I think the Biblical phrase 'the Lord hardened pharaoh's heart' has to be taken at face value. Not that God forced pharaoh to disbelieve against his will, but God could have given pharaoh the grace to believe, and he deliberately chose not to do that. Why did he choose not to do so? Because it gave God the opportunity to display his power to the Israelites, if pharaoh had believed Moses, there never would have been a parting of the Red Sea or the establishment of the feast of Passover.

St. Paul discusses this at length in the epistle to the Romans, even going so far as to say that God creates some vessels for dishonorable use and some for honorable use. At fact value, that sounds a lot like God deliberately damns people to hell just for giggles. That isn't quite what St. Paul meant, but if you're going to be like The Jack and go for the ostensible 'plain meaning' of the text, it seems difficult to avoid that conclusion.

Literally every single person who has ever been lost could have been saved if God had chosen to give them the grace to be saved, but he intentionally chose not to do that.

Light of the East Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2017 5:40 am
I have been trying to "fly under the radar" so to speak and avoid conflict here, since many here are long-time friends and all are good people, but since you pushed the button, I am tired of hiding. I'm praying about leaving for Holy Orthodoxy. Several of my friends have and I have come to understand the reasons why they have. If this concerns you, then your duty to me as a fellow believer is to prove to me that such doctrines as the Immaculate Conception, Purgatory, Merit, Indulgences, etc, existed before the lamentable schism of 1054AD.

As you apparently do not know the real teaching of the Catholic Church, it is high time to learn and believe. As the faith and mind of Christ are made clear by His institution of primacy and infallibility in faith and morals in His chosen leader St Peter and his successors, so everything that is orthodox (faithful and universal) depends on that fact. Muddying the waters by expressing dissent against this fact and Magisterial teaching, by various opinions (theological or otherwise) distorts the essence of the message.

I am learning. That is why I am starting to have some serious questions. I am beginning to understand the difference between the Eastern and Western anthropological views and how they two have differing views of soteriology and eschatology. It was one thing for me to be in a kind of Roman mental ghetto without any Orthodox input, but starting with the things I learned at seminary, I have been increasingly developing questions about Western theology.

Fr Brian Harrison:
"....many Orthodox theologians and bishops have now severely qualified or even surrendered any serious claim to infallibility on the part of their Church. Also, there is no longer any unity, any identifiable “official” position of Orthodoxy as such, in regard to unnatural methods of birth control. Some authorities continue to reprobate these practices, while others – probably the majority by now – condone them. Increasingly, Orthodox married couples are advised just to follow their own conscience on this issue.

What does this have to do with the insertion of the filioque into the Creed? You mention that we are to listen to the Church, but the Church (that is, a universal and eccumenical council to decide this) was never consulted about this. Rome just did it. How do you justify that, especially monkeying with the Creed of all things.

"....in recent decades, with more extensive cultural and ecumenical contacts, and with an increasingly large and active Eastern diaspora in Western countries, Orthodoxy’s underlying vulnerability to the same liberal and secularizing tendencies in faith, morals and worship that have devastated the West is becoming more apparent. That virus – an inevitable result of breaking communion with the visible ‘Rock’ of truth and unity constituted by the See of Peter – is now inexorably prodding Orthodoxy toward doctrinal pluralism and disintegration."
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt133.html

This sounds like an attack on Orthodoxy based on moral degeneration of the Orthodox Church and her members. Now.....do you really want to go down that path?

St. Paul says also, "through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph 3:10)." The Church teaches even the angels! This is with the authority of Christ!

Which leads to another thing I am pondering - is the Church really divided? David Bentley Hart wrote an interesting article called The Myth of Schism. When I look at both Churches, I see the same Sacraments, the same apostolic succession, both have a number of saints, holy men and women, and incorruptibles. Both have miraculous events from the Holy Virgin Mary. It makes me wonder if the Church really isn't still one and there are just points of heterodoxy which separate us. That's another thing I am pondering.

Christ’s Church that teaches the angels is denigrated – a type described by Christ as a “heathen and a publican” for not listening to Christ’s Church, and a dissenter places himself above Christ while ignoring St Paul's testimony. Such is the domain of selfists, heretics and outcasts. What's genuine about that?

And as I said, Rome didn't listen to the Church or even consult the Church in regards to changing the Creed? Does that apply also?

Thus dogmas and infallible doctrines cannot be ignored nor challenged.

Which again I also find interesting t consider when the Church approved a dogma which even a doctor of the Church denied. It is also interesting that the Eastern Churches who are in communion with Rome are not required to adhere to the Roman Catechism. The Ukrainian Catholic Church has its own book, and in checking some things, I note that certain dogmas of Rome are conspicuously absent. Yet we are in communion with Rome, and more than that, our Patriarch, His Holiness Sviatoslav, stated that the UGCC is "Orthodox in praxis, teaching, and doctrine" If this is so, that means that the UGCC does not agree with the Roman Church on all points of dogma.

I have no idea where this is all going, but right now, I am in a sort of nether world regarding what I actually should believe and where I should be.

The problem with that is that makes pharaoh in charge and God only reacting to what he does, this ultimately means that we can save ourselves with our own efforts. It's ultimately Peligian.

I'm not conceiving of God's omniscience as something that depends on events in time. It's not like you or I anticipating someone's opinion or action, such as "if I do this, they're going to do this, then I'll respond by doing that."

Can you elaborate? Because that certainly sounds like what you're saying.

Light of the East Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2017 1:25 pm
“the insertion of the filioque into the Creed… the Church (a universal and eccumenical council to decide this) was never consulted about this. Rome just did it. How do you justify that”

When I look at both Churches, I see the same Sacraments, the same apostolic succession,

I'm saying the exact opppsite: that Pharaoh's hardness of heart was caused by God both by His Providential Will in general and by God's presence in Moses in particular. That his hardened heart was the only possible result, and that God is merely informing Moses of this.

Another "why" to me would be that God knew that Pharaoh would never possess to the disposition to accept that grace in any regard, so to offer it would be an utter waste AND that God used that to show forth His power.

As the great Fr John a Hardon, S.J., points out “the Latin Fathers preferred…’from the father and from the Son’…” But “by the ninth century some Greek Orthodox leaders were saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone.” What is obvious, is that the Latin formula leaves “no doubt about the perfect equality in divine nature of the three Persons of the Trinity.” [The Catholic Catechism, Doubleday & Co., 1975, p 65].


There is the Latin Rite, and the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church with the same dogma and doctrine; naturally, all of these are in union with the See of Peter and assent to Papal Supremacy. Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with the Holy See (e.g. Chaldean, Syrian, Maronite, Coptic, Armenian, and Byzantine rites) naturally require assent to all dogmas and doctrines.

The Orthodox Churches have broken with the See of Peter since 1054, and are individualistic among themselves. Since "legitimacy" means "lawfulness by virtue of being authorized", it is hardly reasonable to assume that the Orthodox Church has the same legitimacy as the Catholic Church in the mind of Christ, who gave His authority to Peter and his successors to teach, sanctify and rule, if Peter's authority is not recognised, for his supreme authority has been shown in the N.T.

“787. Apart from their rejection of Papal Infallibility, has purity of doctrine from the Catholic point of view been maintained by the Eastern Orthodox Churches?

Ithink
Not entirely. Besides denying Papal Infallibility they would, of course, deny Papal Supremacy. They grant that the Pope has a primacy of honour, but not that he has supreme jurisdiction over the whole Church. They deny, also, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary as regards her exemption from original sin, although holding that she was ever personally sinless. In cases even of a valid marriage they permit divorce and remarriage. Other differences could be regarded as belonging to the area of non-essentials. Meantime, what the Catholic Church does recognise in the Eastern Orthodox Churches is the validity of their priestly ordinations; the legitimacy of their Eastern liturgical rites which are much the same as those in Eastern Rite Catholic Churches; and their general affinity of outlook with the Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals. Needless to say, they are much nearer to the Catholic Church than any of the forms of Western Protestantism.”
http://www.radioreplies.info/radio-repl ... t=15&n=787

Back to the OP (as in Original Poster, not Dominicans ):

The question I see is whether or not a one-time profession of faith is enough for a person to be numbered among the Elect. Or is it something else?

Such a view distorts Christ’s teaching. Unless and until you assent to the Sacred Scriptures, as given to us by Christ’s Catholic Church, and interpreted by Her, you will fail to understand the truths therein, particularly the truth that St Paul teaches: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12).

Only redemption has been accomplished by Christ, and we have to work out our salvation.

Maybe its just me, but if OSAS was put into an image, that image would be of someone who has just had surgery to remove cancer from both of their lungs, yet who still sucks down a pack of cigarettes the day after because they've been "saved".

And if we're to include sola fide in this image, the person never actually had the surgery, they merely received the promise of the surgery, which will take place some time later.

And do you think that the Scripture, with all the ink spilt over it's pages about avoiding evil and doing good works because they follow us, really teaches that such things have no bearing on our salvation.

... What does Romans 1:17 mean to you? "or in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’...

“In this context, I must register one strong protest against one particular translation. When the New International Version was published in 1980 (sic), I was one of those who hailed it with delight. I believed its own claim about itself, that it was determined to translate exactly what was there and inject no extra paraphrasing or interpretative glosses. This contrasted so strongly with the then popular New English Bible, and promised such an advance over the then rather dated Revised Standard Version, that I recommended it to students and members of the congregation I was then serving. Disillusionment set in over the next two years, as I lectured verse by verse through several of Paul’s letters, not least Galatians and Romans. Again and again, with the Greek text in front of me and the NIV beside it, I discovered that the translators had had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said. I do not know what version of Scripture they use at Dr. Piper’s church. But I do know that if a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about.

This is a large claim, and I have made it good, line by line, in relation to Romans in my big commentary, which prints the NIV and the NRSV and then comments on the Greek in relation to both of them. Yes, the NRSV sometimes lets you down, too, but nowhere near as frequently or as badly as the NIV. And, yes, the NIV has now been replaced with newer adaptations in which some at least of the worst features have, I think, been at least modified. But there are many who, having made the switch to the NIV, are now stuck with reading Romans 3:21-26 like this:

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known…. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe…. [God] did this to demonstrate his justice… he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

In other words, “the righteousness of God” in Romans 3:21 is only allowed to mean “the righteous status which comes to people from God,” whereas the equivalent term in Romans 3:25 and Romans 3:26 clearly refers to God’s own righteousness – which is presumably why the NIV has translated it as “justice,” to avoid having the reader realize the deception. In the following paragraph, a similar telltale translation flaw occurs, to which again we shall return. In Romans 3:29, Paul introduces the question, “Is God the God of Jews only?” with the single-letter word e normally translated “or”; “Or is God the God of Jews only?” –in other words, if the statement of Romans 3:28 were to be challenged, it would look as though God were the God of Jews only. But the NIV, standing firmly in the tradition that sees no organic connection between justification by faith on the one hand and the inclusion of Gentiles within God’s people on the other, resists this clear implication by omitting the word altogether. Two straws in a clear and strong wind. And those blown along by this wind may well come to forget that they are reading a visibly and demonstrably flawed translation, and imagine that this is what Paul really said.” (N.T. Wright; Justification, pp. 51-53)

One more reason not to read the NIV. The Greek text (HERE) reads "out of belief into belief." The phrase "from first to last" is not in Romans 1:17.

The NLT and CJB are also translating very freely.