Not quite. The Catholic position is that God offers salvation to all: we still can reject it. It’s part of the whole “free will” thing. By Catholic theology, my Grandfather From Hell would be in Hell (that is, not in God’s Presence) not because God rejects him, but because he rejected God; because he was convinced that the choices he’d made put him in Hell and still chose to make them; because he believed he was going to Hell.
Actually, the operative phrase is “getting saved.” “Accepting Jesus” is a modern interloper invented by liberals who no longer wanted the old-fashioned type of religion that their grandparents had. And, unfortunately, it has infected a lot of Christians who are relatively conservative on most points.
Well, until the Mormon church officially stopped doing baptisms for the dead for Jews following outside pressure, that’s what they did. Since Mormons believe one must be baptized in order to go to heaven, they figure most people will accept the baptism by proxy once they get the “straight dope” on the afterlife, which I presume , once you get there, bolsters the case for Mormonism (taught in “spirit prison”, a kind of temporary purgatory that that is the closest thing to a “hell” in Mormonism). Mormons believe that baptisms they can’t do now (for example, people with no genealogical records) will get taken care of somehow during the thousand years after the second coming of Christ.
P.S. I am a lapsed member and am offering a general viewpoint and don’t claim to speak for the Church.
AIUI/IIRC, most Protestant Christian churches these days (I don’t know about the others) maintain that Jews have to trust in Christ for salvation just like anyone else, and that there is nothing “special” or exceptional about them, since this is now the New Testament era.
If Hitler’s in Heaven, I don’t want to go there. :eek:
I think it is impossible to generalize as broadly as “American Christian churches”. Teachings run the entire gamut.
I was raised Roman Catholic (I got better) in the 60s and 70s. What I was taught on the matter varied tremendously on who was doing the teaching - old nun vs. young nun vs. priest. Possibly the dogma was in flux (kind of an oxymoron there) and it settled out after I was done with the whole religion thing. Last thing I was taught was living a good life gets you into heaven, but being a good Catholic qualifies you for booster packs (sacraments) and guidance which makes that goal easier.
My wife was raised in a very liberal church (UCC in Massachusetts), they basically said the same thing but without the need for the booster packs (and with a broader definition of “good”).
In neither case was belief a necessary condition for living a good life.
Conversely, I have a couple of friends that were raised in an extremely conservative church (Church of Christ in rural Indiana) who were taught that not only did you have to believe in Christ to make it to heaven, you had to believe in their version of Christ’s teachings. Not sure how far outside their particular sect you could be and still qualify, but they made damned clear that no Catholics need apply…
The idea of salvation for Jews apart from Jesus is not something all evangelicals agree on. Most believe that it is not possible others that it could be possible.
The existence of Israel is necessary for most eschatological scenarios in evangelicalism but for the most popular scenarios the next step is that Jews from all over the world move to Israel. Many of them are then converted to Christianity and are raptured with the rest of the Christians. Those who do not convert are not singled out but would share in the general misery of the end times and then the final judgement.
That’s pretty much what I’ve always heard- put really simply, God’s covenant with the Jews wasn’t invalidated by the coming of Christ, so whatever deal they had would presumably continue as-is. However, the teaching was also that Christ is for everyone, including Jews who choose to convert.
As far as Catholicism goes, they more or less believe in the “anonymous Christian” doctrine (Anonymous Christian - Wikipedia)
This has shown to be incorrect based upon what others have said.
It is said that Hitler will never repent, and thus fry forever.
I am not sure about the “most”, since catholicism thinks it is possible.
A Jew who chooses to convert is no longer a Jew, so this is kind of meaningless. That a Jew who does choose to convert is saved is kind of obvious from the early history of Christianity.
Reject God or rejects Jesus? I’d say that many Jews forcibly converted or worse never rejected God, but did reject Jesus as a path to salvation - not that salvation means much for us.
Cite?
What’s the alternative - go to Hell?
Catholics are not considered evangelicals, who are Protestant. This thread seems to be mainly interested in evangelical viewpoints re: the Jews.
The first time I heard the phrase “accept Jesus” was in the 1970s in Kentucky. The complete phrase was “Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and personal savior?” The people who liked to ask that question were evangelicals who were not “liberal” by any stretch.
As far as “official” positions, I belong to the Episcopal (Anglican outside the US) Church and I’m not aware of any other major denominations that have fewer official positions on anything than the Anglicans do. The whole church was founded as a compromise to try to avoid religious schism and fighting, broad enough to encompass High-Church Catholicism and low-church protestant evangelicalism. So you don’t even have to leave the Episcopal church to find a whole gamut of opinions on who is saved and the status of the Jews.
But the opinion I most commonly hear goes like this:
- There is no salvation apart from Jesus
- That doesn’t necessarily mean that a person has to understand or recognize that Jesus is the One who has facilitated their salvation/atonement
- Therefore, it is possible (some would say common; some would say universal) for people to be saved outside of knowing Jesus. That would include the Jews.
- Apart from the previous argument, God made a covenant with the Jews and God doesn’t break covenants. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the messianic prophecies, and it doesn’t matter if the Jews accept him or not. The Jews are God’s chosen people who have a special standing with God and been saved by the covenant God made with them from the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through the prophets and including through Jesus.
Of course. I just meant that Jews who convert aren’t bound by that original covenant any longer, which as you say is kind of obvious from the history. But not everyone knows that history, so I went ahead and said it.
Now whether or not they’re still Jews- I think that depends on the definition of Jew; was Peter still a Jew? How about Benjamin Disraeli? Clearly ethnic Jews, but not in a religious sense any longer.
There’s also the doctrine of Baptism of Desire. Strictly speaking it applies to someone who wants to be baptized but dies before having the opportunity (e.g., a “foxhole conversion”); but if you look at it sideways and squint a little — and let’s face it, RCC philosophers and theologians have a lot of practice at doing exactly that — it can be expanded to cover any number of other situations.