Clarification On Christian Fundamentals

[jesussaves]

I don't think the above really adds anything. I haven't gone through it completely, but it seems that way.

I think the justificaiton in the catholic thought could be said as legitimate in this way. When someone does good, they retract what needs to be justified by Jesus. Their subjective justification makes up for the objective justification of Jesus. My issue with this is that it might not be true necessarily by Catholic standards. If we have to be pure on the inside of our soul by our own means, albeit by grace, eventually via earth or purgatory, then Jesus didn't really justify us directly, he only "justified" us in the sense that he allowed us the possibilty of being justified. I wonder if that is really justification at all. It could be contrued that way, but I'm not sure that's what is true.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='jesussaves' post='1108748' date='Nov 2 2006, 02:56 PM']
I don't think the above really adds anything. I haven't gone through it completely, but it seems that way.

I think the justificaiton in the catholic thought could be said as legitimate in this way. When someone does good, they retract what needs to be justified by Jesus. Their subjective justification makes up for the objective justification of Jesus.
[/quote]
This is not at all the Catholic Church's teaching.

[quote]My issue with this is that it might not be true necessarily by Catholic standards. If we have to be pure on the inside of our soul by our own means, albeit by grace, eventually via earth or purgatory, then Jesus didn't really justify us directly, he only "justified" us in the sense that he allowed us the possibilty of being justified. I wonder if that is really justification at all. It could be contrued that way, but I'm not sure that's what is true.[/quote]

It's not the Catholic Church's teaching. It is not the case that He merely allowed us the possibility of being justified. He justified all mankind, but individuals must accept that on an individual basis and must live a life of grace, cooperating with God's action in their lives so that they will be remade by grace in Christ's image, thus being co-heirs with Him and obtaining His inheritance of salvation. All merit comes from the Cross of Christ. The question is a matter of who will acknowledge and accept that merit into their lives so that it may have its effect. It is God working through all of it, but we must cooperate (otherwise, we are being saved unwillingly).

[Briguy]

1. . Justification for us is a process which begins at Baptism when grace enters the soul.

The above sounds all good and all but it just does not hold water (no pun intended ) Justification by definiton means "to be proved righteous" or "to be proved worthy" Grace was given to man as a gift, though man did not deserve it. We can't earn Grace. Grace entering the soul after the earthly act of baptism, would put a modifier on grace and remove the free status. Grace entered the world when Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead. That is one issue. That justificaion can happen, unaware to the justified person, is another obvious problem since there is a "proof required with justification". Ah, but there is two different justifications to consider. Justification before God and Justification before man. Our actions "prove" us "worthy" before men. It is our faith that "proves us worthy" before God. I assumed that the statement above was referring to being justified before God. If Baptism was the time that a person was justified before God then faith would need to be evident. This can't happen in an infant. The flip side is that millions of people have been water baptized and it has NO effect on their lives what-so-ever. Not just a few, millions right in the Catholic Church get baptized and then think little to nothing about God for their entire lives. They eat, drink, sleep around etc... showing no worthinees of the Grace and justification that you are saying is thrust upon them. If at baptism a person was justified it would have a lasting effect.

Just some quick thoughts,
Brian

[jesussaves]

What exactly does the justification from Jesus achieve if you have to justify yourself completely inwardly? Is it the initial justification? The potential?

[Briguy]

In my post above I wrote "They eat, ...... It sounded really dumb when I just re-read it and I could not edit it. Like eating is a sin - LOL I think I was going to say eat, drink, and be merry as a figure of speech, but I didn't and so it really sounded silly. Just wanted to point out that I messed up; but only in that one point. The rest of the post was incredible if I do say so myself, and I do

In Christ,
Brian

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Briguy' post='1108955' date='Nov 2 2006, 06:23 PM']
1. . Justification for us is a process which begins at Baptism when grace enters the soul.

The above sounds all good and all but it just does not hold water (no pun intended ) Justification by definiton means "to be proved righteous" or "to be proved worthy" Grace was given to man as a gift, though man did not deserve it. We can't earn Grace. Grace entering the soul after the earthly act of baptism, would put a modifier on grace and remove the free status. Grace entered the world when Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead. That is one issue. That justificaion can happen, unaware to the justified person, is another obvious problem since there is a "proof required with justification". Ah, but there is two different justifications to consider. Justification before God and Justification before man. Our actions "prove" us "worthy" before men. It is our faith that "proves us worthy" before God. I assumed that the statement above was referring to being justified before God. If Baptism was the time that a person was justified before God then faith would need to be evident. This can't happen in an infant. The flip side is that millions of people have been water baptized and it has NO effect on their lives what-so-ever. Not just a few, millions right in the Catholic Church get baptized and then think little to nothing about God for their entire lives. They eat, drink, sleep around etc... showing no worthinees of the Grace and justification that you are saying is thrust upon them. If at baptism a person was justified it would have a lasting effect.

Just some quick thoughts,
Brian
[/quote]

Yes, grace entered the world when Christ died on the cross. However, it would be silly to say that's when grace entered each individual soul (especially considering most souls ever to exist didn't at that point).

I am talking about justification before God. It is God who makes us worthy before God, but we must cooperate in that. Infants can be baptized because parents have spiritual jurisdiction (just as they have every other kind of jurisdiction) over their children and can will for their children to be baptized and their children can be baptized on account of the faith of the parents. The Church sees that the material world is always an image of the spiritual world. If adults have authority over children in the material world, then they do in the spiritual world, too.

As for those who are baptized and go and enter into iniquity, assuming culpability, grave sin makes them lose that grace, so the point is irrelevant.

Justification is not once for all. It does not stop until you're dead. The problem here is at the very fundamental base of the argument. I have been trying to show how justification works and if your argument is essentially "it doesn't work that way," then you are basically overlooking my proof and just reasserting your own argument without discrediting mine.

Look over my argument. Think about it. I assure you, it makes sense. If you want to go against it, go point by point with the points you find inaccurate and give me in concise form what you would say instead. I ask for this as a concession. Please do me this kindness, because I'm very busy with papers and can't examine in great depth at the moment...point by point arguments would be a great help.

[quote name='jesussaves' post='1108982' date='Nov 2 2006, 06:37 PM']
What exactly does the justification from Jesus achieve if you have to justify yourself completely inwardly? Is it the initial justification? The potential?
[/quote]
Justification from Jesus achieves salvation. We do not justify ourselves alone, we cooperate with His justification of us by working with grace to apply justification to ourselves. It's like this...all justification flows from the Cross of Christ...it is the living water...God grants salvation to those who have the living water welling up inside of themselves. Therefore, we want to take that flow from the Cross and make it well up inside ourselves. God initiates this and we respond by doing as He commanded us: "believe and be baptized." When we are baptized, we die and rise with Christ...the Cross itself is placed in our very hearts and we have a spring of living water welling up in our hearts. Then God says, "look, I have planted the seeds and have let the water flow, but there are parts of your heart still closed off...the dirt is tightly packed...take this hoe and loosen it...I will give you the strength...I will reside in you and with your cooperation, I myself shall loosen it and uproot the weeds...and you shall be made perfect." It is not enough that we should dwell in heaven; God wants heaven to dwell in us. Then we will truly be complete.

[jesussaves]

I could agree maybe in theory that the Catholic idea that heaven inside you is what God requires. But I can't get past the notion that the Catholic Church doesn't teach faith AND works. Faith *through* works seems like a vaque way to smoke and mirror the fact that it's faith and works.
To be clear, maybe I can agree in some weird way you teach we are saved by faith through works, but at least as far as justification, we are justified by faith AND works, at least according to the Catholic Church, albeit noting those works are by the grace of God.

Edited November 21, 2006 by jesussaves

[Katholikos]

To put the Catholic - Protestant disagreement on faith and works in historical perspective:

"His [Martin Luther's] thunderbolt idea that faith alone was sufficient for salvation came, in his own words, as 'knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower. ' "

Source: William Manchester, [i]A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance[/i] (Little, Brown & Company, 1993, p. 140); quoted in [i]TRIUMPH: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church -- A 2,000-Year History[/i], H.W. Crocker III, Forum, 2001, p. 237.

The Catholic Faith comes to us from the Apostles.

James 2:24: "See how a man is justified by works and not by faith alone."

===========================
Blessed Father Damien, pray for us!

