To Grace: First let me say what joy to hear that there is now peace within you, and the battle with Satan has been put to rest by your love, faith and the power of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ.

The following might help you to understand what Phil and w.c. are saying about the fruits of the Holy Spirit in all religions.

http://www.mcmaster.ca/mjtm/5-4.htm


Of course, you have a right to disagree. I understand what you are conveying and saying, but we all agree that we want everyone to come to Christ through the love and graces of the Holy Spirit.

May peace continue for you, together with the love and strength of Christ. Blessings.

If we don't give it another interpretation Jesus was so explicit in saying that "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14: 6).

For sure. I don't think there is another way. What I was saying is that it may well be that Christ is working in all religions and even outside of religions to lead people to the Father in a more hidden manner. When I speak of "implicit faith," then, I don't mean to be suggesting that there's another way to the Father besides Christ.

The little essay Freebird refers us to (very good, btw -- thanks, Freebird) notes:

quote:

The ever-present Spirit can surely foster transforming friendships with God anywhere and everywhere. Surely the Spirit meets people not only in religious spheres but everywhere � in the natural world, in the give and take of relationships, in the systems that structure human life. No nook or cranny is untouched by the finger of God. This is a presence and activity which may even make use of other religions in its drawing action. All because of Jesus Christ, who is both the criterion for whatever truth there is in the other religions and the only and final end where this truth can be fulfilled.

Anyway . . . good discussion, and quite relevant to understanding the mystical body of Christ.

What I was saying is that it may well be that Christ is working in all religions and even outside of religions to lead people to the Father in a more hidden manner.

I don't exactly understand by what you mean Christ is working in all religions. If you mean Christ is available for everybody I agree. That Christ is available for everybody doesn't mean he do all the work for us regardless of our acceptance of him. What I have learned throughout my experience is Christ provides the process of salvation to humanity but we have to commit to go through the experience.

Grace:

I know you're probably looking to Phil for clarification here, but here's another one of my nickles.

Within a cultural setting where, let's say, Krishna is the form of God worshipped, the grace of Christ, as evidenced by the fruits of the Holy Spirit, can be seen. Having Hindus acclimate to a form of God completely outside their own social and cultural references would achieve nothing but confusion, even though a few might convert to Christianity in a more overt way, embracing its creed and trying to adopt more western-like behaviors, but not necessarily be any holier for it.

Otherwise, you're left with a God who expects his children to get their behaviors correct before loving them, which is no different than an immature, abusive parent hiding behind the desire for behavioral modification rather than admitting to his own incapacity.

So the longing for God is enough by itself for Christ and the Holy Spirit to appear in the person's experience. Such a person can recieve those graces without getting the names right. The bottom line, for me, is that we can observe and sense the effects of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in other people, but cannot, ultimately, say what their experience actually is.

The risen Christ's appearance to his disciples on the road to Emmaus (Gospel of Luke) is a partially workable metaphor for this idea. The disciples felt Him burning in their hearts, but didn't recognize Him.

It's not up to me or anyone else to say who can be saved. Having said that, I'm pretty sure that God can save within or without any form of religion.

We have to be careful however to identify the idolatory within other religions. If a Hindu worships Shiva or Krishna, he is worshipping another God and no amount of evidence of the Holy Spirit's fruit will negate that.

Like the Thessalonians, all Hindus, Jains and Sikhs are called to turn to the living God from idols, whatever form these idols take.

God is God. There is no spiritual truth or reality in a "form of God" within or without a cultural setting. And ultimately God can only be revealed through Jesus Christ His Son. He can be witnessed or evidenced through creation or whatever, but revelation of God's love is fundamentally seen in Jesus Christ. If a person doesn't consciously acknowledge that love in Christ and choses to try find God through any other means, he is ultimately rejecting God's love. It's not a matter of man having to behave correctly in order to elicit God's love, but a matter of man expressing his search and love of God by keeping His commandments. As Christ says, "If you love me you will keep my commandments."

Again, can I suggest another parental model. A parent can love his child no matter what but will withhold rewards and favours if that child is behaving in way that is destructive or contrary to its own or the family's good. The child needs to behave correctly to gain the inheritance. This doesn't mean that the parent stops loving it. So it is with God, who never stops loving His creation, but requires even just the tiniest amount of faith in His Beloved Son before He can deliver the gifts He wishes to impart. It's what is called "righteous requirement."

God is required to love unconditionally, but man isn't required to believe in Christ unconditionally. There's a strange irony in that, as if we want it all our own way and God is only allowed to exist according to our requirements.

Stephen:

I'm afraid your Calvinist skirt is showing again . . . .

Obviously you've never met Hindus such as I'm refering to, or if you have, haven't been receptive to them on an interpersonal level. What I'm referring to isn't the idolatry of paganism, to which most Hindus are wrongly associated with. Hinduism, as I know from first hand experience, isn't polytheistic. The various "gods" of Hiduism, are, in fact, manifestations of God's qualities.

So putting that simple miscalculation of theology aside, let's look at your version of the child-parent metaphor. We've slopped through this one before, but I'm amazed at the way you equate a parent's love with a parent's approval. They are not the same. As such, God would most certainly approve of anyone seeking Him, and not withold love simply because the names are incorrect. So your analogy collapses, as you allude to a variety or degree of approval that would actually nullify the intent of the seeker, regardless of the genuineness of the devotion.

It's like trying to provide religious education to a child. Instead of finding out how the child is already intuitively predisposed to a faith experience, educators impose a set of beliefs that undermine the heart connection that already exists.

What's the difference between an Islamist who demands only faith in Allah (got to get the name right . . . it can't be God or Yawheh), and a Christian who demands love-based devotion of other religions forego their own traditions in order to avoid eternal damnation?

Not much . . . .

BTW, Stephen, just what were Jesus' commandments? This would be crucial, since you've admitted from the outset the ability of God to save under any conditions. Why not the willingness to do so where the person's devotion fulfills those commandments?

This is the discussion that's been going on in Christianity for centuries, so we shouldn't be surprised that we're finding it difficult to "tidy things up" on this thread.

Again, I take the quote from Vatican II to be the definitive word on salvation for non-Christians, but I acknowledge that non-Catholics might not see things this way. The difficulty, it seems, is in reconciling this teaching with the Biblical account Grace quoted, where Christ says no one comes to the Father except through him.

Here's something to consider with regard to that point:
1. God creates all things through the Word: Jn 1, 3.
2. Jesus is the incarnation of the Word: Jn 1, 14.

Now if we reflect on these two points, what we find is that:
A. God continues to create all things through the Word.
B. Because Jesus is the risen and ascended incarnation of the Word, God's creation through the Word necessarily involves Jesus, who is present where the Word is present.

OK so far?

Then . . . God's continuing creation through the Word means that Jesus is intimately involved in that process and is in living contact with all creatures. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit as God's indwelling presence is also at work in creation. Therefore, it cannot help but be the case that anyone who is saved is saved through Christ and the Holy Spirit as (from the Christian perspective) these are the living realities which connect us to God.

I realize there is a distinction between a union by virtue of creation and a union through faith, the latter opening the door to sanctifying grace. And I hope you all know that I take this very seriously and consider explicit faith to be the ideal. Furthermore, I take seriously the consequences of rejecting explicit faith, although I am loathe to judge one for doing so, as there are many extenuating circumstances, none the least of which is the bad example of Christians. So color me "orthodox," please! I'm with the "program," gang.

When it comes to condemning those who do not give evidence of explicit faith in Christ, Church-membership, etc., I am also loathe to say that they are going to be damned as many Christian groups do in fact teach. Why? Because of Mt. 25, the teachings of Vatican II, and the plain fact that Christ and the Holy Spirit continue to be present to them, knocking on the doors of their consciousness, and, perhaps, finding entrance in ways we do not see or know even if they do not speak Christianese or join a Church. So even with regard to "implicit faith," what makes it faith is a positive response to grace with evidence of such through good works and the fruits of the Spirit (a la Gal. 5). I daresay there are many non-Christians who meet this criteria, and because I believe there is only one Christ and one Holy Spirit at work, it follows that they must be in touch with these divine Persons. It might even be that they are calling them by other names! I have difficulty believing that God would object to that -- especially if the person didn't know any better.

----

BTW, this notion of "implicit faith" was hinted at in the classical teaching on proto-evangelium, which affirmed a kind of preparedness for the Gospel among the "pagans" to whom the missionaries preached. Missionaries have often been amazed at how quickly and readily some take to the Gospel and how their own religion prepared them for its acceptance. Can you see Christ and the Spirit at work in this way? The profession religious in these traditions have often been the most resistant, but that's nothing new either. They're the ones who had Jesus killed.

Phil, your post had such clarity. Thank you so much.

For by grace are ye saved through faith;
and not of yourselves: "it is the gift
of God:"
Ephesians 2:8

But what about the mystical body? Okay, okay, I get all of the above and I'm not going to condemn any single soul, Hindu, Muslim whatever, to Hell (so I guess I'm hemming up my Calvinist skirt there w.c. , and BTW, we call them kilts in Scotland ) And I'm aware that, in strict Hindu theology, there is only one God and the "gods" are manifestations of that one God's personality. But there's a whole mythology pertaining to these gods and a huge argument that equates them(and the Greco-Roman gods) with the heroes and giants in Genesis . . . and blah de blah, that's a whole different area and I can feel my Hislopian self being shot down in waves of anti-protestant protesting.

