I Have A Couple Questions

[Katholikos]

Okay, I bumped the two current OSAS sites up for you, prov31girl. Please read 'em, then come back with your questions. If there's any point that hasn't already been covered, I'll be glad to answer. You'll find us all willing to discuss OSAS with you.

Ave Cor Mariae, Likos

[phatcatholic]

provgirl,

i'll play in this one, if u would like it to be just the two of us.

let me know....

pax christi,
phatcatholic

[Katholikos]

prov31girl, you've disappeared off the radar screen. I'm sorry if my wacky sense of humor offended you. I certainly didn't mean to chase you away. I could have called your attention to the existing OSAS threads without hurting your feelings, if that's what I've done. Forgive my insensitivity.

Please c'mon back and let's chat.

JMJ Likos

[prov31girl]

Hey guys!! Sorry I disappeared for a while. It wasn't really offended. I just got kinda busy last night trying to help out a friend. Plus I wanted some time to just step back and think about this stuff. I might be back on here tonight, but I dunno. I have A LOT of homework to catch up on. But once I'm caught up and I have a little more free time, I promise I'll be back to put in a little more input. Thank you for your responses and makin me aware of the old threads that I did not see. I hope you all have a wonderful day. Peace out homies!!!

[Katholikos]

[Anna]

[quote name='prov31girl' date='May 3 2004, 07:58 PM']My point with the parents question is this: if we as human beings love our kids enough to never disown them no matter what they do or how rebellious they are, then how on earth could you possibly think that God, our heavenly father who is beyond any human love, would ever disown us and take our salvation away?[/quote]
Actually, none of us said that we would never disown our children. We said we would always love them. I think one parent here even stated that she reserved the right to kick her offspring out of her house. That would not mean that she stopped loving the child; it would mean that she loved the child enough to not tolerate abominable behavior. God will do the same.[quote]God loves us more than humanly possible, I just can't see Him saying "ok...you're too bad for me to handle, I'm giving up on you." No way.
[/quote] Just because you just can't see Him saying...doesn't mean He wouldn't say it. Can you see Him saying that He's sorry He created humanity, and He will now destroy it? He said that. Can you see Him telling a man to kill his young son as an offering? He said that. All this goes to show is that you are not all-seeing. (Neither are we.) God Is.
[quote]1 Peter 1
3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that can [b]never perish, spoil or fade--[/b]kept in heaven for you, 5who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
[/quote]Let's break this quote down a bit: "...an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade..." Well paradise will never perish, spoil, or fade, true enough, "kept in heaven for you, who [b]through faith[/b] are shielded by God's power until..."
What is sin?
It is choosing "Me" over "God."
It is saying "My wants" are more important than what "God wants."
It is faithlessness. It is rejecting God's will.
When we sin, we turn away from God. We reject Him, and all He has to offer. He doesn't stop loving us; we stop loving Him as much as we should. (Oh yes, we might still love God, but not as much as we love ourself!)
It isn't God who turns us away at this point, it is we who have deliberately chosen to [i]turn from God[/i].
Once we've sinned, we need to acknowledge our failure. (Our failure to love Him as we should.)
We need to confess this failure, to repent, do penance, and ammend our lives.
And we need to continually go through this process throughout our lives, because we are humans with a fallen human nature, who continue to fall often.
God understands this.
We are not divine. We fall.
That is why He created a Church and instituted gifts to support us on our pilgrimage toward heaven.
[quote]Isaiah 45
17 But Israel will be saved by the LORD with an [b]everlasting salvation[/b]; you will never be put to shame or disgraced, to ages everlasting.[/quote] Did you know that "Israel" in the Bible often stands for "the Church?"
God asks us to walk in faith, that faith which He instituted, knowing that we'll fall, and He'll be there to help us back up again.
We are saved by Christ, and we are in the process of being saved as we continue on our journey toward eternal life with Him, and we will be finally and eternally saved--only by His say-so--at the final judgement.
We cannot judge; Jesus Christ will judge us all.

[quote]As for the next question of is Jesus enough. A lot of you said "enough for what". For anything, but mainly is he enough to save us? I think so, but if you believe that you can lose your salvation because you're not good enough, then that's saying that the cross wasn't enough.
[/quote] lol. None of us is "good enough." That's why Jesus came; to offer Himself, since only He Is Good Enough! However, if we reject Him, if we reject His Church, His teachings, His authority which He left to us, that's [i]our choice,[/i] and He only came to [i]offer[/i] salvation to us, not to cram it down our throats.
[quote]
It is believed that Peter was the first pope, correct? Wouldn't you think that if it is possible to lose your salvation that he would have been one of the first to go? He directly denied Jesus Christ in His very presence. I think that's about the worst you could possibly do in God's eyes.[/quote] It's historical fact that Peter was the first pope, yes. And the Early Church Fathers' writings support this. As has already been covered, Peter denied Christ three times. Horrors! And then, Peter, the first pope, the leader of Christ's Church, repented, confessed, did penance, and returned to Christ with his whole heart, mind, and soul. Peter was human. He fell, just as the rest of us do, just as housewives and popes do also.
[quote] I feel that if you "accept Christ" and then you do not change at all, then you didn't accept Him to begin with. When we accept Christ, we are given a new, sinless, stainless, pure body through His death on the cross. You can't have that new body and then just go on about your old ways.[/quote] But you can love Jesus with your whole heart, mind, and soul one day and be tempted to offend Him the very next! And you can fall into sin as a result of that temptation. And if you truly love Christ, you'll return to Him, so that He does not lose His own. And if you go your merry way, continuing to sin, then you never [i]really[/i] loved Him.

You seem to have skipped one large point.
You go from accepting Christ directly to eternal salvation.
There's a lot of living in between those two events, accepting Christ, and entering heaven. There's a lot of opportunities to go back on our promises to God, rejecting His Truths and embracing evil.
You make it sound as though once we accept Christ, we never sin --not ever, ever again, until the day we die. Sorry, that's not humanly possible.
God gives us grace to avoid sin, yet we do fall at times, and must return to Him. If we decide we like the sinning better than the repenting, well, we've just chosen to reject the gift of salvation offered to us. Just as a kid who won't stop his licencious living can be booted out of the house, even though his parents still love him, so too, we can lose eternal happiness with God if we reject His Truths and His Teachings here on earth.



Pax Christi. <><

[Lil Red]

yay for Anna!!!!!

[Anna]

[quote]Ok, yes those are loaded questions, but no this is not some evangelical instruction coming on….My main purpose with this thread is to get you guys to see something from a different perspective.[/quote]

And finally, my point is that you did exactly what you said you weren't doing: you asked loaded questions with a theological argument in mind to back up your position, though denying you weren't doing it.

Not that I mind, really, but I'd like you to at least be honest with yourself.

If you're asking questions to get us all thinking, so that you can present some protestant theological perspectives, using Biblical quotes sometimes taken out of context to prove your point, misstating Catholic teaching, then whether you realize it or not, you [i]are[/i] attempting to evangelize us to your way of thinking.

Saying that if we don't believe [i]your interpretation of Paul[/i], it is calling Paul a liar is really very harsh indeed. What we are saying is that we believe St. Paul's writings as they were written to the Church, received by the Church, passed down from the Church, and interpretted by the Church.

The Catholic Church has never taught that God turns His back on His children or ceases to love us. It teaches that [i]we[/i] [i]turn our backs on God.[/i] We have free will. We choose.

Pax Christi. <><