Jamie_L

So, I "came out" to a friend the other day who was over for dinner. My wife (who's not an atheist but also isn't xian or particularly religious at all) made a joke about it, and my friend responded by saying something I've heard him say before: "according to the bible" if your spouse is saved, you'll be saved to - no matter what.

I've never heard of this from anyone but him. I was fresh from reading "Christian Salvation" over in the Kiosk, so I challenged him about being so certain of how to be saved. He just said "if you actually read the bible..." I lauged that off and said if you "actually read the bible" you'll just get confused. But I digress.

Has anyone ever heard of this bizarre "saved by the spouse" clause in the bible? Or is my friend just spouting off something someone else told him, but that he never bothered to verify? Just curious.

Jamie

Samhain

Kind of reminds me of the whole citizenship in the U.S. 1) Must be born in the United States. 2) Must become naturalized. or 3) Must marry someone who is a citizen of the United States.

Damn John Locke.

So much for our freedom of/from religion, eh?

Amos

Catholics call that "the trail of filthy rags" they drag behind them and that is how St. Peter can tell who is Catholic and who is not. That is to say, Catholics with each their own key can go right on in and those that drag behind them all "those they have saved" stop in to show Peter how good they have been and how much they have preached in Gods name. Peter's job is easy as you can tell.

Koyaanisqatsi

Peter's job?

Do you honestly believe it that medieval horse shit, Amos?

Seriously. Do you believe that there's going to be a guy waiting for you in a cloud somewhere with a big book (or will it be computerized by now?) that's going to say, "You may enter the Pearly Gates" or "You will be catapulted down to the firey pits of eternal hell?"

If only we could CT scan your brain, my friend, we'd find the cancer and cure you .

Mageth

I've heard of some 'ligions which believe something along that line, but usually it's the (female) spouse who is "saved" by her marriage to a card-carrying member.

I think the mormons at one time or another held this doctrine - hence the polygamy clause in early mormonism.

Such doctrines may stem from the bible saying when two are married, they "become one." They may figure that, when a married unbeliever and believer die, rather than chunking the "one" into hell, he lets 'em both (or one?) in the pearly gates.

But that "one" stuff is about as confusing as the Trinity, I guess.

ManM

Jamie_L,
1 Cor 7:14

On a more personal note... Heaven without my loved ones? There is no such place. I would sooner join them in hell. As such, what hell could truly torment two lovers spending the rest of eternity together?

HelenM

Of course, you are right - therefore, hell being a place of torture, lovers would, I'm sure, be separated.

After all, it can't be better than the workhouses can it, where husbands and wives were separated when they were sent there?

Or the concentration camps?

*sigh*

Anyway, conservative Christians ('fundies' ) believe that no-one is saved except by their own faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for their sins, was raised to give them new life, and so on...

So therefore, no-one is saved according to who they are married to or whose child they are etc. There's one verse in 1 Cor 7 that refers to children of a believer being 'sanctified' but no CC/'fundie' seriously believes that means that the children of a believer can be saved without having personal faith in Jesus. (Once they reach the age where they are capable of understanding the gospel that is; below that age some Christians believe all babies/children who die go to heaven. No, I don't know what that age is... )

love
Helen

Amos

So how do you suppose I know that Peter's job is easy?

IvanK

I don't think it's only Christian fundamentalists who wouldn't cotton to the idea of someone being saved because his or her spouse was saved. If that were so then I could cheat on my Catholic wife, never repent or convert and still get in. That might make sense to Amos somehow but I doubt it would to anyone else. (BTW as pointed out elsewhere Catholic doctrine, restated in the recent Vatican screed Dominus Iesus, is that God can, through a mysterious act of divine grace, save even non-Catholics though they are in grave peril of perdition for as long as they remain out of the True Church.)

Don't forget the children of U.S. citizens born abroad. They are also citizens, sometimes under certain conditions depending on what the law was at the time they were born.

Samhain

ooOOooOOoo...That's a good one! Yea, so, I'm curious, would the same go for a child whose parents were "saved"? Why shouldn't this be true if it is true through marriage, I mean children, that's blood ties to the Xtian parents and all...

Oh, another thing, this may sound like a ridiculous question, Ivan, because it's probably the case, it seems obvious. Is your screen name IvanK taken from Dostoyevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov?