How can people read the Bible and still believe they are saved by faith alone?

[Michael_C]

bkniceley:

ok you just said salvation comes from grace alone… and thats what the thread is asking… “believe they are saved by faith alone”. And yes jesus christ did say he is going to judge us by our actions… however if we recieve salvation we are forgiven by him. And ill highlight some bold key statements from the passages for you… Acts 16:31b : “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” So we are saved from believing in christ alone… says it right there and there is no way you can take that out of context. The passages you have mentioned are what takes place after we recieve christ and are saved by faith. If we have faith we are saved and in turn do those good works u mentioned. If we dont have faith we are not saved and therefore do not do good works.

So to have faith alone is sufficient? Nothing else is required, only faith?

 

[john_ennis]

The thread brings up a helpful question, I think. I’m discussing this very issue on the Lutheran Forum, and it’s VERY enlightening to see how they look at this. I brought up that we ought to “work out our salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12-13), and my correspondent informed me that I was confusing justification with sanctification, gave a very articulate summary of his belief, and completely ignored the verb in the verse.

Having a pretext can certainly cause one to see things strangely, and to reflexively search for ways to render a bibilical passage impotent. Knowing this can help us in these discussions, and watch out for the same phenomenon in our own understanding.

Peace.
John

 

[mj330]

Genesis315:

That’s why Martin Luther wanted to get rid of James.

My Protestant friends will tell you that Martin Luther wanted to keep it as an “appendix.” I don’t buy that. As a matter of fact, their belief of scripture alone does not make sense if one realizes that the full canon of Scripture was not accepted until the 3rd. C. Which poses a rhetorical question that I asked on another thread: “Are there any that entered into eternal life before 1500 AD?”

 

[Contarini]

Hermione:

How can Protestants believe that they can be saved by faith alone, the Bible directly and clearly says that it is not so!

The classical Protestant belief is that true faith necessarily produces works and will be known by that fact. Yes, there are Protestants who have gotten this mixed up.

Edwin

 

[puzzleannie]

Like the Red Queen, most people have cultivated the ability to believe six impossible things before breakfast each day.

 

[Steven_Merten]

Contarini:

The classical Protestant belief is that true faith necessarily produces works and will be known by that fact. Yes, there are Protestants who have gotten this mixed up.
Edwin

Hello Edwin,

Are you indicating the Protestants believe the following sequence.

1: Attain faith and become “saved”.
2: Faith, not free will, now forces a “saved” person to obey God and do works.
3: Now the “saved” people on earth can judge who is “saved” and who is not “saved” by the works that faith forces a person to do.

I think some Protestants use this line of thought. The problems with this line of thought is:

A. It eliminates man’s ability to love God through free willed obedience to God. Loving God is God’s great commandment and love for God is the fruit of the Kingdom of God.

B. I have never seen a Protestant who did not sin. This thought process would indicate that none are saved or the Holy Spirit is failing to force they the “saved” to obey God as they claim.

C. It is evil to judge which individuals are going to heaven (“saved”)and which individuals are going to hell (“unsaved”). Teaching people to love and obey God to go to heaven is good. Judging people’s eternal destination is evil.

If the Protestants were right, one would have to ask, why did Jesus spend so much time preaching and commanding that His followers love God, obey the commandments, feed the poor and do good works, when He would have known that He will force them to do all these things once they accept Him as their personal savior?

I think we can see through their failed philosophy. Do you agree.

Peace in Christ,
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com

 

[Contarini]

Steven Merten:

Hello Edwin,

Are you indicating the Protestants believe the following sequence.

1: Attain faith and become “saved”.
2: Faith, not free will, now forces a “saved” person to obey God and do works.

Wrong. There is no force involved. Does your love for your parents or your wife (if you have one) “force” you to act lovingly? This is an entirely unnatural way of speaking. If one has certain dispositions one will behave accordingly. There’s no “force” involved.

3: Now the “saved” people on earth can judge who is “saved” and who is not “saved” by the works that faith forces a person to do.

Not infallibly, because hypocrisy is always a possibility, and because we are all sinners who fall short in some way of fully living out our faith. But a “faith” that does not make any difference in how someone lives is clearly a false faith. That’s all I was saying.

A. It eliminates man’s ability to love God through free willed obedience to God.

No, it does absolutely no such thing. Your argument assumes a radically voluntaristic conception of human action, in which dispositions have absolutely nothing to do with how we behave. I think you are also assuming a Catholic definition of faith as being by itself simply acceptance of certain truths. That, as you surely know, is not the Protestant definition of saving faith. Protestants would say (with James to back us up) that a faith that simply accepts certain truths without living according to them is a “dead” faith. In the same way, if I said I loved my wife but treated her like dirt, either I would be lying or my “love” would be something ineffectual and meaningless–“dead.”

Your definition of free will would have made no sense to St. Thomas Aquinas–indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas held a view of free will that was compatible with God predestining certain people to be saved while leaving others to die in their sins. Yet surely you would not say that Aquinas was not a Catholic (of course, his view is not the only Catholic one by any means, and seems to have fallen out of favor recently, as its equivalent has among Protestants)?

B. I have never seen a Protestant who did not sin. This thought process would indicate that none are saved or the Holy Spirit is failing to force they the “saved” to obey God as they claim.

Well, first of all I’m not a Lutheran or a Calvinist, so I think with the Catholic Church that it is possible for someone to live a consistently holy life. However, in Catholic terminology, certainly one cannot avoid some venial sins in this life. That is not the claim at all. You’re making an unwarranted assumption that faith must produce perfect fruit or no fruit at all. That’s not how things work in reality. Again, I often act in a less than fully loving way toward my wife and other human beings whom I claim to love. But that does not mean that I do not love them. If, however, my alleged love did not influence my actions at all, then my claim would indeed be subject to question.

 

[Contarini]

C. It is evil to judge which individuals are going to heaven (“saved”)and which individuals are going to hell (“unsaved”).

To judge presumptuously or with finality is indeed evil. The point here is the principle that true faith produces good works. Since there are degrees of faith and love (which in the Protestant view go inseperably together), it is dangerous to try to judge whether someone has a very weak faith or no faith at all. However, one is justified in treating somewhat skeptically a profession of Christian faith that does not affect how a person lives. This is not about judging a person’s destiny. I think there are two main practical applications of the principle that faith is known by its fruit. Positively, a holy life is a testimony to others that one’s faith is real and living. This is the most powerful form of evangelization, as the lives of the saints show. On the other hand, we should always be ready to examine our own lives to check our religious experiences against our actual behavior. In other words, if I feel close to God but am not treating other people very well, I should repent of my sins instead of pluming myself on the fact that I feel as if I am full of faith and love. I entirely agree with you that many evangelical Protestants (in particular) are far too prone to make judgments about other people’s spiritual condition.

If the Protestants were right, one would have to ask, why did Jesus spend so much time preaching and commanding that His followers love God, obey the commandments, feed the poor and do good works, when He would have known that He will force them to do all these things once they accept Him as their personal savior?

Well no, as I said, force has nothing to do with it. As I’m sure you are aware, Protestants are divided on the question of whether saving faith can be lost. I belong firmly in the camp of those who say that it can. The Reformed tradition, which says that it can’t (and which is the best candidate for “mainstream” Protestantism IMHO), would argue nonetheless that exhortations and commandments are means God uses to guide and stir up the elect to do the good works He has predestined them to do. God doesn’t just predestine the ends–He predestines the means as well. And as the Westminster Confession says, God’s providence does not violate the freedom of second causes, including the human will. This may seem contradictory to many modern people, but it did not seem contradictory to St. Thomas Aquinas.

Many Protestants in the U.S. (and some elsewhere), including most Baptists and many non-denominational Christians, have unfortunately combined the weakest elements of Calvinism and Arminianism into a doctrine of “eternal security” that really does have trouble explaining how good works inevitably follow from true faith. Some of these (mainly Southern Baptists, in my experience) have indeed fallen into antinomianism, claiming that someone can “live like the devil” and still go to heaven. This, however, is repudiated by good Arminians as well as by good Calvinists. It is unfair to judge Protestantism as a whole by this particular infelicitous mishmash of two different traditions.

I think we can see through their failed philosophy. Do you agree.

No, I don’t. Your own philosophy is seriously flawed. You’re assuming a doctrine of free will that was not held by the greatest Catholic theologians, and which you don’t explain or defend adequately. Are you seriously saying that one’s dispositions have no result in one’s actions?

In Christ,

Edwin

 

[T.More]

Hermione (or others): Can you give me a brief description of your understanding of the Catholic view of how a person’s good works justify them before God? Feel free to cite the CCC or other church formulas, as precise formulas are helpful to me.

Thanks

 

[T.More]

While there is great variance in modern Protestant views (as there are an enormous variance of views among Catholic theologians and clergy), classic Reformed protestant theology does affirm that works are necessary in a sense. It is just that they are not necessary in the sense of being offered as a commerical exchange that merits salvation. Here is an excerpt from probably the most detailed Protestant confession, the Westminster Confession:

“Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.”

Note that faith is never alone. A classic analogy from the Reformation era was that the eye is the alone organ that sees. Yet, the eye cannot function alone. Other parts of the body are necessary to make it work. An eye removed from the body cannot see. Similarly, faith is the alone instrument that justifies, but faith is never alone.

T. more

 

[Steven_Merten]

Hello T. More and Contarini,

You make it sound like Protestants have been preaching works are required to go to heaven all along.

Catholics have always held that the only path to heaven is through the blood of Jesus Christ. The Mass has always been our celibration of salvation through the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Catholics also believe that Jesus will judge, reward and punish Christians according to their conduct and repentance on earth.

Many of the Protestants I have talked with in my life condemn the Catholics for thinking one has to do good works to go to heaven.

Do we agree that it is evil to teach “faith alone not works” are required to go to heaven? Do we agree that Christians will be judged by Jesus and recieve heaven through Jesus blood, or hell, according to their obedience to God’s commandments, caring for the poor, repentance and doing good works?

Do we agree that the way people go to heaven is through the blood of Jesus and the reason people go to heaven is because they love God and love for God is accomplished through free from the will of God obedience to the will of God?

NAB MAT 19:16
“Teacher, what good must I do to possess everlasting life?” He answered, “Why do you question me about what is good? There is One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." “Which ones?” he asked. Jesus replied “You shall not kill”; ‘You shall not commit adultery’; ‘You shall not steal’; ‘You shall not bear false witness’; ‘Honor your father and mother’; and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

NAB MAT 25:41
Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

NAB REV 22:12
“Remember, I am coming soon! I bring with me the reward that will be given to each man as his conduct deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End! **Happy are they who wash their robes so as to have free access to the tree of life **and enter the city through its gates Outside are the dogs and sorcerers, the fornicators and murderers, the idol-worshipers and all who love falsehood.”

Peace in Christ,
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com

 

[Ignatius]

Hermione:

How can Protestants believe that they can be saved by faith alone, the Bible directly and clearly says that it is not so!

By very creative and innovative (mis) interpretation.

God Bless you always.

 

[T.More]

Steven: I think we have some areas of agreement. Consider this from one Protestant children’s catechism:
Q. 55. Who will be saved?
A. Only those who repent of sin, believe in Christ, and lead holy lives.

At one level that sounds pretty similar to your position, right? This is a reformed Protestant catechism. You can find the entire catechism at:
reformed.org/documents/index.html

There is a sense in which works are “necessary.” However, I think that the Protesant and Catholic understandings of the role of works (i.e. the way in which they are necessary) differs.

