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Actually, the belief that they're damned is a pretty normal belief, I'm pretty sure.
Among the Roman Catholics, there's the teaching of Extra eccleasiam nulla salus—outside the church there is no salvation, although I'm not sure what Vatican II did to things. The council of Florence has a statement saying that neither pagans nor Jews nor heretics nor schismatics will be saved. Eastern Orthodoxy I think has at times expressed similar thoughts, although I know that universalism is also kind of popular among them, at least in the present day.
Protestants are more varied, I think, but I think with the emphasis on sola fide, there should be the same belief.
Christianity really is an exclusive religion. As Christ says, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father, except through me." John 3:16 is perhaps the most famous verse in the bible: "For God loved the world thus: he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." Paul writes, "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe."
If you're wondering, how is this just, well it's not as if Christians think they don't deserve hell. Their own salvation is an enormous gift, and it isn't as if it's owed to everyone else that they come to believe in Christ.
Edit: It looks like I understated the effect of Vatican II, Vatican II seems to have reinterpreted the things I was saying so as that they're probably not representative of current Catholic teaching.
I was taught in catechism class people who were not introduced to Christianity could still be saved if they lived righteous lives. So, unless the people writing the official catechism textbooks were heretics or it’s changed in the last 20 years that’s the official line from the church.
I imagine you're right. Aren't there teachings about the necessity of grace, though, given that the Pelagian controversy was a thing? And wouldn't pretty much everyone have committed a mortal sin at some point (and so they wouldn't be considered to have lived a righteous life, as you put it), as well as there being original sin?
Not disagreeing that is probably the official line, just unsure how some of that works.
The mechanism of theoretical salvation for the righteous non-Christian is still the grace obtained through the sacrifice of Christ, as it is for the innocent unborn, and for youths before their personal age of accountability.
They would have to be someone who, were they not ignorant of or memetically poisoned against the gospel, would repent of and turn from wickedness, and plead Christ’s blood before God’s throne.
So then why do Christians spread the gospel? First, because He told us to. Second, to assure salvation and hope to any who feel lost in this world’s turmoil.
That's a reasonable take, but I don't think it's quite the same as what @Hyperion was saying. You seem to be saying those who would have believed would be saved, while he was saying that those who did the best available to them would be saved, which are not the same.
(I'm not sure that the link you put is arguing what you are saying, since it seems to say that everyone still is guilty at the end—just saying there are differences of degree, if I'm reading it rightly.)
I disagree with both, though.
The scriptural evidence is somewhat interesting. The main thing that comes to mind is some imprecations of Jesus:
It's definitely not saying here that Sodom and Tyre and Sidon will be in paradise. But it seems like they will have a less severe judgment.
I think one thing to be kept in mind is that our salvation is fundamentally not based upon our deservingness, but Christ's. It's not that people are good enough but just in the wrong situtation, never hearing the gospel, etc. No, rather, conversion is rather a work of God in those who are wicked and undeserving.
Yeah, I gave a hot take on the most permissible salvation scenario I can reasonably consider possible. It’s not likely to shake out that way.
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It doesn’t really work, but people, and religions, contain multitudes. You see this in all religions where they compromise their previous beliefs for various reasons and that becomes the new orthodoxy only to then compromise them again during the next crisis.
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The catholic dogma was interpreted this way at the time of the Council of Florence (see also Dante), but it stopped to be long before Vatican II. For example:
John Carroll, first bishop of the US.
For the protestant, I don't get it. I was taught that they believe in fate, so that your salvation was decided by God before your birth and your actions don't matter, but I'm no expert.
You can't "reinterpret" defined dogma. That's what defining a dogma means.
As for the dogma itself:
With regards to John Carroll, of course he's going to be wishy-washy like that. Maryland is surrounded by protestants. If he went around telling people they had to swear allegiance to the pope to be saved, the Establishment Clause might have been under some early pressure.
Well it was also the opinion of vatican II that everyone could be saved on his own merits, if they did not reject jesus. So it seems that you can actually reinterpret dogma, because that's what vatican II did. Just like the catholic church always had a dogma that you could not make money from money, yet there are catholic bankers now.
Let's say that person A asserts both that X, and that no future interpreters may gainsay X.
Then a century later, person B asserts both that not X, and that future interpreters may contradict A.
If both A and B are church leaders, it would be easy to say that B is simply mistaken. However, I think a better way to look at it may be that there are two separate churches, "A-type catholicism" and "B-type catholicism".
(If however B-types then go around asserting that they are and have always been A-types, we may have a problem.)
I think it's a little more complicated that, since Catholics are loath to admit that the dogma has actually changed.
What's actually going on is that they're reinterpreting X so that they don't have to agree with the actual sentiment, so that they can affirm X while denying what X was originally supposed to mean.
As was pointed out elsewhere, that's kind of hard to reconcile with some of the things said in Vatican I about reinterpretation not being okay, but there are sort of ways to get around that, via what seems like it's quite possibly a reinterpretation.
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It depends how you define catholicism, but it seems to me that there is in practice only one type of catholicism. They recognize the same pope, they go to the same churches. That is why you can actually reinterpret dogmas, even if you said you couldn't. Because the dogmas are defined by the catholic community, not the other way.
Who exactly are "the catholic community"? There's a lot of variance out there.
And why does that allow reinterpretation? I'm afraid I'm not following.
The catholic community is the set of people that go the the same churches, that recognize the same pope, that have the same theology courses (be it catechism or university courses). Obviously you can ask whether south america catholics are really in the same community as rome catholics, but catholicism is heavily centralized and ultimately it's the pope who chooses the priests everywhere (through the bishops and the cardinals). If you recognize the priest the pope has chosen for you, you are a member of the community.
It allows reinterpretation because in practice it does not change the community to reinterpret. People won't leave the churches, they won't stop recognizing the priests. In fact, some might: some communities do not recognize vatican II, but they are very small minorities that do not matter much. Most catholics aren't theology nerds and the point of catholicism is that they don't have to. Knowing the dogmas and reading the bible is good for the priests, but the people just have to follow what the priests say. So why would they care if the dogmas change?
Because Christianity is a religion that concerns itself with truth, not merely unity. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Being protestant, I suppose I do not object to your considering previous people wrong, as long as you are willing to admit that they were wrong, and that the pope is not infallible. What cannot be allowed is a change in true doctrine, only a change in what is considered to be true.
In any case, considering that there are people who reject Vatican II but recognize the pope, how do you determine what the current teaching is? Just what the pope says? Is you're saying that those against Vatican II are small and irrelevant to say that truth is determined just by the size of the party?
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Ah, revealed-preference dogma. :)
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I agree with you. But that reads to me like it's contradicted by some of the things that Vatican II says about tradition in Dei Verbum, along the lines of Newman.
I think there are ways to get out of some of that—Bellarmine thought that only the canons and other select parts of councils are infallible, I believe, and what you cited first wouldn't fall under that.
But there is the following from Dei Filius, which is an anathema, so everyone would agree that it's infallible:
Unfortunately, that particular statement is a little ambiguous—the argument could be made (I think it might be unclear, there are features in the text of Dei Filius that could support either interpretation), that that anathema, when it has the word here translated as knowledge (scientia in latin), refers to non-theological sciences like psychology, not to theology.
I would prefer that it were less ambiguous, since I have Catholic friends to argue against who like the idea of development of dogma, but that's how it goes.
(Also, someone else attempting to use the set of texts you pointed out to argue a formerly Catholic friend into more anti-Vatican II beliefs did result in that person leaving Roman Catholicism)
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Given the last canon of Dei Filius of Vatican I, it's at least questionable to me whether you should be able reinterpret dogmas like that (although I haven't actually read any Roman Catholic scholars to see how they approach that canon of Vatican I—it probably is a little ambiguous).
Well, I'm not sure how settled it was. Maybe he was trying to do something else, but the following from the Syllabus of Errors from 1864 at least reads as intending to prohibit some of what Carroll was there affirming (although maybe there's some other way to take it):
(those were condemned by Pius IX)
At this time, not all protestants really have a doctrine of predestination, but they should. Like under Thomas' understanding, you're predestined, but you also are condemned because of your own actions.
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In my experience only some Protestants believe that (notably Calvinists). Though, I also like the explanation I've read from Catholics. God exists outside of time, so he sees all of your life in one instant, like a single endless now. Therefore he knows what will happen, but you have free will nonetheless.
I realize that not everyone will jive with that explanation, but I personally rather like that one.
Right, I think that might end up being isomorphic to the Molinist interpretation, depending on how things fit into that. You still have to account for how any of that relates to God. Is it all dependent upon God's will in some way? Is any aspect of it independent? God being eternal doesn't make all the problems go away, since I would image there would still be some doctrine of providence.
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I'm pretty sure Luther did not believe in free will, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Bondage_of_the_Will
It seems to me that for the catholics God knows (before your birth) if you will be saved, while for the protestants (at least those who don't believe in free will), God decides it.
Actually, that depends on the Catholic in question. The two predominant ideas on predestination are the Molinistic and the Thomistic views, I believe. Thomas Aquinas would see God as predestining, while Molina sort of would. (Predestinating which choices are instantiated, but not the output of the choices themselves, if I understand it correctly.)
Dominicans vs. Jesuits.
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