Grace Evangelical Society / Faith Alone in Christ Alone

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I wonder if this group is actually more like a cult or heresy (and not Protestant Christian)?

I think this group grew out of rebellion to Baptist doctrine. Some of its leadership trained at Dallas Theological Seminary – but I don’t think this is what they teach there.

Look at faithalone.org and click on “How Can I Be Saved?”

No getting Baptised.
No need to pray.
No repentance.
No nothing.
Simply believe Jesus for spiritual life, eternal life (without even asking Him).
And nothing more.

The “How Can I Be Saved?” content doesn’t include God the Father or God the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps it is an even easier trap to comply with and fall into than King Jeroboam’s Judaism.
 
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jmm08:
I wonder if this group is actually more like a cult or heresy (and not Protestant Christian)?

I think this group grew out of rebellion to Baptist doctrine. Some of its leadership trained at Dallas Theological Seminary – but I don’t think this is what they teach there.

Look at faithalone.org and click on “How Can I Be Saved?”

No getting Baptised.
No need to pray.
No repentance.
No nothing.
Simply believe Jesus for spiritual life, eternal life (without even asking Him).
And nothing more.

The “How Can I Be Saved?” content doesn’t include God the Father or God the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps it is an even easier trap to comply with and fall into than King Jeroboam’s Judaism.
Click to expand...
***Yet another example of why sola Scriptura just doesn’t work in practice. ***
 
Catholic4aReasn said:
***Yet another example of why sola Scriptura just doesn’t work in practice. ***
Click to expand...

No. I think this is worse. I think they need to remove or reduce a lot of scripture to get to where they are.

Is there a latin phrase for cafeteria-style sola scriptura?

Perhaps a future heresy would cut out the whole Bible except the verse John 11:35 “Jesus wept.” Since Jesus wept, we are all saved. End of story. But hey, I’m not starting it. I’m going to RCIA this year. I can almost see that in the endzone during football games. John 11:35. I know. I shoulda had a better quiet time today. Sorry.

I suppose they would want to diminish the authorization of the Catholic Epistles (James, Peter, etc). James 2:17 teaches Faith without Works is dead. Even sola scriptura, sola fides folks know that works will follow after a Christian gets “saved”. The works are not required to get saved (they are evidence after the fact). I think a recent ecumenical discussion between Roman Catholics and Lutherans concluded that they agreed concerning faith and works (that their only differences were semantic).

And look at the effort going into the thread “Apologetics” / “The OT can make wise unto salvation”.
 
In case anyone out there thinks like Grace, Acts 23-24 makes it fairly obvious to me. Felix knew enough about Christ to get saved. He was wise unto salvation, but apparently did not want to act on that wisdom at that time. When it came to hearing Paul speak about more about righteousness and self-restraint and the coming judgment (Acts 24:25), Felix was frightened, had a “shut up about it” attitude and left.

When St. Paul preached righteousness, self-restraint and coming judgment to Felix. Can we instead say “Simply believe Jesus for spiritual life”?
 
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jmm08:
I wonder if this group is actually more like a cult or heresy (and not Protestant Christian)?

I think this group grew out of rebellion to Baptist doctrine. Some of its leadership trained at Dallas Theological Seminary – but I don’t think this is what they teach there.

Look at faithalone.org and click on “How Can I Be Saved?”

No getting Baptised.
No need to pray.
No repentance.
No nothing.
Simply believe Jesus for spiritual life, eternal life (without even asking Him).
And nothing more.

The “How Can I Be Saved?” content doesn’t include God the Father or God the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps it is an even easier trap to comply with and fall into than King Jeroboam’s Judaism.
Click to expand...
😦

A perfect example of the unfortunate legacy of Sola Scriptura, it seems to be an extremely radical form of Sola Fide belief as well. It is clearly heretical by either Catholic or mainstream Protestant standards.

Gerry 🙂
 
What is comes down to is a belief that we are saved, not by faith in Jesus alone, but by faith in the doctrine of salvation by faith alone.

Justin
 
After looking over some of the content of the web site, it appears to take a position on a controversy within evangelicalism --between believing in Jesus as Savior as distinguished from believing in Jesus and Savior and Lord (the latter sometimes being termed “Lordship Salvation”). GTS takes the former position.

It’s true that some of the leadership was trained at Dallas Theological Seminary, a well known and widely respected evangelical seminary, and probably THE academic center of dispensational theology. I’m a graduate of DTS, and attended there from 1982 to 1986. Zane Hodges was my professor in New Testament Greek. Dr. Arthur Farstad was also a professor at DTS, and I knew him well. He was also the executive editor of the New King James Bible, and a careful New Testament scholar. In fact, I knew both Hodges and Farstad to be fine, godly men, but their views, as far as I know, are not part of any official position of Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Farstad was Plymouth Brethren in his church affiliation, and a small congregation met in his house for many years. I’m not sure about Hodges, but I think he would consider himself a nondenominational evangelical.

I don’t know that I would call the positions of Grace Theological Society cultic, but they do seem to have taken the Reformation principles of sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, and sola Christos to the furtherest extreme.
 
“Heresy” is sometimes defined as “truth out of balance.” The Dallas emphasis on sola fide does, indeed, crowd out the rest of the New Testament’s emphasis on repentance. The issue was very divisive within evangelicalism a decade ago, and I even remember it making waves thirty years ago.

It has appeared to me that the thinkers who developed and pushed the new views have been marginalized. The question was hashed out and the historic doctrine was reaffirmed. Someone (mbryanbooks?) correct me if I’m wrong.
 
Wow! I agree with the poster who coined the term “cafetaria sola-scripturist”. On their web-site under “How can I be saved”, the first “red flag” was seeing the word “do” crossed out with “believe” superimposed on it. This flies right in the face of what the Scripture says in Matthew 19:16! These people remind me of Luther who wanted to change or rather ADD the word “alone” in Romans 3:23. Pretty scary stuff! - Mfaustina1
 
I still have ties with the evangelical community and I’m not surprised to see this happen. I have seen this coming for quite some time…in fact I suspect the associate Pastor at my husband’s church might believe this way. 😦

Things are going to slip further and further away as time goes by.

dream wanderer
 
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