Monsignor Pope Ping!
I chalk it up to the Mystery of Colloquialism.
I will tell you what it says to me:
When people sin, they are sinners until they ask for God’s forgiveness.
When people are immoral, and enact rules for the majority of people to have to live by, that are not immoral, that is a direct slap in God’s face and should be denounced quickly...which I have done, and will continue doing in my life...
God is a loving God, but He will only put up with just so much, and I think He’s about had enough of the World and their immoral thinking, behavior and not looking towards Him to guide us...
God picks who is saved through faith and who is not.
“And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:”
God owns Time. He KNOWS who is intractable and who is not. I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that I did not benifit from Grace along the way when I consider where I SHOULD have wound up versus where I found my way to. I don’t think I did it alone.
God owns Time. He KNOWS who is intractable and who is not. I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that I did not benifit from Grace along the way when I consider where I SHOULD have wound up versus where I found my way to. I don’t think I did it alone.
Jesus spoke of the unforgivable sin. I see this sin as the sin of despair. It is a sin against the Holy Spirit through Whom God reaches out to us in mercy. When we are so committed to our sin that we turn away fully and finally from God and despair of His mercy, we seal our own fate because we have turned away from our only means of salvation. Judas followed this path... and it was better for him had he never been born.
Perhaps it’s that old protestant thread of resistance that still runs through when I see God’s Word described with “but”, followed by examples of “balance”, as opined and expressed by Monsignor Pope.
I have no problem taking God’s Word more literally and believe we would have all been better off if through the ages we had done just that.
The saints and Apostles and their priest successors were closer to the times of Jesus. Therefore, I find comfort in reading the teachings of the Early Fathers and the saints own writings about some of these “questions”, and where they do not address something, for me I am pleased to let it remain a mystery.
Clearly, we accept that we seek and strain toward and for conversion of heart daily, among those of us who understand that we “all fall short of the glory of God”, certainly imperfect and unfit for Heaven, where God’s Glory resides.
I believe for myself that I understand the obligation to distinguish between my faults and my venial sin from mortal sin, which with any mortal sin brings with it first my own rebellion against God and a purposeful complicity with Evil.
Msgr. Pope makes that point, but Pharaoh had his heart “hardened by God”, and permanently so. Sacred scripture is quite explicit about that. Msgr. Pope says, here, that the Pharaoh “hardened his own heart”.
No. That is not even remotely what God said.
I've been having an ongoing mental argument in my imagination with someone once on FR who said that there is no such thing as free will.
Msgr. Charles Pope says what I've been trying to say in my mental arguing. Very helpful!