Why say "Sola Fide"?

[lanman87]

Justification is necessary for salvation. We’re justified by faith. After justification, sin must decrease while good works increase, or else we should question whether or not we actually reside in a state of justice/righteousness, and therefore whether or not we possess eternal life.

It doesn’t cover all the bases, and purposefully leaves the question of different kinds of faith (dead vs saving faith, etc) out of the equation altogether.

That is a good summation. The only thing I would add is that when we say we are justified by faith what we really mean is we are justified by a living/saving faith. R.C. Sproul said in one of his sermons that if you intellectually believe that Jesus is the Son of God and even assent to that truth then “Congratulations, you have enough faith to be a demon”.

We would never say someone (including me) has a saving/living faith if they didn’t have love of God and love of others. We would never say someone has a saving faith if they weren’t living a life of repentance. We would never say someone has a saving faith if their faith wasn’t “working in love”.

True faith comes from a heart change. It changes the way we look at the world and changes our desires from selfishness and being my own master to being loving and letting Christ be the master. So while faith is how we are made right before God it also causes evidence in our lives that we have been made right before God. If we don’t have that evidence then we have to question our claim that we have faith.

 

[fhansen]

Thank you. Again, I was consciously taking the full emphasis off of faith, even as it’s necessarily the doorway to justification. Incidentally I didn’t mention baptism either, since baptism, itself, is a response of faith. A Catholic would say that, in order for our justice to be complete, hope and love must be added, both gifts of God themselves. Hope is that virtue by which we place trust or confidence in God and His promises. Love is the ultimate blossoming of righteousness in man.

Whether or not Protestants overload faith by conflating too many virtues into that one, I’m not so sure that it’s correct to think of faith, itself, as being the cause of evidence or fruit in our lives. Indirectly perhaps, in that it’s the cause (as a response to grace) of relationship with God who then does a work in us. Faith provides the foundation of it all but does it necessarily encompass hope and love, to put it another way? I mean, love is required in order for acts of love to be performed with any authenticity behind them. And the CC teaches that it’s possible for a person to believe while failing to love. Either way if faith does encompass the rest, then it would appear that the justified man possesses more than a merely imputed righteousness.

I mean, if “saving faith” intrinsically and automatically includes or motivates hope and love then that would mean that real righteousness (expressed by works) is inseparable from the faith that justifies. IOW real justice given is an aspect of our being justified. Otherwise the “faith alone” doctrine might be virtually equating faith with justice/righteousness it seems.

Trying to be ecumenical here and locate the common ground.

 

[fhansen]

I have to say though that I really like this comment, from an Eastern Orthodox:

"I suspect many people confuse belief with faith.

I may believe the ladder will hold my weight, but faith is climbing the ladder.
If there is no action corresponding to our belief, we don’t have faith."

Or I guess it could be called a dead faith, that of the demons.

 

[lanman87]

I may believe the ladder will hold my weight, but faith is climbing the ladder.
If there is no action corresponding to our belief, we don’t have faith.

That is very similar to what I learned in Evangelism Explosion many years ago. It went something like this:

Belief is looking at a chair and believing it is a chair. You may even tell other people that the chair is a chair. You may believe in your heart the if you sit in the chair it will hold you up. But faith is actually sitting in the chair.

One thing to understand is that we consider faith to be a synonym (rightly or wrongly) with being “in Christ”.

 

[ltwin]

Whether or not Protestants overload faith by conflating too many virtues into that one

I think Protestants do tend to treat faith and hope as more or less synonymous. Love and faith are more distinct I believe though. I agree that there are subtle and not so subtle differences in how our traditions define and mark off these three things. For Protestants, there is much more overlap and interrelation than there appears to be in Catholic definitions.

A Catholic would say that, in order for our justice to be complete, hope and love must be added, both gifts of God themselves . . . Love is the ultimate blossoming of righteousness in man.

God does grant love in justification–love is the grateful response to God’s pardon on the basis of Christ’s righteousness claimed by faith.

Another way to say this is that “faith precedes and enables our love for God. Confidence in God’s promise grounds our delight in his goodness. There is another way to conceive of loving God: not just delighting in who he is and what he promises, but wanting to please him.”

Hope is that virtue by which we place trust or confidence in God and His promises.

How do you distinguish between faith and hope?

This question caused me to do some digging, and I found a sermon by Reformed Baptist minister John Piper on hope. John Piper says that “faith is the full assurance of hope.” Faith looks both backward and forward. By faith, we know that the world was created by God in the past. Yet, hope is faith in the future work of God. By faith, we also know that in the future there will be a resurrection and eternal life for those in Christ; this is our hope.

In fact, hope is part of the biblical description of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). So, a thoroughly Calvinistic evangelical minister like Piper can say:

“Hope is an essential part of faith. Take away hope and the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1 is destroyed. We are not merely saved by grace through faith. We are saved by grace through hope.”

 

[catholicray]

Love is not a side-benefit of faith. Scripture makes it abundantly clear that faith which does not express itself in love is not justifying.

Learn your Scripture better. St. Paul teaches that one can indeed have faith without love. Read 1 Corinthians

“If I have faith so as to move mountains but I have not love I am nothing.” Paul identifies faith as a spiritual gift.

If you are preaching a faith in conjunction with love then your words are dead and pointless when you say faith alone. The slogan is rendered empty.

If you’re not going to defend a faith alone based salvation then don’t but stop pretending you are while attaching words like obedience and love to your salvation concept.

I find that I can basically agree with how a Protestant explains faith alone but when they summarize it as being faith alone it utterly fails in contradiction to their own explanation. I’m left seeing nothing more than someone who wants to be combative because of their pride in being right or their fear in being wrong.

 

[ltwin]

Learn your Scripture better.

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the internet.

St. Paul teaches that one can indeed have faith without love. Read 1 Corinthians

“If I have faith so as to move mountains but I have not love I am nothing.”

First, the faith referred to here is the charism of faith–special or extraordinary faith as opposed to what we might call “common faith.” Just as not every Christian has the gifts of prophecy, healing or miracles, not everyone has the extraordinary gift of faith. Learn to read Scripture in context.

If you are preaching a faith in conjunction with love then your words are dead and pointless when you say faith alone. The slogan is rendered empty.

We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God’s glory alone. Of course, true faith is never alone, but that’s beside the point. What Protestants mean when we say “faith alone” is that faith is the only means by which Christ’s righteousness is applied to our lives. It does not mean that there is an absence of other virtues but that those other virtues proceed from our union with Christ–and we are united to Christ by faith.

If you’re not going to defend a faith alone based salvation then don’t but stop pretending you are while attaching words like obedience and love to your salvation concept.

I find that I can basically agree with how a Protestant explains faith alone but when they summarize it as being faith alone it utterly fails in contradiction to their own explanation. I’m left seeing nothing more than someone who wants to be combative because of their pride in being right or their fear in being wrong.

When I read what you just wrote, I’m left seeing nothing more than someone who is angry that a Protestant doesn’t want to discuss faith alone within the confines of the caricature he’s created. Just because I refuse to accept your wacky definition of sola fide doesn’t make me combative or prideful.

 

[catholicray]

I’m actually tired on the wrong side of the internet. But it’s not wacky. If I question you long enough you’ll say faith without obedience does not save. Just like you’ll say faith without love will not save. Those words are grammatically action words or “works” based words. If your word faith is conflated with the meaning of those words then you’re Catholic because that’s the Catholic meaning of works when you really study it.

I challenge you to show me in the details where we actually disagree. At the end of the day we don’t disagree in the details and Sola Fide as you will inevitably define it is not an excuse to reject the Holy Catholic Church.

 

[ltwin]

I challenge you to show me in the details where we actually disagree. At the end of the day we don’t disagree in the details and Sola Fide as you will inevitably define it is not an excuse to reject the Holy Catholic Church.

So, you think that men have fought over this for hundreds of years because of simple pride? That there is no dispute. Protestants just want to nitpick for no better reason than satisfying some internalized anti-Catholicism??? Well, I guess I understand now why Aleksey Khomyakov once said, “All Protestants are Crypto-Papists.”

All snarkiness aside, you ask a question worthy of a serious answer. Historically, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone was a repudiation of certain Catholic beliefs related to purgatory and the use of good works to benefit souls there. This also implicated church teaching on the sacrament of penance and the sacrifice of the Mass. The Reformation was nothing less than a fight over two competing schemes of salvation–sola fide for Protestants and something a bit more complicated for Catholics.

 

[Brian_K]

Faith gets you saved, ie, keeps you from Hell. Ok, now you’re saved. Now what? Your life, a gift from God, should show more than the minimum, right? Hope and Love are the next steps.

The more we give back to God, the closer we will be to Him for eternity.

I, for one, don’t want to spend eternity in “not Hell.” I want to spend it in Heaven, as close to God as my fool self can be

God, who is Love, doesn’t desire His children to be in “not Hell”, but to be as close to Him as we can. He gives our souls this gift of Life so we can strive for Him, and be joyful, with Him, forever.

I receive Him in the Eucharist, sinner that I am, to say, “I love You, I trust You, and please, PLEASE, hold me close to You, my Lord and my God!”

My God, You stooped down to my filth, died for me, then took away the fear of death!

I hope my life can be a Thank You note back to You, Who gave so much for me

Yes, I have faith.

I believe.

But I also Hope.

And I hope to Love better Who did so much for me

 

[catholicray]

So, you think that men have fought over this for hundreds of years because of simple pride?

Pride mixed with good intentions and sincerity through ignorance yes. But I’m not going to call that pride alone eh.

Sarcasm aside, outside of Martin Luther I think the feud was fueled by political agendas geared toward the acquisition of power. I think Protestants today read much of the modern landscape of Evangelicalism back into history rather than the other way around. Modern Sola Fide is not Luther’s Sola Fide is all I’m saying. That’s my opinion.

 

[JonNC]

I think Protestants today read much of the modern landscape of Evangelicalism back into history rather than the other way around. Modern Sola Fide is not Luther’s Sola Fide is all I’m saying. That’s my opinion.

Please elaborate.

 

[catholicray]

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly.” - Martin Luther

 

[JonNC]

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly.” - Martin Luther

That’s a Luther quote, but not an elaboration.
I know the quote from his letter to Melanchthon, and it’s context.

 

[catholicray]

I simply think that Luther’s Sola Fide was more compatible with the sinner who remained a sinner than the modern interpretation or at least a modern conservative interpretation which comes across as nearly Catholic to me. Of course this is an opinion I’m not qualified to be a voice of scholarship on this particular matter. You’re more than welcome to share your own insight.

 

[ltwin]

Sarcasm aside, outside of Martin Luther I think the feud was fueled by political agendas geared toward the acquisition of power.

Religion and politics were deeply intertwined in 16th century Europe, so of course, any religious movement or thought would have political implications. However, reducing the Reformation(s) to political agendas is unwise. Even Henry VIII–initiator of the English Reformation, which was largely an “act of state” until later on in the process–could cite profound religious scruples for his desire to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. Catherine was his brother’s widow and as such their marriage contravened Leviticus 20:21 and Catholic canon law; they had to get a papal dispensation to marry to begin with. Henry’s claim for the annulment was straight out of Sola Scriptura–the Pope cannot dispense with a divine law (of course, Deuteronomy 25:5 threw a wrench into that argument). So, even a matter as sordid as Henry wanting to put aside his wife for another woman for the sake of securing a male heir at root was an argument over Scripture. Henry believed God was refusing to give him an heir because he had taken his brother’s wife.

Even when it came to the confiscation of church wealth–nothing new there. Catholic monarchs (at least in England) had seized monastic wealth before. The only difference during the Reformation is that for theological reasons the monasteries and other religious houses were shut down for good. Couldn’t have all those monks and nuns sitting around praying for souls in purgatory could we now?

 

[ltwin]

I think Protestants today read much of the modern landscape of Evangelicalism back into history rather than the other way around. Modern Sola Fide is not Luther’s Sola Fide is all I’m saying. That’s my opinion.

There are always people ignorant of history. That doesn’t mean they are ignorant about other things. We can’t all be informed about everything. And per sola fide, I’m pretty sure Luther’s concept is still pretty much in sink with the modern one–at least among informed Protestants. (There are those ignorant of theology too, but once again, we can’t all be informed about everything.)

“Be a sinner and sin boldly , but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly.” - Martin Luther

Be wary of Luther quotes. The guy wrote in a very hyperbolic way and snapshot quotes easily lead to failure to grasp what Luther was actually saying. When Catholics use these out-of-context quotes and act all “gotcha”, it isn’t the slam dunk they think it is.

This is one was said by Luther, but I’ve come across some “Luther” quotes that were apparently entirely made up. LOL.

 

[JonNC]

I simply think that Luther’s Sola Fide was more compatible with the sinner who remained a sinner than the modern interpretation or at least a modern conservative interpretation which comes across as nearly Catholic to me. Of course this is an opinion I’m not qualified to be a voice of scholarship on this particular matter. You’re more than welcome to share your own insight.

I suggest you read the letter. It is impossible to interpret Luther ‘s as permission to remain in sin as it is sometimes painted by some Catholic apologists.
Here is the specific portion of the letter:

1. If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but
   the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the
   true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only
   imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let
   your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the
   victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we
   are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We,
   however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new
   heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that
   through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the
   sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to
   kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think
   such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager
   sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.

http://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/letsinsbe.txt

And following is a very good ecological Luther’s meaning.

Confessional Gadfly: What does "Sin Boldly" mean?

 

[fhansen]

I think Protestants do tend to treat faith and hope as more or less synonymous. Love and faith are more distinct I believe though. I agree that there are subtle and not so subtle differences in how our traditions define and mark off these three things. For Protestants, there is much more overlap and interrelation than there appears to be in Catholic definitions.

Yes, at least when describing the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, for the purpose of explaining and understanding what justice or righteousness for man actually consists of. The ability to merely believe-to give intellectual assent to-supernatural truths is profound by itself and impossible to accomplish on our own. By separating faith from hope the concepts stated in James 2 and 1 Cor 13, as others have noted, are preserved in their simple and direct meaning (not to mention Augustine: “Without love faith may indeed exist but avails nothing”). This is not to say that the Church doesn’t also use “faith” in the sense of trust and dependency, in common usage. And for our purpose I think it’s mainly necessary that all the virtues and the concepts concerning them are included and that they’re stated in such a way that we have the clearest understanding possible.

While faith has always been central to Catholicism of course, I think the reason the Reformers latched onto it so strongly is because it makes the relationship personal, and more separated from the necessity for mediation by the Church between the believer and God. But the Eucharist, itself, proclaims this same truth and, if anything, the intercession of the Church does not need to be viewed as interference, until we begin to make it and its leaders into virtual idols, which is wrong. Because the purpose of the Church from the beginning is one of servitude, to reveal truth to us regarding the nature and will of God, and initiate and nurture or support that very personal relationship between us and Him. My grandmother from the foothills of the Italian Alps learned and lived this simple kind of faith.

God does grant love in justification–love is the grateful response to God’s pardon on the basis of Christ’s righteousness claimed by faith.

Another way to say this is that “faith precedes and enables our love for God. Confidence in God’s promise grounds our delight in his goodness. There is another way to conceive of loving God: not just delighting in who he is and what he promises, but wanting to please him.”

continued:

 

[fhansen]

I’m honestly not sure how much gratefulness comes into play here in real life, as a definition or source of love that springs forth owing to appreciation of our salvation. Or whether “confidence in God’s promise grounds our delight in his goodness”. Anyway, yes, we want to please the one we love. But I think love simply flows from grace, from God, just as faith does, even as faith establishes the relationship that makes this love available. We love Him because He first loved us. But we do come to love Him; as we love people in our lives, regardless of whether or not we receive anything from them.

How do you distinguish between faith and hope?

This question caused me to do some digging, and I found a sermon by Reformed Baptist minister John Piper on hope. John Piper says that “faith is the full assurance of hope.” Faith looks both backward and forward. By faith, we know that the world was created by God in the past. Yet, hope is faith in the future work of God. By faith, we also know that in the future there will be a resurrection and eternal life for those in Christ; this is our hope.

In fact, hope is part of the biblical description of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). So, a thoroughly Calvinistic evangelical minister like Piper can say:

“Hope is an essential part of faith. Take away hope and the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1 is destroyed. We are not merely saved by grace through faith. We are saved by grace through hope.”

I don’t see “hope” in that passage as meaning the same as “trust and confidence”. It’s used in 11:1 more in the common sense of a desire for something better in the future. Although depending on the author’s intention, there could well be included elements of belief that those things will indeed transpire. In any case Paul had all three virtues separated out in 1 Cor 13:13:

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Whether it’s important to keep them distinct from each other in that way is a matter of the church to determine. Either way, I don’t think Paul felt the need to combine all these into one. I think he knew that faith should lead to the others, but that we must keep challenging ourselves to be certain that it has. And 2 Pet 1:5-7 can shed light here:

“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.”

Anyway, it doesn’t make so much difference if at the end of the day we’re speaking of the same thing regarding justification. In that case it mainly matters how well our understanding of the issue is promoted by our usage and definitions, etc.