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Posted by Wayne L
on 3/18/2010, 9:25 pm, in reply to "Luther and wu wei"
76.168.112.x
--Previous Message--
: Martin Luther: "All have sinned and are
: justified freely, without their own works
: and merits."
:
: I think we can find some "apophatic
: value" in this, maybe even a lot. The
: sin part is not too useful to me. I cannot
: sense anything that I could coherently
: characterize as "sin." Sin from
: one perspective might we goodness from
: another.
:
: "Justified" is useful, I take it
: to mean "worthy." It is my sense
: that a person can realize her/himself to be
: worthy, without having to have done anything
: good. (And in fact I cannot find anything to
: characterize as coherently "good."
: It might be good from one point of view, and
: not another.)
:
: “without their own works and merits” is
: quite significant.
:
: If a person has the realization that she/he
: is unconditionally worthy, she/he will
: experience mystical ecstasy. As a
: side-effect, she will treat the rest of us
: very nicely. But if she thinks she needs to
: be good, in order to be a worthy being, she
: will not (according to this model) realize
: mystical ecstasy. The irony: She treats us
: worse when she thinks that to be worthy, she
: has to treat us well.
:
:
The defining of justification separates the Catholic from the Protestant.
The Catholic must work hard in order to be forgiven for his or her Sins in order to be justified; Justification being dependent upon the individuals own works and merits."
For the protestant the individual is not justified according to his or her own works and merits; forgiveness of his or her sins, justification being freely given by having Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Christ being God in the Flesh.
You can not be justified by
461
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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