12:43 AM
What I just said to God (the initial surrender) is how I define "faith", which "alone" is a sufficient criteria to receive God's Spirit (i.e. to receive God's love, since God is love), which resulted in making me ADOPTED by God as his own child (Rom 8:15-16). I didn't say "saved", simply "adopted". I didn't say this surrender will persevere in sanctification because I can quit the process and never come back. Salvation is not complete until we become "heir of God's glory" after we die (v. 17).
This initial surrender today, this "faith" in God's goodness, is not easy and is itself is a GIFT, not my own effort. So I can truly say that it's by "grace" that God enables me to have this initial trust. Not everyone can do this. They maybe too proud to accept God's love. They maybe too afraid of commitment. But as small as a mustard seed this "faith" is, it's a REAL step for me because my mind knows and my will neither accepts nor rejects, it's "stop resisting love" (Eleonore's concept).
What's important is I need to maintain this surrender so I keep growing in love (defined as keep wanting the good and keep doing the good) and keep repenting if I fail (which requires God's grace just like the initial surrender). I will find it's VERY hard to keep trusting God, so I conceive "faith" itself as a virtue that God needs to grow from a small mustard seed to the kind of trust that will not quit when calamities like Job happens to me (although I pray that God will spare me this).
Did this initial surrender today require me to believe a certain explanation (atonement theory) of why Jesus died and how he saved me? No. Is surrendering a "work"? No. Is the faith defined above fulfill your two criteria in your blog article? Yes. Is the faith defined above missing the 8 without? No. But is faith defined above is "alone" sufficient for us to be adopted today? Yes. Does today guarrantee tomorrow? No.
The above understanding of what "faith" is, which is somewhat different than yours, a little different than Protestant's, but the same as Catholic's, is what 1) enables me to reconcile Protestant's understanding with Catholic's; 2) gives me freedom to separate actionable faith from an atonement theory; 3) makes me faithful to both Jesus's and Paul's teaching.
1:03 AM
4) avoid the fight over the meaning of "righteousness", "faith alone", etc. by staying on common ground with all Christians: keep repenting and obeying Jesus commandment to love; 5) Bottom line: if there is a situation requiring a love response, did I do it? I keep my "faith" healthy by monitoring what I actually do without quibbling over a "distinction without a difference": who is doing it (ME or GOD), whether I'm doing WORK or not, whether I'm IMPUTED or INFUSED righteousness, etc.
1 hour later…
2:03 AM
SUMMARY When today I said the prayer at 15:47 to God, I'm making a genuine commitment to 1) accept God's standard of love, receive God's love and his offer to make me ADOPTED, willing to be transformed even though it entails suffering to stop my pleasurable sins. That's your definition #1:
Then I make another genuine commitment to 2) change my lifestyle to loving the best way I KNOW while studying more on how to love Christianly and asking God to empower me to DO it. This I need to stay day by day to give a real meaning to "faith" with a practice such as Ignatian daily examen. That's your definition #2:
@GratefulDisciple I previously got very frustrated with Lee that he would keep asserting what Protestantism taught, but be unwilling to hear any refutations or clarifications. Over and over he would assert "Protestantism is wrong about X, the Bible really says Y", when Y is what Protestantism actually teaches. It's a trait I see in some other people on the site too. Hopefully Lee would be more willing to accept when he has misconceptions about the teachings of others now.
The more I read your article the more I notice that your definition is actually what Catholics define "love". I believe this has a lot to do with the cross talk. At any rate, "faith" (my definition or Protestant definition) will need to lead to "love" (=your "faith"). So we can be reconciled that way.
@curiousdannii Of course it can be frustrating. At the same time, a lot of cultural Christians are too complacent now, and it's quite plausible that too much reliance on "faith alone" (properly understood) can contribute. The Puritans used to be a LOT more self-conscious about the soul state.
I personally know someone who accused me: "You are not a Christian" since there is a bad habit that she perceives I don't bother to correct and according to her that's sign enough that I don't love God! Very similar to the stance Lee's having in that article. My response to her is to admit my blind spot & my complacency and to thank her for pointing it out.
4 hours later…
6:47 AM
@GratefulDisciple Except that we reject every major point of standard Protestant theology, including the Trinity of Persons, justification by faith alone, penal substitution and satisfaction theory generally, imputation of Christ's merit, and on and on. But I understand you don't want to talk about that, so I'll let it sit.
@GratefulDisciple Incidentally, Mr. Bultitude never did to the Swedenborg reading that I gave him as his side of the reading exchange that he proposed. If you spend some time with Swedenborg, that would give me some satisfaction. However, I would suggest not reading it with a mind to "refute your position." Reading any book from a negative frame of mind will cause a person to read it badly, looking for flaws.
It is better to read with an interest in learning. Then you can make up your own mind whether you agree or disagree with what you're reading.
I really tried to read the Sola Fide books with an interest in learning. I was hoping to see some good biblical arguments that would require me to think and evaluate both their position and mine. What I got instead was flimsy, flimsy arguments that frustrated and exasperated me due to their weakness. It only served to strengthen my view that Sola Fide is an entirely false and unbiblical doctrine.
@GratefulDisciple Protestants always claim that people who disagree with their doctrines "just don't understand them." The reality is that they cannot be understood by a rational, thinking, objective person, because they are internally contradictory and externally in contradiction to basic teachings of the Bible. They simply don't make sense. Trying to make sense of them is a fool's errand.
I finally concluded that the Protestants trying to explain their doctrines to me don't understand those doctrines themselves. They have in their minds a lot of things that their doctrine is supposed to be, but it's not that, and therefore they can't see their own doctrines with a clear mind.
It is possible to state what those doctrines are. It is not possible to make them make sense, because they don't. And it is not possible to make them good or loving, because they are the opposite of that. The God they portray is a horrible, bloodthirsty, vindictive, arbitrary God. There's just no way around that.
Here is an article I wrote in the aftermath of my reading of those two (technically one and a half) books on Sola Fide. I was quite frustrated as I wrote it.
The thing is, Luther had good intentions in inventing sola fide. He wanted to root out the corruption in the Catholic Church, especially the fake "works" that the Catholic Church required of its people, but mostly to acquire money and power for themselves. Indulgences, large contributions to the church, and so on.
But he jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Protestants see Luther's good intentions, but they don't see that the cure he prescribed was worse than the disease.
@curiousdannii This would carry more weight if I hadn't gone ahead and read one and a half books by eminent Protestant scholars presenting and defending the doctrine of justification by faith alone. "They just don't understand us" is a common excuse for people whose ideas don't make any sense.
@GratefulDisciple Oh, I should mention that Mr. Bultitude had asked me to pick one of the two books he recommended, and read it. So reading one and a half was going beyond my side of the bargain.
@GratefulDisciple Yes. The whole point of the Bible, and of religion in general, is to make us better people, who are closer to God in character and in action. If some doctrine or practice doesn't do that, it is useless.
Salvation as an abstract thing means nothing. Who cares whether God "deems" us "justified." The question is: are we actually good and righteous people. God doesn't "deem" us one thing when we are actually something else. God looks at the heart, not at some external "clothing" of righteousness that is "imputed" to us, but isn't who we actually are.
If salvation means anything at all, it means removing our heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh. Or in non-metaphorical terms, changing us from being selfish, greedy people to loving, compassionate people. That is what Jesus was talking about when he said that if we want to enter the kingdom of God, we must be born again.
@GratefulDisciple In response: 1) I would say that God can and does give love unilaterally, but if we are in opposition to God, we will receive only a small portion of it, and that small portion we will twist into its opposite, which is exclusive love of self and the world--the sources of all evil.
@GratefulDisciple I think that where Swedenborgians differ from both Catholics and Protestants is that we would say that sanctification is salvation. We would reject the idea that a person is saved, and then sanctified as a result of being saved.
Also, instead of "sanctification," we use the word "regeneration," which is a somewhat old-fashioned latinate term that means the same thing as "being born again." Being born again, in our view, means becoming a person motivated by, and living out, love for the Lord and love for the neighbor instead of being motivated by, and living out, exclusive love of self and the world (money, power, etc.).
