The Catholics are not lost

A so called faith [belief] that does not call for any action is a dead faith. It is a cheap grace or cheap discipleship as D. Bonhoeffer called it.

The way I like to say it is, "Show me your works and I will show you your faith."

Jesus said to "Go ye into all the world.............." He never said to sit at home and rest. He did not say to live and commune only in Christian ghettos. Christ went among the sinners and worked and I believe had a lot of fun with them and in helping them.

On infant baptistm, of which I am not an expert, I believe for many it has more to do with the concept of original sin.

As I stated in another posting in another thread I was amazed when I heard a Jesuit priest tell the parents at the baptism of their infant that, "You realize, this has nothing to do with the salvation of your daughter. It has everything to do with you being committed to raising her in a Christian family."

 

Is it clear that good works are essential in the process of ones sanctification and that true faith produces good works. If ones faith doesn’t produce works, then they may not have a true faith. Most Protestants believe this…

Where we disconnect at is that these good works save us.

As an Orthodox, we know that Christ says that if we love Him, we will obey Him. We must love Christ to enter into His Kingdom. We cannot love Christ without faith. We cannot be saved without His saving Passion and Resurrection. We know that without works faith is dead.

In regard to election, there's two Protestant views, and each start with the same premise of Sola Fide (by faith alone). However, in practice, they both, by very different routes make this statement far less extreme than it seems at first glance to the Orthodox. Those Protestants who believe in the possibility of losing ones salvation (as do the Orthodox), acknowledge that repeated, unrepented sin will cause you to lose your salvation, because those who so indulge will eventually end up with a conscience so hardened that faith will die. Thus, works are necessary to salvation in that position.

Those who believe that one cannot lose one's salvation use a different expedient. It is clear that many people who initially live in a very godly manner eventually turn their back on God. Those who believe in eternal security usually deal with such cases by saying that those in such circumstances never had true faith. However, existentially, such a person is indistinguishable during his/her pious stage from someone who will in fact persevere to the end.

One cannot know whether one is merely deluding oneself or one has true faith. Only perseverance to the end, which involves good works done out of gratitu for God, demonstrates the genuineness of the faith in that position. However, this too is not so far from saying that works are necessary to salvation at least existentially.

Also, the Orthodox concur that faith is the greatest of works (although this work too is a gift of God--we only offer back to God that which He first gives to us). Thus, the person who is converted on his death bed or on a cross (as the thief), though he/she has no material works, does in fact have the work of faith. This is not so far, in concept if not in terminology, from the position held on this subject by either school of Protestantism.

I derive no great theories about what goes on in God's eternal counsels (which is why I don’t judge Catholics or any other). Certainly, our widow's mites of work add nothing to God's infinite supply of Goodness. Still, He honors them. We, on earth, see the necessity of works for ourselves to appropriate the free gift of God of salvation. To go beyond that into speculations about the exact function of grace and works seems to lead us back to this conclusion in the end.

ICXC NIKA
-

 

It is sensitive because you are dealing with the Gospel. What is and what is not the gospel is a matter of vital importance since the consequence of getting it right or wrong is eternal.

Show me in the Bible where the redeemed are judged for their sin after salvation. What the Scriptures declare is that there is No condemnation to the person who is saved by the grace of God. Christ took all the wrath of God for the saved therefore they are not under any judgment of God for their sin.

Consequently a person who is truly regenerate will manifest a life of actions that are righteous and pleasing to God.

 

Darren and Agnus, :thumbs:

I might add that I don't think anyone (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran or other Protestants) are saying that the 'works of faith' originate with us; they along with faith in fact originate with God, as does grace. All that is asked of us is that we do not resist His grace in producing both faith and works of charity in us but actively - in so far as is in our power as fallen, concuspiscent (I love that Augustinianism - it covers a multitude of sins!) human beings - co-operate with that grace. In doing so we will produce 'works of faith' as fruit.

 

I was raised Catholic and attended a parochial grade school.

Once I visited a protestant church with one of my friends and I mistakenly told my teacher (a nun). She told me I must go to confession because I had committed a grievous sin.

I did as I was told and had to serve penance because I had visited a 'pagan' church.

More recently, my neice (in her late teens) and a very devout Catholic (as is the rest of my family) visited with me. We talked about Jesus and I believe she received Him as her Lord and Savior.

She went home and told her mother and she was immediately sent to the local priest for counseling. He told her that she must repent and not listen to the heresy I had told her.

I agree there are Catholics who are truly saved (my brother being one of them), but the majority of Catholics I know are not. They get drunk on Saturday night and confess it to the priest on Sunday morning. Jesus is the furthest person from their minds. They are relying soley on the priest and penance for forgiveness.

My sister-in-law is still paying for masses and lighting candles to get her late husband out of pergatory. THAT is heresy...

 

I'm only going to respond to this part of your post.

The Bible says:

Jhn 14:21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."

We don't obey because it will save us or keep us saved, we obey because we love Christ. Obedience is the natural outworking of our love for God. Faith without works is a dead faith. James does not say that without works our faith dies. He says that works demonstrate a living faith. The works that we do are the evidence of that living faith. It does not die. If it is dead, it is because it was not alive to begin with.
Those who live a life of disobedience do not and have not ever loved Christ.

First, we love Christ (put our faith in Him). Then the works will come.

You are saying that if we work we will be saved.

I am saying that we work because we are saved.

 

OK, Amy, let's suppose the following scenario: a guy who has lived a dissolute life hitherto attends one of those 'old-style' revival meetings, hears the Gospel, is convicted of his sin, and goes forward to commit his life to the Lord/ receive Him as Saviour/puts his faith in Him/prays the 'Sinner's Prayer'/does however you say people get saved. A few days later he goes back to his drink, drugs and dames.

Is he saved?

 

You’re right, James doesn’t say without works our faith dies, because James clearly says that without works our faith is already dead. Why would the Holy Spirit want James want to contradict himself?

Gina, can a person be saved by dead faith?

The issue at hand is that you, as a Protestant have been taught to see works as being meritorious, and that’s an innovation of Protestantism and not apart of Orthodox Theology. The Apostolic and early Church Fathers never taught such…

The Orthodox simply see these works as fulfilling what God has created us to be.

Salvation is NOT of Faith alone, nor of works alone, but of Jesus Christ alone. Thus Christ gives us both the gift of faith and the gift of good works that we might use them both to live out our calling as God’s workmanship.

Sadly, somewhere along the Reformation journey of schism’s the Protestant theology got weaker and weaker and the theology of simply fulfilling what God has created us to be got lost…

In the risen Christ
-

 

Maybe. Only God knows the heart. However, many a saved person will fall back into their old lifestyle for a time, but later will return to God.

You can read about this in 1 and 2 Corinthians.

At the moment of salvation, we are justified, or made right with God. This is a one time event.
But we are being sanctified daily. At salvation, we begin our walk with God. But just as infants need milk, so do baby Christians. Eventually, they are able to digest meat. But this doesn't happen overnight. It is a life long process.

If a person says they received Christ and never leads a Godly life, they were not saved. (Faith without works=vain faith) But saved people can fall in and out of fellowship with God and yet still remain saved. But they cannot live a life of sin without the conviction of the Holy Spirit and chastisement from God, which will lead them back to fellowship with Him.



Hbr 12:7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?
Hbr 12:8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.
Hbr 12:9 Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?
Hbr 12:10 For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.
Hbr 12:11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

 

I never said James contradicted himself. A dead (non-living, vain, worthless faith) or better, a faith in anything other than Christ, will not save you.

Not sure who Gina is. I'm Amy.
And no they cannot.

I do not see works as meritorious. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. Our works are simply the result of our faith and love of God. The same as when we do good things for our children. It is simply because we love them, not to gain their favor.

Yes, salvation is of faith in Christ alone.




It is really very simple. We must ask ourselves if this statement is true:

Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
Eph 2:9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Eph 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.


We are saved by grace. Alone.
Grace=unmerited favor from God. We have nothing to offer God in return for salvation. We come to Him empty handed. We do not deserve His favor. We deserve His justice.

Through faith. Alone.
Faith in the only begotten Son of God and His work on our behalf. For there is no other name under heaven by which man can be saved.
Christ alone.

 

I read part of it, but I didn't find anything that would change what the Council of Trent had said. Could you please show me where it would?
Surely your capable of telling me.

Here is the article in question

Council of Trent Session XI CANON IX.-If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you'd stress a balance of faith and works?

InXC
-

 

Anyone who prays to Mary and worships the Pope is as lost as lost can be.

 

Is it only Mary this "rule" applies too SFIC? What if you make a request in a humble manner to your wife to fix you a turkey pot pie...does the same rule you applied to Mary apply in this scenario?

I pray you SFIC that you answer truthfully...oops...

InXC
-

 

Asking one's wife to do something is not praying to her... that is, unless that one's wife is dead. In that case, she can't hear as annsni pointed out.

 

Without posting each bible verse, consider both Pauls’ position regarding faith and works in Ephesians 2:4-10 and what James has to say about the same subjects in James 2:14-26.

Both teachings on faith and works are not antithetical, but are one of emphasis. Paul stresses primarily the position of faith, but at the same time doesn’t deny works, because Paul concludes with…we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

James stresses works, without which faith is not discerned.

So the balancing of faith and works come into play by the grace of God where we are justified by faith and united to Christ and His Church. That union, however in light of James and Paul, by its very nature must result in good works…

InXC
-

 

Hmmm...Mary's dead...I guess God didn't get the memo, b/c from what I read, God's the God of the living not of the dead...Furthermore we get a vivid picture of the saints in heaven around the throne of God offering the prayers of the saints under the form of golden bowls of incense...ho hum...

InXC
-