A Baptist university once asked me to teach a master-class in writing—but first I had to answer this: "Please summarize the development of your own personal Christian faith and commitment, including your understanding of salvation and your relationship with Jesus Christ." /1
Here's the answer—not very Baptist, but what's a Catholic boy to do?—I gave:
I affirm all elements of the Nicene Creed, as I have since I was young. I understand salvation as a grace offered to us through active acceptance of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection.… /2
I affirm all elements of the Nicene Creed, as I have since I was young. I understand salvation as a grace offered to us through active acceptance of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection.… /2
My primary personal relationship to Jesus Christ is through his real presence in the Eucharist, together with confession and the other sacraments, in the divine institution and efficacy of which I believe. … /3
I have a further relationship with Christ through individual prayer and a yet further relationship through congregational prayer, joined with both the Church militant and the communion of saints in the Church triumphant. … /4
I understand myself to be placed in relation to Jesus Christ when reading the Bible, but also, to a lesser but still genuine extent, when I read the theological, philosophical, literary, and mystical texts granted to us over the centuries in the Deposit of Faith. … /5
I see the effect of our creation in God’s Image in the dignity of all human beings, but especially Christ—through whom all was made—in the faces of the weak, the sick, and the injured. … /6
I understand acts of charity and the corporal works of mercy to be homage to his love and a sanctifying participation in his plan for the world. … /7
I have an ongoing philosophical understanding of the Second Person of the Trinity as the locus of the Eternal Truths and an ongoing theological understanding of the possibility of mystical vision, the Triune reality of God echoing through the created universe. /8/
