doctrine of "salvation"

[son_of_angels]

The concept of being saved is the notion that in this life we make a one-time act or profession of faith and trust in Christ, which applies the atonement of the Lord in our life over all sins past, present and future. Those who do so are thus, according to Baptists, guarranteed eternal life (the "Blessed Assurance" notion).

Being saved is the state after this profession of faith and contrition.

[jezic]

but then is it different from Catholicism, when you don't usually call yourself saved?

Do they have more complete conversions or is it all kind of misleading?

[Aloysius]

well we WERE saved
we are not saved
we are BEING saved
and if we persevere to the end
we will BE saved

that's the way St. Paul thought.

[jezic]

hmm alright but what about the second part?

it still isn't making sense to me.

[Aloysius]

They think they have more complete conversions I think... because they think they're into heaven (to them, their status is like... what it would be to us if we were in purgatory)

it's like G.K. Chesterton once said (actually, before his conversion to Catholocism): Calvinism (read: most any OSAS protestant system) is all about being good calvinists, Catholocism is all about being bad (i.e. acknowledging your weaknesses) Catholics

anyway,

[son_of_angels]

Do they have more complete conversions? I'm not really sure. What I remember about my "salvation" experience was that it was A conversion, to seek truth and faith, and to live a life that I could believe was pleasing to God. This conversion has led me to the Catholic Church. So was it complete? Probably not, but it was real.

Most people's conversion experience in the "OSAS" camp would be described as being an inspirational decision to follow God and flee the devil, yet that in and of itself cannot be complete because it lacks the sacramental and ultimately heavenly end which it fortells. In other words one who claims to be "saved" isn't really saved, thus not complete, because they are not, and cannot, be in a state of heavenly perfection while mortal.

But a conversion CAN, but is always not, be perfected in its purpose only in the Catholic Church, because only in the Catholic Church is their the absolution of sins, the confirmation of the Holy Spirit, and the partaking of Christ in the Eucharist.

[philothea]

I have read "Christian" (protestant) novels where as soon as someone converts, they're instantly perfect. They never have any flaws any more.

Yeah, I WISH! I found this very annoying. :angry:

[Gal. 5:22,23]

[quote name='philothea' date='Jun 23 2005, 05:23 PM']I have read "Christian" (protestant) novels where as soon as someone converts, they're instantly perfect.  They never have any flaws any more.

Yeah, I WISH! I found this very annoying. :angry:
[right][snapback]620953[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

I guess that is why it was a "novel" - fiction. I have never heard a Protestant teacher/pastor, etc. teach that. That line of thinking is not Scriptural. Why would St. Paul say that the things he wants to do, he does not, and the things he does not want to do, he does? Our former pastor told a joke about a man who confided in his pastor that since he gave his life to God, he no longer dealt with lust, or with any sin for that matter. The pastor looked at him and said, "Son, how long have you been struggling with lying?"

I have always been taught that the notion of being "saved" comes from Romans 10:9-10. "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."

The problem is, of course, is that those who believe in OSAS, use a verse like this one to build an entire doctrine. It ignores others, such as Col. 1:22,23 which says, "But now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation - IF you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel."

[Quietfire]

Well, Luther endorsed (quietly) polygamy. He was even present at the second wedding.
Urged King James to marry his new spouse before his first marriage was aborted. The king didnt go for it.
He also stated that even if you went on a rampage and decided to kill, say, your entire community, you would still be assured of a place in heaven right there next to God....cause yer saved.

[jezic]

hmm that doesn't make sense either.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Quietfire' date='Jun 24 2005, 04:51 PM']Well, Luther endorsed (quietly) polygamy.  He was even present at the second wedding.
Urged King James to marry his new spouse before his first marriage was aborted.  The king didnt go for it.
He also stated that even if you went on a rampage and decided to kill, say, your entire community, you would still be assured of a place in heaven right there next to God....cause yer saved.
[right][snapback]622006[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

Umm... I've read a whole lot of Luther and I've never read this. . . Could you point out where he wrote such things?

[mulls]

ay, i don't know where to start....

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Jun 24 2005, 02:50 PM'][quote name='Quietfire' date='Jun 24 2005, 04:51 PM']Well, Luther endorsed (quietly) polygamy.  He was even present at the second wedding.
Urged King James to marry his new spouse before his first marriage was aborted.  The king didnt go for it.
He also stated that even if you went on a rampage and decided to kill, say, your entire community, you would still be assured of a place in heaven right there next to God....cause yer saved.[/quote]
Umm... I've read a whole lot of Luther and I've never read this. . . Could you point out where he wrote such things?
[right][snapback]622069[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
It is no secret that Luther supported the bigamous marriage of Philip of Hesse:

From the [u]Catholic Encyclopedia[/u]:

[quote]Philip the Magnanimous (b. 23 November 1504) was married before his twentieth year to Christina, daughter of Duke George of Saxony, who was then in her eighteenth year. He had the reputation of being "the most immoral of princelings", who ruined himself, in the language of his court theologians, by "unrestrained and promiscuous debauchery". He himself admits that he could not remain faithful to his wife for three consecutive weeks. The malignant attack of venereal disease, which compelled a temporary cessation of his profligacy, also directed his thoughts to a more ordinate gratification of his passions. His affections were already directed to Margaret von der Saal, a seventeen-year-old lady-in-waiting, and he concluded to avail himself of Luther's advice to enter a double marriage. Christina was "a woman of excellent qualities and noble mind, to whom, in excuse of his infidelities, he [Philip] ascribed all sorts of bodily infirmities and offensive habits" (Schmidt, "Melancthon", 367). She had borne him seven children. The mother of Margaret would only entertain the proposition of her daughter becoming Philip's "second wife" on condition that she, her brother, Philip's wife, Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer, or at least, two prominent theologians be present at the marriage. Bucer was entrusted with the mission of securing the consent of Luther, Melancthon and the Saxon princes. In this he was eminently successful. All was to be done under the veil of the profoundest secrecy. This secrecy Bucer enjoined on the landgrave again and again, even when on his journey to Wittenberg (3 Dec., 1539) that "all might redound to the glory of God" (Lenz, op. cit., I,119). Luther's position on the question was fully known to him. The latter's opportunism in turn grasped the situation at a glance. It was a question of expediency and necessity more than propriety and legality. If the simultaneous polygamy were permitted, it would prove an unprecedented act in the history of Christendom; it would, moreover, affix on Philip the brand of a most heinous crime, punishable under recent legislation with death by beheading. If refused, it threatened the defection of the landgrave, and would prove a calamity beyond reckoning to the Protestant cause.

Evidently in an embarrassing quandary, Luther and Melancthon filed their joint opinion (10 Dec., 1539). After expressing gratification at the landgrave's last recovery, "for the poor, miserable Church of Christ is small and forlorn, and stands in need of truly devout lords and rulers", it goes on to say that a general law that a "man may have more than one wife" could not be handed down, but that a dispensation could be granted. All knowledge of the dispensation and the marriage should be buried from the public in deadly silence. "All gossip on the subject is to be ignored, as long as we are right in conscience, and this we hold is right", for "what is permitted in the Mosaic law, is not forbidden in the Gospel" (De Wette-Seidemann, VI, 239-244; "Corp. Ref.", III, 856-863). The nullity and impossibility of the second marriage while the legality of the first remained untouched was not mentioned or hinted at. His wife, assured by her spiritual director "that it was not contrary to the law of God", gave her consent, though on her deathbed she confessed to her son that her consent was feloniously wrung from her. In return Philip pledged his princely word that she would be "the first and supreme wife" and that his matrimonial obligations "would be rendered her with more devotion than before". The children of Christina "should be considered the sole princes of Hesse" (Rommel, op. cit.). After the arrangement had already been completed, a daughter was born to Christina, 13 February 1540. The marriage took place (4 March 1540) in the presence of Bucer, Melancthon, and the court preacher Melander who performed the ceremony. Melander was "a bluff agitator, surly, with a most unsavoury moral reputation", one of his moral derelictions being the fact that he had three living wives, having deserted two without going through the formality of a legal separation. Philip lived with both wives, both of whom bore him children, the landgrave, two sons and a daughter, and Margaret six sons. How can this "darkest stain" on the history of the German Reformation be accounted for? Was it "politics, biblicism, distorted vision, precipitancy, fear of the near approaching Diet that played such a role in the sinful downfall of Luther?" Or was it the logical sequence of premises he had maintained for years in speech and print, not to touch upon the ethics of that extraordinary sermon on marriage? He himself writes defiantly that he "is not ashamed of his opinion" (Lauterbach, op. cit., 198). The marriage in spite of all precautions, injunctions, and pledges of secrecy leaked out, caused a national sensation and scandal, and set in motion an extensive correspondence between all intimately concerned, to neutralize the effect on the public mind. Melancthon "nearly died of shame, but Luther wished to brazen the matter out with a lie" (Cambridge Hist., II, 241). The secret "yea" must for the sake of the Christian Church remain a public "nay" (De Witte-Seidemann, op. cit., VI, 263). "What harm would there be, if a man to accomplish better things and for the sake of the Christian Church, does tell a good thumping lie" (Lenz, "Briefwechsel", I, 382; Kolde, "Analecta", 356), was his extenuating plea before the Hessian counselors assembled at Eisenach (1540), a sentiment which students familiar with his words and actions will remember is in full agreement with much of his policy and many of his assertions. "We are convinced that the papacy is the seat of the real and actual Antichrist, and believe that against its deceit and iniquity everything is permitted for the salvation of souls" (De Wette, op. cit., I, 478). [[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09438b.htm"][u]Catholic Encyclopedia[/u][/url]][/quote]

From Protestant historian Philip Schaff's book [u]History of the Christian Church[/u]:

[quote]The most unfortunate matrimonial incident in the Reformation is the consent of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer to the disgraceful bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse.  It is a blot on their character, and admits of no justification.  When the secret came out (1540), Melanchthon was so overwhelmed with the reproaches of conscience and a sense of shame that he fell dangerously ill at Weimar, till Luther, who was made of sterner stuff, and found comfort in his doctrine of justification by faith alone, prayed him out of the jaws of death. [Philip Schaff, [u]History of the Christian Church[/u], volume 7, page 481][/quote]

From Kenneth Scott Latourette's book [u]A History of Christianity[/u]:

[quote]Charles V succeeded in dividing the Protestants.  In this he was aided by what became a notorious affair in which Philip of Hesse, a leader in the Schmalkaldic League, and Luther were both unhappily involved.  At the early age of nineteen Philip, for political reasons, had been married to the daughter of one of the German princes.  Although he had seven children by her, he engaged in the promiscuity which was common to men of his rank and day, including Charles V himself.  After his conversion to Lutheranism his conscience troubled him so badly that only once in thirteen years did he take of the communion, for he found himself powerless to desist from his adulteries.  He felt that a second marriage might help him to continence.  With the consent of his first wife and of the girl's mother and also of Bucer, Melanchthon, and Luther, he contracted a bigamous marriage with the seventeen-year-old maid.  Luther opposed divorce and held monogamy to be the form of marriage endorsed by Christ, but cited the polygamy of the Old Testament patriarchs as a precedent.  He advised that the second marriage be kept secret, for being bigamous it was against the law of the land.  The marriage was performed by a court preacher, and when the news leaked out Luther advised "a good, strong lie."  To this Philip would not agree, especially since the bride's mother would not consent to having her daughter regarded as a concubine.  Both Roman Catholic and Protestant princes professed themselves shocked and Charles took the opportunity to exact promises from Philip which led to a rift in the Protestant ranks.  Charles also bought off one of the other Protestant princes by an offer of territory. [Kenneth Scott Latourette, [u]A History of Christianity[/u], Volume 2, page 728][/quote]

[infinitelord1]

when i was 16 years old i went to a southern baptist church one night for a sleep over. This guy started to give a speech about his experiences in life and how he came to "be saved". He then offered to save whoever else wished to be saved if they hadnt already been "saved". I was the only volunteer. I met him in this small room and we talked for a couple of hours about god. He answered some questions for me, and he asked me if i was ready to be "saved". I said i guess. We said a prayer and i was "saved" after i said this prayer. supposedly i wouldnt have been saved if i had never said this prayer. It certainly had an effect on me that night as i was not able to get to sleep because i experienced such a high level of euphoria. Yet i was still so ignorant in the eyes of god.......so much was left unknown in my mind and i still needed answers.