Problems with Faith Alone Theology and the Double Imputation Theory.

[kepha31]

If you go back and look at my quote, it was not the idea of justification as meritorious action I was discussing. It was about the way that Roman Church dogma appears to make merchandise out of salvation by guaranteeing it if you do so much of this, so many of that, and a certain number of these. I am having a real problem with that idea.

Yes, I read both your posts, and you are grossly misrepresenting Catholic teaching on salvation. Devotions and practices lend the mind to God, but they are not salvation in and of themselves.
IN BRIEF

2017 The grace of the Holy Spirit confers upon us the righteousness of God. Uniting us by faith and Baptism to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, the Spirit makes us sharers in his life.

2018 Like conversion, justification has two aspects. Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, and so accepts forgiveness and righteousness from on high.

2019 Justification includes the remission of sins, sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man.

2020 Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ. It is granted us through Baptism. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who justifies us. It has for its goal the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life. It is the most excellent work of God's mercy.

2021 Grace is the help God gives us to respond to our vocation of becoming his adopted sons. It introduces us into the intimacy of the Trinitarian life.

2022 The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom.

2023 Sanctifying grace is the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.

2024 Sanctifying grace makes us "pleasing to God." Charisms, special graces of the Holy Spirit, are oriented to sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. God also acts through many actual graces, to be distinguished from habitual grace which is permanent in us.

2025 We can have merit in God's sight only because of God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man's collaboration. Man's merit is due to God.

2026 The grace of the Holy Spirit can confer true merit on us, by virtue of our adoptive filiation, and in accordance with God's gratuitous justice. Charity is the principal source of merit in us before God.

2027 No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life, as well as necessary temporal goods.

2028 "All Christians . . . are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity" (LG 40 § 2). "Christian perfection has but one limit, that of having none" (St. Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Mos. PG 44, 300D).

2029 "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mt 16:24).
CCC

 

[Thursday]

To the OP's original point:

Who more than Satan would want to teach mankind that their actions have no impact on their eternal destiny?

 

[sturgeonslawyer]

This is a rather dumb debate.

We are not saved by good works.

We are not saved by faith.

We are saved by the grace of God, of which faith and good works are both *products*.

 

[Albion]

This is a rather dumb debate.

We are not saved by good works.

We are not saved by faith.

We are saved by the grace of God, of which faith and good works are both *products*.

We are saved by Faith which comes to us thanks to Grace.

 

[Light of the East]

'Who will have' is better translated 'who desires', from the Greek 'thelei' - 3rd person present - meaning: he desires, wishes, wills.

God bless

So is God like man, that is, does just sit around, sigh, and wish that things He likes could happen? Or is He sovereign and omnipotent and all His holy will actually does get accomplished?

 

[Light of the East]

Yes, I read both your posts, and you are grossly misrepresenting Catholic teaching on salvation. Devotions and practices lend the mind to God, but they are not salvation in and of themselves.

Then perhaps the Church could curtail the numerous writings and such that tell us that if you, for instance, wear the Brown Scapular and are enrolled in it, you will never endure the flames of hell.

I would say that goes a tad beyond just being a pious practice, wouldn't you?

Many other such promises are made involving similar devotionals, with the effect that the focus becomes the external practice as a sort of eternal fire insurance rather than focusing on our inner man and the change needed within.

 

[Thursday]

We are saved by Faith which comes to us thanks to Grace.

So then you must believe that it is God's fault when a man goes to Hell.

In your opinion, why is one man saved and another condemned?

 

[Thursday]

Then perhaps the Church could curtail the numerous writings and such that tell us that if you, for instance, wear the Brown Scapular and are enrolled in it, you will never endure the flames of hell.

That is not Catholic doctrine.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that sacramentals such as the Brown Scapular "do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church's prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it."

 

[Albion]

So then you must believe that it is God's fault when a man goes to Hell.

Nothing I wrote would add up to that.

 

[Albion]

That is not Catholic doctrine.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that sacramentals such as the Brown Scapular "do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church's prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it."

What should we say, then, about a church that teaches its people such things (which it does)...or permits and even encourages them in their superstitions (which it most certainly also does), but also writes up and files away some disclaimer in case such dubious theology is ever questioned?

 

[Thursday]

Nothing I wrote would add up to that.

You said faith comes from God's grace and that faith saves us.

How does someone without faith get it if it only comes from God's grace?

 

[Thursday]

What should we say, then, about a church that teaches its people such things (which it does)...or permits and even encourages them in their superstitions (which it most certainly also does), but also writes up and files away some disclaimer in case such dubious theology is ever questioned?

You shouldn't bear false witness against any Church.

Don't say anything unless it is true.

 

[Albion]

You said faith comes from God's grace and that faith saves us.

How does someone without faith get it if it only comes from God's grace?

Start a thread and people will chime in, I'm sure. Here, I was addressing "sturgeonslawyer" who said this:

This is a rather dumb debate.

We are not saved by good works.

We are not saved by faith.

We are saved by the grace of God, of which faith and good works are both *products*.

It's not the case that we are saved by grace apart from faith and/or works.

 

[Albion]

You shouldn't bear false witness against any Church.

Don't say anything unless it is true.

You can rest easy. I am opposed to bearing false witness against any church, no matter who is doing that.

 

[Thursday]

Start a thread and people will chime in, I'm sure. Here, I was addressing "sturgeonslawyer" who said this:


It's not the case that we are saved by grace apart from faith and/or works.

He is correct. You seem to claim that our works are irrelevant to our salvation.

 

[Albion]

He is correct. You seem to claim that our works are irrelevant to our salvation.

"Irrelevant?"

 

[kepha31]

Then perhaps the Church could curtail the numerous writings and such that tell us that if you, for instance, wear the Brown Scapular and are enrolled in it, you will never endure the flames of hell.

I would say that goes a tad beyond just being a pious practice, wouldn't you?

Many other such promises are made involving similar devotionals, with the effect that the focus becomes the external practice as a sort of eternal fire insurance rather than focusing on our inner man and the change needed within.

Scapulars are not magic. They must be accompanied by a disciplined prayer life and proper disposition or they are useless. Contrary to "faith alone" the Church has always taught the necessity of inner transformation, not mere paint jobs.

Superstition

2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.41 CCC 2111 <see full context

Sacramentals (holy water, scapulars, blessings, miraculous medal, genuflection, etc.) work differently than sacraments, which are objectively efficacious (ex opere operato). But even the sacrament of the Eucharist will not have an effect if taken by a person in mortal sin, and priestly absolution is null and void without the prerequisite of true repentance.

The scapular will not “work” —you can be can rest assured — for a person who neglects holiness and obedience and uses it as a “magic charm” (which is occultic superstition, not Christianity). A piece of cloth cannot rescind the normal, routine duties of the Catholic life. Any Catholic worth his salt knows this. Yet we see – sadly – how many don’t know it.

 

[Light of the East]

That is not Catholic doctrine.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that sacramentals such as the Brown Scapular "do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church's prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it."

NOT what I heard a priest say last week, and I am pretty sure I heard right.

 

[Thursday]

NOT what I heard a priest say last week, and I am pretty sure I heard right.

Could be. Priests aren't always right.

 

[kepha31]

Thank you for clarifying that. Nonetheless, I am going to look up some information on the Brown Scapula because I am sure I heard a priest last week state that among the promises of the Brown Scapular is that the wearer will never experience the flames of hell.

IF that is what the priest said, then he failed to give a 2 hour comprehensive treatise on sacramentals, which in all likelihood would not have been appropriate in that time frame. Priests don't HAVE TO do that for every topic mentioned because it is assumed that Catholics already know the basics.