Mothra said:Sam Lowry said:Mothra said:Sam Lowry said:Mothra said:Sam Lowry said:Mothra said:Sam Lowry said:Mothra said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:
"Depending on Jesus" is not passive; it is itself a spiritual act that involves our will and active cooperation with grace. I cannot agree with the idea that belief alone makes us righteous without any effort or participation on our parts
When someone "comes to Jesus with empty hands and puts full reliance on Him," that is an act of cooperation and work, it must take place, because without it, a person is effectively abandoning the faith. Salvation is not earned, but it is received and lived through our active engagement with God's grace.
You cannot claim that sola fide is anything other than a "said faith," a one-time mental assent, because by definition it divorces faith from obedience, repentance, and ongoing participation in Christ. That is exactly why ideas like Once Saved Always Saved exist, because if faith is reduced to mere words or belief without action, then nothing we do, including turning from sin or cooperating with God, can affect our salvation. The moment you admit that believers must actively pray, repent, avoid sin, or cooperate with grace to remain in Christ, you are acknowledging that true faith is never "alone" or merely said, it is cooperative and requires our willpower/work.
Faith itself is "a spiritual act that involves our will and active cooperation with grace". Depending on Jesus is having faith in Jesus. It is not a "work", like performing water baptism or taking the Eucharist. Faith happens in the heart.
If you can't agree that this "belief", i.e. faith, alone makes us righteous, then you don't understand the gospel. You're trying to tie your ability and performance to salvation, i.e. your "obedience" to salvation, rather than on Jesus' completed work. To which I ask and you have yet to answer: how much obedience, then, is required? What is the cutoff point? It can't be "perfectly" because then no one would be saved, right? You're just trading one set of law-keeping (the Torah) with another (Jesus' commandments) as the means to salvation.
If you think sola fide is merely "said faith" then you don't understand sola fide, you're only creating a straw man, making it what you want it to be so you can easily defeat it. Sola fide is referring to true faith being the only thing that saves, apart from works. That is straight from scripture. Denying sola fide is denying the gospel.
I still would like answers to these questions, in addition to the question above: 1) If someone truly believes in Jesus, but dies before water baptism or the Eucharist, are they saved? If not, then doesn't that falsify Jesus when he says that whosoever believes will be saved? 2) if someone hears the gospel, believes, and puts their trust in Jesus alone for their salvation - are you saying this doesn't qualify as "faith" until he performs an act of obedience, like water baptism or the Eucharist?
... Orthodoxy also teaches that people who are Baptized and do take the Eucharist aren't automatically saved. Again, there's no legality here.
Didn't you just quote me "Baptism now saves you" in arguing the Orthodox case that water baptism is required for salvation? So it saves you.... but then it doesn't? Orthodoxy doesn't seem to know what saves and what doesn't. Perhaps Orthodoxy needs a little more legality in their views, otherwise they'll just seem to be floating in a sea of uncertainty, talking out of both sides of their mouth. That is definitely not what God wants with his gospel.
Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are really stuck in a quandary here. If Peter saying "Baptism now saves you" is proof that water baptism is a requirement and actual means to salvation, then it means that the Eucharist is not. And that would mean that Jesus' words about needing to eat his flesh and drink his blood to get eternal life are not literal.
Do Roman Catholics or Orthodox Christians have an answer to this? If not, then how can your church anathematize (separate from God) anyone who doesn't believe it? How can your church's teachings be true?
The sacraments are normative means of grace, not mechanical guarantees.
So... what you're saying is, water baptism and the Eucharist saves, because those are the direct words of Peter and Jesus.... but they are not guaranteed to save. Do I have that correct?
But isn't this a "guarantee" in John 6?: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he WILL live forever. And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh.... Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood HAS eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."
Jesus is not making it "normative" but with exceptions, as you are saying. He says you WILL live forever. He says one HAS eternal life. He is cleary making it definitive, not "normative". Jesus is pretty clearly making a guarantee. What you are doing is falsifying Jesus' explicit declaration. This pretty much invalidates your view completely.
Also (as if the above weren't enough), you have to explain why Peter was able to guarantee salvation by water baptism, when it's not a guarantee for others. Why not? What is the criteria for this? And you still haven't resolved the fact that if Peter says baptism saves, then the Eucharist clearly is not necessary for salvation, nor was Jesus being literal in John 6, both which contradicts RC and Orthodox beliefs.
This is the Catholic faith in a nutshell. I am going to try and do enough things to save myself from eternal damnation. I just hope it's enough.
It's not even a coherent reading of the Scripture, much less a Catholic one. Unless BTD believes baptism or communion are guarantees of salvation, which he obviously doesn't, these passages are just as problematic for him as they are for any Catholic.
The simplest solution is to accept that the requirements are normative, as the Church has always taught. Instead BTD is forced to argue that the passages aren't really about baptism or communion at all. Like everything else, they're just metaphors for "belief." So of all the thousands of metaphors that Jesus could have used, he insisted on the one he knew his audience would mistake for an endorsement of cannibalism, and when they abandoned him en masse he only doubled down.
I don't know about you Protestants, but for me sometimes it's easier just to believe what the Bible says.
I agree that would be easiest. The problem with the Catholic faith is there are so many things you believe that the Bible doesn't say. The idea that some ministerial act like sprinkling with water is necessary for salvation is but one example. There are many more, as we've discussed ad nauseum (e.g. praying to saints, confession as necessary for salvation, the papacy, veneration of Mary, purgatory, etc.).
Hopefully you will die at exactly the right time, having done all of the ministerial acts necessary at the exact moment of your death. But of course, even then, there's only a chance at salvation.
John 3:5 tells us that except a man be born of water, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Are you telling me that's not about baptism?
I would submit it isn't about baptism as you understand it - some mere ministerial act of sprinkling or dunking in water. To enter God's Kingdom, a person must experience a spiritual rebirth, being "born of water and the Spirit," which signifies a profound spiritual cleansing and transformation by the Holy Spirit, leading to a new life in Christ. So, no, this is not about some ministerial act of being sprinkled on the head, but about a spiritual regeneration. It's a singular, essential new birth, explained as being "born again" or "born from above," where "water and the Spirit" describe the one work of God's renewing power.
Moreover, when we read such verses, we have to read them in context to Christ's and his apostles' other thoughts. Throughout scripture, the authors repeatedly point to repentance and belief as the saving grace, not mere sprinkling of water. We see scripture replete with examples (John 3:16-18; 3:36; Rom. 10:9; Hebrews 11:6). And of course, we have the example of the thief on the cross, who Christ said would be with him in paradise, despite the fact he wasn't baptized after repentance and belief.
So, no, the great weight of scripture is clear that a ministerial act of baptism - while important, an outward sign of an inward transformation and rebirth - is not necessary for salvation. Indeed, anyone with a knowledge of the New Testament knows the character of God does not require some ministerial, physical act to attain salvation. Denying salvation on that basis would be against the nature of God.
Well, I don't think anyone before the Reformation would have taken that view. The Church Fathers were quite consistent on this point.
Many of what you call the "Church Fathers" had incorrect theology, which is of course what made the reformation necessary in the first place. And in either regard, such a belief contradicts the great weight of scripture.
Jesus and the Apostles left us a real mess, for sure. Good thing it only took a millennium and change for someone to sort it out.
As any student of the NT knows (Catholics excepted, of course) there were false teachers and misguided churches even during the very early years of the Church. Why do you think Paul was so busy traveling around the Mediterranean? Not hard to get congregants hooked on bad theology. Throw in money, power and corruption, and you have a good idea regarding why the Reformation was necessary.
We all know that pimp Tertullian and his money, cash, hoes.