Nevertheless, I still maintain an idolatorous aspect to the worship of these aspects of God and am not convinced that they lead to the true God but rather have different energies/entities surrounding them. I've met Hindus who have converted to Christianity because they have discerned demonic presences surrounding the worship of a particular deity.

I really don't think I equate a parents love with a parents approval, w.c. In fact, I'm actually making a distinction between the two. A good parent can love despite disapproving and will withhold certain things from a child, not because he/she disapproves, but, on the contrary, because his/her love deems that the giving is wrong for that child at that particular time, in that the child will waste/squander/spend the inheritance on something bad for the child, or destructive for the family, and that this withholding is, rather a more subtle expresion of love and wisdom, not disapproval as you seem to think. Besides, I happen to think it's okay to disapprove, and to withhold certain things, "certain" things, because of disapproval, if that withholding influences or guides a wayward child onto a better path. I hope we've cleared that one up.

So God withholds because, in His love and wisdom, He sees the child to be unsuited, having not experienced adoption by the Spirit of God. Indeed, exposure to the glory of salvation would be destructive to the child whose robes weren't washed in the lamb's blood, much like Paul or Zacharias or anyone else blinded or maimed by premature exposure to the glory of God. IOW, you have to have faith in Christ because to experience God without it is ultimately bad for you. And so God withholds because He loves, not because He disapproves, though you couldn't really blame him for disapproving anyway - gently, and with compassion, but not sparing the rod, cos that would spoil the child .

Anyway, the whole point of a person's membership of the body is to edify other members and to grow into the Head who is Christ. If Christ isn't the explicit head, but some other supposed manifestation of God, then how can the member grow into that true head? Rather he/she grows into an imitation. And how indeed can that person edify another member when the true head isn't even acknowledged?

I'm quite willing to concede the Holy Spirit's fruit bearing role in other religions.Indeed,the Holy Spirit prompts love, peace, self control etc, in any context, but that prompting is different from the indwelling. The fruits of the Spirit can be manifested through that prompting, but it is not the same as indwelling. The indweliing only takes place after explicit faith in Christ. It follows then that only when that happens can there be membership of the body of Christ. And only if there is explicit faith in Christ can there be an indwelling. That's how it appears in the Acts of the Apostles.

Many characters in the Old Testament were prompted to good works by the Spirit but there was no indwelling of the Spirit because the Spirit hadn't been sent into the world. I would contend that the likes of Abraham, Moses, and David are not members of the body of Christ(rather they are "friends of the bridegroom") because there was no indwelling in any real sense. Christ had to ascend and the Spirit had to come for the mystical body to be fully formed on earth. And there has to be faith in Christ and a subsequent indwelling of the Spirit to be formed as a member of that body.

And BTW, can you be a true American if you don't swear allegiance to the flag?

�Nevertheless, I still maintain an idolatorous aspect to the worship of these aspects of God and am not convinced that they lead to the true God but rather have different energies/entities surrounding them. I've met Hindus who have converted to Christianity because they have discerned demonic presences surrounding the worship of a particular deity.�

I'd wager most of these converted Hindus were not steeped in the devotional aspect of their faith, and involved in the kind of kundalini meditations that put them at risk. When I hear them talk about intimacy with God, it very clearly has presonal qualities. OTOH, I'd support the idea of conversion if they were simply drawn to it, but as a deepening of their faith, not a recanting of something essentially bad or lacking in the basic sense.

�I really don't think I equate a parents love with a parents approval, w.c. In fact, I'm actually making a distinction between the two. A good parent can love despite disapproving and will withhold certain things from a child, not because he/she disapproves, but, on the contrary, because his/her love deems that the giving is wrong for that child at that particular time, in that the child will waste/squander/spend the inheritance on something bad for the child, or destructive for the family, and that this withholding is, rather a more subtle expresion of love and wisdom, not disapproval as you seem to think. I hope we've cleared that one up.�

No Stephen, we haven't cleared that up, as you used the metaphor, at least in your previous post, to suggest that God would actually withold His love from a soul because the tenets of faith being embraced were not the Christian creed. This rigid view of the sovereignty of God among Protestants, especially of the Calvinist persuasion, makes God a clumsy artifact of the mind, a rendering of Scripture that suggests something quite different than the Abba of Jesus. As such, you have God witholding His love, but calling it His approval. I'm afraid you are treading the path of the Pharisees, as you didn't answer the question I posed at the end of my last post. Jesus' commands were drawn from the Old Testament, familiar to all Jews, and lived quite well by some in Jesus' day who didn't follow Him completely. What you end up arguing, Stephen, is that Jews who love God with all their heart, soul, etc . . . and their neighbors as themselves, are essentially deficient without Christ. This is a slippery slope, where everyone but rigid Protestants go to hell because of the lack of paranoid care give to the fine details of what membership is supposed to look like. The grace of God didn't become more specious with the advent of Christ; otherwise even some of the Old Testament prophets are more inclusive than you are.

�So God withholds because, in His love and wisdom, He sees the child to be unsuited, having not experienced adoption by the Spirit of God. Indeed, exposure to the glory of salvation would be destructive to the child whose robes weren't washed in the lamb's blood, much like Paul or Zacharias or anyone else blinded or maimed by premature exposure to the glory of God. IOW, you have to have faith in Christ because to experience God without it is ultimately bad for you. And so God withholds because He loves, not because He disapproves. This is a deeper, more subtle love than you give God credit for, w.c.�

Subtly? Are you suggesting the literalization of metaphor you've made here captures God's subtlty? Again, you are beginning with the premise of God witholding His love from those who seek Divine Grace with an open heart. Leaving out �love� from your first sentence doesn't make this post of yours any different than the one before it. You are still insisting that God would withold love from His children, which doesn't in anyway match Jesus' own witness to His father's love when he presented children to his disciples as the way to the kingdom. None of these children were fearful of Christ, or in some danger because they hadn't passed some test; their own direct receptivity to God's grace was the point. This is most definitely not the God of mercy, but one who banishes those �unsuited,� and quibbles over the manners or proprieties of relgious creed where intimacy is concerned. So your couching God's sovereignty as some hidden aspect of providence isn't convincing.

�Anyway, the whole point of a person's membership of the body is to edify other members and to grow into the Head who is Christ. If Christ isn't the explicit head, but some other supposed manifestation of God, then how can the member grow into that true head? Rather he/she grows into an imitation. And how indeed can that person edify another member when the true head isn't even acknowledged?�

This is exactly why Christian and Hindu mystics that meet for conferences more often than not come away with a sense of kinship, as the credibility of the mystical experience doesn't tolerate much in the way of figuring out whose deity gets to stand on the head of the pin.

�I'm quite willing to concede the Holy Spirit's fruit bearing role in other religions.Indeed,the Holy Spirit prompts love, peace, self control etc, in any context, but that prompting is different from the indwelling. The fruits of the Spirit can be manifested through that prompting, but it is not the same as indwelling. The indweliing only takes place after explicit faith in Christ. It follows then that only when that happens can there be membership of the body of Christ. And only if there is explicit faith in Christ can there be an indwelling. That's how it appears in the Acts of the Apostles.�

The fruits of the Holy Spirit are in fact the outcomes of the indwelling. Christ as the Word made flesh is simply too close to human beings to not be involved in a deep search of the heart that happens to fall outside Christian culture. As for Moses and Elijah, I guess they were pretty bummed to find out during Jesus' transfiguration that they needed an upgrade on their membership.


�And BTW, can you be a true American if you don't swear allegiance to the flag?�

I guess it depends upon which part of the pledge you're taking exception to.

So I'm a Pharisee now. Well, that's a first. I see I have to watch my words with you w.c.

I never ever say God witholds his love. Ever! I do say God witholds "certain" gifts, especially if that gift is rejected. There's a difference. I don't see anything wrong in God disapproving of certain behaviour. I don't see anything wrong in God being hurt and offended at the rejection of His Son, who is, after all, part of Himself. I also think it's okay to give certain gifts because He approves as that approval is part of His divine wisdom and righteousness. (You talk a lot about God's love and mercy but never about His holines or righteousness or justice. Are you an incompletist?) Paul talks about a "prize". The word "reward" is splashed throughout scripture. It's just a possibility that some folk might not get it!

Nor do I say a person has to pass a test or be suitable for salvation. That's blatantly ridiculous and a gross misinterpretation of what I've been saying. But - "You MUST be born again." It's quite simple. If your son was an alcoholic and asked for $10, you might be reluctant to give it to him, right? Similarly, if God reveals His perfect love in Christ and a person, whom you say is supposedly seeking God, rejects that gift, then aren't they ultimately rejecting God? If a father offers his son a vast estate but the son choses to rent a parcel of land from another landlord, isn't there something a tad perverse in that?

What I'm saying, w.c., is that the Jews "who love God with all their heart and mind etc." wouldn't BE "without Christ" because He is the essence of that God whom they purport to love. It doesn't make sense to be "without Christ" in that context. Nor does it make sense to be without Christ in today's religious mileau because Christ is the essence of that God we're all supposed to be seeking!

As for the commandments Jesus asks us to keep, it's pretty obvious from reading them that the Jews were to have no other God but Jehovah, and that the Lord their God was a jealous God.

I think you pick what you want from scripture w.c. I also think you underestimate the power of God's love in Christ and insult God by suggesting that His revelation in His Son is practically unnecessary. Having said that, I don't think our views of God differ all that much. You paint a grossly unfair picture of my personal faith and lump it in with an aspect of protetantism I myself have difficulty with. I suggest you do this because your opinion of said group is particularly ungracious and revelatory of a huge chip on your muscular shoulder. I'm not a stinking Calvinist!! And BTW, your equating my beliefs with Islamists could almost be construed as a case of post 9/11 American paranoia.

I'm going to have to leave your last major paragraph for now. Have to run. Busy busy. Or is that too Pharisaical for you? I will say in the passing it is rather facetious aswell as being theologically unsound. I'll see if I can get to it later.

A quickie before I head off to our glorious capital, beautiful Edinburgh, built upon the fiery breath of Knox and Calvin, those tyrannical monsters of . . . yadayadayada.

w.c. - Sometimes you suggest a view of humanity that is as sopping wet as an old dishcloth. We're not a bunch of wimpoids who melt into a pool of emotional mush every time someone shows the slightest disapproval. My father was/is a loving, kind, compassionate man who occasionally disapproved of certain ways of my behaving. Sometimes his giving or witholding from me was based on that disapproval and, looking back, I'm glad of that. It showed character and built in me resilience and a fine sense of right and wrong.

Also, your continual use of the parental metaphor to explain God is wearing thin. Sure Christ revealed Abba Father and that's wonderful and beautiful. But God also reveals Himself as Warrior, Judge, King etc, and some of the discussions we get into warrant the application of those expressions.

�So I'm a Pharisee now. Well, that's a first. I see I have to watch my words with you w.c.�

Most of us tread the path of the Pharisees now and then, but since we only have our words for clarity in a forum exchange, it does help to watch them. What you have said at certain times does in fact remind me of the rigidness of the Pharisees, Stephen. That's not to say that you are, of course.

Here's what you said in you first post in this exchange:

�It's not up to me or anyone else to say who can be saved. Having said that, I'm pretty sure that God can save within or without any form of religion.

�We have to be careful however to identify the idolatory within other religions. If a Hindu worships Shiva or Krishna, he is worshipping another God and no amount of evidence of the Holy Spirit's fruit will negate that.�

�Like the Thessalonians, all Hindus, Jains and Sikhs are called to turn to the living God from idols, whatever form these idols take.�

So you defer to God re: who will be saved. We all do that, but then you go on to arbitrate over other religions, saying that the worship of Krishna cannot be the worship of God as you know him. That's what sounds like the Pharisee to me, where a potentially deep love of God is experienced in a person's heart, not happening to fall under the semantic mantel of Christianity, and yet it is summarily dismissed as idolatrous without any appeal to how truth may appear via the tranforming effects of the personality. It's as though you're saying (correct me here) God can save them if they turn to him in explicit faith in Christ, but not as long as they labor under the supposed delusion of another God. That notion, where everyone has to be careful to get the names right in order not to betray God, sounds idolatrous itself. So it would help to have some familiarity with other's experience, rather than conclude that Krishna, de facto, renders the Hindu an idolator. Hence the conferences where mystics of the various religions you mention above find a deep kinship with each other, recognizing grace where it bonds them with each other. This is partly, I think, what informed the Second Vatican Council in its theological anthropology, wherein the activity of the Holy Spirit is understood to take place wherever there is, in effect, a keeping of Christ's commandments to love God and neighbor. Anyone in any religion can keep those commandments, whether or not they are aware of Christ's teaching, or drawn to Him in explicit faith.


�If a person doesn't consciously acknowledge that love in Christ and choses to try find God through any other means, he is ultimately rejecting God's love. It's not a matter of man having to behave correctly in order to elicit God's love, but a matter of man expressing his search and love of God by keeping His commandments. As Christ says, "If you love me you will keep my commandments."

Here again is the kind of statement I take strong exception too. Not that you and I will ever agree, Stephen, but where you seem to stand is quite a departure from the Catholic view Phil has described in brief. You seem to make no room at all for what Catholics call implicit faith, or the presence of the Word throughout creation that meets human souls where they yearn for God and serve Him in others. And so a Hindu who keeps Christ's commandments to love God and neighbor with all his heart would somehow pull up short in your scenario here, suggesting that what you view to be Christ's commandments are different than mentioned in Matthew 22: 34-40. Otherwise, if these are in fact the commandments you have in mind, then you seem to be saying that loving God and neighbor is only possible for a Christian under certain explicit tems of faith.

�I never ever say God witholds his love. Ever! I do say God witholds "certain" gifts, especially if that gift is rejected. There's a difference. I don't see anything wrong in God disapproving of certain behaviour. I don't see anything wrong in God being hurt and offended at the rejection of His Son, who is, after all, part of Himself. I also think it's okay to give certain gifts because He approves as that approval is part of His divine wisdom and righteousness. (You talk a lot about God's love and mercy but never about His holines or righteousness or justice. Are you an incompletist?) Paul talks about a "prize". The word "reward" is splashed throughout scripture. It's just a possibility that some folk might not get it!�

Given the above statements you've made, it doesn't really matter that God has offered His love, but that those of other faiths, inspite of keeping the two great commandments at heart, nonetheless, as you say, are �ultimately rejecting God's love.� To use the infamous parent-child metaphor again, it would be like a child sincerely loving a parent, but not keeping a rule properly due to lack of adult understanding, and being abandoned or punished for it. So as for God �disapproving of certain behaviors,� what could you mean here, since all we're talking about is how a person from another faith might express his or faith experience with metaphors approximating God's Divinity? It seems to me that you are equating belief with behavior in terms of consequences, wherein a Hindu would be disapproved of not because of his loving behavior and tranformed personality, or for his kindness or generosity in trying to keep the second commandment, but because he hasn't named Christ explicitly as the source this transformation.

So in short, this seems to amout to . . . a Hindu, for example, keeps the first and second commandments, exhibits increasingly the fruits of the Holy Spirit throughout his life, and yet God's son has somehow been rejected in this and God therefore disapproves of the Hindu. To then say God doesn't withold his love is rather like dangling a carrot in front of a hungry man who can only stomach cucumbers.

�You talk a lot about God's love and mercy but never about His holines or righteousness or justice. Are you an incompletist?) Paul talks about a "prize". The word "reward" is splashed throughout scripture. It's just a possibility that some folk might not get it!�

My experience of God's holiness and justice is mostly in two forms: the awe and creatureliness I feel when the grace of contemplation is given (which makes these discussions seem mostly a waste of time), and how He is constantly burning away at my false-self habits (or hoping I'll give Him the room for it), which is often quite painful, and on exhibit here in these postings! But I don't experience God's justice, holiness and righteousness as separate from His mercy and tenderness, but as qualities that procure transformation through truth. Not the truth of getting the words right, but where the heart's treasure happens to be. Distorted longings are healed through that truth, but not in terms of becoming a less semantically-error-prone Christian. As for a �prize,� how can it be anything other than God's love? What more could be received? Given that the two great commandments bear upon loving in the way they do, then I'd say that prize of love is within reach, through grace and implicit faith, to all who seek God earnestly and encounter His Word within creation, just in the way Phil describes it above:

�Here's something to consider with regard to that point:
1. God creates all things through the Word: Jn 1, 3.
2. Jesus is the incarnation of the Word: Jn 1, 14.

Now if we reflect on these two points, what we find is that:
A. God continues to create all things through the Word.
B. Because Jesus is the risen and ascended incarnation of the Word, God's creation through the Word necessarily involves Jesus, who is present where the Word is present.

OK so far?

Then . . . God's continuing creation through the Word means that Jesus is intimately involved in that process and is in living contact with all creatures. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit as God's indwelling presence is also at work in creation. Therefore, it cannot help but be the case that anyone who is saved is saved through Christ and the Holy Spirit as (from the Christian perspective) these are the living realities which connect us to God.�



�Nor do I say a person has to pass a test or be suitable for salvation. That's blatantly ridiculous and a gross misinterpretation of what I've been saying. But - "You MUST be born again." It's quite simple. If your son was an alcoholic and asked for $10, you might be reluctant to give it to him, right? Similarly, if God reveals His perfect love in Christ and a person, whom you say is supposedly seeking God, rejects that gift, then aren't they ultimately rejecting God? If a father offers his son a vast estate but the son choses to rent a parcel of land from another landlord, isn't there something a tad perverse in that?�

So what of our poor Hindu, Stephen? He loves God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and his neighbor as himself, proclaims the transcendental and immanent presence of God as both deeply pesonal and holy beyond words, bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit that witness to a new birth of his soul. I know several Hindus just like this, and of them I'd love to say, at some point in my life, I've been sanctified as deeply. So how is it that this Hindu �rejects that gift� offered by God? He seems in many ways, or degrees, more sanctified than I am, yet somehow he is refusing God's gift of grace, the only thing that accounts for his seeming spiritual maturity. The Hindu doesn't see any significant difference between his God and my God, and in prayer, neither do I, and so we both acknowledge fundamentally the same inheritance, or, as you say, the same �landlord.� Given the implicit and explicit signs of the Holy Spirit, i.e, the fruits born through transformation, the �pervesity� comes in the form of quibbling over whose experience of grace is the legitimate one.


�What I'm saying, w.c., is that the Jews "who love God with all their heart and mind etc." wouldn't BE "without Christ" because He is the essence of that God whom they purport to love. It doesn't make sense to be "without Christ" in that context. Nor does it make sense to be without Christ in today's religious mileau because Christ is the essence of that God we're all supposed to be seeking!�

So if you give the Jews this benefit of the doubt, why not the Hindus? From a Vatican II standpoint, those of other faiths keeping those commandments are not outside the presence of Christ as the Word through which creation occurs.


�I think you pick what you want from scripture w.c. I also think you underestimate the power of God's love in Christ and insult God by suggesting that His revelation in His Son is practically unnecessary.

We all pick and choose from Scripture, Stephen, each according to his or her own bias; it's inevitable. And we all insult God, but our petty intelligence probably evokes more mercy than anger. As for necessity of Christ's incarnation, there is no doubt of that in my mind. However, I see Christianity as the fulfillment of the other religions, wherein God, the uncreated, became human for the first and only time. This advent of God into human history has, IMO, the attributes Phil describes, where the second person of the Trinity, the risen Christ, continues to create the world through Himself, and is, in that way, available to all who seek God.

�Having said that, I don't think our views of God differ all that much. You paint a grossly unfair picture of my personal faith and lump it in with an aspect of protetantism I myself have difficulty with. I suggest you do this because your opinion of said group is particularly ungracious and revelatory of a huge chip on your muscular shoulder. I'm not a stinking Calvinist!!�

If I've misunderstood, or mischaracterized you, then my apologies. But considering the poor, not-so fictitious Hindu, I don't think our views are as kindred as say, those mystics from various religions who find a deep fellowship between each other via shared mystical grace.

�And BTW, your equating my beliefs with Islamists could almost be construed as a case of post 9/11 American paranoia.�

If in fact you view the Hindu, genuinely committed as he is to the two great commandments, as unredeemed or deluded, then unless you recant on the notion of his eternal damnation then I'd have to say such beliefs are dangerously close to those of Islamists. Not that I think you'd resort to violence against your own neighbors physically, but find your exclusionary terms to be just as harsh. The Islamist views Christians and Jews as deficient and falling outside the graces of Allah, whereas you have made statements suggesting someone like our Hindu is just as forlorn. I'm not paranoid of you, as I don't view fundamentalist Christians as a threat to the security of free citizens of the world. However, the creedal rigidness of many versions of Protestantism certainly has me grateful for the separation of church and state.


�w.c. - Sometimes you suggest a view of humanity that is as sopping wet as an old dishcloth. We're not a bunch of wimpoids who melt into a pool of emotional mush every time someone shows the slightest disapproval. My father was/is a loving, kind, compassionate man who occasionally disapproved of certain ways of my behaving. Sometimes his giving or witholding from me was based on that disapproval and, looking back, I'm glad of that. It showed character and built in me resilience and a fine sense of right and wrong.�

I think this bears upon our different understandings of God's justice, holiness, sovereignty, etc . . . As I mentioned, my undestanding of these qualities of God's presence comes from the way He tranforms humans internally, where the false self is often painfully burned away. God seeks the place in the yearning where He can be recognized as what we desire, rather than creaturely attachments. There's certainly nothing �wimpoid� in that process, and suggests a great deal of resilence and strength within the human soul, i.e, probably more goodness and intelligence than many Protestants would acknowledge as even possible.

�Also, your continual use of the parental metaphor to explain God is wearing thin. Sure Christ revealed Abba Father and that's wonderful and beautiful. But God also reveals Himself as Warrior, Judge, King etc, and some of the discussions we get into warrant the application of those expressions.�

Again, I'd say that these characterizations of God are transformed, and fulfilled, via the incarnation, where Abba allows God's kinship to retain its profound �otherness� while being at the same time deeply intimate, as in bride to spouse. And so this �otherness� is no longer God's vindictiveness or need for revenge, but the humility felt by the creature in His loving presence beyond our capacity to understand, and as we surrender to transformations that require a warrior's heart. The holy of holies is now within the human heart via Christ. The temple curtain has been torn. The power of God is now in this indwelling.

