If salvation is a boolean value - you have it, or not at any given moment, then (unless this is one of those mystical square circle things), it can’t be acquired gradually.
Except that every other thing I can think of that applies to us humans, is gradual (or at least non-instantaneous) in some way.
The only way I have been able to make sense of this, if there is indeed sense to be made, is the refinery fire bit in 1 Cor 3, which appears to be saying that the bad bits will be burned away, leaving only the good bits - but everyone escapes the fire.
Friar Ted, I have already pointed out that this thread is not to be used for off-topic polemics. Your posts could be perceived as baiting, at this point. Stick to this topic or open your own thread.
[ /Moderating ]
On this board, not very many I suspect. The advance of secularism over the last few hundred years has helped to improve the ethics of the religious in that respect. None of which, of course, justifies the continued existence of organised religions in any way. To continue the virus analogy, which I think is vastly underappreciated, just because AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was, at least for well-off Westerners, doesn’t suddenly make it “a good thing”. Not to mention that, while we pat ourselves on the back for our relative defanging of AIDS over here, it’s still causing suffering and death for millions over there. Like religion.
I, with my watered-down Catholic background, sip tea with watered-down Protestant friends, and we’re all very agreeable, so who anyone who mentions Northern Ireland is clearly just being a bigoted meanie. I chat to a muslim co-worker just before he shoots off for a smoke-break, and we’re gossiping about the weather, so obviously 9/11 was just some kind of freak accident of nature. We go out for drinks after work with a Jewish guy, so I guess the Middle East is just peachy right now.
The Archbishop of Canterbury isn’t overseeing death camps for gays. Oh, WOW! Let’s give the guy a fucking medal. The Catholic church is no longer stamping down on free thought, burying Europe in a dark age, and burning heretics. Yay, go Christianity! Aren’t organised religions wonderful?
Or maybe, just maybe, they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of reason, compassion and justice. And every time some nut kills an abortion provider, or another 50 people get blown up in a market in Pakistan, or an evangelical group in a rich first-world country lends support to anti-gay legislation involving the death penalty in some African backwater, it’s a reminder of what the impulse to faith is capable of.
I think it’s more like the court system. There is some cutoff point between innocent and guilty, but within either group there are varying levels, and more importantly, it is based on lots of mitigating factors since an act is good or bad based on intentions and outcome more-so than it is on what the act was.
That’s stupid. People who are bad want to suffer damnation? :dubious:
I can see the idea in Jesus’ teachings, turning your cheek and all, but a) that goes entirely against the Old Testament God, and b) it’s stupid. “You’re a murderer, but you really want to go to Heaven. Well…oh alright! C’mere brother!”
To the OP- I think it’s like conception & gestation on to birth. One can entrust themselves to Christ, miscarry themselves by breaking faith & settling into known sin, recommit & restore their saving relationship, and so on. God’s Grace will hold onto one & run interference with one’s loss of salvation, but if a person is Hellbound dedicated to renouncing faith & living in rebellion, I do believe He permits one to run into damnable apostasy. Now, perhaps they never were saved to begin with or perhaps God will still hold on & get them back in the end, but I do know this…
I know a lot of people who once seemed to be devoted faithful loving Christians who now seem to be Hellbound rebels. I also know a lot of people who do not believe or behave in ways consistent with Christianity but who I have a tough time believing God/Christ isn’t working undercover in them & will slip them into Heaven in the End.
God is Infinite and all Creation is within Him. The idea that a part of Him is in need of “salvation” from Himself is simply ludicrous.
But as we see in Proverbs 23:7, “As a man thinketh, so is he.” which I would parse as so it seems to him. As Jesus put it in Mark 7
This is to say, to judge another is to judge myself. The only salvation I (and the world) am in need of is from my own judgment. Forgive and know yourself forgiven. That alone offers peace of mind or, if you will, Salvation.
Religion is organized superstition. Given man’s subjective nature, a universal theology is impossible. A universal experience of God thru forgiveness, however, is possible, necessary and inevitable, being God’s Will.
They don’t WANT to suffer damnation, but they don’t want to love & obey God. Therefore, Heaven would not be Heavenly to them. Heck, I have no problem believing that in the end, everyone does go to Heaven, but to those who are in utter defiance of God, IF there will be any, it will be pure Hell.
And by the time they get to that point, they will have had every opportunity to entrust themselves to Christ.
What of people for whom other people’s salvation (or, at least, not damnation) is required for their situation to be truly Heavenly? If I managed to somehow live a life acceptable to God, yet some of my friends did not, I don’t believe I would find a situation which those friends find Hellish to be particularly Heavenly. And even with people I don’t like, I don’t think I would be able to to truly enjoy Heaven if there were, in my eyes, an unfair amount of unpleasantness for them.
Also i’d argue that it seems reasonable to say that a person who truly understood God, as he is held to be, yet rejected him, would be either insane or mentally challenged in some way. Defiance, in the face of utter good and all that kind of thing, seems to me implausible without assuming not just personal differences but defects. In which case unpleasantness seems harsh.
If I’m reading you here, you’re saying that the problem will be that people will not want to love and obey god, and this will make heaven unpleasant for them. Doesn’t that mean that in heaven everyone will be forced to love and obey god?
