotional experience but it didn't really develop into faith. And so on an so forth....

 

But he actually says it completes faith and emphasises that point 4 times

 

Ah. I'm fishing then? I like Bass and Pike and Trout. Now I'm hungry!!!

 

Yellow Lake Perch are superior to all of them. :smilewinkgrin:

 

Your misunderstanding the meaning. By your meaning and interpretation it forces it to conclude he is saved by works, not by grace.

 

In Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical, "Spe Salvi" we read:

"Life in its true sense is not something we have exclusively in or from ourselves, it is a relationship. And life in its totality is a relationship with him who is the source of life. If we are in relation with him who does not die, who is life itself and love itself, then we are in life. Then we 'live... Our relationship with God is established through communion with Jesus -- we cannot achieve it alone or from our own resources alone."

Yup, the Catholic Church teaches a personal relationship with Christ: The Catechism says:
1428 Christ's call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church who, "clasping sinners to her bosom, [is] at once holy and always in need of purification, [and] follows constantly the path of penance and renewal." This endeavor of conversion is not just a human work. It is the movement of a "contrite heart," drawn and moved by grace to respond to the merciful love of God who loved us first.
1430 Jesus' call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, "sackcloth and ashes," fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion.

I think we all could agree that the Pope and the Catechism are good authorities on what the Catholic Church teaches. They are both telling us to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

 

If water baptism is necessary for salvation, then I guess Quakers and Salvation Army folk are all going to hell.

 

Not at all, but that the fruit of Grace is not only accenting to a faith but a faith that works in love. Ie if works are the fruit of Faith and Faith is the Fruit of Grace then what do you have if there is no fruit at all?

 

You may be right about modern reasons to get baptized. However, in aposotolic times these reasons wouldn't have even been considered. So now when you read that passage in the context of the time it was writen in how do you understand it?

 

What do you call people who purposely do not do the will of the Father? What do you call people who purposely refuse to do something Jesus said to do? Especially in scripure? Are they saved?