As I have said more times than you probably wanted to hear, I understand hard-core Catholics, Calvinists, Bible literalists and atheists. In the conservative movement, the Randian Objectivists made atheism a sine qua non of belonging to their group while the Sharon Statement required with equal rigidity that one had to believe in God in some form to belong to the Young Americans for Freedom.
These were the two groups I mostly worked with in college.
In Washington rock-hard Catholics, Calvinists, Bible literalists and some atheists, all of whom considered the other positions intolerable and said so, were my regular allies.
I am about 99% atheist and 1% Christian. For me it’s one or the other.
The one position I truly find alien is wishy-washy religion.
If you believe in salvation, there is not a lot of room for a wiggle. I am completely mystified by a “sort of” God.
I guess I was just not born to be moderate ANYTHING.
They are certainly free to practice whatever this is. I will defend their right to do it, but I refuse to try to understand it.
#1 by Mike on 06/14/2005 - 10:39 pm
I grew up with somewhat of a Babtist upbringing. Early in my adult life I was always unsure whether I had crossed the line of salvation or not. It was not until I considered the idea of unconditional forgiveness that I could have any peace in the matter. Thinking about it, the phrase, “I forgive you if…” just doesn’t sound right.
#2 by Bob on 06/15/2005 - 2:32 am
Mike, that is my feeling exactly.
If Christ could forgive those who crucified Him, He doesn’t seem to have put a lot of conditions on His forgiveness. That seems to be in total contradiction to the theologian who stands in the church door preventing anyone from entering who does not fully agree with him.
#3 by H.S. on 06/15/2005 - 12:47 pm
Agreed. The facts are all important as usual. The Greek is very plain. We (as non-eyewitnesses with no record left to say) have NO idea who was still left standing there under the voice of Jesus as he died. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Them who? John with His mother we know. Roman military, family, crowd gawkers – it had been hours in the Jerusalem outdoors. Doubtless none from the Sanhedrin but maybe believers (which were many). We have no idea.
He is quoted as already condemning to eternal death members of the ruling elite, as He plainly said and as they indicated they plainly knew.
He said as recorded plainly, salvation forgiveness was forever from that point forward, unconditional.
He said as recorded plainly, NO salvation forgiveness is forever as well. No forgiveness is the default condition. Those entire context quotes of Jesus are in John, chapter 3, to name just one.
The default condition is what we ALL are bothered by. It is what a Creator has complete control over. It’s His way or no way and it doesn’t matter how we interpret it or whether we have or don’t have a personal opinion about it. We have nothing to say about it – He already said it all.
#4 by Elizabeth on 06/15/2005 - 7:08 pm
I became a Catholic for a lot of reasons. One of them was to attach myself to a religion with a structure, with specifics. Unfortunately, my first continuing in-person contacts with Catholics were on a public college campus, under the aegis of a very liberal group of priests — and this was in the two years before the death of Pope Paul VI.
I was heartbroken! Where was the strong, vital Church I’d read about in my college’s collection of Catholic material from the 1940s and 1950s!
Fortunately, it all started to return in 1978. On Easter 1981, I stood before a bishop and was confirmed as a Roman Catholic.
And it’s just gotten better….though you’d never know it if all you see about the Catholic Church is in the mass media.
#5 by Richard L. Hardison on 06/16/2005 - 8:23 pm
The idea of unconditional eternal security in the life is heretical. Salvation is based on a faith relationship with Christ. That relationship will determine how you act, as you act on what you believe.
Unless you can prove Augustine’s and Calvin’s idea of double predestination, then the idea of “once save always saved” does not hold water (I wish you luck!). Once you are in eternity, and you aren’t as long as you are in this life, then eternal security will apply. Sin, and our predeliction for it, will be removed completely, and sin will be but a bad, but dimming, memory.
