Alexis:
The first thing I have to note here is that your protested me using what you termed my "opinion" to justify anything. And I agreed that I cannot stand on my own "opinions," but must make myself subject to the truth of God.
But when I gave you nothing but the Word of God itself and asked you what you thought, you chose not to respond. I cannot help but note that fact, and wonder at it.
Why?
It seems to me those passages unequivocally show that there IS such a thing as "eternal punishment." I don't think one can read them and doubt it. One may debate who is implicated in each case, perhaps; though it's mostly explained in the context -- but I don't think one can believe any longer what you said to me earlier: namely, that there's "always a chance." Pretty clearly, for some folks, there just isn't.
My encouragement: let you and I not be one of those folks, right?
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 3:17 pm
None of this is inconsistent, mind you, from the sole and basic thrust in what I read in Catholic literature, in the Missal, in the Breviary, in the books of prayer that I have assembled in my research.
Then I must say, you've found some very evangelical Catholics, rather than some mainstream ones. For mainstream Catholic theology teaches the axiom,
"extra Ecclesiam nulla salus," which translates as, "outside the Church (i.e. Catholicism), [there is] no salvation."
In Catholicism, it is supposed that membership in the organization saves people. It is not at all their personal faith. And it is works by which they are justified, according to Catholic theology, not at all merely faith. If you read about the history of the Luther trial, you will see, in fact, that it was this very issue over which the Catholics were willing to fry Luther.
Well, that and his opposition to their teachings of Purgatory and Indulgences, both entire inventions of Romanism that find absolutely no support and no mention in Scripture at all.
My inclination, or you could say my *spiritual strategy*, is to divide in a sense my inner life from my outer life. The object, as I understand it, is to surrender, to seek association, to present oneself before one's creator for examination,
Before a sinner presents himself before God for "examination," he is best to present Himself for "salvation." To be "examined" as steeped in sin, unrepentant toward God and untransformed by
metanoia is not likely to earn him a result he wishes.
There is, after all, such a thing as eternal lostness.
The showy, buoyant, self-declaring and over-confident display of many Evangelicals is supremely off-turning. Simultaneously, it seems to me that within the Catholic world there is a great deal of rather 'dead' spirituality -- just going through the motions of Christian living perhaps.
Both are reasonable observations. Personally, I feel the same.
At the same time there is a *general death* within the Catholic community which, as I have thought about it, is not so much the fault of the people but the result of larger, surrounding processes.
Yes, I agree.
I think there are genuine Christians within the Roman Catholic sphere. I would say my next-door neighbours are likely among them. They are not merely good-hearted, generous and honest people themselves, but they have a deep reverence and appreciation of Christ. And I love them very much, and think well of them. They are dear friends to me. But it is so hard to know, within the Catholic sphere, which people are genuinely saved; for the doctrine of the organization itself is so convoluted, so full of human innovations and changes, so theologically cacophonic, that somebody who comes from that fold is often full of confused and anti-Scriptural ideas about saints and purgatory, or god-mother worship, or works salvation, that you can't tell whether they know or not what they need to know in order actually to be saved.
In contrast, the Biblical message of salvation, as I've laid it out to you in colloquial language above, is quite easy to understand, is it not? Really, even a child can grasp it...and in fact, they often do. (Good thing, too: for if it were less simple, then only the sophisticates could be saved.) However, there are many people around who do not want the gospel to be simple, clear and save souls. Rather, they would wish to see those souls vexed and frightened, and directed toward works demanded by the "church," so that power and benefit flow into that organization...instead of salvation to the individual.
It's a serious problem. But I still suspect there are some in the Catholic sphere who have sufficient clarity of understanding to still be saved -- not
because of the Roman Catholic dogma, but
in spite of it. And they, like all who trust Jesus Christ, are my brothers and sisters.
A Gospel message, or a Biblical message, is simply drowned-out by far more powerful influences (TV, movie, the motion of culture generally, novelty, and the myriad forces of *seduction*).
Well, or as in the Catholic case, by the massive accretions of false doctrine assembled around the few remaining residual core truths of Christianity still held within Catholicism itself, which often threaten to overwhelm the latter with the clamour of clericalism, legalism and ritualism.