I know without question what the spiritual state of my parents are due to the fact that the categorically deny any need of Christ and/or salvation. If that isn't a warrant to judge them, then pray tell, what is?
Well, surely, if one deny the need of the Savior to be delivered from one's sins, then that is pretty clear. What I was referring to was more in line with judgment based in personal habits -- i.e, you are not "saved" because you
A) have a drink of wine with dinner
B) go to the movies
C) attend a denomination different from mine
D) believe in the Sacraments
E) attend a Catholic church
etc. etc. etc.
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You are certainly entitled to your whimsical opinions about what I understand and/or don't understand. But what I do know is that I understand sufficiently that it is a fatal step into apostasy to distort the covenant of grace whereby one intermixes faith and works in order to be justified.
I find it whimsical at best to see the "presuppositional blindness" which strikes people when they are presented with evidence that the Early Church, as early as the second century AD, believed in both baptismal regeneration and the real presence of Christ's Flesh and Blood in the Eucharist. You claim that the Gospel which your denomination preaches is that very same Gospel which the apostles taught, yet there is not a shred of evidence that such doctrines as the Reformers invented ever existed in the Church.
Let me ask you this: if there was another understanding of baptism and the Eucharist, where is the evidence to this effect. I.E., where is a Church Council on either of these subjects. You see, these are indeed issues of how one obtains eternal life...therefore, if there were another opinion other than that which the Early Fathers published in their writings, and if that opinion had a number of followers, there most certainly would have been a council to decide this issue.
Seeing, therefore, that there is a [color:"FF0000"]conspicuous absence of any such council on either subject,[/color] we must therefore conclude that such teachings as you adhere to, my dear sir, did not exist prior to 1517 and are the invention of a certain type of hermeneutics which the Church rejects out of hand.
I understand your concern not to mix grace and works....however, you do not understand the difference. The Hindu who goes down to the filthy Ganges River to baptize himself for the remission of his sins, doing so without any reference to the finishe work of Christ on his behalf, is trying to make covenant with God [color:"FF0000"]by works of his own invention.[/color]
But the person who submits to baptism is not "working his way to heaven" as I hear so often accused, but is being obedient to that Sacrament which God has given to mankind. Through this work, the sinner is joined to Christ (Gal. 3:27) and is made a partaker of His death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:3). We are baptized into Christ. The aforementioned Hindu, on the other hand, is baptized into nothing more than his own ideas of salvation -- which will ultimately fail.