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='jesussaves' post='1125197' date='Nov 21 2006, 02:52 PM']
I could agree maybe in theory that the Catholic idea that heaven inside you is what God requires. But I can't get past the notion that the Catholic Church doesn't teach faith AND works. Faith *through* works seems like a vaque way to smoke and mirror the fact that it's faith and works.
To be clear, maybe I can agree in some weird way you teach we are saved by faith through works, but at least as far as justification, we are justified by faith AND works, at least according to the Catholic Church, albeit noting those works are by the grace of God.
[/quote]
Let me put it this way: it is not Catholic teaching that we are saved by faith and works as if they were two separate conditions necessary for salvation which both must be met by the faithful to get to heaven.

Sometimes seeing what one does not believe helps clarify what one does believe.

[jesussaves]

[quote]I wanted to sort of shift the question a bit because I thought that this approach would cut to the heart of the matter better. The short answer is that yes, you are justified in this life if you have grace in your soul because you have the sort of "minimum" conformity with Christ, but are you as justified as you will ever be? No. We believe that we continue to grow and grow in justification. You only need a certain amount to get into heaven, but you want to grow past that. This begs the question, why do we want to do more than the minimum if the minimum gets us to heaven? Well, think of it like this: in heaven, God will pour Himself out to you in love (I assume we agree here, although it's really only an analogy). You are a vessel made to hold God's grace. As long as you hold His grace, you are justified. However, you can hold more grace, and the more room you make in yourself by uprooting evil, the more grace you can hold. Well, when you get to heaven, you will be filled with grace, undoubtedly, but during this life you can be stretched to hold more. Thus, while in any case you will be completely blessed in heaven, your capacity for blessing can increase. That and it's just a good thing to be conformed more and more to Christ (what true Christian wouldn't want to be?).[/quote]

I wanted to reply again, because I see a point I made that was possibly good, obscured by a point I made that was not so good above, in response to this paragraph. Here is how I replied, minus the obscured part, plus a comment from way earlier.

way earlier.
[quote]You say we are justified at the conversion and at any point thereafter before death. Then you say there are degrees of justification, where some are less justified. I realize your story of being late to class would leave on to think you are more justified than the other. Are you saying the one that is less justified isn't justified completely? How are you saying they are both justified, but one is less justified.[/quote] Add: It's almost contradictory, at least at this level of understanding.

reply to your quote, and my thought on what the catholic thought must be to be legitimate.
[quote]I think the justificaiton in the catholic thought could be said as legitimate in this way. When someone does good, they retract what needs to be justified by Jesus. Their subjective justification makes up for the objective justification of Jesus. [/quote]
While of course acknowleding the whole time grace is the copperating impetus the whole time in Catholic thought.

Or another way of making sense of the Catholic thought, to me, is to say that the one who is less justified is indeed less justified, while living, but when they die, they both have a minimal justification to achieve salvation, even though one has less while living.

I think I'm beginning to understand, but I want to be clear. Actually what you said in the quote is probably enough to explain, but I want you to point out any errors I'm making restating it and giving impications to it.


I think I can accept the above, but then you add the idea of purgatory and how we have to achieve full perfection, to be justified. That still requires our own abilities, albeit graced. Maybe I"m just a doubting Thom so to speak, but I don't see us achieving that, even in purgatory. Maybe when we die we'll have much more incentive etc to increase where we need and it's more beyond my understanding now. Plus maybe I should just have faith that it can happen.

Finally, I thought I'd add, if the above is true, that I think you're doing yourself a diservice most of the time as I've seen you respond to others, saying that they are desribing Pelgians (sp?) when they accurse you of faith and works because we must cooperate with the grace. That simply to a prot would be a fancy foot work to get around the fact you have to cooperate and thus earn it, albeit graced. Even in protestant circles you have to cooperate, or atleast the better prots, but you aren't earning it. I think the best response is what you said above, noting that we are justified at each moment. Or at least justified enough to make puragory and then receive full justification after that.

Edited December 18, 2006 by jesussaves

[jesussaves]

If there are no problems with my characterizations, let me know that too.

Thanks.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Okay, it's been such a long time since this thread was brought up, so I may need a little simpler post.

Anyway, it is Pelagian to claim that we can save ourselves by our works. That is not the Catholic position. The Catholic position is that we grow in justification by allowing God to live in us, by making room (by the grace of God) for the grace of God, so that He may reshape us into His likeness, which was damaged with the Fall. Thus, having been reshaped and joined to Christ, we continue to grow in His likeness, becoming therefore more justified, since we grow in Him who is justified. All this is done by grace, which we open ourselves to so that it may work in us for our salvation. Openness to grace is cooperation with grace, which works the clay that is man into a worthy vessel for God. A vessel that has a bit of an indention in it can hold water, but a vessel with a deeper opening can hold more water. Any vessel that holds this water, the life of God within us, shall be saved, but some hold more than others. They hold it by being shaped in the likeness of Christ, who holds all water (grace, in this metaphor). Mortal sin destroys that likeness and shatters the earthen vessel; God restores it, but only when it is willing and cooperates with His efforts.

Does this metaphor help?

Is there anything I have left unaddressed?

[jesussaves]

Not really but that's okay. I'm trying to get to the root of what you're saying means, to distinguish it from protestant theology. But instead of asking you to go through everything else if you're not sure of what I'm referring to in the last post, as I think I understand your theology now, can you verify that you still ascribe to this below? (it was written by you earlier) Particularly the bold part.

[quote]I wanted to sort of shift the question a bit because I thought that this approach would cut to the heart of the matter better. The short answer is that yes, you [b]are justified in this life if you have grace in your soul because you have the sort of "minimum" conformity with Christ[/b], but are you as justified as you will ever be? No. We believe that we continue to grow and grow in justification. You only need a certain amount to get into heaven, but you want to grow past that. This begs the question, why do we want to do more than the minimum if the minimum gets us to heaven? Well, think of it like this: in heaven, God will pour Himself out to you in love (I assume we agree here, although it's really only an analogy). You are a vessel made to hold God's grace. As long as you hold His grace, you are justified. However, you can hold more grace, and the more room you make in yourself by uprooting evil, the more grace you can hold. Well, when you get to heaven, you will be filled with grace, undoubtedly, but during this life you can be stretched to hold more. Thus, while in any case you will be completely blessed in heaven, your capacity for blessing can increase. That and it's just a good thing to be conformed more and more to Christ (what true Christian wouldn't want to be?).[/quote]

I think I could even ascribe to it, but I still need to struggle with your idea of mortal sin, to decide if it's true, but I won't bother you with that.

Edited December 19, 2006 by jesussaves

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Yes, I ascribe to the part in bold. If you have grace, you are justified, but you grow in justification as you grow in grace.

I'd be happy to explain mortal sin, if you wish. I'm sure you're familiar with all the common arguments.

[jesussaves]

Okay you can give some initial impressions for me. I have problems with the practicality of no mortal sins. I understand how if you have a mortal sin, you're not going to acheive full justification, as required with Catholic theology. It seems that you are having to be the one to turn to the Father, it's not Him calling you... at least not as much as in my brand of protestant theology. That is, in mine, we're clean, or at least saved, and whatever we lack, we are either covered with snow, or the bad parts of us are cut off. (that's one thing you could explain too, is it that Catholics can have larger pots/potential than others because they have more positive graces from the good they did? otherwise, in catholic theology, all must be justified inside and out, so how can anyone have different levels?) In my theology, the fact he justifies us regardless or a grave sin is good motive to return to him, out of gratitude. In catholic, it seems more out of fear that I would not sin. Of course, these reason I am giving are more subjective, as far as who's calling who, but if you could touch on that.

Also. I realize you shouldn't go calling every small sin a mortal sin, but even a lot of venial sins seems to warrant mortal category, that most people commit, even catholics. This is mainly because, to persist in venial sins is to commit a mortal sin to my understanding. So if I have a tendency to call my brother an idiot, or think it, even if I confess it, I know I am going to do it again. (remeber Jesus said even calling them that is wrong, but regardless this is just an example of a regularly commited venial sin. another issue would be if most should be mortal because of an indirect way such as saying "you idiot" is like murder, etc) That might be a bad example, pick any intentional sin that you commit regularly. You might lie to yourself and say you won't do it again, go to confession, but you always go back to it. You not only lied to yourself, but to God. Or if you had a truly good faith wish to everytime, but you always fail, the fact that you always do it seems to warrant mortal category, once you did it yet again? It's something that you're doing knowingly against God.

And as far as purgatory goes, that only cleans the temporal punishments to sin, not the actual sins. Even if they were venial sins, you cannot make up for them in purgatory to my understanding, and who doesn't have at least venial sins on them? Let alone mortal sins, which cannot be made in purgatory anyway.

I said a mouthful, reply to what you can.