Posted on 11/07/2009 2:07:36 AM PST by Gamecock
Roman Catholic Asks "Do Protestants Believe That True faith = Faith + Works?"
John Hendryx Answers Roman Catholic
I was recently in an online discussion with a Roman Catholic who made the following assertions:
Ultimately, it makes no difference whether you hold that
faith + works = justification
or
faith = justification + works
In either case there is no justification apart from good works. According to the reformed view, if you don't have good works, then you don't have the right kind of faith. In other words, according to reformed theology, the equation would be
true faith = faith + works.
Well, there you have it. How does this not end up exactly in Rome? This is also the reason why Rome in 1998 agreed to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. For if "true faith" is really "faith plus works", well then embracing Sola Fide is really faith plus works, and Rome doesn't have to make a move. However, the reformed don't seem to realize that the phrase "faith alone" is utterly meaningless and empty words. Do you really assent to this: true faith = faith + works?
my response:
You asked, "Do you really assent to this: true faith = faith + works ?"
Thanks for your question. If you mean does salvation = faith + works the answer is yes, but not my faith and works. It is the faith and works of Christ that saves. My faith and my works have no redeeming value whatsoever.
Unregenerate men can no more obey the gospel than the law, without Christ granting renewal of heart. The saving power of Jesus Christ is not dependant on faith or works being added to what He has done; The saving power of the cross is such that faith and obedience springs from it. To trust in either faith or works is damning for "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them." (Gal 3:10) The RCC premise is that Christ is not sufficient to save completely so they must add works to His to somehow make up for where His work is inadequate ... And the catch is that these works have redemptive value, according to RCC.
Faith itself is man's act or work and is thereby excluded from being any part of his justifying righteousness. It is one thing to be justified by grace through faith merely as an instrument by which man receives the righteousness of Christ, and another to be justified FOR faith as an act or work of the law. If a sinner, then, relies on his actings of faith or works of obedience to any of the commands of the law for a title to eternal life, he seeks to be justified by works of the law as much as if his works were perfect. If he depends either in whole or in part, on his faith and repentance for a right to any promised blessing, he thereby so annexes that promise to the commands to believe and repent as to form them for himself into a covenant of works. Building his confidence before God upon his faith, repentance and other acts of obedience, he places them in Christ's stead as his grounds of right to the promise and so he demonstrates himself to be of the works of the law and so be under the curse (Galatians 3:10) (Colquhoun)
Paul then on Phil chapter 3:3 gives a definition of a true Christian:
"....we are the [true] circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh."
He calls true Christians “the real circumcision”, i.e. the true covenant people of God. There are three characteristics Paul gives of Christians found in verse 3. He says they are those who:
1) Worship in the Spirit of God
2) Glory in Christ
3) And put no confidence in the flesh
In other words, to be a true Christians means to have utterly despaired of all hope in oneself. When the Holy Spirit does a work of grace in someone, He convicts them of their sin. Not just sins, but convicts of the fact that they are sinners by nature and can do nothing to save themselves. This means one who is brought to faith, repents of both their good works and their evil works. Both are equally worthless to God. False teaching, like Romans Catholicism, glories in something other than in Christ alone, always pointing to something that we can do; a resumé we can bring before God to curry His favor.
So again to answer your question. It is the faith and works of Christ that saves us, not our faith or works of obedience, neither of which will ever even come close to pleasing God in any redemptive way. In the covenant in Christ's blood ALONE he remembers not to treat us as our sins justly deserve.
Regards.
Amen.
I think we cudgel-swingers might consider trying to have a friendly conversation about the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification put out by some Catholics and some Lutherans
***Wouldn’t there turn out to be a lot of variation in the accounts given by the many differing groups which call themselves Protestant?***
I think the confusion would be with the idea of perseverance. Some Proddies would say I am saved by faith alone, but now it’s up to me to keep myself saved.
Protestants are just so cute when they try to explain what Catholics believe. They're wrong, but cute.
Keep the commandments?
Only one Man has ever kept the commandments—Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He kept them for us. God counts His obedience as ours (Romans 5) if we confess what we are in sin and count Christ as our only hope.
If a man keep the whole law but offend in one point, he is GUILTY OF ALL. (James 2:10) Thus not one of us is NOT guilty of breaking God’s WHOLE law on a daily basis.
Keep the commandments? Friend, you won’t.
With God's grace I can, Jesus wouldn't demand the impossible:
Mt:19:17: "And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."
Certainly I fall every day in smaller matters, as we all do, but God's grace keeps me from falling into sins that are unto death.
Regards.
That would be the Catholic view except the "keep myself saved" part leaves out the necessety of God's grace in order to stay in a state of justice through the keeping of the Commandments, it entirely leaves God out of the picture.
Then you’ll have to keep the commandments as sinlessly as Jesus Christ did, from your very early childhood to your death.
That is God’s standard for keeping the commandments.
Its like turning on a light in a dark room. If no light follows, either you didn’t actually turn on the light or the bulb is dead.
You mean some of the commandments...Right??? Problem is, if you violate one, you're guilty of violating all...
Paul seemed to have significant difficulty in keeping the Commandants. (See Romans 7, and no, that was not his pre-conversion experience)
” . . . by the obedience of ONE shall many be made righteous.” (Roams 5:19)
By Christ’s obedience shall many be made righteous.
Jesus Christ spent 3-1/2 years on this earth demonstrating by His own obedience to His Father, that mankind has failed entirely in the commandments, and then died to provide the full payment for our disobedience as well as the reconciliation of sinful man to God.
If righteousness could be obtained by the law, no other way would have been provided. (Galatians 2:21; 3:21).
“Paul seemed to have significant difficulty in keeping the Commandants. (See Romans 7, and no, that was not his pre-conversion experience)”
My impression is that some Baptists kind of sort of synch okay with us Papists that even though it is God who does good works in and through us after our being saved, (so to speak) those good work redound to our spiritual benefit, are the vehicle through which God strengthens faith, bestows further graces, etc.
I am so sort of intellectually conflicted about this perseverance stuff. I tend to want to go with Kierkegaard and say that if you don't love now, you never loved - that once you love, you don't stop. Yet Bunyan tellingly recounts (Pilgrim's Progress) ,"Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of Destruction." ( I think it was Ignorance who was dragged down to hell from the gates of heaven ... he's an evocative writer!
In any event, I would say that if perseverance is required, only God can supply that grace. All I have to offer is sin.
The mystery is so well presented in Phillipians 2:12-13. You'd think these people had never danced, had never been given the grace to will to give their wills up to their partner and to the music. What their account gains in simplicity it loses in accuracy.
"Now I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me." Galatians is the epistle to which they so often have recourse, and yet it seems they do not read it all.
The beauty and piety of giving all the glory to God -- who can question that? But God is great and glorious enough to sweep our wills up in His train and carry us along like fallen leaves behind a big truck, flying and dancing in the air. We die in His death, we live in His Life!
Lol. That, of course, is impossible.
"That is God’s standard for keeping the commandments."
You'll have to show me some verses...But I do know that the Scriptures leave room for sins that are not unto death whereby we lose our justification:
1Jn:5:16: "If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it."
1Jn:5:17: "All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death."
Gamecock:
"Paul seemed to have significant difficulty in keeping the Commandants. (See Romans 7, and no, that was not his pre-conversion experience)"
No doubt. He gives an example of the wretched state of the human soul because of the fall of our first parents. I would argue that Paul was not committing sins unto death because we know how he condemned the types of sinners that would not inherit eternal life, fornicators, adulterers etc....we would have to call him a hypocrite when all Christianity knows he was just.
“You’ll have to show me some verses...”
The first commandment is to love God with ALL of our heart, ALL of our mind, ALL of our soul, ALL of our strength.
Any man who claims to be in obedience is only lying to himself. Jesus Christ proved that the man who is obedient to the first commandment gets nailed to a cross and is made sin for the purpose of receiving the wrath of God.
No other man has ever kept even the first commandment, and thereforefore ONE had to come who could — and DID — and the world couldn’t stand Him, and crucified him.
Other men who have gotten close to it (John the Baptist, Stephen, James, Paul, John the Beloved, and more) have all been hated and ended up murdered, too. None of those men ever claimed to have kept the commandments.
“The RCC premise is that Christ is not sufficient to save completely so they must add works to His to somehow make up for where His work is inadequate ...”
The Protestant who wrote that is either a LIAR or a grossly IGNORANT man.
"You mean some of the commandments...Right??? Problem is, if you violate one, you're guilty of violating all... "
John Leland 1789:
"If a man keep the whole law but offend in one point, he is GUILTY OF ALL. (James 2:10) Thus not one of us is NOT guilty of breaking God’s WHOLE law on a daily basis."
Tough verse. I would argue that the sense is you can't say: I'll just not commit murder, but I'll be a drunkard and still enter into heaven. The one sin cuts you off from the grace of God, just as if you had committed the others which also would cut you off, and it would be no profit to me to try and keep all the other commandments while remaining an unrepentant murderer. BTW the very next verse says it is possible to commit one sin and not "actually" commit another:
Jms:2:11: "For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, (yet) if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law."
You see, the sense in context with the previous verse seems to be that you ar cut off from God by breaking any of the Ten Commandments.
Here is a question, how do you reconcile the verse where Jesus said "keep the Commandments"...with the belief that it is impossible to do so...
Honestly. They can’t help it. They’ve heard it all their lives. They’re more to be pitied than censured.
That's the standard we're suppose to aim for, but the just man falls every day because he still hasn't reached it, but he doesn't necessarily fall "unto death".
*** I think the confusion would be with the idea of perseverance. Some Proddies would say I am saved by faith alone, but now it’s up to me to keep myself saved. ***
But then is one truly saved by Faith Alone if one must keep it?
Who, valuing the most precious thing he has, does not maintain and protect it? The more he values it, the less of a "work" and the more of a gift and grace it is to do such maintenance and protection.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I think too often our Protestant friends over simplify Salvation Theology and specifically Catholic theology on the matter. They are used to something that fits neatly into Sola Fide or Sola Gratio, when it really is deeper than that.
But yes, that is one of the problems of apologetics and trying to defend the Catholic position, is often we are faced with a woefully incomplete statement that requires far more effort to answer than someone is necessary willing to listen for.
*****************
Quite right, and beautifully said.
So we have the dialectic: works as evidence of salvation, or as a means thereof. Is the sacrifice of Christ absolutely necessary or absolutely sufficient? I think applying earthly efforts to obtain a supernatural salvation cannot succeed. In my very humble opinion, Rome loses this argument.
“That’s the standard we’re suppose to aim for . . . “
What proposition is "Rome" supposed to be defending? Surely you don't think we teach what the bozo eminent scholar who wrote the article thinks we teach, do you?
Sorry for the bitterness. It has always irritated me to be told that I am arguing something I not only am not arguing but specifically eschew. I meditate on this when I pray the 3rd Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus is Crowned with Thorns. I wish I could bear it as He did.
There is a large conceptual problem, and to a Catholic some Protestant categories feel more like a Procrustean bed where our arguments must be stretched or maimed before they are considered -- and thus are never seen in their natural state.
I think these verses imply the admonition to strive to love God with one's whole heart mind and strength :
Mt:5:48: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
Lv:20:7: "Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God."
Matthew 5:48 and Leviticus 20:7 do NOT imply that men are to aim for this standard. It is a directly stated requirement and God is too holy to come down to man’s inability to comply as the standard. That is why blood had to be shed. Something had to stand in for man in God’s wrath on sin, or God would have to destroy man.
God’s standard is sinlessness. If we are not sinless then someone must pay for our disobedience with the shedding of innocent blood. Someone must die in our place and take ALL of God’s judgement on Him.
Christ fulfilled that, and it is on that basis alone that we may obtain mercy. Adding to that our “aims” to obey is to trample on the Blood of Jesus Christ and treat it as an unholy thing.
...does salvation = faith + works the answer is yes, but not my faith and works. It is the faith and works of Christ that saves. My faith and my works have no redeeming value whatsoever.
I believe, and could be wrong, that this is essentially Catholic faith regarding the salvific value of "works". As I've posted before (a while ago now), the works that Catholics perform that are effacious for salvation do not have, as their *origin*, Man himself. It is Christ, and His Grace, transforming us, that originates the true works that are pleasing to God. By co-operating with God's Grace, we are transformed into a "new Creation", not instantaneously (usually) but throughout our entire lives.
As we co-operate with this transformation, we do good works.
Lately, I've been thinking of it this way: What does it mean to have the "Spirit manifest in our lives"? The word "manifest" means something obvious, visible, on display, for the world to see. This obviously implies that we are doing a "work" that people can see, a good work.
This is what I quoted above, I believe. I believe the author of this post would agree that once one has faith in God, then works must be manifest, else the faith is "dead" (as James would say).
Beyond this though, works are "necessary" for salvation, not that we are the source of the works, but that the good works, whose origin are in God, transform us. Like, again as I've said before, they are "spiritual exercises". Exercises given by God, that are part and parcel to our transformation. In other words, it's not the exercises themselves that "please God", but our co-operation with them.
That is, if we say, "Yes, I'll pick up this cross and follow You", then we please God. That doesn't mean that we have to pick up our cross perfectly. It means we have to *try* to do so. And why do we have to try? Because its our own cross that is part and parcel to our transformation.
Our transformation from a fallen man, to a man who is fully human, the way we were originally intended to be, the man Adam was before his fall.
The alternative cannot possibly be correct. The alternative that somehow, when there is no outward manifestation of the Spirit, when there is no change in our behavior, and, perhaps most critically, when there is no desire within *ourselves* to do good work, that somehow we are still "saved" because "Christ did all the work", is, again as I've said before, exactly like the lie from the Garden where Satan said, "You surely will not die!". Because Satan said that to assure his victim that, no matter what she did, or did not do (such as follow God's command to not eat of the fruit) she would not die. Sound familiar?
Laziness has traditionally been a "deadly sin" for a reason for the centuries, and it wasn't just to get everyone to work in the fields harder.
If we are not sinless then someone must pay for our disobedience with the shedding of innocent blood. Someone must die in our place and take ALL of God’s judgement on Him.
Agreed.
To whom was Jesus speaking when he said,"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Was he speaking to us or to another?
And to whom was Paul speaking when he said, "... work out your own salvation in fear and trembling -- for it is God who works in you both for willing and doing for his good pleasure," -- is this to sinners or to whom?
And we might want to do a word study on "perfect,: come to think of it.
But are the moral and spiritual recommendations in the Bible only meant to show us what righteousness is and how we can't possibly attain it, or is there something else going on?
I think the trying and failing and lather, rinse, repeat is part of the dying and rising into which we are saved.
Thank God he's not describing the Catholic Church.
RCC = “Royal Crown Cola”
please give a short summary of catholic soteriology in your own words.
thank you.
I prefer to respond to people in their own idiom.
please give a short summary of catholic soteriology in your own words.
Read this.
I thought it might be “radio-controlled car.”
“To whom was Jesus speaking when he said,”Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Was he speaking to us or to another?”
The correct response by Israel (the nation to whom He was the speaking as their Davidic King) would have been, “WE CANNOT, WE’VE ALREADY FAILED AND COME SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD. (Romans 3:19-28)
Secondarily, it speaks to every sinner. So, BE ye therefore perfect. It does NOT say, “aim at being perfect.” It does NOT say “TRY to be perfect.” It says BE perfect. God does not equate any man’s efforts to be perfect with His requirement to BE PERFECT.
Based on the PERFECT Merits of Jesus Christ, the believing sinner is MADE perfect by God so that in Christ he IS perfect. It is not our state, it is our standing. Again, it has nothing to to with man trying to do anything.
“The law made NOTHING perfect, but the bringing in of a BETTER HOPE DID.” (Hebrews)
Are you St. Charles Borromeo?
Are you Sir Francis Drake?
So many Romanists laughingly claim Protestants have no clue of Romanist soteriology but then never bother to explain it.
All I’m asking of you is for is a short summation.
Is that possible?
Who’s being snide now?
What amazes me more than the ignorance of Protestants is their hypocrisy.
What’s snide about asking someone their beliefs?
Yes, I reject that offer for the reasons I stated earlier. If Romanists want to mockingly claim that Protestants are unable to understand her doctrines then those same Romanist must show they have at least an elementary understanding of their own doctrine.
Thus pointing to someone else’s work does not prove they themselves understand what is presented.
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