Posted on 11/11/2005 11:12:11 AM PST by B-Chan
Salvation: Homemade or Vintage?
Wine, being both beverage and nourishment, is (along with water) the perfect drink for human beings. In terms of savor, health benefit, and psychological effect, wine reigns as the king of cups at the finest tables in the world. Yet many people do not care for wine, citing its "bad taste" as the reason they do not partake. I have always suspected that for most oenophobes this distaste for the fruit of the vine is the result of a bad first impression. For many people, their first taste of wine comes as a child, when their young palate is too unsophiticated to appreciate wine's subtle flavors; for others, the cheap, sweet plonk found at convenience stores -- the sort guzzled furtively by teenagers -- is the first wine they know. (I won't mention the awful sludge often served as Passover wine.) In such cases, the innacurate idea that wine tastes bad develops early.
Christ comes to us in the form of wine. Just as early exposure to bad wine put many people off it for good, among my fellow artists I have found a great deal of hostility towards Christianity -- much of which, it seems to me, is likewise based upon a certain particularly harsh, judgmental and anti-intellectual evangelical Christianity -- the type of folk religion that many of us were exposed to as kids. As a veteran of American evangelicalism (and of many discussions on the topic of Christianity with fellow survivors), I have found that those of us who grew up under the influence of the cheap wine of such (often wildly unorthodox) "homemade evangelical Christianity" are often surprised at how different it is from the Good Stuff that comes straight from the Vine.
Case in point: the doctrine of salvation. Much of the venom spewed towards "Christians" by my fellow artists is directed in fact at the sort of prim churchgoing folk who feel perfectly justified in judging the eternal destiny of others while trumpeting their own personal holiness. In other words, artists hate hypocrites -- and who could blame them? -- which hatred often bleeds over into a disdain for God. In the judgmental and Pharisaical attitude of these "Christians" they see a wildly distorted reflection of God -- a hateful monster God that most find unworthy of worship. "I have no desire to worship a God who condemns people to Hell just because they aren't members of XYZ Church", they tell me -- as if God did such things!
Of course, we Csatholics have the benefit of the Magisterium of the Church -- the unaltered tradition of Christian doctrine, straight from the Vine through the branches (the apostles, martyrs, saints, and bishops). This we can come to know the loving tenderness of merciful God as He truly is. As you can see, however. the traditional teaching of the Christian Church regarding salvation is practically unknown to these critics. As an artist and a Christian, I feel it is my duty to point out that Pharisaism is not the same thing as Christianity. This essay is my feeble attempt to do that.
Who is saved? Here is what the Christian religion teaches about salvation:
"Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery." Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity. [Catechism, 1260]
So we see that the Church teaches that, as a logical necessity, even those with no knowledge of Christ and no baptism may enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This can be known by reason. The logic runs like this:
1. God is perfect.
2. Therefore, He is perfectly just.
3. Therefore, He will judge all men justly. 4. However, some people do not know or accept that Jesus is God, but honestly seek the truth and attempt to follow God in accordance with their understanding of Him.
5. It would be unjust to exclude such people from eternal life.
6. Therefore, it must be that God, being just, will provide that such people can be saved by Christ in some way unknown to us.
We know it would be unjust to condemn those innocent of Christ's Grace to Hell. But how do we know this? From our innate knowledge of the Natural Law. The Natural Law (i.e. the basic moral structure of the universe) is known intuitively by all people, no matter what faith they follow. God's law is programmed into people directly, "the work of the law [is] written in their hearts" [Rom. 2:15]. Therefore, we all know right and wrong, good from evil, justice from injustice. But while every person capable of reason knows of God's Law, not every person is exposed to (or capable of accepting) the Grace given by God through Jesus that enables us to escape the consequences of our wrong actions. God, being perfectly just, will not hold such people accountable for something they did not know about or could not accept. In other words, "all those who, without knowing of the Church but acting under the inspiration of grace, seek God sincerely and strive to fulfill his will, can be saved even if they have not been baptized". Thus we know that our separated Christian brothers, along with those who profess Jesus Christ without the benefit of true baptism or doctrine, can be saved.
This possible salvation is not the sole right of Christians, however. This Grace includes Hindus, Sihks, pagans, even Muslims: "'The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.'" Now, none of this means that Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, paganism, or any other religion is a true religion, equal with our Holy Church; it means that God will not judge a man unjustly no matter what religion he or she might practice.
Only through Jesus can we live forever. This is an unalterable fact. "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved". However, the method by which Christ saves people is His business, not ours. His power can save anyone who wants to be saved, no matter what false faith they might practice. We have no way of judging if He has saved any particular individual -- not even ourselves. It's just not something we are equipped to do.
(This lack of authority to judge should not prevent us from speaking out against sin, however. The true Christian has the right and duty to judge the actions of our neighbors, so long as we leave the judging of our neighbors themselves to God. As Saint Augustine said: "Concerning those things, then, which are known to God, unknown to us [i.e. the eternal destiny of souls], we judge our neighbors at our peril. Of this the Lord has said, Judge not. But concerning things which are open and public evils, we may and ought to judge and correct, but still with charity and love, hating not the man, but the sin, detesting not the sick man, but the disease.")
So who is saved? We can't know. The Church teaches "When [Christ] comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works, and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace." In other words, it is His right to judge the eternal destiny of every individual person, not ours.
Please note that this is not some fancy-pants "modern interpretation" talking here. This is the doctrine of salvation that the Church has always taught. Anyone who teaches anything different is not teaching the whole truth. And it is this Truth that can set all of us -- artist and layman alike -- free from the confusion generated by our do-it-yourself culture.
Christ is the Vine; the Church, His Branches. As stewards of the Vineyard of Paradise, it is our mission to serve our nighbors the best wine available -- the Wine of Cana. By replacing bad-tasting homemade Christianity with the true, savory Vintage served to us by the Magisterium of the Church, we can avoid the poison of unorthodox teaching and belief.
***
"May the same God, who through the Prophet Nathan forgave David when he confessed his sins, who forgave Peter when he wept bitterly, the prostitute when she washed his feet with her tears, the publican, and the prodigal son, through me, a sinner, forgive you both in this life and in the next and enable you to appear before his awe-inspiring tribunal without condemnation, he who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen." - The Byzantine Liturgy
Yippee! It's 5 o'clock somewhere!
Ahem. Now I'll go check your grammar.
Well, "Csatholics" should be "Catholics."
Other than that, I thought it to be well reasoned and well written (probably because it generally agrees with what I believe.)
I would change both uses of "their" to "the" in this sentence, and you left out the second S in "unsophisticated."
I'd wonk the whole thing in one shot, but my husband has Done Something to the computer and I can find Microsoft Word. Bleep!
One N, two C's.
Can you spell-check on your word processor, or whatever you're using to set this up?
Thus we can, etc.
Comma after "however," and the second person addressee "you" comes out of nowhere here.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
"artist and layman alike"
Artists are a self-ordained clergy? "Artist and Philistine", maybe?
#4 in your list should be on its own line, since the other items are.
You may want to rephrase this part. To say that Catholics can never know if someone is saved seems to contradict our belief in the communion of saints. Perhaps what you should say is that during our lifetimes we should neither presume we (or anyone else) is saved nor despair that we or anyone else is damned. After we have died, the Church does canonize people, but we never declare that a particular soul is damned.
Following this logic one can only conclude that not only is the Catholic Church unnecessary but Jesus' life death and resurrection was also unnecessary and that nothing has changed (for the world outside of Christianity) because of either.
We know Abraham and Elijah went to Heaven. Neither were baptized Christians. Therefore, we know that the salvation paid for by Jesus' life, death, and resurrection must be valid for people who never heard of the Gospel. How exactly this works in unimportant.
Christ, the eternal Logos, exists at all times and in all places. He was sent for all men -- ALL. That includes people who lived before Him, people who never met Him, and people who by a mere accident of birth were raised to worship someone besides Him. Not everyone will be saved, but the perfect Justice of God demands that every rational human being who ever lived will somehow have a chance to know the Gospel and to accept or reject Jesus Christ, even if that takes a miracle.
You build up a straw-man evangelical and knock him down for being too rigid, then build up Catholicism as "the vine?" Would other "artists" point out that as hypocritical?
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