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Catholic/Protestant : present/future sense of justification, purification, etc

This is not a big discovery for others, and I probably heard it before somewhere.  But the Catholic sense of salvation is of being right with the Lord here and now.  And that sort of being-saved naturally gives rise to a process of growth that goes on throughout a lifetime.  And that process can, unfortunately, be terminated: one can get un-saved.  But one can also joyfully give the Lord the glory here and now while entrusting the future to Him.

Certain flavors of Protestantism, however, seem to me to understand being saved as meaning one knows that one will go to heaven when one dies.  This meaning is more like the turning on of a switch, whereas the former was more like conception or the so-called animation of a seed.

Note that the former is consistent with an ontological view of justification, while the second is consistent with a juridical view.  And that contrast parallels nicely the contrast between the natural law and the divine command approach to morality.  And the latter approach is by nature restricted to understanding good and evil in instrumental terms, i.e., in terms of future rewards and punishments, while the former in terms of intrinsic value and dignity.

It's getting late as I'm writing this, but it's worth noting that different takes on the question of purgatory follow the same contrast.  The ontological understanding of morality/justification would lead one to think that the psyche has to be purified to be able to enjoy the presence of the Lord.  Even juridical talk of purgatory would easily be translated by such into "ontological" terms: i.e., as being ultimately about repairing a relationship.  The Protestant with the juridical approach to justification, however, would see no need for a growth/purgation processes, as justification already turns "on" the switch via imputation.  Such a person would understand purgatory as a denial that the switch of justification had been turned on.

More later...

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