For example, Protestants do not belive that good works merit pardon of sin. That is one reason I was asking about the role of works in Catholic theology. I want to see how to ordinary Catholic on the board views the value of his works. Here is an excerpt from the (adult) Westminster Confession of Faith, a Reformation era Protestant Confession:

“V. We cannot by our best works merit pardon of sin, or eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come; and the infinite distance that is between us and God, whom, by them, we can neither profit, nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins, but when we have done all we can, we have done but our duty, and are unprofitable servants. . .”

I would be curious about what, if anything, Catholics on the board disagree with about this formula. BTW, the entire Confession is here:
opc.org/documents/WCF_text.html

Thanks

 

[Contarini]

Steven Merten:

Hello T. More and Contarini,

You make it sound like Protestants have been preaching works are required to go to heaven all along.

Depends what you mean by this statement. I wrote a very long post with lots of quotes from Lutheran confessional statements (I hadn’t even gotten to the Reformed yet), and I lost it. So this is going to be much briefer.

For Lutherans, one of the most authoritative texts is the Formula of Concord, drawn up to resolve various controversies after the death of Luther. One of the issues it addresses is whether good works are necessary for salvation. The Formula condemns that way of speaking. But at the same time it says things like this (3.11): “We believe, teach, and confess that, although the contrition that precedes, and the good works that follow, do not belong to the article of justification before God, yet one is not to imagine a faith of such a kind as can exist and abide with, and alongside of, a wicked intention to sin and to act against the conscience. But after man has been justified by faith, then a true living faith worketh by love, Gal. 5, 6, so that thus good works always follow justifying faith, and are surely found with it, if it be true and living; for it never is alone, but always has with it love and hope.”

In Article 4, the Formula explains that it’s correct to say that believers “must” do good works. But this doesn’t mean (as you claimed earlier) that they do them out of compulsion. They act freely, in the sense that they act out of love not fear. (If you think this is an odd sense of the word “free,” then you need to brush up on your Augustine and Aquinas. I also recommend Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P., Sources of Christian Ethics.)

And finally, here’s 4.19: "We also reject and condemn the dogma that faith and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost are not lost by wilful sin, but that the saints and elect retain the Holy Ghost even though they fall into adultery and other sins and persist therein. "

In other words, if you’ve heard people citing Luther as saying that he could commit adultery a hundred times a day and still be accepted by God, then those people were distorting Lutheran doctrine. Luther said that as a rhetorical exaggeration in a letter to his friend Melanchthon, whom he knew to be over-scrupulous. But elsewhere he makes it clear that he doesn’t think a true believer would want to behave like that. And the Formula makes the Lutheran position very clear. Good works are not necessary as a cause of salvation, and obviously someone could be saved without good works (such as the thief on the Cross, who didn’t have time to commit any good works). But someone cannot have true faith and wilfullly persist in serious sin. This is not essentially different, practically, from the Catholic view of mortal sin. But Lutherans get there by a different route. And they think that difference is important in order to avoid “works righteousness.”

 

[Contarini]

Steven Merten:

Hello T. More and Contarini,

You make it sound like Protestants have been preaching works are required to go to heaven all along.

Depends what you mean by this statement. I wrote a very long post with lots of quotes from Lutheran confessional statements (I hadn’t even gotten to the Reformed yet), and I lost it. So this is going to be much briefer.

For Lutherans, one of the most authoritative texts is the Formula of Concord, drawn up to resolve various controversies after the death of Luther. One of the issues it addresses is whether good works are necessary for salvation. The Formula condemns that way of speaking. But at the same time it says things like this (3.11): “We believe, teach, and confess that, although the contrition that precedes, and the good works that follow, do not belong to the article of justification before God, yet one is not to imagine a faith of such a kind as can exist and abide with, and alongside of, a wicked intention to sin and to act against the conscience. But after man has been justified by faith, then a true living faith worketh by love, Gal. 5, 6, so that thus good works always follow justifying faith, and are surely found with it, if it be true and living; for it never is alone, but always has with it love and hope.”

In Article 4, the Formula explains that it’s correct to say that believers “must” do good works. But this doesn’t mean (as you claimed earlier) that they do them out of compulsion. They act freely, in the sense that they act out of love not fear. (If you think this is an odd sense of the word “free,” then you need to brush up on your Augustine and Aquinas. I also recommend Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P., Sources of Christian Ethics.)

And finally, here’s 4.19: "We also reject and condemn the dogma that faith and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost are not lost by wilful sin, but that the saints and elect retain the Holy Ghost even though they fall into adultery and other sins and persist therein. "

In other words, if you’ve heard people citing Luther as saying that he could commit adultery a hundred times a day and still be accepted by God, then those people were distorting Lutheran doctrine. Luther said that as a rhetorical exaggeration in a letter to his friend Melanchthon, whom he knew to be over-scrupulous. But elsewhere he makes it clear that he doesn’t think a true believer would want to behave like that. And the Formula makes the Lutheran position very clear. Good works are not necessary as a cause of salvation, and obviously someone could be saved without good works (such as the thief on the Cross, who didn’t have time to commit any good works). But someone cannot have true faith and wilfullly persist in serious sin. This is not essentially different, practically, from the Catholic view of mortal sin. But Lutherans get there by a different route. And they think that difference is important in order to avoid “works righteousness.”

 

[Contarini]

The Reformed differ from the Lutherans mainly in two ways–they are often more willing to say straightforwardly that works are necessary, and they put election in the forefrong, which leads to the doctrine of “perseverance.” In other words, they believe that anyone who has true faith has been given it through the predestinating grace of God, and therefore has also been predestined to do good works and persevere to the end. Faith and works are linked together by the sovereign grace of God.

Henry Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession of 1562 (published 1566) takes essentially the same stance as the formula. On the one hand (16.8), good works are not necessary for salvation, but on the other hand, they “are necessarily produced from faith” (Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3:270). The Heidelberg Catechism (1563, in Schaff, 3:339), clearly teaches that only those who repent and turn from evil deeds can be saved: “Q. Can they, then, not be saved who do not turn to God from their unthankful, impenitent life? A. By no means; for, as the Scripture saith, no unchaste person, idolater, adulterer, thief, covetous man, drunkard, slanderer, robber, or any such like, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” (Question 87) Finally, the Westminster Confession (authoritative for Presbyterians to this day, and used with some adaptations by Congregationalists and Calvinistic Baptists) deals with relevant issues in chaps. 11-19. Chap. 14.2 (Schaff, 3:630) defines faith as not only the belief that God’s Word is true but also as appropriate action according to the Word–including obedience to God’s commands. Similarly, 15.2 (631-32) defines repentance as including turning from sin and a purpose of obeying God’s commandments, and 15.3 (632) says explicitly that while repentance does not satisfy for sin, no one can be forgiven without it. Finally, chap. 16.2 (633) defines good works as “the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith.”
Steven Merten:

Many of the Protestants I have talked with in my life condemn the Catholics for thinking one has to do good works to go to heaven.

Yes, that is one of the traditional Protestant objections. How strong this objection is, and what form it takes, varies from one Protestant group to another. I come from the Wesleyan tradition, which is far closer to Catholicism on this point than either the Lutherans or the Reformed; and furthermore I’m a very high-church Wesleyan (indeed I belong to the Episcopal Church at the moment, rather than any specifically Wesleyan denomination like the UMC). So I’m not typical. I think that the differences are a matter of nuance. Important nuance at times, but still nuance. One of the big issues I think is the definition of faith. For Protestants, formed and unformed faith (let’s call them Pauline and Jacobine–i.e., Jamesian–faith) are two fundamentally different things. We don’t believe that Pauline faith is simply Jacobine faith plus something else, namely charity. To use a contemporary catch-phrase, we think saving (i.e., Pauline) faith is irreducibly complex. You can’t break it down into two parts: “faith” and “love,” which seems to be the Catholic position. Saving faith necessarily involves love by its very definition. Thus, ironically it is Catholics who attribute more to unformed faith than Protestants think proper. Catholics think that someone can be in a state of mortal sin, bound for hell unless he repents, and still have the supernatural gift of faith. Protestants generally don’t think “dead” faith is a gift of God (except in the sense that any truth is a gift of God)–it’s simply a religious opinion that happens to be true. The Protestant concern is that because Catholics think saving faith is “dead” faith plus something else, too many Catholics start out with dead faith and try to “enliven” it by doing good works. That isn’t good Catholic theology, IMHO. But it does seem to be the trap into which many Catholics fall. What we call “faith” often doesn’t even seem to be on your radar screen. (That doesn’t mean that you don’t have it–simply that I think the Protestant formulation does have the advantage of pointing people directly to the kind of faith by which all the elect are saved. It has some serious problems as well–most seriously, it tends to focus people on the mechanics of salvation, so that some Protestants wind up having faith in faith rather than faith in Christ.)

T. More is apparently Reformed, so he will have a different (and more typically Protestant) response.

 

[Contarini]

Steven Merten:

Do we agree that it is evil to teach “faith alone not works” are required to go to heaven?

If that means that faith that does not produce works is salvific, then yes. Clearly one can be saved without exterior works (as in a deathbed repentance), but not without such inward dispositions as produce works when given the opportunity.
Steven Merten:

Do we agree that Christians will be judged by Jesus and recieve heaven through Jesus blood, or hell, according to their obedience to God’s commandments, caring for the poor, repentance and doing good works?

Yes, I certainly agree with that, as long as it does not mean that there is some particular quantity of good works that you have to pile up. As Protestants have always insisted, true faith is known by good works as a tree is known by its fruit.
Steven Merten:

Do we agree that the way people go to heaven is through the blood of Jesus and the reason people go to heaven is because they love God and love for God is accomplished through free from the will of God obedience to the will of God?

Well, my first caveat here is that you don’t mention faith. The more Biblical way of phrasing your second proposition is to say that “the reason people go to heaven is that they trust in Christ with a faith that works through love.” As for the third proposition, love of God is “shed abroad in our hearts,” not accomplished through our obedience. But our obedience either strengthens or weakens the love of God that has been shed in our hearts. And we may behave in such a way that we lose the gift of saving faith (which means losing the gift of charity). So I think I agree with what you are saying, even if I have some quibbles with how you are saying it.

In Christ,

Edwin

 

[Katholikos]

Genesis315 wrote: That’s why Martin Luther wanted to get rid of James.

mj330 wrote: My Protestant friends will tell you that Martin Luther wanted to keep it as an “appendix.” I don’t buy that.

Here’s what Luther thought of James:

"I will not have him (James) in my Bible to be numbered among the true chief books, though I would not thereby prevent anyone from including or extolling him as he pleases. (Preface to James, 1522 edition. Works of Martin Luther, Vol. VI, P. 477-9)

“Only the papists accept James on account of the righteousness of works, but my opinion is that is not the writing of an apostle. Someday I will use James to fire my stove. (Weimar, “Tischreden” (5) p. 5854)”

Quoted at: wls.wels.net/library/Essays/Authors/B/BartlingLuther.pdf

 

[T.More]

So, for the Catholics, I would still ask just for your understanding of what way works are necessary for justification. Do they merit pardon for sin? If not, what do they do? You don’t have to cite confessional formulas, just let me know how you understand things. Thanks

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

wabrams:

What are we so Proud about?

The accusation of pride might carry more weight, if it were not used as a defence for one religion and a tactic against another: as though one religion were pride-free, and another, were not.​

Catholics can be every bit as proud as any Protestant - but in some different ways. EENS look like a disguise for pride…but what Catholic is going to treat that as a fair comment ? It is no more unfair than dismissing faith alone in the same way.

Pride is as likely to be manifested in how one is Christian & in what one believes, as in anything else ##