Thursday, May 12, 2022

Abraham was Justified before God by Works (Not Previous, but Subsequent)


Documentary: Protestantism's Big Justification Lie
4th March 2015 | vaticancatholic.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L14UNjaZJm8


2:55 "forensic justification" in the sense of forensic only justification is contrary to any description that describes someone as gratia either plena or plenus (the Blessed Virgin from the start, St. Stephen at a moment close to his martyrdom, Our Lord), since the grace in that case would overshadow but not indwell and gratia adumbrata or adumbratus would be more correct.

4:51 Exactly. What Sproul just said would be correct if for "account" he had said "life" - our sins transferred to Christ's life nailed Him to the Cross, were annihilated in the process (in the case of those for which He died effectively, not just potentially) and His reighteousness brought into our life by Sacraments or at least their reception in voto transforms us (in the case of those of us who are in a state of grace).

5:20 It can be added, to the honour of McArthur, while he distinguishes justification from sanctification, he thinks the latter actually does change the one being sanctified, Luther didn't.

To us, obviously, justification is the first moment of sanctification beginning, or beginning again after the disaster of mortal sin.

"It describes what God declares about the believer, not what He does to change the believer. In fact, justification effects no actual change whatsoever in the sinner's nature or character. Justification is a divine judicial edict. It changes our status only, but it carries ramifications that guarantee other changes will follow."

The latter was not Luther's position.

Catholics : to be justified, the adult must intend to do good works, and as long as in the state of grace will do good and meritorious works.
McArthur : to be justified, you get a declaration from God, who intends to make you do good works
Luther : to be justified, you get a declaration from God, without imagining you can start doing good works.

The fact that he compares the "legal" (only) act of justification to the "legal" (only) act of marriage (on his view), shows he does believe a sanctification follows, a real walk with God, just as in marriage, the legal act is followed by living together.

His problem with both can be resumed in his considering the marriage to be a legal only act, and not one of the seven sacraments - when vows are exchanged, God changes the disposition of the spouses to each other by a grace enabling fidelity to their duties (to each other and to children).

However, after looking at Luther's larger, it is apparent even he believed in sanctification of sorts, but in this life never complete.

He would disagree with White, he doesn't believe OSAS, he actually stated one could get outside the Church, and outside the forgiveness worked by the Holy Spirit, if one tried to base one's salvation on works lose their salvation:

"But outside of this Christian Church, where the Gospel is not, there is no forgiveness, as also there can be no holiness [sanctification]. Therefore all who seek and wish to merit holiness [sanctification], not through the Gospel and forgiveness of sin, but by their works, have expelled and severed themselves [from this Church]."

If they have severed themselves, it means they were in it before, and they were both justified and being sanctified before. Ergo, he does not believe in OSAS.

If one liked, one could parody his position that to him, believing justification without works, is the work necessary for salvation.

23:18 The non-Feeneyite would consider what Piper just said as a fairly hopeful sign of his perhaps not being outside the soul of the Church, to take a word used in the Larger Catechism of St. PIus X.

25:33 And with McArthur, one can ask, given what he just said, whether his verbal statements of believing in forensic (only) justification are in him a deliberate mortal sin, or an oversight, like (I had kicks on my head a few weeks ago) "reighteousness" instead of "righteousness" ... obviously unintentional.

34:34 Are these the guys Pope Gregory XVI was talking about?

Perhaps this pope was talking of what you call "historic protestantism" or perhaps he was considering the fact that Anglicans and Calvinists galore were abandoning all pretense of actually believing the Bible (liberal protestantism) or perhaps both.

That's why a certain passage in Mirari Vos might not apply to "Protestants" like these, as long as it's on this issue.

Obviously, there is also the refusal, very widespread (as in Ray Comfort, a recent video) to believe the Real Presence, and obviously being deliberately wrong on that one is sufficient to damn them, even if they would be Catholics on the justification issue.

37:57 "That is why every Protestant in the world who believes in justification by faith alone"
(believes in verbal confession, or having actually fully internalised?)
"operates under the core principle of forensic justification ... even if he doesn't know it"

If he doesn't know it, how is he guilty of it? Sounds like "alien unrighteousness" to me?

I thought I had been believing in "justification by faith alone" and it took me one major mortal sin, a bit out of the ordinary, to make me realise, I actually did believe sacraments and doing penance was necessary, and starting to take steps to convert (by the way, I had not been involved in believing Protestant anti-Catholicism, and when learning how it was really implied in the reformation, I had already taken the intention to sooner or later convert, ideally along with other High Church Lutherans, some of whom I knew. And some of them (notably some back then Lutheran Benedictines and Bridgettines) have since then also converted (I'm not sure Stephan Borgehammar, Church Historian, is one of them, from back before his conversion, he probably to too certainly appreciates them).

40:31 Note also how a Protestant is adding, not Sts Eustace or Emerentiana, but Dr Martin of Wittenberg to the "hall of fame of faith" in Hebrews 11.

He not only refutes (I am tired, I trust you on this one) the forensic justification, by his account of Luther's acts, but also the aversion against reverence for the saints, by his tone. V e r y visibly.

41:40 Back from when I was a Lutheran (though very superficially instructed), I do not recall these words of Luther.

I do know some Protestants believe in highly novelised versions of his life, like Ellen Gould White (to whom my father has owed allegiance, not I, I did not grow up with him) depending much on Merle d'Aubigné who was not always historically accurate. I'd like to know if the man from Ligonier ministries is citing Tischreden or Merle d'Aubigné for Luther's experience.

But perhaps I misspoke, it sounds at least like Luther's exuberant prose. Rhetoric : Logic = 7 : 3 or sth ...

52:05 But the words "they have been kept for you" do not preclude them One Who kept them from having transferred them to your inside, rather than only a paper in a courtroom (by the way, names on papers are somewhat important, there is such a thing as the book of life).

I refuse to indict Piper on account of that word.

53:09 Indeed. If I am unable to pray the Our Father due to impossibility of forgiving some, my next move to try to save my soul is speaking up about it.

Hence my words to the blogger Introibo. And my remark, if Bishop Dolan had prayed for me to remain celibate, that might have been the reason God gave him opportunities to see my situation better or at least (if he wasn't saved) took away opportunities to affect how more innocent laymen pray the rosary for me, while I am not doing it.

And the kick on the head was before my words to Introibo, it was not God punishing me for the words, but possibly for feeling that way and not speaking up.

Hence my words to Introibo blogger (found on my blog - New blog on the kid - url distinctive part "nov9blogg9") after the kicks I received, lest God should punish me more for my silence.

53:46 If Tyndale had heard James White, he might have come to agree with Latomus and stand in a yellow short shirt rather than on a bonfire in Wilvoorde.

Thank you for documenting, to me, at least some hope, the Protestant leopard head seems to have a leopard wing, which will perhaps not be part of the final, wingless, beast.

55:57 Happy that St. Jerome has ablue and abluti estis - same cognate for same verb - on both texts.

Really tired, when writing Latin, would you use for "I took a photo" the more Latinised "photograpsi" or the more purely Greek "photegrapse {?]

58:38 Lutherans and Anglicans have, however, tended to keep Baptismal Regeneration.

I say "tended to" because one of the conflicts entered on by Puseyites was against their contemporaries denying this (the group being larger by far than Puseyites, therefore more likely what Pope Gregory XVI had in mind for Mirari Vos).

1:00:03 Apart from hatred of the Bible, they also hate Martin Luther and Thomas Cranmer, and even Tyndale whom they (usually, unhistorically) consider as "martyr for the Bible translation"

1:05:58 Do you have the author of an apologetic commentary I read decades ago, with that title?

A former Anglican, I think, gone Catholic priest.

1:11:57 It can be stated, part of the reasons why Luther went to his error you are talking about is another one you are not talking about, one examplified by Ray Comfort "what do you call someone who tells a lie" - "a liar" - as if venial sins and lies of jocularity (followed by "April Fools") didn't exist in their moral theology.

Luther explicitly denied the distinction between venial and mortal, that is how his experience of sometimes venial sins (while he was still a more or less Catholic) came to drive him to a false conclusion and the world one lion head and one leopard head closer to the final beast.

1:13:38 I think you were alluding the Johannine Epistles? [confirmed - he cited I John 5:6]

1:14:07 As some of the sins you mentioned as mortal are of a certain type, it reminds me ...

But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

... in other words, the fact, those who have been praying for my ongoing celibacy may have been praying for either my damnation or my getting saved only at a very high price to myself, as if I were principally to blame for the people who deliberately "[forbade] to fast and to marry" (not reading this as of Gnostics, but of people who pretend such and such guy is neither mature enough to marry, nor should he be allowed to use ascesis to get chaste. If I had taken up monastic ascesis at 20, perhaps 30, I might have been saved, with little difficulty, then. I do not think that is the case any more. The exact thing I consider some were praying wrong about.

It is also very possible, if I had made a more serious try back then, I would have had a firm but kindly indication from a Novice Master to get a job and a wife instead, back when having an employer was lots less irksome to me, than it became after two of them were involved, so far, in pushing me out of opportunities to even talk to girls I was hoping to marry.

If I got a male employer, old and wise, and he were putting an arm around my shoulder to encourage me to confide, or even to simply keep going, I'd feel that as a homosexual agression, even if I would be careful not to judge him guilty of such an intention. At 9000 + blog posts and the existance of technology able to transfer text from computers to paper, I should be living off my writing, and not from getting an employer anyway.

1:19:32 If I had believed that, "a man can commit suicide and if he is a true Christian he will go straight to glory" (end of quote) there are times when I might on that belief have acted as if that was advise.

I am glad I had C. S. Lewis rather than that pastor giving me advise, through books where the horror of Hell is made very clear, and through The Great Divorce in which one suicide is a prime example of one chosing to remain damned.

I do not think it is excessive hatred of old malefactors to hate the systems that gave them such power to destroy my life back then, since the systems remain in existence and remain destroying other people's lives. School compulsion, psychiatry and a few more.

1:20:52 I think the correct term is "unnecessary occasions for sin" - if I am courting someone I hope to marry, seeing her may be an occasion, but necessary relative to my hope to marry, like if someone is a policeman and needs to step in with blows and gunshots, that is an occasion for sins of hatred or of unjust manslaughter or maiming, but relative to the duty of the policeman to eliminate threats to others, if correctly assessed, a necessary one.

I am afraid some will have prayed for me to avoid all occasions of unchastity, including such as are necessary to get me into a state where chastity is less irksome, since allowing for more satisfactions. I consider encouraging to such prayers is being guilty of Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and by them that have known the truth. If themselves accepting marriage as a good, they would be collaborators with such (for instance left wing shrinks) who do no so consider it.

No comments: