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well, pretty much the same thing. he's just spewing forth some of the same tunnel vision Reformation-based errors. . the gospel consists of carrots and sticks. If we focus only on the "carrot verses" then we'll believe as they do. but if we choose to read all verses, without finding a way to make the "stick verses" say other than what they say, then we'll believe as I do. at the end of the day these novel views reflect a misunderstanding of the will of God and this purposes with man.
IMO Sidon is saying the opposite of what you’re asserting. My theology supports Matt 19:17 with 19:26. IOW, Catholicism maintains that, under the new covenant, man can-and still must-obey the commandments but can only do so by being under grace, living by the Spirit, in communion with God, not under the law. The law must still be fulfilled, righteousness is not merely imputed but given at justification, by internal change, a new heart, and man must then invest and express and grow in that righteousness to gain eternal life. His righteousness must truly exceed that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law IOW.
That wasn’t the point. Some from the Sola Fide crowd and all from the OSAS group focus on those verses that might support the idea that righteousness is only imputed at justification and salvation cannot be lost: the carrot. But ignore those verses that indicate that man must strive and persevere and do good and obey the commandments such that he can compromise and lose his state of righteousness, by behaving badly or acting unjustly: the stick.
You clearly avoided my question, I will assert that if a person accepts salvation, they are not eternally saved, they can at some future point renounce Jesus and their salvation. Would you like to disagree with that statement?
Without the blood we can’t perform, beginning with our faith. Because the blood brings reconciliation and union with the only One who can write put His law in our minds and write it on our hearts.
We can always default to that, I guess. No scriptural argument can ever suffice IOW. And that is one of the problems with the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. There often can be more than one plausible yet conflicting interpretation. But the truths of our faith are not based strictly and primarily on biblical exegesis, as if this person’s understanding must be true because they’re better credentialed in Bible studies, until an even more highly credentialed scholar comes along with a different POV perhaps. Our faith is living. It was received before a word of the New Testament was written and the basics of what it means to be justified happen to be the same in the eastern and western ancient churches and also happen to agree with mine, which wasn’t always the case as I had bought into the Protestant line (not that it’s really so consistent or unified within Protestantism), for quite some time in the past.
Salvation is all about a partnership, a communion that man was made for but which Adam effectively dismissed and rejected in the beginning, initiated now but not forced upon His lost creation by God. Sin has always separated man from God, with that separation, itself, being the essence of man’s death aka the state sometimes called “original sin”. So, yes, man’s obligation to be righteous does not go away under the new covenant. He’s finally now given the means, the only authentic means, to fulfill it, by the Spirit, with God rather than on our own, apart from Him. This vital union is entered into, from man’s side of the coin, via faith, which, itself, is both a gift of grace and a human choice and act.
Yes, He knows the end from the beginning and knows every hair on our heads and without Him we can’t ‘live, and move and have our being’. He doesn’t even need us and yet loves us lavishly. Man, the work of His hands, is really quite a big deal even if we rarely act like it in our fallen state. But man is a noble being, or potentially so, created in Gods own image, given the freedom too be ‘left in the hands of his own counsel’, with a justice and purpose and ultimate perfection yet to be achieved. But it’s only attainable to the extent that man’s will is involved, even if only weakly at first. And this is because, to put it concisely, man’s perfection is attained as He comes to love God with his whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and his neighbor as himself, to love as God does, IOW, as best as he’s capable, with the help of grace. And love, necessarily, involves choice, or else it isn’t love at all. So it’s a work of Gods in us but a work we must participate in.
Yes, and yet it does us nothing for us until and unless we accept the offer, the offer of faith to believe in who He is and what He’s done. And that is the beginning and foundation of man’s salvation as it’s the beginning of a new life, in the family of God. That communion, itself, is the essence of justice or righteousness for man. Then we must remain in Him, which implies following His will daily even as we’ll slip and backslide at times.
