I had Seminary last weekend, and as usual, it's taken me about a week to recover! Work has been pretty busy, too, contributing to my absence from the weblog.
This Seminary module is entitled "Pastoral Care", and Friday night we got into a really good discussion on the relation between baptism and salvation, which is a difficult question for Evangelicals coming into the Catholic faith. Bishop Myers had some good stuff to say from a book called Common Sense: (I don't know the author; I need to find out.)
- Baptism makes you a Christian, period.
- There are good Christians, and bad Christians.
- There are Christians in heaven, and Christians in hell.
- To have the blessing of baptism and spurn it is worse than never having it at all.
So, baptism is the initiation into the Church. When someone is baptized, they are made a member of the body of Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is a gift, a mighty work of grace that God does in the person who receives it. But it does not force that person to not subsequently reject God and spurn the gift. So, it is possible for a person to receive the grace of baptism, and later walk away from it. One example is Josef Stalin, who was baptized and raised in the Church, but later in life ordered the execution of thousands of priests. He seemed to have rejected the blessing that he received at baptism.
The Bishop also had a good quote from Robert Capon which I had heard from him before, but had not written down. "Hell is the white hot fury of the love of God."
Although there is a sense in scripture where God's judgment is active, but there is also a sense that it is self inflicted by virtue of the rejection of God's love. Compare
John 5:22, "For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son" with John 12:47-48, "And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him--the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day." At one point, Jesus says that all judgment has been committed to the Son, but then He says He did not come to judge the world. I think Jesus is saying in John 12 that the very words of salvation that He spoke in the gospel become words of judgment to those who reject them. They are words of love, but they burn those who do not receive them.
9:45:07 PM 
|
|
