Saved?

Great Debates
41

Or not be able to enter heaven for that matter

I am also not claiming that some church doctrine hasn’t implied this. I am also saying that there is also contradictory doctrine as previously addressed. It is just a very debatable issue. I should also note again that non-catholic christians don’t follow catholic doctrine either and their beliefs may tell them differently regarding judgement, salavation, and heaven.

This is exactly what makes the saved question such a contested one and good subject matter for a thread. There are many differing beliefs and opinions in this regard. Everyone does not follow the same doctrines or even interpret that doctrine the same way.

42

Your interpretation, mine Paul’s etc. are just that - interpretations. We can include Matthew, Mark, Luke and John too for that matter. They are the limited understandings of “mere mortals”. So, they are each flawed. Even if inspired, they are still limited by human understanding. I interpret the statement about “those who reject” the same way I interpret other reasons for being doomed. I was taught it had to be a very concious and deliberate thing. It was not God sending you to hell, it was you choosing to go there. For everyone else there was always hope. Going along with this, anyone of a different belief was simply doing what they had been taught was right. They may not go to heaven, but it would not be hell either. If Christ could forgive thieves, killers and those nasty evil tax collectors (joke), does that not say that we all have a pretty good chance? Most of us are not as bad as all that.

43

This view is precisely what I’ve been trying to draw attention to. It’s a wonderfully inclusive view, but it seems to necessitate the negation of scriptural and clerical authority and any sense of spiritual imperative when it comes to the subject of salvation. No one is an expert; salvation is what you make of it. To say otherwise is to accept that there may be only one proper way to salvation, and that to stray from this path is to be damned. I would never argue that’s a terribly nice way to put it, but I would also never argue it’s inconsistent with Christian thought. Obscure thinkers like the Evangelists, Paul, and sundry Popes might have said otherwise, and I’m not to take their views as authoritative on the subject?

44

We can’t even come to a total agreement on the exact meaning of what they said. They may be the ultimate authority (maybe not). But if it is not painfully obvious just what they mean, if these were obscure thinkers, how do we follow them exactly? How do you know the one true path, if even the great scholars can’t agree? Even within any one church there are different factions. To complicate things even more, all our bibles are translations of previous translations. Things get muddied along the way. You lose the exact shadings and nuances of the original.

You mentioned Lutheranism earlier. Ever think about why the Church had such a problem with him? From what I remember, he was a Catholic priest, who yelled “bullshit” when he got fed up with the greed and corruption he saw. They killed him for it. They got so angry because he was telling the truth. He called them a bunch of crooks, they called him a heretic. Did they do this out of some advanced wisdom or God given authority? No, they did it because they wanted to protect themselves and keep the game going. They were the clerical authority and even kings listened to them. Just because someone is the authority doesn’t guarantee they are right. (Point of info, I was raised Catholic).

No human has a monopoly on the truth. No human ever can. To know the entire truth would be to know everything, the infinite. To know everything is to be God. That job is already taken. God does what God does, while we humans play with our interpretations and mental gymnastics.

We may as well argue about predestination and free will too. These are other subjects that we will never nail down to a final definitive answer. I venture that if God came down right now and personally told us the, I don’t know, the Great Truth About It All, we would have no clue what he was talking about - it’s just too far beyond us.

So, all we can do is follow what we believe is right and hope he is the just and loving God he claims to be in our own books - books we believe he inspired.

45

:confused:

Are you referring to Marin Luther? There was possibly an attempt on his life rather early in his career as a Reformer; but I’m pretty sure he died in his home town of an illness, purportedly not long after making some disparaging comment about the Pope. His last written words were “We are all beggars: this is True.”

46

You’re right, it was natural causes. I get confused - a lot of folks were being burned at that time. But they sure were upset over him at any rate.

47

The title Hell is the state of those who reject God while catchy it is a bit different from the actual address that was given, and both are still open to much interpretation, and really isn’t about anyone going to hell at all, but about salvation. This address was in part given to what he hoped would quiet the growing debate among catholic scholars about if hell and the devil even exist. It is not in any way about damning any group of people. He is hoping to give some sort of explaination to what hell may be.

As for his statements,I am of the opinion He is only stating here that he believes that in life those that reject god are making their lives hell by doing so. The statement referenced in the title is actually is referring to one of the very first things he says which is

“Hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God, but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life.”

The document explains this as meaning "as is commonly said, make life “hell”. "

It also references that all can go to heaven later when it says

“The New Testament sheds new light on the condition of the dead, proclaiming above all that Christ by his Resurrection conquered death and extended his liberating power to the kingdom of the dead.”

Note that it does not say kingdom of catholics or kingdom of christians.

The document later is of the opinion that it is works that are used determination of salvation when it says

“Redemption nevertheless remains an offer of salvation which it is up to people to accept freely. This is why they will all be judged by what they [have done]”

He does not say it is based on level of faith as you have claimed is the main factor.