I say exclusive love of self and the world because these loves are not bad if they are subordinated to love of the Lord and love of the neighbor. Even more accurate would be to say that if we are ruled by love of self and/or love of the world, then we are an evil, unregenerate person.
Under satisfaction theory, a person is saved by faith in Jesus, and specifically that Jesus died for our sins; when a person accepts and declares this faith, s/he is immediately saved by having Christ's righteousness and merit imputed to him or her. Sanctification then follows if the salvation was genuine.
But in Swedenborg's chapter in his True Christian Religion on imputation of merit, he says that it has no meaning unless it means a person being "regenerated" or reborn, so that s/he more and more acts from love of God and the neighbor rather than from love of self and the world. The process of regeneration is the process of salvation, and cannot be separated from it even intellectually.
Why does this distinction matter? Because it is too easy for Catholics, and especially for Protestants, to think that once you're "in the door" and saved by faith, you can relax and take it easy about actually repenting from sin. I've met a few too many "saved" people who are just plain terrible people. And they all say that they're saved by faith in Jesus.
There is no such excuse if sanctification = salvation. If you're not doing the hard work of no longer being a terrible person, then you're not saved. Period. There's no getting in the door and being satisfied with being a doorkeeper because you're unwilling to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. If you don't do the work, you don't get in the door in the first place.
The reason this isn't "meritorious" or works done "for boasting" is that if we know and have faith that we are being saved by Jesus Christ, we recognize that none of our good works are ours. They are all Christ's in us. And even though it feels like we're doing the work, and it should feel that way, the reality is that it is also Christ doing the work in us. He is the vine, we are the branches.
@GratefulDisciple Back to 1) for a moment: If we did not receive any of God's love we could not live at all, good or evil. We are all sustained moment-to-moment by God's love, forever. However, we are free to receive God's love each in our own way. Good people receive God's love and do good and loving things with its power. Evil people receive God's love and twist it into evil, hateful, and destructive things.
An illustration Swedenborg commonly uses is that it is like the sun shining on various plants and animals. They all receive the same sunlight. But each turns it into its own distinctive character: horse, deer, dog, cat, rose, bramble, and so on. And if the sunlight shines on a corpse, it turns it into rotting, decay, and maggots.
God's love is the same everywhere, always. But the recipient turns it into all manner of things, both good and evil. If evil, then the evil is in the recipient, not in God.
It remains true that neither the good nor the evil can do anything without God's love. He is the vine, we are the branches. Without him we can do nothing. That is a universal truth.
(Oh, and Swedenborgians make no distinction between Jesus Christ and God. For us, Jesus Christ is God. In the Lord (Jesus) is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not as separate "persons" (an unbiblical falsity), but as "parts" or "essentials" like our soul, body, and actions.)
@GratefulDisciple I don't disagree with any of this. I would only say that it is a mistake based on satisfaction theory to think that conversion = salvation.
Conversion is literally "turning around." That is the point at which we cease walking the path toward hell, and turn around with the intention of walking the path toward heaven instead.
If, at the time of conversion, we simply turn around, and do not take any steps in the other direction, then we are not saved. It is the actual walking of the path toward heaven that constitutes our salvation. Because at the point of conversion, we are actually still in hell, because we've been wading into hell our entire adult lives up to that point. If we don't start traveling toward heaven, we remain in hell, and we remain damned.
This is why it is a mistake to think that we are saved at the point of conversion. No. We are saved when we begin walking the path toward heaven.
Or more accurately, we are being saved. If we continue in that direction, we will make our way out of hell (in God's power, of course), and into heaven.
That's why Jesus said that if we want to enter the kingdom of God, we must be born again. Even physically, being born is not an instantaneous thing. Even from the most reductionist stance, it takes a few hours at least to be born, and sometimes a day or two. It is not instantaneous. But it also requires nine months in the womb, and it requires follow-up after the birth, or it will be a stillbirth.
