Are Catholics 'saved' Part 3

I am sorry I haven't made an entry in awhile. I was sick most of last week and spent much of that time simply trying to keep up with my day-to-day responsibilities at the parish. I am feeling better now and so I will continue the discussions I have had with "Joe" about the Catholic faith. I have met with "Joe" again since my last post and we continued discussing the Church. He is happy with what I have posted and said I presented it fairly. He was also happy with the comments that were made and told me that they helped him in his thinking.

It seems that this is working and I asked "Joe" if he wanted to continue the postings. He said a definite yes! With that said, I appreciate your comments and encourage you to keep making them. You are evangelizing and catechizing him with your comments just as much as I am.

It looks like, between the remainder of the conversation from the first visit and the conversation from this last visit, I will be making at least another 5 entries of our discussion. I don't want to present too much material in each entry because I want you readers to have an opportunity to comment on specific elements of the conversation. So, with that in mind I am posting below the 3rd of the 4 parts of the first conversation. I'd recommend re-reading the first two before starting on this one so you get the general flow of the conversation since this all occurred in the same 1 hour period. So, our conversation continued:

Joe: “But, do Catholics believe that Christ won them their salvation?” If I can’t be sure of my salvation then neither can Catholics. ”So, Christ didn’t win us our salvation?”

Fr. Chris: “Catholics don’t deny that Christ won our salvation. We would say that he ‘redeemed’ us. He opened the gates of heaven for us.”

Joe: What’s the difference? It sounds like the same thing we believe?

Fr. Chris: “We do have the same basic belief.” We both believe that what Christ did won us salvation. But when we say he ‘redeemed’ us we are talking about him exchanging his life for ours. We deserved to die for our sins but Jesus died for our sins instead. It is because of his redemption that we can be saved. He won our salvation by redeeming us.

Joe: I still don’t see the difference.

Fr. Chris: His redemption is absolute. He exchanged his life for ours. Neither of us denies that. So when we “accept Christ as our Lord and Savior” we are recognizing that he exchanged his life for ours. He won our salvation. But, our being ‘saved’ is more than simply recognizing that redemption he won for us. Our accepting or rejecting that cannot change the fact that Christ DID redeemed us. But what we do in our lives does show whether we truly embrace that salvation ourselves.

Joe: But the bible says just that. Paul says in Acts to “Believe in Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”

Fr. Chris: It does but we can’t just read one verse of Scripture by itself. We have to look at that verse in the context of other things that Paul said about salvation. For example, Paul says in Philippians that “every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” but right after that he says that they are to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Just so you don’t think that I am some walking bible, ‘Joe’ had told me on the phone some of the issues he wanted to discuss so I had looked up the Scripture passages beforehand that I knew spoke on salvation. BTW, the reference is from Philippians 2:12)

I am going to stop here because our conversation changes direction here from understanding 'salvation' to understanding how we are to work out our salvation. I'll make my next post in the next day or two. Until next time...God bless.

posted by: crossman at 15:45 | link | comments (1) |

#1  26 October 2007 - 05:51

 

very thought provoking conversation for all of us, no just Joe.

fm

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