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Credo Catholic
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| Joined: | Sat May 5th, 2007 |
| Location: | Greenville, South Carolina USA |
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| First Name: | Marsha | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Baptist, Catholic |
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Posted: Sat Jun 30th, 2007 10:56 am |
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| I hope this is the right forum, it's about once saved, always saved. That is what we were taught as Baptists and it has been a regular topic on this forum. We accepted Jesus into our lives at some point and at the end of a church service, went down to the front at the "invitation" and professed our faith in Him as our Savior, and were admitted into that church, and later baptized. Most baptists would say that's it, they are saved and what God has promised He can't take back. Although they acknowledge they are sinners and imperfect and will sin again, they believe they can just pray to God themselves for forgiveness and everything is just as before. But I remember seeing people who I knew had already joined the church and been baptized, who would sometimes go down to the front and speak to the pastor to "rededicate" themselves to the Lord. It was a personal thing, it wasn't announced to the congregation or anything, but it was an act of some sort of contrition or acknowledgement that they had gotten offtrack somehow and needed to rededicate themselves. I remember sometimes they had tears on their faces. I also remember sometimes feeling like I had heard such a good sermon and had been so inspired that I felt like rededicating myself too! Has anyone else experienced this procedure in your former church, and would you compare it in anyway to confession? Not as a sacrament with a priest who has been ordained by apostolic succession, but it does resemble the motions of contrition and new spiritual determination to do better. Any thoughts?
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David W. Emery
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| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Brownsville, Texas USA |
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| First Name: | David | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic |
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Posted: Sat Jun 30th, 2007 04:25 pm |
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I was just reading this post together with a friend, who had tagged along to look over my shoulder. We both noted that these Baptists have decided their OSAS doctrine needs a little overhaul, so they are re-inventing the wheel in covering their tracks on the lack of a sacrament of penance in their belief system.
If you look around, you will see other denominations and congregations doing similar things. Somehow they are beginning to sense that something was lacking in Reformation orthodoxy. Their solutions (telephone confessions, internet confessions, altar call rededications, whatever) are not like the Catholic sacrament because they recognize that their ministers don’t have the power to forgive sins in persona Christi. But there are some remarkable similarities to parts of the Catholic sacrament, aren’t there?
David
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Darlene
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| Joined: | Mon Oct 9th, 2006 |
| Location: | Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania USA |
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| First Name: | Darlene | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Christian, trusting His love and forgiveness |
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Posted: Sat Jun 30th, 2007 05:42 pm |
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Dear Marsha,
My first experience of rededication was in the Forever Family/Church of Bible Understanding Christian sect/cult. We regularly rededicated ourselves because we were hyper-Arminian. Also, when I attended the Pilgrim Holiness and Wesleyan Churches, they encouraged people to rededicate at altar calls and revivals. This branch of Protestantism believed in Entire Sanctification or what John Wesley called Christian Perfection. Often, one of the members in these churches would ask me if I had been sanctified. The good thing is, they didn't believe in Eternal Security. 
Darlene
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The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. II Corinthians 13:14
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Credo Catholic
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| Joined: | Sat May 5th, 2007 |
| Location: | Greenville, South Carolina USA |
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| First Name: | Marsha | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Baptist, Catholic |
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Posted: Sat Jun 30th, 2007 10:49 pm |
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What did they mean by "sanctified?" Doesn't it mean holy, or consecrated?
P.S. Did you get any help with the avatar?
Last edited on Sat Jun 30th, 2007 10:51 pm by Credo Catholic
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AlmostPersuaded
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| Joined: | Sat Jul 14th, 2007 |
| Location: | Kentucky USA |
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| First Name: | AP | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Southern Baptist |
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Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 12:06 am |
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| I need some help understanding "in persona Christi." This doesn't mean "in the place of Christ" or that the priest becomes Christ, does it? That would seem like an anti-christ doctrine. I'm not trying to be divisive. Just trying to understand.
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CajunRick
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| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
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| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
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Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 12:26 am |
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AlmostPersuaded wrote: I need some help understanding "in persona Christi." This doesn't mean "in the place of Christ" or that the priest becomes Christ, does it? That would seem like an anti-christ doctrine. I'm not trying to be divisive. Just trying to understand.
The priest does not become Christ but by virtue of his ordination, Christ acts through the priest. "In persona Christi" means "in the person of Christ" meaning essentially that Christ inhabits the priest, and it is Christ who performs the sacrifice of the mass acting in and through the priest.
In other words, the priest does not become Christ, but Christ becomes the priest. It is the action of Christ that is operative by virtue of the priest's ordination.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
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Annie
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| Joined: | Wed Feb 14th, 2007 |
| Location: | Columbus, Ohio USA |
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| First Name: | Annie | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | nothing, Quaker, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Catholic |
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Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 09:58 am |
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Marsha, I have never been in a church that had altar calls and stuff but I would think that the rededication that you mention would very much in practice be like confession in that it is a starting over. Anything that frees us from our encumbrances and sets us on track again is to be encouraged. In a church that doesn't have sacramental confession the process that you describe is just great.
As you can see I am a lumper and not a splitter and I am delighted to see somebody who sees parallels between things.
Last edited on Tue Aug 21st, 2007 09:59 am by Annie
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Annie
Ora et labora
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CajunRick
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Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 02:44 pm |
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Darlene wrote: Also, when I attended the Pilgrim Holiness and Wesleyan Churches, they encouraged people to rededicate at altar calls and revivals.
Catholics do it every Easter when we renew our baptismal promises, and every time we bless ourselves with baptismal water (holy water) "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"!
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
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Racaela Fultz
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Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 05:38 pm |
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I guess I've often thought of rededication kind of like "in case I didn't get it right the first time." Now they wouldn't say it like that, but in a church that taught once saved always saved, you had to be sure you had actually once been saved, and weren't just fooling yourself. That whole thing looks mighty strange to me now, though.
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"To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant" - Cardinal Newman
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CajunRick
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Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 11:03 pm |
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Racaela Fultz wrote: I guess I've often thought of rededication kind of like "in case I didn't get it right the first time." Now they wouldn't say it like that, but in a church that taught once saved always saved, you had to be sure you had actually once been saved, and weren't just fooling yourself. That whole thing looks mighty strange to me now, though.
I've always thought "once saved, always saved, unless you backslide in which case you were never really saved" sounded a little fishy, too.
I have a friend who's brother was "saved" and three months later was back on drugs and booze, and shacked up with a woman he wasn't married to. I was told he was "never saved". Three months later he was "saved" and guaranteed a place in heaven, and now he was "never saved". Today he's still not "saved" even though about five years ago he was "saved".
(This friend is the same one who told me he never heard the gospel preached in the Catholic church. He shut up when I reminded him he hadn't been to church in more than ten years, and you can't hear preaching when you're not there. He still won't talk religion with me.)
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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dblake22
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| Joined: | Mon Aug 20th, 2007 |
| Location: | Sacramento, California USA |
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| First Name: | Dan | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | cradle catholic, left at age 23, IFCA, reformed baptist |
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Posted: Fri Aug 24th, 2007 02:32 am |
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CajunRick wrote: I've always thought "once saved, always saved, unless you backslide in which case you were never really saved" sounded a little fishy, too.
I have a friend who's brother was "saved" and three months later was back on drugs and booze, and shacked up with a woman he wasn't married to. I was told he was "never saved". Three months later he was "saved" and guaranteed a place in heaven, and now he was "never saved". Today he's still not "saved" even though about five years ago he was "saved".
The failure in this account is the untested declaration that the brother was ever "saved" in the first place. This is a frequent error in Arminian assemblies. The result is often embarassing when subsequent actions reveal the true condition the heart. Jesus addressed this in the parable of the sower (Matt. 13:1-9, particularly vv. 5-7).
The Catholic church is much more cautious regarding adult membership.
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Credo Catholic
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| Joined: | Sat May 5th, 2007 |
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| First Name: | Marsha | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Baptist, Catholic |
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Posted: Fri Aug 24th, 2007 12:19 pm |
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| The only way to be saved, really saved, is to be in heaven. No one breathing on this earth can say or know they will not sin again. They will. And when they do, they have turned their backs on God. Maybe in a small way, maybe in a big way. They have to make it right with Him. Whether they are protestant or catholic or jewish or whatever! We all go through a similar process, we just call it different things. The exception is catholics have the sacrament of confession.
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