This caught me by surprise. The message of "God invites, we accept and then cooperate with works" sounds an awful lot like free-willism and modern evangelicals. I know modern evangelicals will disagree on the points about being saved by conscience, but the similarity with "invite, accept, work" sounds very familiar.
I was telling a friend the other day that "children" are unequivocal proof of freewill.
God has let us experience exactly what He experiences with His offspring through our children.
canons... creeds.... councils.... no matter what the label on the religion proclaiming them..... most all of them are extrabiblical and overshadowed with mans opinions and ideas......very little of any of them reflect the actual faith and spiritiual beliefs of the peope so labelled.... .... .......so it comes as a surprise to even lifelong catholics sometimes to discover there are just as many differing and contradictory ideas among catholics concerning the doctrine of salvation as there are among baptists, and other protestant... non-protestant... claimers to have descended uncorrupted from those pastored by the original apostles ..... and etc.... . ....... there are even catholics who for all practical purposes are calvinists..... .... most don;t know they are calvinists.... but when you ask them what they believe it;s like a carbon copy of some of the things i saw written on the old fff, back when tulip vrs daisy was the hot topic of the day....... ..................the classic and stereotypical idea of the catholic who believes good works get you into heaven and sees the final judgement as a great set of scales where your good works are weighed against the bad is out there too..... ....but has that ever really been the official doctrine of the catholic church? ...... ...how many proclaimers of any religious denomination can actually remember or recite all the various creeds and councils their sect of the faith is supposed to believe or adhere to?.... ...how many know which of the various "-isms".... "-ianisms" ... "semi-isms".. .. and combinations thereof their beliefs would even fall under?.... ...
i think these days most people who still attend church choose one for no other reason but that there are other people there they simply feel comfortable around.... few are there to actually worship with people who believe the same doctrines and share a similar view of salvation..... ....it;s more about culture than commitment..... and i think if the truth were known most people don;t even know what most of the people they share a pew with on sunday morning really believe in... ... ...that became obvious to me when i saw how many different ideas were represented by fff members back in the day..... most them calling themselves baptists...... and all of them calling themselves fundamentalists..... ... and to see the many different multisyllable labels they plastered on everyone they both agreed and disagreed with became tedious and disheartening .... ....i think it;s one reason that so many walk away from the faith and end up believing in nothing.... ....even those that were once outspoken defenders of one doctrine or another..... ... most long time church goers have seen it happen in their own churches..... and anyone who has been on the various fff forums for any length of time has seen it..... and some of us have seen it happen more than once.... ..........
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It's hard to know what the person next to you in the pew believes when the only person who is allowed to talk is the preacher.
(01-06-2019, 05:19 PM)The Rogue Tomato Wrote: [ -> ]It's hard to know what the person next to you in the pew believes when the only person who is allowed to talk is the preacher.
true....... ....but if it was God;s will that someone should interrupt the preacher.... ....and the supralapsarian model is correct...... ......or God;s decree that anyone in every church setting be allowed to speak up and either add to or contradict what the preacher was saying.... ... ....how could it not happen?....... ...it must either be God;s will and decree that church goers in those settings remain silient and listen.... ...or the people in those pews have chosen to refrain from talking through their own free will........