CHRISTIANS ONLY: Do you think that Atheists can go to heaven, as the Pope said?

[John Martin]

You're a heretic. You're not going to convince us to agree with your heresy.

Scriptural statements need to be interpreted. These interpretations can change as the person grows in relationship with God.
At our birth we are all mixture of two elements: unconditional spirit of God and conditioned matter. Our bodies are the product of conditioned genes from our parents and their genes go backwards up to the big bang. The consciousness in us is the reflection of the divine ray, which is pure unconditioned. Hence we carry within us these two elements: unconditioned and conditioned. Unconditioned is our original blessing and conditioned is our original sin.
Original sin also can be understood as a state in which we are not aware of our original blessing, our image and likeness of God. We are not aware of the universal presence of God.
Our salvation is one hundred percent grace of God. We also need grace to discover this grace. This grace can come from two ways:external and internal. When we are in a state of helplessness and seek the the help of God, we experience the grace of God,coming from above and freeing us from our slavery.
The second is internal or inherent grace. It is the effort people make to come out of their difficulties. This effort is also grace of God but inherent. All the efforts we make are the processes in which we awaken the inherent grace. For example two persons fall into two wells without water. one person cannot climb up and shouts for help and some people hear his cries and bring him out of the well. The second person tries to come out by himself and he succeeds. The first person says I am saved by grace. The second person says I saved by myself. But both are the grace of God. One is external and the other is internal. St.Augustine experienced the external grace and Pelagius experienced internal grace. The Church, instead of accepting both, accepted St.Augustine and made him a saint.It rejected Pelagius and made him heretic. It was an unfortunate and fragmented decision,

 

[Estro Felino]

St. Paul doesn't say any of these things.

So what, are you Pelagian, believing that we can go through life without committing even so much as a single tiny little sin? Do you think that we don't need God to be saved?

precisely. I am Pelagian. It is written in my profile. Actually I should write Catholic-Pelagian.
I don't understand why you Catholics and Orthodox praise Saint Augustine.
His soul was not that pure...and he was wrong. Pelagius was right

 

[Shiranui117]

precisely. I am Pelagian. It is written in my profile. Actually I should write Catholic-Pelagian.
I don't understand why you Catholics and Orthodox praise Saint Augustine.
His soul was not that pure...and he was wrong. Pelagius was right

Believe me, we as Orthodox are often criticized for being too harsh towards St. Augustine, and if you've seen my posts on these forums, I rip Augustine up one side and down the other for being ill-educated and for departing from the teachings of the Church, inventing his own teachings because he didn't know that the issues he spoke on were things that had already been settled by the Church. Many Western Christians call us "Semi-Pelagians" because of our synergistic view of salvation. But it is clear from the Scriptures and from the Fathers that we cannot save ourselves by ourselves, nor can we earn salvation.

I would like to see you try to make either a Scriptural or a Patristic case for Pelagianism.

 

[Katzpur]

Mormonism takes a little different approach to the question, since we believe the human spirit continues to exist as a cognizant entity after death but before the resurrection and judgment. In other words, death is not the final curtain. It's merely the end of mortality. We believe that God will allow everyone who has ever lived to have the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ and His gospel -- either during our mortal life or during the time we spend awaiting the resurrection (in the spirit realm). There are probably a great many people who were atheists here on earth for reasons we really can't understand. When the cultural, political, etc. baggage they hauled around with them throughout their lives is cast aside, they may very well be receptive to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We all "see through a glass darkly" and we are all the products of our environment and culture.

 

[BSM1]

Sure they can, but they'll never believe they're there.