North of the Shire

Here’s a fascinating look from a very articulate and plain-spoken man who converted from Calvinism to the Catholic Church. He brings something unique to the discussion, in my opinion, which I have not seen brought into focus, and which caught my eye and ear. First the discussion with Fr. Mitch Pacwa and Dr. David Anders.

I think back and realize that in the course of my life, for the sake of brevity and short-hand shall we say, somewhere along the way I fixed a time point of my own conversion experience, my own “born-again” experience in my youth, growing up in an Evangelical Protestant home. There is a time that I have remembered, and which I have re-counted as that being “saved” moment, and it was very real and my understanding of it was very real. However, when I reflect back to it more leisurely I realize that at the time I was not thinking of that experience so much in that respect, but rather as one more moment of turning from sin and selfishness in repentance, although that particular time was perhaps more emotionally poignant in my memory.

This highlights a difficulty that I’d had for many years even before I could step back and reflect upon it, while I was still growing up and in that Evangelical environment. To my mind at the time it seemed that it was very critical to being saved, to have that one “point-in-time” conversion, at which time I “got saved.” My difficulty was in pin-pointing that one time. I even envied those people who had grown up wild and sinful and had had a powerful conversion, who could look back and say “that was the day I was saved.”

Once Saved Always Saved

Part of the difficulty for me was the teaching that I had absorbed which I now refer to as OSAS, once-saved-always-saved. This is what Dr. Anders touches on in this video. If we know that once we are saved that we have nothing to worry about, then it becomes critical, particularly for an imaginative kid, to be very precise and certain about that salvation. But if we have trouble pin-pointing that moment, then we begin to have doubts of our own salvation.

At the same time I was able to think rationally and realize that in the very essentials of the faith I had been taught, I was a believer. So how do I reconcile this? The short-hand answer that I used for years was as I mentioned above, a particular conversion experience that I had which I can still remember, sometime before the age of 10. That is about all I can remember substantially, although some fragments of detail are there and when assembled make a respectable “got saved” story. And, I have never thought, nor do I now, that I made anything up or mis-represented what did happen. But I think that in the urgency of convincing myself, nevermind others, of a one time salvation moment, I may well have attributed more significance to the experience than it deserved.

Conversion to Holiness

Again, reflecting back, I realize that the pressure in my own mind to be able to make that kind of “born-again” experiential claim was a direct result of the theology I was raised with. Now, as a Catholic, I understand that such conversion experiences can and should happen to us all of our lives as God works with us to make us holy. Without the pressure to pin it down to one internal event as salvation itself, I am much more able to hear the Holy Spirit when he speaks or urges me in the path that I should follow, including those moments when I have drifted away somewhat and then respond to God’s invitation to reconciliation in a moment that can be a significant emotional experience to a greater or lesser degree.

But such things, while wonderful moments of miraculous work on God’s part which I feel internally, they are not confusing to me, they are not indicators that I was not saved before but am immediately afterward. No, they are not the measure in and of themselves of my salvation. Instead, I can know objectively, by my own state of mortal sin or not, whether I am in a state of grace, and I know what has to been done to be reconciled with God.

Constant Conversion

Now if I look at that only as my objective, that is to make just the bare minimum commitment to Jesus Christ, there is a good chance that I have not made a proper examination of conscience and have not truly repented and may not get to heaven if I were to die at that point. On the other hand, even when in a state of grace there is so much further for me to advance in holiness that I know there will be many moments of conversion. In fact, I should expect and desire them, knowing that God is working in me to make me more like Jesus Christ. Constant conversion.

Can we go backward spiritually? Yes. Does that then require more conversion to bring us back even to where we were? Of course. And not all conversion experiences are particularly emotionally poignant. Emotions are a response, they are not the essential ingredient, so that to use them as a marker will get us off track.

Getting back to my youth, I can remember more or less settling the issue in my own mind, knowing that I believed in Jesus Christ and that I was a Christian, so that I could tie it all up in a neat package and say with assurance that I was saved. I was glad to be able to do that and then I was hit with baptism.

Baptism

That is where I rebelled, where I drew the line. How is it that I had been told all my life to that point that all I needed to do was believe in Jesus, accept him into my heart as my personal Lord and Saviour and I would be saved? I had convinced myself that had done all that. Now they threw me a curve. So I took them at their word. Baptism was not necessary for salvation so I was not interested.

It wasn’t until I entered the Catholic Church that I was baptized, and then that I realized it was an integral part of salvation. Looking back now, and remembering my own internal struggles I have likened the Evangelical position to a form of gnosticism. I realize that the “gnosis” of the original gnostics was qualitatively different from the “born-again experience” of the Evangelical, but there is a parallel insofar as the Evangelical will depend upon the inner knowledge, the experience to determine for him whether he is saved. I do not debate whether the particular experience of the Evangelical is actually the work of the Holy Spirit. That is between that person and God. But his experience cannot be my measure, or the measure for anyone else down the street.

Subjective Salvation?

Dr. Anders points out that part of the reason for the truncation of the faith of the Evangelical is the rejection of anything sacramental. That is to say, in their view, God does not transmit grace through the physical or corporeal world. Everything then is subjective. While the fact of salvation is objective, it is only determined subjectively.

In Catholic theology, the subjective inner conversion of heart, the individual’s faith, is indeed critical to their salvation. But it cannot be divorced from the actual sacraments given by Christ. The two are intrinsically tied together as the Scriptures and the Apostles taught. And, from my own point of view and experience, I saw then that the inner working of the Holy Spirit, the gift of faith, does not then need to be tied to one particular experience or another. What a liberating realization! Enough that we have faith in Christ and receive his grace, and srtive for holiness with his constant help.