We go to Kurt in Jamesville, Wisconsin, listening on EWTN Radio on the internet.
Kurt, your question for Karlo. My question for Karlo is that I've
talked to people and they're saying they're confused...redemption and salvation, and said
that Jesus did it once and that's it. And we're all saved, we're all saved if we
believe, we're all saved if we do certain things, so where did that
confusion come from? Okay. Very good question, yeah. So there seems to be this
interchanging use of the terms of redemption and salvation. For--like
for example, you mentioned the idea of "once saved--" it seems as if you were
getting to the question of "once saved always saved," right? And this,
unfortunately, is an idea that is not found in the Bible. It contradicts what
we believe as Catholics, but it's actually contradictory to the Bible
itself, the idea that once you enter into a relationship with God there is nothing
that you can do to affect that relationship or your standing with God.
And where it comes from is, it comes from, you know, the Protestant Reformation
which was started by Martin Luther. But what we see clearly in the Bible,
Kurt, is that it is possible to lose the grace of salvation; that once we enter
into relationship with Jesus Christ, by grace leading--by grace moving us to
faith, we enter into relationship with Jesus Christ, it is possible to lose that
gift of salvation. I mean, even Paul himself, for example, in 1 Corinthians
chapter 9 verse 27 would write that, "I pummel my body lest I become 'adokimos,'"
in Greek, which is "a reprobate," "a castaway." He puts himself through deeds, acts
of mortification and penance, lest he be separated from Jesus Christ
and cut off from the life flow of God, namely grace. So even Paul himself
understood that it was possible for him to lose the gift of salvation and that
he would have to, as he says in Philippians 2:12, "work out [his] salvation
with fear and trembling," to preserve that relationship with God. So this idea of
"once saved always saved," it's a novel idea in Christian history that arises
out of the Protestant Reformation, but it is not found in the Bible. Now concerning
redemption and salvation, did you have a question concerning those two terms and
and if they're interchangeable or not? Yes, are they interchangeable? Because I
have talked to people and I've told them "I think you've confused the two." Okay. They're
not the same. Everybody's redeemed. Right. But not everybody's
saved. You know, this is a very important point, Kurt, and you hit the nail on the
head. When we in our Catholic tradition--you know by the way, Frank Sheed, in his
book "Theology and Sanity," as well as the smaller version, "Theology for Beginners,"
makes this point beautifully. When we talk about redemption, we're talking
about that objective dimension of redemption or salvation. You can sort of
use those terms interchangeably, but technically "redemption" refers to Jesus's--
the gift that Jesus won on the cross whereby which He unites the human race
back to God. So He opens up the gates of Heaven back to the human race, which was--
the human race fell out of relationship with God due to the Original Sin of Adam
and Eve. So through Jesus's death on the cross, He
"takes away the sin (singular) of the world," as we read in John 1:29. But that grace
of SALVATION has to be APPLIED to us individually on a subjective level. And
whenever that grace is applied to us--for example, initially in the Sacrament of
Baptism according to first Peter 3:21-- it is then that we say that individual
is saved. So when I say I was saved on February 14th, 1982, that means I--the
grace of salvation was applied to me subjectively in my soul through the
Sacrament of Baptism. Now, when I say, "I have been redeemed," sometimes people will
use that term interchangeably with "salvation," applying to the subjective
dimension, right? The grace of Jesus has been applied to me. But in our Catholic
tradition, when we say we've been redeemed, that refers to the fact that
the entire human race was bought back by the price of the blood of Jesus Christ
and reunited back to God the Father thanks, Kurt.