{"id":19901,"date":"2013-06-27T07:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T14:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=19901"},"modified":"2021-05-30T16:21:44","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T23:21:44","slug":"osas-three-cups-of-tea-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2013\/06\/27\/osas-three-cups-of-tea-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"OSAS & Three Cups of Tea: Cup 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last post I began to examine the responses of Mack, a recent commentator\u00a0on my\u00a0Once Saved, Always Saved post<\/a>\u00a0who offered some constructive criticism concerning the Scripture passages I presented.<\/p>\n

I previously<\/a> looked at Mack’s commentary of\u00a01 John 5:16-17<\/a> and 2 Peter 2:20-22<\/a>.\u00a0I will now look at his analysis of several other passages which I offered in defense of the idea that it is possible to lose one’s salvation.\u00a0Mack basically attempted to disqualify these texts since they were drawn from letters addressed to groups<\/span> of people.<\/p>\n

So, grab another cup of tea and we’ll look at what he had to say…<\/p>\n

\"tea\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Text #3: Romans 11:1-23<\/h2>\n

Scripture<\/h3>\n

\u201cBut if some of the branches were broken off [the Jews], and you, a wild olive shoot [the Gentiles], were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree [Jesus Christ], do not boast over the branches\u2026For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you\u2026Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God\u2019s kindness to you, provided you continue in His kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off<\/span>\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Mack’s Comments<\/h3>\n

[This] is addressed to gentiles as a group who are invited…to join the family of God, but warns them as a group of holding the Jews in contempt since God is able to turn again to Israel and dump the Gentiles (which will happen during the tribulation period). No saved individual Christians are sent to hell in the passage.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

My Response<\/h3>\n

Mack emphasizes that these words are addressed to a group<\/span> of people, the Gentiles. In his commentary on other passages he explains what he sees as the implication of this so I will address that point then.<\/p>\n

A real warning?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Mack and I both agree that this passage from Romans is a warning. Paul tells his Gentile readers that they share in Christ\u00a0“provided” <\/em><\/span>they “continue in His kindness”<\/em><\/span>. I would suggest that this is the main warning, rather than against\u00a0“holding the Jews in contempt”<\/span>,\u00a0<\/em>which Mack asserts.<\/p>\n

I have to ask, is this a warning without teeth? What will happen if Paul’s Gentile readers\u00a0don’t<\/span> continue in the Lord’s kindness? Paul says that they will be “cut off”<\/em><\/span>, separated from Christ. Can someone who is separated from God really enter Heaven? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

An immediate warning?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I may be wrong here, but I get the impression from Mack’s comments that he doesn’t think this passage has any direct relevance to the original Gentile recipients of Paul’s epistle.<\/p>\n

Now I am speaking to you Gentiles…<\/em>\u00a0– Romans 11:13<\/span><\/p>\n

It sounds like<\/em> Mack thinks that these words only apply to the Gentiles at some point in the distant future. If he does believe this, I would appreciate an explanation as to why he holds this view.<\/p>\n

So once saved, always saved? I’m afraid it doesn’t sound like it to me…<\/p>\n

Text #4: Galatians 5:1,4<\/h2>\n

Scripture<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be\u00a0<\/em>burdened again<\/span>\u00a0by a\u00a0<\/em>yoke\u00a0<\/em>of\u00a0<\/em>slavery\u2026You who are trying to be justified by law have been\u00a0alienated from Christ<\/span>; you have\u00a0fallen\u00a0<\/span><\/em>away from\u00a0<\/em>grace<\/em><\/span>\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Mack’s Response<\/h3>\n

[This] is addressed to a group of persons (saved and lost church attendees in Galatia) who are drifting off into Jewish legalism and other human self-effort types of religious do-goodisms. They have fallen from grace into legalistic bondage. No saved Christians go to hell in the passage, although they might be among all the people mistakenly caught up in legalism because of the church\u2019s bad teachings.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

My Response<\/h3>\n

As above, Mack appeals to the fact that this passage is addressed to a\u00a0group<\/span>\u00a0of people.<\/p>\n

Group members are people too!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m afraid I really don’t see what possible impact the group nature of this epistle has concerning the passage’s meaning.<\/p>\n

For example, suppose I take a group of friends rock climbing and I say to them “You should all make sure you put on your safety harnesses otherwise you’ll hurt yourself if you fall”<\/em><\/span>. I’m speaking to a group, but the truth I’ve just communicated applies to each of them individually.\u00a0If they don’t obey what I say, they will each have to suffer the consequences of not heeding my words.<\/p>\n

Likewise, Paul’s words are for the Church in Galatia, but they are obviously meant for each member.<\/p>\n

Does gravity apply only to groups?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Again, maybe I’m misunderstanding Mack’s words, but it\u00a0sounds\u00a0like <\/em>he thinks that\u00a0groups<\/span>\u00a0can fall away, but\u00a0individuals<\/span>\u00a0can’t. \u00a0How does that work exactly?\u00a0If this is what he believes I find it logically problematic. If one assumes “once saved, always saved”<\/em>, then the following two statements must be true:<\/p>\n

(i) It is impossible for someone “saved” to fall away
\n(ii) The non-saved have never been “saved”, so there’s nothing from which they can actually fall<\/p>\n

So, given these two statements, who exactly are these people “fall[ing] away”<\/em><\/span>?<\/p>\n

Extreme Words<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Returning to the passage itself, I just don’t know how a person can be “burdened again….[returned to] slavery…alienated from Christ…fallen away from grace”<\/em><\/span>\u00a0and still end up in Heaven. As I asked in my original post, how could the language be any more extreme?\u00a0Paul is saying that the Galatians are returning to the same slavery they experienced prior to coming to Christ!<\/p>\n

So once saved, always saved? I’m afraid it doesn’t sound like it to me…<\/p>\n

Text #5: Colossians 1:21-23<\/h2>\n

Scripture<\/h3>\n

\u201cAnd you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him,\u00a0provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospe<\/span>l\u201d<\/em>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Mack’s Comments<\/h3>\n

In the King James Bible the \u201cye\u201d demonstrates that Colossians 1:21-23 is plural, a statement to the group. No individual Christians are damned in the passage, rather the local church is suppose to not move from the faith (sadly many have). Of course, individual saved people can be carried along by false doctrines (like St. Peter, see Galatians 2:13), and it would bring them into temporal condemnation only.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

My Response<\/h3>\n

Mack is perfectly correct here that the King James Version (KJV) reveals that the “you”<\/em><\/span> here is plural. But, again, I have to ask: so what? Groups are made up of individuals! Do warnings, when spoken to a group, not actually apply to the members of that group? Can the\u00a0“local church”<\/em><\/span>, a group<\/span>, “move from the faith”<\/em><\/span>\u00a0while its members<\/span> remain “saved”? Who exactly is moving from the faith?<\/p>\n

Orthodoxy or orthopraxy?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Mack speaks about “individual saved people…[being] carried along by false doctrines”<\/em><\/span>. The example he gives\u00a0<\/span>is unfortunately not an especially good one since it concerns orthopraxy (correct action) rather than orthodoxy (correct belief). St. Peter knew that the Gentiles were part of the New Covenant, in fact, they were first brought into the Church by Peter himself! The problem was that he wasn’t practising what he preached\u00a0(Acts 15:7<\/a>). Unfortunately he wasn’t the last Pope of the Catholic Church to say one thing and to do another…<\/p>\n

Salvation by ANY faith alone<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To my mind, Mack’s response implies something extremely radical. It\u00a0sounds<\/em> like he’s asserting that it’s possible to embrace legalistic heresies with absolutely no impact upon salvation. He concludes that there will be\u00a0“temporal condemnation only” <\/em><\/span>for legalism, although I’m unsure what it is he is seeing in the text to lead him to that conclusion.<\/p>\n

I don’t know the denomination to which Mack belongs, but it seems to me that embracing this belief together with sola fide<\/em>\u00a0(salvation by faith alone) presents some real problems.\u00a0Within Lutheran theology the only real “mortal” sin is heresy, since it strikes at faith. When someone embraces heresy, he still has faith, but in what does he have faith? He has faith not in truth<\/span>, but in error<\/span>. To quote St. James, can such a faith still save him?<\/p>\n

If Mack is saying that we are saved by faith alone and that it doesn’t matter if that faith is a heretical one, I’d like to hear his explanation and reasoning.<\/p>\n

Again with that pesky conditional…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Returning to the original passage, Mack has not addressed the important part of the sentence which was underlined in my original post:\u00a0“…provided that you continue in faith”<\/em><\/span>. What will happen to the members of the Church at Colossae if they\u00a0don’t<\/span> continue in faith?<\/p>\n

So once saved, always saved? I’m afraid it doesn’t sound like it to me…<\/p>\n

I’ll address Mack’s final two Scripture interpretations in my next post.<\/p>\n

Part 1<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Part 2<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Part 3<\/a><\/p>\n

The article OSAS & Three Cups of Tea (Part 2)<\/a> first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last post I began to examine the responses of Mack, a recent commentator\u00a0on my\u00a0Once Saved, Always Saved post\u00a0who offered some constructive criticism concerning the Scripture passages I presented. I previously looked at Mack’s commentary of\u00a01 John 5:16-17 and 2 Peter 2:20-22.\u00a0I will now look at his analysis of several other passages which I offered in defense of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,17],"tags":[1076,59,2969,2247,2248,1075,111,2613,568],"class_list":["post-19901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-faith","tag-always-saved","tag-eternal-security","tag-featured","tag-mack","tag-mackquigley","tag-once-saved","tag-osas","tag-osas-tea","tag-tea"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19901"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81513,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19901\/revisions\/81513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}