Would you stay? 4

Spoken like a true literalist.

 

Martin, thank you for getting what I was saying. I don't criticize crackers. Actually, Catholics use both regular leavened bread and wafers. The Eastern Rites tend to use regular leavened bread while the Western or the Latin Rite uses the unleavened wafer. The reason I believe this is that it has symbolic reasons. Leaven in scriptures is often related to sin.

 

Does it really matter to you what I believe about this? What do you believe? I believe I am correctly obeying Jesus command.

 

I know

 

No, the truth!

 

No, it was heretics who rejected this Christian orthodoxy. Tell me Batman, if the sacraments were a heresy, why didn't our Eastern Orthodox brothers ditch the theology of the sacraments when the great schism of Christianity occurred in the 11th century?

 

Because they teach heresy, too!

 

You are clearly after something else. I have explained to you clearly. I have answered your questions. I have expressed my beliefs. Now it is up to you to consider them and accept or reject them.

 

I re-read your post, and I still think you are after something else. However, I wanted to say something specifically to Salvation. I think your view of it and mine are different. For me Salvation encapsulates our entire life culminating in heaven. Every decision and every action. Jesus said to his disciples that their righteousness must be greater than that of the Pharisees. Which to me means its not about lists but faith and living it out. Jesus restores our friendship with God and we live out that friendship. If we abandon that friendship the relationship breaks down. What I don't believe is that salvation is a once and done thing. We get our "faith" ticket stamped and getting to heaven is final which may or may not affect the rest of our life. Nor do I believe by following a bunch of lists while I have no faith or relationship with God. The things we do as Catholics maintain us our side of that relationship, God does his part by giving us the Holy Spirit and grace to guide us as we follow him. But if we don't have that relationship founded in faith to begin with those things don't really help but can condemn us. Like the passage in 1 Corinthians 11 says :" So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord"

 

While your comments were not directed at me, I generally liked and agreed with most of what you said.
With respect to this ...

... I would see the relationship differently. We do not have a "friendship" with God restored through Christ, we have our relationship upgraded from "dead in sin" (Ephesians 2:1) "already judged" (John 3:18) "enemies of God" (Romans 5:10) to children of God (Romans 8:15). While this does not make it impossible for us to go astray, as the Prodigal Son went astray (Luke 15), I am confident that "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion" (Philippians 1:6) and like the Prodigal Son, all of God's adopted children will eventually "come to their senses" (Luke 15:17) and return home to find the God waiting with open arms.

While I agree that Sacraments are of no value to those without faith, wasn't this verse ...

... really more about people turning the Table into a drunken party rather than a somber remembrance?

 

Broken crackers and grape juice? You are getting it wrong from the get go on that statement alone.

 

So the Grace of Calavary was not enough to cover and atone for all of our sins?

 

isn't that the best way to understand the scriptures though?

 

Never said that. The sacraments are a channel of the Grace of Calvary. Ask any Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, Disciple of Christ, or Orthodox Christian.

 

Point of clarification: "A channel" or "THE channel" of the Grace of Calvary?

 

None of the reformed or Baptists though would see them as being conduits of saving grace as Rome does!