To dogknox:
Welcome, friend, to my ignore list.
When you are more mature, you may be taken off it.
BTW, his claim that the quote by Clement of Rome could not be found reminds me of a Muslim who used to debate on this forum and claimed to not be able to find people’s posts, even though they were simply on the previous page. Frankly, I think dogknox is lying,
given that the quotation is easy enough to find since I cited it for him. I’ll let the other CAF members be the judge.
So my question to sola fide adherents is: How can you deny the necessity that good works play in making one’s faith a saving faith?
Well, again,
sola fide does not deny works, nor, as you said earlier in your post, suggest “the complete removal of the necessity that good works.” I would also say that we are not arguing that works are simply “a residue or bi-product or ‘evidence’ of a saving faith.” If by evidence you mean we know that a person has a saving faith…well, scripture speaks of that as well, as I quoted earlier:
By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. [1 John 2:3-6]
As I mentioned earlier, good tree bears good fruit, bad tree bears bad fruit. The fruit is certainly not “residue” or a “bi-product,” nonetheless it is not works which saves but works done from the faith in Christ which displays our faith. Since we “have been chosen of God,” it is then that we are commanded to “put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col 3:12). We were “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph 2:10), but that creation must come about by the grace of God before the good works can come about.
Some quotes regarding
Sola Fide, just for food for thought:
In 1531 Melanchthon responded to this assertion as made in the Roman Confutation (a reaction to the Augsburg Confession). He observed, “Our opponents slanderously claim that we do not require good works, whereas we not only require them but show how they can be done.” According to Melanchthon, while justification is by faith alone, faith is never alone: the faith that justifies cannot be solitary. It cannot exist by itself, in supposedly blissful isolation. What Melanchthon here asserted was the common teaching of all the Protestant Reformers. [James R. Payton, Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings; pg 122-123]
Although, as I have said, inwardly, and according to the spirit, a man is amply enough justified by faith having all that he requires to have, except that this very faith and abundance ought to increase from day to day even till the future life…Here then works begin; here he must not take his ease; he must give heed to exercise his body by fastings, watchings, labour, and other regular discipline, so that it may be subdued to the spirit, and obey and conform itself to the inner man and faith, and not rebel against them nor hinder them, as is its nature to do if it is kept under. For the inner man, being conformed to God and created after the image of God through faith, rejoices and delights itself in Christ, in whom such blessing have been conferred on it, and hence has only this task before it: to serve God with joy and for nought in free love. [Martin Luther, *The Freedom of a Christian;
source]
How else indeed can we say that we are justified by anything other than faith? Sola fide has never, ever meant “justified by a barren, dead faith that is not Spirit-borne nor accompanied by all the rest of the work of God in His redeemed people.” The alone has always referred to the denial of any additions to faith, especially those that speak to merit…As B. B. Warfield put it, “The saving power of faith resides thus not in itself, but in the Almighty Savior on whom it rests…It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith.” [James White, The God Who Justifies, pg 108-109]
