That’s very true! When I read the section on Justification in the Cat. Catechism, I am encouraged that we do have such an appreciation and belief in God’s undeserved Will and work to see us justified!
I think James (Holy Spirit) is convicting a certain “belief” or “faith” that was not set out to do the will of Christ, who brought them into Justification through Belief and Baptism. So this faith may have made them clean and able to walk by faith, but their was lacking a conversion of heart (in love, as you mention) to complete faith in their lives.
Right, Peter did not see the full outcome of either the abuses by the Church or the formulated doctrine of Sola Fide 1500 yrs later. Yet He was inspired to give warning as to things which could be twisted. And then James was more specific in expressing the relation which works have TOGETHER with faith, as to complete faith, and further supporting the very likely hood that an early “faith alone” belief had manifested some.
Men naturally want to believe that they play a part in God’s salvation. We think there must be some good thing in ourselves. We say its a “cooperative” effort. God does His part and we do ours. The Bible is against this. It says “Even when we were dead in sins, hath He quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved);” Eph.2:5. What this is saying is that God decided to save us at the point where we were yet dead and incapable of doing anything to please Him. In v. 10 we are saved UNTO good works, NOT BY good works.
God seeks to draw out the righteousness that He created us in. Man was not made to sin after all, and His image, no matter how diluted and corropuoted, still resides within. His whole purpose, in restoring justice to His universe, is to guide us, without force, into willing rightly, aligning our wills with His.
And other men wish to discourage us from this.
There is good in the man who trusts in God. Some trust much and some trust little.
If you mean moving ourselves to Him in order to “be saved”, we dont agree. If you mean, accepting our condition and need for Him to move us, and so doing what He compells us by faith, we agree.
This is certainly proper Catholic understanding as well!
I think you make it sound as though we, at some point, all got so bad that we became incapable and then God decided to step in and save us.
Does St. Paul ever say that faith alone justifies? If yes, please give me the verse.
Here’s some more Chrystostom:
Paul does say we are justified by faith apart from works, he of course doesn’t say faith alone, only St. James says that in the negative, but the Church has always taught the the initial moment of justification is by faith and an act of God alone, nothing we do can merit us the initial grace of justification.
We are justified by faith, this is plainly obvious in both the teaching of the Church and the scriptures. The disconnect doesn’t come from how we are justified it comes from what justification means. For the Protestant justification means once saved always saved, for the Catholic it is the initial moment of being brought out of the kingdom of death and into the kingdom of God. For Catholics we can enter back into the kingdom of death by mortal sin, and we can lose our salvation, at the same time we can merit rewards for our sanctification by our works. Our final justification will be by faith and works, while our initial justification is by faith alone apart from works. So St. James is talking about the final justification or final sanctification, while St. Paul is talking about initial justification.
Well said
John 5:29Well said
We were all justified out of God’s Grace. Grace, by its very nature, cannot be earned in any way. Faith, then, is the belief in this free gift of God’s and embracing the hope which it brings.
What happens to this child born of God, then, is inevitable trial and testing of this faith. And we are still certainly not on our own, but since we believed, we are now trusting in His strength to do His will. This may mean failure, and for some seldom while others often. When there is failure to do what the Father has put before us, we have Reconciliation to remain in keeping His commandments.
34“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37“Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’
41“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45“Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”I think I get what you are trying to put across but you are leaning to much to the calvinistic side of things. You are basically saying God will choose and we can’t do anything about it. (you try to defend free will but you don’t do a good job of it) The fact is while without God we can’t do anything, the simple fact is that God has given us a share in our own sanctification and at the judgement he will judge us for what we have done. Of-course without God we would all be eternally dead. My point is that we should all now in the Christian life work to grow in holiness. I think the best way to explain it is as follows, God created us for an end and we can only reach that end with God’s grace, but if we don’t ourselves move to that end we won’t reach it. So basically we can only reach our end if we work towards that end, and if God brings us to that end. It’s like a rake it’s end is raking leaves but without a person moving it that end can’t be done. Now I understand that the rake isn’t free to do anything, but it is for the sake of the analogy. We work towards our end, God brings us to our end, these must work together to achieve the end.
Actually, I am saying the exact opposite here. At least that was my intent. I am saying those that are claiming that those who are DOING THE FATHERS WILL are not going to heaven if they did not accept Christ as their “personal Lord and savior,” are implying that it is man that has the last word and the Lord is OBLIGATED to forgive us if we say the sinners prayer. Personal Lord and savior BTW is another term for…“my personal translation of the Bible.”
This gives us things to work on and actually this is what we will be judged on, we may receive our initial justification in baptism, but if we don’t grow in justification we can lose it and many do.
I’ll repost what I just said above this post.
I understand that, and I have read Trent. But Paul goes on to clarify that the works he is talking about are works of the law. That is why Paul never says faith alone. He knows works of charity are essential.
Why do you think that faith alone even implies works of charity are not essential ? Paul says so. James says so. Christ says so.
But if charity also, then it’s not faith alone. Why do you think faith implies love?
Jon, if works of charity are essential, then is the faith alone? If faith is truly alone, it means nothing else is with it. James makes it clear that the people he is talking to have faith. Notice he never says they don’t have it. He is clear it is not good enough. He makes it clear that without the works of charity, the faith is dead. But notice, it is still faith. So obviously faith alone does not save, because if it did, **then dead faith would save. ** If faith alone saves, then there is no reason for James to write what he did.
These are obvious the definitions of faith and alone, and alone literally means with nothing else.
No. Faith cannot be alone. Luther himself answers this,
Agreed, and this is exactly the Lutheran position: We are justified by faith, but a true, saving faith is a faith that works.
And when it comes to justification, we believe just that. By grace we are saved, through faith, and not of yourselves. But we also know from scripture that we are called to good works by Christ, by Paul, by James.
They are the result of faith. Good works, pleasing to God, are the fruits of faith.
They are essentials because Christ says they are. Scripture tells us they are. What other reason must there be? I return to Luther’s comment in The Doctrine of Works: