IC to Gary wrote:The beginning is faith: "without faith, it is impossible to please God," says the Word. So personal belief in Christ as Saviour, not the example or the imitation, and certainly not trying hard (Eph. 2:8-9) is the gateway to becoming a Christian. Effort follows from salvation, of course; but it never leads.
If I had to speak on this, I’d have to say that in that old passage God was visualized, explained and understood in a certain way. I could not now say that faith is not needed, but we as modern men, and especially we who are in the midst of all the changes and progressions of knowledge, would do ourselves well to redefine and clarify, update, how we think about “faith”. Because the implication is that without that status or quality “God cannot be pleased”. But that view of “God” pictures God as rather stone-like. As if God, as consciousness awareness, as the ultimate in intuition, cannot, or worse
will not see into the inner depths of every individual, and understand (and value) where they are in their life. They could be ‘faithless’
technically but in reality on a quite high plane.
A religion — be it Protestant Christianity of Catholicism — often sets up rules about how ‘piety’ is conducted, and there is, naturally, group attitudes that are established as being ‘the right ones to have’. I do not want to imply impiousness necessarily, nor minimize ethical conduct (always emphasized) but rather a subtlety and even a nuance in how God is conceived.
I personally find IC’s rigid Protestant conceptions to be erroneous on two levels: one insofar as it minimizes the high relevance of conduct to achieve “grace”. It simply does not stand up to reason. I get the Protestant conceptions however, but I think it is erroneous. And again: If we conceive of God at all, it seems absurd that that God would not order the priorities of piety so that conduct and even “willingness to obey” is not at the forefront, and the faith element rather below it.
Let me put it like this: If in your conception you define, say, child rape as an extreme evil, but yet believe that one who “has faith in Jesus” could have declared that faith at some point, even been faithful (whatever this is supposed to mean) but who commits such acts again and does not suffer the direst consequences, I say that one’s concepts are very mixed up.
It must be noted that in Catholicism there is such a thing as “mortal sin” and no matter if one at one moment one was “in Grace” if at another one commits “mortal sin” and does not
deal with it, one falls from Grace. One must in this sense start over. Reestablish one’s status. So, one is — to put it colloquially — ever on one’s toes.
Effort follows from salvation, of course; but it never leads.
Effort might well not follow from this “salvation event”. And then as I have been saying a far fuller analysis of different levels of ‘complicity’ would be even more unlikely to be undertaken by one whose status is insecure. I am not saying this is done
more in general Catholicism, and anyway this is all simply an examination of the concepts that undergird the religion.
. Also, please don't be concerned about my (personal) use of AI. That part of my life is my personal business, not yours. I don't tell you what you should and shouldn't do; if I wanted your opinion and guidance, I would ask for it. That's a fact.