And so I'll ask you the question I asked Bernie:

Do you believe that humans are depraved, or primarily good, as in the Catholic notion of the fall distorting our likeness to God, yet while retaining His image?

Well, gents, I'm glad to see that you feel free enough to speak your mind to each other.

A microcosmic snapshot of the larger discussion that's been going on for centuries, and which, as I've noted above, we won't be able to "tidy up."

Stephen: Nevertheless, I still maintain an idolatorous aspect to the worship of these aspects of God and am not convinced that they lead to the true God but rather have different energies/entities surrounding them. I've met Hindus who have converted to Christianity because they have discerned demonic presences surrounding the worship of a particular deity.

That is indeed a possibility, and one that I did not wish to be discounting. All the more reason to evangelize, I believe, and invite people to explicit faith.

Also: . . .The indweliing only takes place after explicit faith in Christ. It follows then that only when that happens can there be membership of the body of Christ. And only if there is explicit faith in Christ can there be an indwelling. That's how it appears in the Acts of the Apostles.

There were also some in Acts who received the baptism of the Spirit before being baptized in water, which is the formal sacrament of initiation into the Church. (Acts 10: 44-48) This is interpreted in terms of indicating God's desire to allow the Gentiles admission to the Church, but it does break with the usual flow of things.

I don't think explicit faith is the telling factor for the new experience of indwelling Spirit that came through Pentecost so much as the new situation existing in the human race's connection with God in and through Christ. It is his sacred humanity, now connecting God and our old human nature, that mediates the flow of Spirit. This new ontological situation was fully consummated with Christ's ascension, wherein he became fully integrated with the Word and its cosmic, universal manifestation, and it is from such a position of intimacy with respect to creation that Jesus Christ now works to bring about the new creation. It would seem that he can impart the Spirit to whomever he wills, regardless of our faith profession. Explicit faith fully honors the "lawfulness of our free-will," has Grace has noted, but so does implicit faith, although in a different way. The assumption, here (with implicit faith), is that given a proper opportunity for explicit faith, such a soul would happily accept, inasmuch as it is already responding to the Spirit in such a manner as to co-operate with Christ and his work. That's what the old docrine of "Baptism of Desire" was about, and I think it still has merit.

That said, it certainly is true that a fuller understanding of the Christian mysteries would enhance the flowering of the Spirit in one's life. It's rare, for example, to see the charismatic gifts of the Spirit operating in individuals outside the context of Christian community, as building up the community is the reason such gifts are given in the first place. Nevertheless, the "sanctifying gifts" (Is. 11: 1-2) could be noted, as well as the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5: 22-24).

There's a lot to consider there, w.c., and my heads a bit mince just now, so I'll take my time and get back to you. A lot of what you say on first reading seems fair enough, some of it quite lovely even. So bare with me and pardon me if I've come across all self righteous and vindictive. My own experience of God is as an ever loving heavenly Father, a gentle Lamb and a wonderfully energetic Holy Spirit. I don't think He's vindictive or full of vengeance, but I do think there's more to His righteousness and holiness than you make out, at first reading anyway.

I will say quickly that I have experienced sin as filthy and unclean, both via demonic presence and personal disobedience, and that that sin is incompatible with God's holiness, so there needs to be some process of cleansing via the body and blood of the crucified Christ. Perhaps I just don't understand implicit faith so well. I read a verse like Romans 10:9 and it seems to suggest that explicit faith is essential.

I will say too that the "prize" certainly involves God's love but refers specifically to administration in the earthly and heavenly kingdom of God, so that there are places to filled in these kingdoms and treasures to be won. This is pretty clear from readings in Ephesians and Colossians, Romans too, I think. Read Col 1:23 and Rom 8:17 - all these "ifs" in scripture, conditional promises where we receive the prize/reward if we do this or that or continue in this or that. It isn't all just handed to us on a plate. There's a lot involved in God's inheritance, more than just the experience of His love, but practical positions to be filled, tasks, gifts, treasures, all sorts, and it's all conditional. And this too involves God's sovereignty so that it is much more than a sovreignty over an individual life but one over the whole of creation, and we are involved in it, co-heirs with Christ. It just seems so strange to me that we can be co-heirs with Christ while never having explicitly believed in him on earth. I'd be interested to know what you think of these conditional promises and what you think being co-heirs with Christ actually means.

I don't really know if man is essentially depraved or not. I do know we are all unclean and in need of God's cleansing. As I say, I'll get back to you.