If you wish to oopose the above, you need to ask yourself why the early church did not agree with you. Having been throught he Greek on the matter, it does not treat your position very kindly. I’ve seen how people like Charles Stanly and Adrian Rogers handle the issue, and they badly wrest the passages they appeal to.
#6 by Mike on 06/16/2005 - 11:27 pm
Think of a child, is learning best accomplished under threat of intense punishment, or in guiding hands that always forgive no matter how bad you screw it up?
Back a bit Bob spoke of addiction. For the addict nothing else matters except fulfilling his addiction. How are you going to save an addict when you deny him the only thing that will pull him out of it, forgiveness. There is an old rock song with the line, “I can’t make a deal with the preacher, no I can’t make a buy in heaven.”
Salvation is denied to the “rabble who know nothing of the law”
#7 by H.S. on 06/17/2005 - 2:56 am
The idea of unconditional eternal security in the life is heretical.
Salvation, the ACT when your sorry, repentant spirit and soul believes on and in the Lord Jesus Christ who came at a time in history to earth a man, demonstrated He WAS God, died to serve out your sentence for your personal sins, paid that judgement penalty so that you will live in Heaven after you die, with Him, ONLY happens in that “time” period of your eternal life while you are living and breathing on earth.
Nothing in N.T. or from early church records even remotely suggests men, or women or children, once truly “born again” through the Spirit, sealed by the Spirit indwelling the believer, go through it then again and again and again and again and again and again via the flesh and its mind, will and emotions. Growing with the Spirit sustaining you from “birth” until whenever you die IS in the Power of His Hand. He holds you, not you Him. I am confident of this singular thing, that if He has truly begun a good work in you, He will keep on performing it in you until the end.
Salvation is based on a faith relationship with Christ. That relationship will determine how you act, as you act on what you believe.
An absolute of the Christian faith “Be Holy, as I Am Holy.” [you would know the Greek definition for Holy is not sinless]
Sin, and our predeliction for it, will be removed completely, and sin will be but a bad, but dimming, memory.
Mostly an absolute to any believer. We can’t know what/how our memories might be there.
If you wish to oopose the above, you need to ask yourself why the early church did not agree with you. Having been throught he Greek on the matter, it does not treat your position very kindly. I’ve seen how people like Charles Stanly and Adrian Rogers handle the issue, and they badly wrest the passages they appeal to.
The early church and Greek completely agree with “my” postion. And it agrees with our position as Paul worked out many times, and the blood brother of Jesus stated so well. In Christ you are a new creature. You are not sinless. “Yes, a man may say, you have faith, and I have works: show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith *by* my works. You believe that there is one God; you do well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? … For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”
Jesus said He bought and paid full price for me. In me or by myself there’s not a chance I could perform for and keep myself on Santa’s good side and fear and worry and fret the “scale of good and bad” tips to my favor. But He will not LET me go, nor can I be taken away. It’s all about the relationship for sure. That’s the question to be asked: is there one?
You know that He said Himself that there will be many more on judgement day that stand condemned and, after listening to their Santa’s list of goods, He will say in awful truth and sole power… “Depart from Me, **I** NEVER knew *you.* He NEVER knew them. Not a plucking of the eternal life flower petals all your time on earth… “I save you, I lose you; I save you, I lose you; I save you, I, oops….” He NEVER knew them, EVER.
I will get for myself hard knocks and consequences here for my wrong and sin, others will hurt and injure and defame me, but I know now I WILL be in heaven. The presence now of His Holy Spirit inside of me, alongside of my spirit covers me continually before the Great Judge. Why bother otherwise. This is what He says. By faith, I believe it. Jesus stated He is able to make His own slave stand. The slaves are sinners — but for a little while.
#8 by Trager Smith on 06/18/2005 - 7:10 am
Hey, Bob, you’d better adjust the 99% atheist, 1% Christian to 90% atheist, 10% Christian, for it is written “The Earth from God we do but rent/and all he asks is ten percent.”