Catholics consider the idea that any living person can be sure of getting into heaven a heresy. Trump isn’t Catholic but he’s still not saying anything theologically controversial here.
That’s not at all a modern American “nondenominational” Protestant attitude though. If you are saved, you are supposed to be assured that you are getting into Heaven.
That’s true, and I think that Trump is actually not a Catholic theologian but rather that he is expressing the view, common among cultural Christians today, that God weighs a person’s good and bad deeds against each other. There’s still the hope for divine forgiveness in this view, but the abandonment of the idea of unearned grace is contrary to the teachings of every Christian denomination, as far as I know.
It’s just odd. Been reading Martin Luther lately and it’s the antithesis to everything he’s saying about faith versus works. And if he was Calvinist, his position in life would be part of being “elect” anyway.
It’s amazing that we have a wannabe theocrat who makes a mockery of the religion that is supposed to be supreme here. Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.
I wouldn’t say that Trump is interested in being a theocrat - his movement pays lip service to Christianity as part of its nostalgic fantasy of America the way that it used to be, but the actual Christian conservative movement has been sidelined within the Republican party since 2016 (if not earlier). Trump and his inner circle care about Christianity only to the extent that it is a label that divides “us” from “them”.
Catholics consider the idea that any living person can be sure of getting into heaven a heresy. Trump isn’t Catholic but he’s still not saying anything theologically controversial here.
That’s not at all a modern American “nondenominational” Protestant attitude though. If you are saved, you are supposed to be assured that you are getting into Heaven.
That’s true, and I think that Trump is actually not a Catholic theologian but rather that he is expressing the view, common among cultural Christians today, that God weighs a person’s good and bad deeds against each other. There’s still the hope for divine forgiveness in this view, but the abandonment of the idea of unearned grace is contrary to the teachings of every Christian denomination, as far as I know.
It’s just odd. Been reading Martin Luther lately and it’s the antithesis to everything he’s saying about faith versus works. And if he was Calvinist, his position in life would be part of being “elect” anyway.
It’s amazing that we have a wannabe theocrat who makes a mockery of the religion that is supposed to be supreme here. Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.
I wouldn’t say that Trump is interested in being a theocrat - his movement pays lip service to Christianity as part of its nostalgic fantasy of America the way that it used to be, but the actual Christian conservative movement has been sidelined within the Republican party since 2016 (if not earlier). Trump and his inner circle care about Christianity only to the extent that it is a label that divides “us” from “them”.