The point is not whether or not you agree with my interpretation, but rather simply that there are many interpretations of any doctrine, whether you agree with it or not. It is not black and white at all.

You are also focusing on one possible catholic doctrine interpretation which even you yourself don’t necessarily believe, when you must remember that catholics are only part of a larger community of christians, jews, and muslims.

48

It looks like the Pope agrees with me. :smiley:

49

I walked away from my discovery of Christianity almost 20 years ago (I call it going from Born-Again Christian to Dead-Again Agnostic), but here’s what it meant to me at the time.

Jesus was an early self-help guru. I know that at that point in my young life I felt weighted down by the burden of my own habits. One of the toughest obstacles to personal change is the feeling that you can’t overcome the patterns you have locked yourself into, or that no one will believe your transformation and you will falter for lack of support.

I did not believe Jesus was God, at first, nor that he rose from the dead (my Zondervan Bible had a footnote saying the earliest extant texts some of the gospels did not contain the story of the ressurection at the end, which I always found interesting).

For me, being “forgiven” meant that at some great level where it mattered, I could simply make a positive change in my life free of worries about the ramifications, that it was OK to take the first step. Being “saved”, therefore, meant I was saved from the mindset that prevented me from becoming who I wished to be.

This worked for me for a while, then those with whom I discussed such things at the time insisted on piling the mythological crap on it, and I lost interest.

50

I suppose he was. I tend to think of him as a community activist. He didn’t like the system, tried to help his people, and wanted to make things better for the people of his community

If you spent time trying to figure things out for yourself, don’t allow others to crush your conclusions just becaue they don’t want to hear what you feel or intergate your point of view.

51

The problem I have with the term “saved”, as used by fund’ist/Evangelical Protestants is that it usually refers to having a conversion experience. “I got saved on such and such a date, in such and such a church…”, usually meaning that some preacher instilled such a fear of going to h-e-double hockey sticks in them that they went weeping to the altar and said some version of the Sinner’s Prayer.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with conversion experiences, I had one of my own about seven and a half years ago (in the privacy of my own apartment, though), they do have their place. If a person has a moment in which they realize that they are in a state of not having a good relationship with God (or, indeed, even that they don’t have a relationship with God at all), and feel an immediate need to take steps to rectify that situation, I think that this is a good thing.

I do not, however, feel that having such an experience constitutes “getting saved”.

Many fund’ists feel that having such a conversion, or, at the very least, making a conscious decision to “give your life to God” or “give your heart to Jesus”, whatever that means (and it nearly always involves saying the Sinner’s Prayer) is 1) absolutely necessary for salvation
2) the only thing necessary for salvation
3) bring on the tentacled monsters!*

which is, quite frankly, horse pucky.

A lot of people “get saved” in a highly emotional state. Many of them go on to become good Christians. Many others will attend church for a few weeks, then the emotional rush will wear off and they go back to their old lifestyles without having gotten any real spiritual benefit from the experience. Still others will become fund’ists of the ilk who think that being a Christian is about refraining from certain activities which they define as “sin”, and demand that all others do the same, while in their hearts remaining the same (or worse) cruel, spiteful, hate-filled people they were before they answered that altar call. Also, a person can either have a relationship with God from childhood, or develop one over time, without going through the formality of saying the Sinner’s Prayer or making a conscious decision to give their life/heart/pet ferret over to God. They just sort of… do it.

Another issue I have, especially with fund’ists, is that a lot of the time, the churches/pastors concentrate on “getting people saved”, but give little thought to the spiritual life or development of the new convert. What then happens is a lot of people “get saved”, then join a religion without having any real knowledge of what that religion teaches, except that this guy named Jesus died on the cross for their sins, and they damned well better believe in Him if they don’t want to go to Hell. Then these folks start to pick up smatterings here and there of what that particular church/denomination teaches, find that it is at odds with what they’re reading in the Bible or that it sticks in their craw for some other reason, and end up “church hopping” for the rest of their Christian lives, trying to find the “true church”.

The Catholic and Orthodox churches take the opposite tactic (not sure about the more mainstream Protestant denoms, maybe Polycarp can shed some light on this)- they have a potential convert attend RCIA/adult catechism classes for a period of time, then leave it to the person to decide whether they want to convert/believe that this is the True Church, or whatever, after that person has a good handle on the beliefs and doctrines of the Church.

[sub]* I fully expect that Tentacle Monster will now pop into the thread and demand to know what I want. He seems to follow me through the fora waiting for me to post a two-item list. [/sub]

52

I agree, I posted something along these lines in another thread regarding “have you been saved” that this thread was spawned from.

Essentially, the question in my mind assumes a conversation experience which only applies to people that find faith later in life and assumes that you somehow personally know that you will now go to heaven because the lock in now in, which I don’t see how anyone could possibly know.