Most every Protestant I have met, including in my own family and in homeschooling groups are some of the nicest people I have ever met. Kind and welcoming, great with kids and seniors alike. Wonderfully non-judgemental.
I am very glad that we fight on the same side in the culture wars.
I do not want competition from the Catholic Church.
Indulgences is one of the reasons the “universal” Catholic Church isn’t that universal anymore.
“When the coin on the bottom of the plate rings; the soul from purgatory springs!”
The original practice grew out of the Crusades. Your sins were absolved if you went on Crusade. But if you were somehow unable to go on Crusade; if you PAID someone to go on Crusade, that could also absolve your sins. From there is was a small step to just outright paying for sin.
The author doesn’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about. Indulgences do not have to do with salvation or atonement. Everyone in purgatory is on his or her way to heaven, is saved. Catholic teaching is that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone (but faith formed in love, not naked faith apart from love—since faith without [naked of works] is dead, according to Scripture]).
Indulgences have to do with the same kind of thing that a man who has wronged his wife and has been forgiven by her after he repented and asked forgiveness. They are reconciled but he has betrayed her trust and she rightly cannot fully trust him as if he had never done wrong, until, after a while, he proves his trustworthiness by being trustworthy toward her, by being “toward” her. A wound is left behind by sin. The eternal penalty for sin is gone when we ask God’s forgiveness—he never denies forgiveness to the repentant. But a wound is left behind just as a wound is left behind when a wife wrongs her husband. The wound has to be healed.
Prayer, fasting, generosity (almsgiving) heal the wound. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ETERNAL SALVATION, WITH HEAVEN HELL. The eternal penalty is long gone. Indulgences have to do with the healing of the temporal wound of sin. During our lives through doing virtuous things (which can be done ONLY by God’s grace aiding us), in prayer and love of God and neighbor, the wound is healed.
Indulgences finish whatever unfinished healing might remain at the point of death.
I repeat, indulgences HAVE NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with eternal salvation or atonement for sin. That, Catholics have always taught, depends solely on God’s grace in the work of Christ on the Cross. Faith (faith formed in love, not naked faith) in the work of Christ on the Cross is what saves us and atones for sin. That’s Catholic teaching. It’s in the Catechism of Trent, it’s in the 1994 Catechism, I can show you evidence that this is what Catholics believed and lived by at the time of the Protestant Reformation.
This author does not know what he is talking about.
Period.
And Christianity Today should be ashamed of publishing this garbage.
Relying on “Christianity Today” for the truth is like a schizophrenic reading “Psychology Today” for a mental health evaluation.
The nub of the article's error--and the Reformers' as well.
Christ dispenses HIS treasury of merits THROUGH the Church. There is absolutely no Pelagianism here.
If you fall overboard and the ship captain throws you a life preserver, who saved you? The captain or the life preserver? Obviously the captain. The life preserver has no power to throw itself--it is merely an agent, but it is a crucially important agent nonetheless. If the captain throws it, he means you to use it--he WILLS you to use it. And what fool, drowning in the water, would dare *refuse* to take hold of this thing, on the grounds that he wants to be saved by the Captain's hand and the Captain's hand alone?
All who call on the NAME of Yah'shua will be saved !shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiachJoel 2:32 "And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of YHvH Will be delivered;YHvH saves ==>> Yah'shua (Jesus)
For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem There will be those who escape, As YHvH has said, Even
among the survivors whom YHvH calls.
Acts 2:21 'AND IT SHALL BE THAT EVERYONE WHO CALLS ON THE NAME OF YHvH WILL BE SAVED.'
Rom 10:13 — for "WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF YHvH WILL BE SAVED."
How does one "revive" something that never went away?
If the article gets this basic point wrong, how can it be trusted to get anything else right?
This article (written by John Knox...what a pen name!) is pitiful.
He said, The practice of indulgences is based on the ruinous error that anything short of the perfect righteousness that God requires and gives freely in his Son can satisfy God's holiness.
No, it's not. This is the false premise upon which the entire article is based.
And then the article goes off on a tangent based on this false premise.
Alex, we have been through the subject of indulgences before and before on this forum, so I have a hard time believing that you don't have a full handle on what the Catholic Church teaches on this subject, so I see no reason to re-iterate that teaching over and over again. Whether you believe what the Catholic Church teaches is another issue altogether.
Therefore, all posting an article like this does is just stir up the vultures.
Bottom line: if you would like to post an article that refutes what the Catholic Church teaches (refuting what is actually taught, not what is in the mind of some author with a particularly cheesy pen-name), I'll be more than happy to discuss. But this is not such an article.
(BTW, I am pinging the usual Catholic subjects on this. Not because I'd like any of them to argue on this, but just in the fashion of offering friendly advice that it's not worth getting into an argument when the premise presented upon which to argue is a false one)
No matter what the issue is for indulgences or purgatory, it really doesn’t matter, because they’re not applicable, at all...
What we can see from the Bible is that if we are in our body (i.e., alive) we are absent from the presence of the Lord (as He is in Heaven right now, at the right hand of God), and if we are absent from our bodies (i.e., having died, and having Salvation in Christ) — we are present with the Lord (where He is, in Heaven).
—
2 Corinthians 5:1-11
1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven,
3 if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked.
4 For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.
5 Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
6 So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.
7 For we walk by faith, not by sight.
8 We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
9 Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
11 Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.
I think indulgences make perfect sense.
Just not for Christians.
Alex Murphy:
May I ask (and would you please answer)
Why did you post this article?
What did you want to happen as a result of your posting it?
What did you expect to happen as a result of your posting it?
The article lies! Either negligently or intentionally it lies! Why post it?
...Indeed, the fact that indulgences have so long stood safe and with impunity, and wantoned with so much fury and tyranny, may be regarded as a proof into how deep a night of ignorance mankind were for some ages plunged. They saw themselves insulted openly, and without disguise, by the Pope and his bull-bearers; they saw the salvation of the soul made the subject of a lucrative traffic, salvation taxed at a few pieces of money, nothing given gratuitously; they saw what was squeezed from them in the form of oblations basely consumed on strumpets, pimps and gluttony, the loudest trumpeters of indulgences being the greatest despisers; they saw the monster stalking abroad, and every day luxuriating with greater license, and that without end, new bulls being constantly issued, and new sums extracted. Still indulgences were received with the greatest reverence, worshipped, and bought. Even those who saw more clearly than others deemed them pious frauds, by which, even in deceiving, some good was gained. Now, at length, that a considerable portion of the world have begun to rethink themselves, indulgences grow cool, and gradually even begin to freeze, preparatory to their final extinction...
Apparently, their "extinction" is still a ways off. Hurry, Lord Jesus.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”