Is this not just works snuck in through a back door? — Confused

Or the latest in “spiritual one-upmanship”.

i.e. “Proof of election/salvation is whatever I do that YOU don’t.” And “The Unpardonable Sin is whatver YOU do that I don’t.”

But I said I agree it CAN be a problem, and I cited the best work I know of on the issue.

But for the record, if the reformed can sometimes turn faith into works by a wrong emphasis, Catholicism rejects the radical implications of the fall and tells us that salvation is synergistic. And that sends me to hell immediately. It’s either Luther’s doctrine- ramped up a bit- or universalism if I am to have any hope at all.

peace

MS

who are you responding to in that last comment? If it’s to me, then what I expressed wasn’t a flippant attempt to sidetrack the discussion, but rather something I’m really struggling with. People like A.W. Pink leave me convinced that EVERYONE is going to Hell.

Read Shreiner and Canaday, The Race Set Before Us.

…then they’ll turn around and say, “By the way, if you are doing A, B, or C, you’re probably not elect.”

Is this not just works snuck in through a back door?

Yep… scary, ain’t it?

I can’t speak to the theology behind blessing at all, but, however appealing an purely noumenal view of grace might be, it’s hard (for me, not knowing much) to reconcile it to what Jesus / the OT demonstrates about grace, blessing and cursing (and miracles, even?) – which I imagine to be within the same superaddition to our paradigm of reality that characterizes God’s intervention in our lives.

Jesus blessed stuff, and people. God blessed nations, men. It would seem, some more than others. The Protestant idea of grace is philosophically attractive to me, but I seem to remember from CCD that people have different amounts of charism – something I associate foggily with the parable of the talents, and stories from the OT about Elijah (or Elisha?) and items made holy. I can’t make sense of how various instances of grace aren’t somehow temporal quantities of grace, as well as a “quality” of God’s added to reality somehow.

I appreciate that statement from the CCC, but I don’t see how anyone can deny that the RCC believes that grace is, to a great extent, substantial and is dispensed by material means and church authority.

That someone saw past this is commendable. Merton wrote eloquently that grace was not ultimately a “thing.” But what view of grace is taught in Indulgences? You are getting “this much” and not “all.”

peace

MS

The ‘thing’ in Catholic understanding is His life.

CCC 2023 “Sanctifying grace is the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the sould to heal it of sin and to santify it”.

Happy All Saints!
Jenny