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Ubenedictus
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YEaH faith includes obedience i think this is the way paul talk about faithIt is likely the key disagreement and the more I’ve thought on this it is a rather strange problem. I’m not sure that faith is used equivocally so much as misused. I would contend there is no such thing as true faith. There is either faith or no faith. The idea of true faith is to indicate actual faith. The phrase should not have any theological significance. The real issue is how is faith determined? I would contend it is determined by what we do.
If someone were to come up to me and say the banks are going to crash today whether I had faith in that person would be determined by what I did. If I went to the bank and withdrew my money I had faith in them. If I did nothing I did not have faith in them. True faith in the sense often used would here be just faith where I went and acted as if I trusted the person who gave me this message.
It seems to me many people want to reduce the issue of salvation to intellectual assent. Scripture is very clear that some who recognize God as being God will not be saved. So holding to the belief that God exists seems insufficient. No one is doubting that Adam believed God existed. The issue for him was disobedience. We can say that act of disobedience was a lack of faith but Scripture does not say as soon as Adam thought to sin he was in trouble.
Of course Christ later does tell us that what is in our hearts condemns us. This seems to me a call to a higher level of morality. It would seem that in heading Christ’s words some have taken it too far. What we do is certainly important. What we think is certainly important. The most ideal situation is to think and do good, not to just think good or to just do good. Like with children we were first conditioned to do what is right. Then we were instructed to do what is right for the right reasons. Christ explained this to us by proclaiming the foundation of the law being rooted in love of God.
This is entirely consistent with moral understanding in our criminal law wherein we have both actions and intent. We judge a person’s actions in light of what we perceive to be their intent. But we also judge actions regardless of intent.
I believe that theif was saved while working, it took great pains to speak on the cross especially with nails in your hands and feet yet he came up to defend Jesus he loved that is charity he asked for forgiveness he certainly was using his will to make a choice. For me that theif actual recieved salvation when he was fulfiling the command of love. I believe he died with great love in his heartThe faith alone issue seems to me to be basing theology on what might best be called an edge case. There are situations, like the thief on the cross, where a person can not do any works as a demonstration of their faith. He was saved in that moment by his faith. He couldn’t do any good works.
wow i had to check again to make sure you were protestant. It seem very catholic. Anyway the key to everything is the different preception of faith and the want to keep salvation simple. This simplicity made luther throw away what he thought to be too complex, he qualified what he believed to be saving faith, he called it fecund*cial and added the word alone to it. so all that is neccesary is a trust in him who has power to save the unrighteous and nothing else counts, nothing else improves or tampers with salvation as calvin later develops. The other difference is our understand of the word justification. Pax And blessings.But the faith alone theology has what has to be stranger edge cases. It has to dismiss its standard for children and the mentally retarded or consign them all to Hell. Of course that theology can be fixed with stipulations on its standard. But I think the nuanced version of faith and works salvation makes far more sense and does less violence to scripture, which is explicit that faith alone is not sufficient, than the nuanced faith alone theology.
Ubenedictus