I’m not sure how being forced to love him would work, but being forced to obey is easy enough to comprehend - it’s somewhere on the scale from rigid totalitarianisn to slavery. Am I reading you right here?
IMHO the moment you say ‘Jesus come into my heart’ or likewise salvation is then inevitable and there is nothing you or anyone can do to stop it. Once you give any part of yourself to Jesus, He will take it, no matter what it’s condition, and work on you from within, eventually bringing your whole being either piece by piece or in whole to your knees one day saying to Jesus (again in one form or another) ‘I surrender, you are my Lord’.
At this time, when Jesus is Lord of your life IMHO salvation is completed, though your work in His service may continue.
A truly loving God would not force loving obedience, but attempt to “win by being winsome”, to be that which will eventually bring the person rejectinmg Hm to belief and love. The God in whom I believe takes this patient, laissez faire approach – and gets criticized in conequence for not being aggressive enough in defending from the ills of the world.
Plus “True courtesy in the giving of gifts considers the taste of the recipient.” Just as Lewis once sardonically commented that the same place could be at the same time a Hell for men and a heaven for mosquitoes, so too is it not too difficult to envision a series of experiences that would bee simultaneously heaven for kanicbird and he;; for Der Trihs. And that is not said with any intent to insult either, but with a sympathetic appreciation of their respective personalities.
In this model, too, both Der Trihs and kanicbird will each eventually end up in a place they perceive as a good place to be, and will each think the other is demonstrating poor decision-making skills by choosing to remain in the bad place they’ve chosen.
To address the OP from a different standpoint, I think it’s more a process than anything else. I was born and raised a very strict Roman Catholic, but I remember having very religious experiences as I grew up similar to the feelings of peace described by others. These became less frequent as I grew up, coupled with an idea that the Church wasn’t what it should be by the terms of its own holy books. I compared the anti-scientific views of many Catholics with the writings of Augustine of Hippo and the modern Jesuits, and my faith slipped a little. I compared Jesus’ calm assurance and sense of social justice for all with Paul’s rigid, sweeping proclamations, and my faith slipped a lot–I can still imagine Jesus looking down with a growing sort of horror as Paul’s influence waxed in Christianity. Before long, around the time of my Confirmation, it was literally true that the people I respected most in the Church were the ones who were least doctrinally pure and who were reviled by my fellow churchgoers. We had a Jesuit who was our parish priest for a long while until his untimely death, and people quit the church (going to different parishes instead) because he used examples from non-Christian philosophers and religious figures, and because he wasn’t afraid to preach about real modern problems like sexuality among teens, drunkenness, sloth (not a safe topic in a town with 90% on welfare), etc. Meanwhile, he devoted his energies to maintaining two parishes AND operating a homeless men’s shelter (still the only one of its kind for a long way in all directions)–and my faith slipped a little more, as I watched the parish reject this Godly man based on quibbles of decorum and theology.
It was about this time that I started doing meditation on the advice of a few Christian monks who used it as part of their daily devotions.
And there was the spark again! The one that I always associated with positive religious experiences! So I read more about meditation. This led me into the depths of religious history, and gradually I learned that it was the act of meditation itself that gave me the positive feelings and increased well-being, regardless of whether I meditated on scriptures, or on the tree in the front yard, or simply nothing at all.
Around the time I got into college, I was Catholic in name only, getting my religious/spiritual needs met via meditative practices, and generally liking it. The pattern continued until about halfway through college I rejected the Catholic Church utterly for its frankly ridiculous policies regarding any number of moral issues, the death blow being the molestation cover-ups. Currently I describe myself as Zen Buddhist, having worked my way specifically in that direction. While I would still consider myself a theistic person, in that I have a very specific gut feeling that there is a God out there somewhere, I also feel like His relevance is very small to my daily life, and it’s the mental strength and centered-ness the techniques of Buddhism give me that are the primary benefits of the religion I practice, rather than the theology.
These days, my salvation comes every day when I take a stray cat to the vet, or hold an elevator for someone, or just really notice some particular aspect of the world and people around me for the truly unique bit of experience that moment represents. And the feeling is more and more common as I practice more, so I’d say it’s a gradual thing–IMHO, the only salvation in this world is the salvation we provide for others and ourself and in turn have provided to us by others.
I recognize it didn’t answer the OP exactly, but it did answer the title of the thread, and I hope that’s relevant enough.
So would you argue that nobody has to do anything to recieve “salvation”? All personality types will be catered to? If I like killing people, then people will be lined up for me to kill?
Not to say that this model is impossible - all you have to do is put everyone in a separate isolated simulated reality, where they cannot interact with anyone else real in any way and instead deal with simalcrums they think are real. (If any interaction is allowed people might decide to hurt each other.) I don’t think this model matches any religion I’ve heard of though - if for no other reason that it makes all religions unnecessary.
Just as Lewis once sardonically commented that the same place could be at the same time a Hell for men and a heaven for mosquitoes, so too is it not too difficult to envision a series of experiences that would bee simultaneously heaven for kanicbird and he;; for Der Trihs. And that is not said with any intent to insult either, but with a sympathetic appreciation of their respective personalities.