Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Once Saved Always Saved Message-ID: Date: 30 Nov 89 07:59:26 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services Lines: 35 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article jhpb@lancia.garage.att.com writes: > >It would appear to make salvation independent of one's actions. One >person robs a bank, and ends in Hell for it, another robs a bank, and >yet goes straight to Heaven. > >What exactly is a person damned for, if not as a punishment of their own >actions? How can the same act in two different people lead to such >disparate ends? > Your first mistake is in thinking that anyone ends up in Hell for robbing a bank. One is damned for being sinful; we're all sinful, bank or no. The idea of damnation as "punishment for actions" is a pernicious misconception that is a blight on the Church. God is not a thin-lipped disciplinarian, handing out eternal spankings to naughty mortals. The difference between your two robbers is that one of them is repentant. If this is truly the case, he will be saved. The unrepentent bank robber faces the same fate as the unrepentant gossip, the unrepentant liar, and even the unrepentant pretty-good-guy and the unrepentant everyone-thinks-he's-a-saint. Human beings are sinful. Period. By the Grace of God through Jesus Christ, we have the unbelievable opportunity to commune forever with God anyway, by having our sins erased at the Cross. All of them. Now, and later. Because there will be more of them, you can bet on it. And no one of them is any more offensive in the eyes of God than any other. (See previous posting on this). -- David M. Tate | DISCLAIMER: dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu | "Hey, that's *my* dis!" _____________________________________________________________________________ Statistics is the science of inferring the obvious and the false.