Dr. John Bergsma

What he commanded, even though their understanding of what it was that he commanded was subject to confusion and limitation because they weren't beneficiaries of special revelation, that they could possibly be saved.

Long before modern progressivism and liberalism and so on, you could find it in their writings.

So you...

you find this dichotomy in the scriptures, you find it in the fathers, and you find it in the statements of the councils.

What I would say about those two statements is that when Florence says all these people who are outside the Catholic church can't be saved unless they reconcile with her, what Florence is assuming is that these folks are consciously rejecting the Catholic church.

And you cannot, and the catechism says this as well, you cannot know what the church is and then consciously reject her and be saved, okay?

If you know what the church is and you decide, despite that, I don't wanna be part of her, no, you can't be saved.

But like Paul in Romans 2 and like many of the fathers and many of the theologians throughout the ages,

The church leaves open this possibility of those who through no fault of their own don't have the benefit of the fullness of revelation, but follow the lights that they've been given in sincerity and love God and try to serve him with humility.

And the church asserts that that is the work of God's grace in their heart.

They're not doing that of their own accord.

No, absolutely not.

It's the grace of Christ working in their heart.

Because we're not Pelagian here.

We're not saying that these virtuous pagans saved themselves by their own human power.

We're saying, no, that was God working outside of his usual means, outside of the ordinary means of grace.

God was giving them grace to lead them towards himself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the, the virtuous pagan who followed the natural law, the natural law is the logos.