And of course, that birth is a metaphor. In reality, being born again is a lifelong process. Our entire lifetime on this earth is our stay in the womb so that when we die we can be born into heaven, which is "life after birth."
In short, it is wrong to think that when we have converted, we have been saved. No. Salvation follows conversion if we actually walk the path toward heaven. That walk is the walk of repentance from sin and acting from love and kindness instead.
@GratefulDisciple I disagree with the key point in this whole discussion. "Faith" "alone" is not sufficient to receive God's Spirit. God's spirit is not a theoretical thing. It has action and movement. We receive the Holy Spirit only when we are in action. If we are not in action, then the Spirit is not flowing in us. This is what James was talking about in his letter.
8:14 AM
@LeeWoofenden That's not my criticism. My criticism was that you won't hear us when we say that what you say we should be teaching is what we are teaching already. Not 100% of the time of course, we still have some major differences. But enough of the time that I have mostly given up trying to communicate with you.
Most Protestant preachers are not bad people. They do want their flock to be saved. And they preach the message of salvation because that's what the Lord and his Apostles preached. When they are preaching it, they don't realize that their sola fide doctrine contradicts everything they are preaching. This is part of God's providence to ensure that people can be saved even when the doctrines of their church are false.
@curiousdannii Sola fide involves and implies this. That's why antinomianism has been such a thorn in the side of Protestantism from the very beginning. And it is still very common today. Protestants believing they are saved when they are awful people. I see it all the time. There is no excuse for this in Swedenborgian Christianity. Not a breath of an excuse. But sola fide provides a hole big enough to throw a whole herd of cats through.
8:20 AM
@LeeWoofenden It truly does not. You are just demonstrating my point. I don't try to tell you what you believe, what Swedenborg taught, I hear and learn from you. Like, for example, how you showed the difference between Swedenborgism and Modalism. So will you please listen to us when we tell you that you have not actually understood our teachings?
@curiousdannii But it is not yet "saved." If it is fertilized, and then dies, it does not become a human being. Being "saved," which is also having life, requires growth to occur.
8:27 AM
8:30 AM
@curiousdannii I didn't say that. But I also do say that the doctrine contradicts both itself and the Bible. A Creed can be false.
When two people get married, they don't instantly become husband and wife in anything but a legal sense. In reality, it takes years of growing together to become husband and wife. The wedding day is the point at which the process of becoming husband and wife begins. Though there was preparation for it in the period of courtship and engagement, the actual becoming husband and wife begins on the wedding day. And it is a process that continues for the rest of the couple's life.
Similarly, when we accept Christ into our life, we are not in union with Christ. We are only beginning the process of becoming one with Christ. That process takes an entire lifetime, and we believe, continues to eternity in the afterlife as well. (We believe the same about genuine spiritual marriage.)
@curiousdannii Yes, of course. A baby has the physical characteristics of a human being in somewhat undeveloped form. But a baby still has not developed the capabilities that make us humans rather than animals. These are capabilities of mind and heart. It takes eighteen or twenty years to develop those capabilities. Then, if the process has worked, we begin the process of becoming fully human.
@curiousdannii Yes, of course. It didn't happen instantaneously. It takes time to breathe life into dead flesh. The valley of bones didn't instantaneously pop into flesh-and-blood humans. The flesh had to be put on the bones. And that takes non-zero time.
8:41 AM
@curiousdannii When we first convert, we are still mostly dead, because we are still sinful humans, desiring gratification of our own self and our own lusts. Christ gradually replaces that death within us with life. It doesn't happen instantaneously.
If we are being saved by Christ, we are going through the trials of temptation, in which we must do the hard work of laying aside our old desires and replacing them with the new love and light that comes to us from Christ. If we are not working out our own salvation with fear and trembling, we are not being saved.
@curiousdannii And yes, indeed, you can be half dead and half alive. Consider someone who has had severe hypothermia, and it has progressed to where it has killed the flesh in the person's extremities. That person is half dead and half alive. And it could go either way: resulting in death or resulting in life.
Would you say that your hands and your feet aren't part of you? If you lose them, you have lost a part of yourself. Part of you is dead.
There are then many things you could do before that you can't do now. Even in expression, part of you is dead.
@curiousdannii And incidentally, the Bible never says that we are individually the bride of Christ. It is the Church, or the community of God's people collectively, that is the bride of Christ. God is not a polygamist.
@GratefulDisciple Really, Protestant theology is just a continued development (really, a devolution) of Catholic theology. Luther was a Catholic monk. He was thoroughly inculcated with Catholic theology. Most of what he believed and taught was Catholic belief. He simply came up with his own variation.
The reason Catholicism has been able to reconcile with Protestantism as much as it has is that the differences between their respective theologies are incremental, not radical. At its core, satisfaction theory is a faith alone theory, even if its originators and developers (Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, etc.) didn't reach that conclusion themselves. Protestantism simply brought that theory to its logical conclusion.
But it is a fundamentally unbiblical and false theory. Anselm originally developed it, not based on the Bible, but based on logic, human reason, and legal theory. Nowhere does the Bible ever say that Christ satisfied the Father. The entire concept is completely absent from the Bible.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. There was no need to satisfy the Father. The Father is God's love. Love does not need to be satisfied. It needs only to be accepted.
It is ironic that after Paul put out such effort to expel legalism from the church, 1,000 years later the Catholic Church readopted legalism in the form of
Protestantism doubled down on that legalism with its penal substitution variation of Catholic satisfaction theory.
@GratefulDisciple If you do the work of repentance and loving your neighbor as yourself, then you are being saved regardless of any errors in your intellect regarding theology. That is the bottom line.
However, this doesn't mean that theology doesn't matter, and that we can all just have our own truth. False ideas do inflict damage by misleading people and sending them down wrong paths. True ideas guide people on good and safe paths.
@GratefulDisciple The external appearance is that faith leads to love. The internal reality is that love leads to faith.
@GratefulDisciple For us humans, being perfect is a goal, not a reality. There will always be remaining blind spots in our eyes and remaining selfish spots in our heart. Salvation is a lifelong process—one that continues to eternity.
Being perfect is not a requirement for entering heaven. Even the heavens themselves are not perfect in God's eyes. What is required is that we put love of the Lord, or at least love of the neighbor, first in our life.
To use a Swedenborgian term, our "ruling love" must be good. There are four basic choices of ruling love:
1. Love of the Lord
2. Love of the neighbor
3. Love of the world
4. Love of self
1. Love of the Lord
2. Love of the neighbor
3. Love of the world
4. Love of self
If we are ruled by either of the first two, then we are in a state of heaven. If we are ruled by either of the last two, then we are in a state of hell.
Once a good ruling love is in place in our heart, the remainder of our life consists of gradually bringing the rest of ourselves into alignment with that ruling love. It doesn't happen all at once. It happens on an "installment plan." There will always be some parts of ourselves that we still need to work on to get them into alignment with the love that rules in our heart.
9:27 AM
@GratefulDisciple Faith is simply the expression of love. We can distinguish faith from love intellectually, but in reality, either they are one with each other or neither one of them exists.
This is why "faith alone" is so fallacious. Anyone who believes in "faith alone" has no idea what faith is.
Faith looks primary because our intellect can grasp faith and talk about it. But love is the fundamental reality. This is why Paul put love above both faith and hope—a passage that Western Christians seem to blissfully ignore in all of their doctrines.
If there were not some love moving in our heart, we could not even come to a point of faith. We perceive the faith first, and therefore we think it comes first. But really, Christ's love moves in our heart, and based on that we come to a conscious position of faith in Christ. The love is unconscious (at first), the faith is conscious, so we say that faith led us to love. But the reality is that love led us to faith.
This is what Paul is talking about when he says that we are saved by grace through faith. "Grace" is a translation of one of the many Greek words for "love." It is God's lovingkindness working in our heart that brings us to a position of faith, through which God then works to save us by putting more and more of God's love in our hearts, and giving us the power to express that love in our lives.
5 hours later…
2:15 PM
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