Ex-communication means nothing when you recognize the fact that salvation is through by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.
Ah. Nothing. Gotcha.
If you believe that ex-communication affects your salvation, then you are placing your trust in the church to save you and not Jesus.
Once again, I see the reason that people leave the Faith. Their faith is in themselves and their religion is what they construct. Everything is justified 'in the name of Jesus'. I hear that argument from everyone from Osteen to Swaggart to Oral Roberts to Bakker to Haggard to...
You keep telling me that nobody leaves the Faith for personal reasons and you keep showing me in your posts that that is exactly what you have done.
Churches don't save and churches can't save. Peter speaking here..... Acts 4:12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
But as was ably demonstrated by the good Dr. E., it is the definitions and the doctrines as taught by the Church that teach orthodoxy, else anything goes and whatever springs from the whims of men may be construed as Christianity.
Nobody leaves *the Faith* (capital *F*) because there is no such thing as the *Faith* (capital *F*).
People leave the Catholic church, just as they leave other churches, but leaving a church is not abandoning faith, it is not leaving Christ.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith is a very simple thing. It's just taking God at His word and what He says is really is in spite of the fact that we can't see it.
Nothing mysterious about it.
I suppose in one sense, you are correct. I left faith in the Catholic church for faith in Jesus and got saved in the process because it's faith in HIM that saves, not faith in the Catholic church.
Romans 10:8-13 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”