Please help me get Sola Fide out of my head once and for all!

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

Which Protestants? I ask because this sounds like virtually nothing I was ever taught.
Jon

Jon,

Sadly hardly any Christians whether Catholic or protestant teach what they claim to teach.

Minorsecond,

The hangup your friends claim to have is not a real one. Because it has been drummed into so many people, it is prevalent. Therefore you would benefit from getting it out of your head even if you are remaining in their communion.

I have lifelong been close to Catholics and protestants alike. I could recomend the same to you if opportunity presents, provided you only take communion in one church.

No church will get it exactly right for you as to doctrine or teaching. We have to just be where God helps us thrive spiritually.

Please check out the many recent threads on salvation and related themes.

 

[Goya]

Correct, for the historic Protestant view (i.e. Reformed and Lutheran Confessions), the “Righteousness of Christ” is the work that Christ did which merely replaces our inability to do that same work. What Adam could and should have done for us, Christ did for us. That’s the historic Protestant view.

Here’s a quote from the Lutheran Solid Declaration of Concord (3:15):
For this reason, then, His obedience, not only in suffering and dying, but also in this, that He in our stead was voluntarily made under the Law, and fulfilled it by this obedience, is imputed to us for righteousness, so that, on account of this complete obedience, which He rendered His heavenly Father for us, by doing and suffering, in living and dying, God forgives our sins, regards us as godly and righteous, and eternally saves us.
And here is the LCMS website Encyclopedia on “Justification”:
God sent His holy, innocent Son to become man and made Him man’s Substitute. This Substitute fulfilled all requirements of the Law in our place (active obedience). He also suffered the pangs and woes which we had deserved (passive obedience).
Perfect obedience to God’s Law is what the Protestant mind thinks is the requirement to get into Heaven, and this requirement remains even after Adam sinned and made us personally unable to meet this requirement (i.e. living a lifetime of good works). So for the Protestant, it certainly is and always has been Human Works Alone that save, no faith or grace required.

And that’s why If I asked you: “Why can’t my works save me?” your response would come in the form of “Because we’re sinners,” which only confirms that works alone save in the Protestant mind, with the catch that a substitute must do it for us. Of course, these ideas are completely contrary to Paul’s explicit teachings and are found nowhere in Scripture or the Early Church Fathers.

Wow! Outstanding stuff there*, 'dude!

• (referring to all of your posts in this thread, as well as some of your links).

Thank you for posting this.

 

[Goya]

Hey all…

…I keep forgetting these objections to Sola Fide and start thinking “maybe the Protestants are right.” I just want to be over it once and for all.

Here is a brief excerpt on faith, from the Catechism, that shows faith to be a multi-faceted word; a loaded concept:

*CHAPTER THREE

MAN’S RESPONSE TO GOD

142 By his Revelation, “the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company.”1 The adequate response to this invitation is faith. (1102)

143 By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. 2 With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience of faith.”3 (2087)

ARTICLE 1

I BELIEVE

I. The Obedience of Faith

144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to “hear or listen to”) in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.

Abraham — “father of all who believe”

145 The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eulogy of the faith of Israel’s ancestors, lays special emphasis on Abraham’s faith: “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go.”4 By faith, he lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land.5 By faith, Sarah was given to conceive the son of the promise. And by faith Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice.6 (59, 2570, 489)

146 Abraham thus fulfills the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”:7 “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”8 Because he was “strong in his faith,” Abraham became the “father of all who believe.”9 (1819)

147 The Old Testament is rich in witnesses to this faith. The Letter to the Hebrews proclaims its eulogy of the exemplary faith of the ancestors who “received divine approval.”10 Yet “God had foreseen something better for us”: the grace of believing in his Son Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”11 (839)
Mary — “Blessed is she who believed”

148 The Virgin Mary most perfectly embodies the obedience of faith. By faith Mary welcomes the tidings and promise brought by the angel Gabriel, believing that “with God nothing will be impossible” and so giving her assent: “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word.”12 Elizabeth greeted her: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”13 It is for this faith that all generations have called Mary blessed.14 (494, 2617, 506)

149 Throughout her life and until her last ordeal15 when Jesus her son died on the cross, Mary’s faith never wavered. She never ceased to believe in the fulfillment of God’s word. And so the Church venerates in Mary the purest realization of faith. (969, 507, 829)

…

III. The Characteristics of Faith

Faith is a grace

153 When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come “from flesh and blood,” but from “my Father who is in heaven.”24 Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. “Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and ‘makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.’”25 (552, 1814, 1996, 2606)

Faith is a human act

154 Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths he has revealed are contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reason. Even in human relations it is not contrary to our dignity to believe what other persons tell us about themselves and their intentions or to trust their promises (for example, when a man and a woman marry) to share a communion of life with one another. If this is so, still less is it contrary to our dignity to “yield by faith the full submission of… intellect and will to God who reveals,”26 and to share in an interior communion with him. (1749, 2126)

155 In faith, the human intellect and will cooperate with divine grace: “Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.”27 (2008)

…

Perseverance in faith

162 Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: “Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.”44 To live, grow, and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith;45 it must be “working through charity,” abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church.46 (2089, 1037, 2016, 2573, 2849)

 

[Goya]

cont’d:

*Faith—the beginning of eternal life

163 ** Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below.** Then we shall see God “face to face,” “as he is.”47 So faith is already the beginning of eternal life: (1088) When we contemplate the blessings of faith even now, as if gazing at a reflection in a mirror,** it is as if we already possessed the wonderful things which our faith assures us we shall one day enjoy**.48

164 Now, however, “we walk by faith, not by sight”;49 we perceive God as “in a mirror, dimly” and only “in part.”50 Even though enlightened by him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. The world we live in often seems very far from the one promised us by faith. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice, and death, seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it. (2846, 309, 1502, 1006)

165 ** It is then we must turn to the witnesses of faith: to Abraham, who “in hope… believed against hope”;51 to the Virgin Mary, who, in “her pilgrimage of faith,” walked into the “night of faith”52 in sharing the darkness of her son’s suffering and death; and to so many others**: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”53 (2719)

 

[Goya]

Now, here’s an excerpt concerning salvation and grace:

*CHAPTER THREE

GOD’S SALVATION: LAW AND GRACE

1949 Called to beatitude but wounded by sin, man stands in need of salvation from God. Divine help comes to him in Christ through the law that guides him and the grace that sustains him:

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.1

…

III. The New Law or the Law of the Gospel

1965 The New Law or the Law of the Gospel is the perfection here on earth of the divine law, natural and revealed. It is the work of Christ and is expressed particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. It is also the work of the Holy Spirit and through him it becomes the interior law of charity: “I will establish a New Covenant with the house of Israel… I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”19 (459, 581, 715)

1966 The New Law is the grace of the Holy Spirit given to the faithful through faith in Christ. It works through charity; it uses the Sermon on the Mount to teach us what must be done and makes use of the sacraments to give us the grace to do it: (1999) If anyone should meditate with devotion and perspicacity on the sermon our Lord gave on the mount, as we read in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, he will doubtless find there… the perfect way of the Christian life… This sermon contains… all the precepts needed to shape one’s life.20

1967 The Law of the Gospel “fulfills,” refines, surpasses, and leads the Old Law to its perfection.21 In the Beatitudes, the New Law fulfills the divine promises by elevating and orienting them toward the “kingdom of heaven.” It is addressed to those open to accepting this new hope with faith—the poor, the humble, the afflicted, the pure of heart, those persecuted on account of Christ—and so marks out the surprising ways of the Kingdom. (577)

1968 The Law of the Gospel fulfills the commandments of the Law. The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, far from abolishing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands arise from them: it reveals their entire divine and human truth. It does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to reform the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure,22 where faith, hope, and charity are formed and with them the other virtues. The Gospel thus brings the Law to its fullness through imitation of the perfection of the heavenly Father, through forgiveness of enemies and prayer for persecutors, in emulation of the divine generosity.23 (129, 582)

1969 The New Law practices the acts of religion: almsgiving, prayer and fasting, directing them to the “Father who sees in secret,” in contrast with the desire to “be seen by men.”24 Its prayer is the Our Father.25 (1434)

1970 **The Law of the Gospel requires us to make the decisive choice between “the two ways” and to put into practice the words of the Lord.26 It is summed up in the Golden Rule, “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; this is the law and the prophets.”**27 (1696, 1789, 1823)

**The entire Law of the Gospel is contained in the “new commandment” of Jesus, to love one another as he has loved us.**28

1971 ** To the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount it is fitting to add the moral catechesis of the apostolic teachings, such as Romans 12-15, 1 Corinthians 12-13, Colossians 3-4, Ephesians 4-5, etc. This doctrine hands on the Lord’s teaching with the authority of the apostles, particularly in the presentation of the virtues that flow from faith in Christ and are animated by charity, the principal gift of the Holy Spirit.** “Let charity be genuine… Love one another with brotherly affection… Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality.”29 This catechesis also teaches us to deal with cases of conscience in the light of our relationship to Christ and to the Church.30 (1789)

1972 The New Law is called a law of love because it makes us act out of the love infused by the Holy Spirit, rather than from fear; a law of grace, because it confers the strength of grace to act, by means of faith and the sacraments; a law of freedom, because it sets us free from the ritual and juridical observances of the Old Law, inclines us to act spontaneously by the prompting of charity and, finally, lets us pass from the condition of a servant who “does not know what his master is doing” to that of a friend of Christ — “For all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”—or even to the status of son and heir.31 (782, 1828)

…
*

Often times, the problem with Sola fide vis a vis the Church, isn’t in what S/F purports to mean, but in what the Church actually teaches and believes, vs. what is often believed she teaches and understands about it, and the economy of salvation. IMHO, SF also tends to oversimplify the concept of faith itself, as though faith were merely a declaration of belief (as it is often treated).

FWIW.

God bless…

Note: here is link to site for above excerpts:

usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/epub/index.cfm

 

[Jennifer132]

May I recommend a book to you? It’s called The Drama of Salvation, by Jimmy Akin. It really helped me sort through some of these issues.

 

[fasolislithuan]

In Titus 3,5-7 there is an important key to solve the problem. Paul says** God saves us by the bashing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. ** God saves us by Baptism+sanctificant grace. This is the catholic justification=sanctification (theosis), the partaking of the divine nature. The justification is not a single event in God’s court (forensic or external imputation “extra nos” by faith) rather a living and constant process of God’s grace infusion in our lifes (“intra-nos”). Faith alone doesn’t work, regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit (internal process) is the condition that actually saves us