Posted on 09/02/2017 7:03:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
About half of Protestants in the U.S. now agree with the "historically Catholic belief" that both faith and good deeds are needed for salvation, rather than faith alone, a Pew Research Center survey shows.
White Evangelicals stood out as the strongest believers in faith alone, however.
Pew, which released the survey to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, explored different questions, though one of the main focuses was on the requirements for salvation.
Fifty-two percent of U.S. Protestants said both good deeds and faith in God are needed to get into heaven; 46 percent said faith alone (sola fide) is needed. Among Catholics, 81 percent agreed that both good deeds and faith are necessary. Meanwhile, two-thirds of white evangelicals said they believe faith alone is needed for salvation.
(Catholics argue that "faith and works" is a misleading oversimplification of their beliefs.)
Protestants were similarly split on the Reformation principle of sola scriptura (which means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian), with 46 percent saying the Bible provides all the religious guidance Christians need and 52 percent saying Christians need guidance from church teachings and traditions in addition to the Bible. Among white evangelicals, nearly 60 percent agreed with the principle of sola sciptura.
Overall, only 30 percent of Protestants, 7 percent of Catholics and 44 percent of white evangelicals believe in both sola fide and sola scriptura.
The data for the poll was collected between May 30 and August 9, sampling 5,198 respondents, with the questions split in two forms. Pew noted that the margin of sampling error for both halves of respondents was plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
Some respondents were asked to answer the question of what is needed to get into heaven in their own words. Common responses to this open-ended question included belief in Jesus and being born again (32 percent); being a good person, moral values and doing good works (19 percent of all Christians); repentance and asking forgiveness for sins (12 percent); and belief in God (11 percent).
In other findings, Christians were largely split on the topic of purgatory, which some believe to be a place where souls go to be cleansed of their sins before they can enter Heaven.
Overall, 54 percent of U.S. Christians rejected the existence of such a place, while 33 percent said that they believed in it. White evangelicals were most likely to say it is a false belief, with 72 percent rejecting it. Catholics found themselves at the opposite end of the scale, with 70 percent stating that purgatory is a real place. While a majority (65 percent) of Protestants overall said purgatory does not exist, black Protestants were split on the belief, with 47 percent saying it exists and 48 percent saying it doesn't.
Notably, a majority of U.S. adults were familiar with the Reformation as the time Protestants broke away from the Catholic Church and correctly named Martin Luther as the person who inspired it.
Protestants this year are commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany on Oct. 31, 1517.
According to Ligonier Ministries, while the Reformation is largely described as a movement that revolved around sola fide and sola scriptura, "the 'protest' of Protestantism went far beyond the issue of justification by faith alone, challenging many dogmas that emerged in Rome, especially during the Middle Ages."
Pew noted, "[T]he issues at the heart of the Reformation were not merely doctrinal. Disputes also arose over religious practices, ecclesiastical structures, the sale of indulgences, the expensive construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and more. Political and other factors also played an important role."
The Reformation swept through Germany in the 16th century, spread throughout Europe and then to the new world.
Good works DO save us. Only the good works of Jesus Christ, though.
I took trumpet lessons once but can’t play the trumpet. Nobody wants to listen to the noise I can make.
James 2:14-26New International Version (NIV)
Faith and Deeds
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless[a]? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”[b] and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Let me repeat that!
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Galatians 2:8,9
Says it ALL!
The issue is the distinction between (1) becoming a Christian and (2) living as a Christian.
In the same way as many Israelites saw the power of God against Egypt, they were “impressed”, but nonetheless they showed their lack of real faith by rebelling against God.
Your comment: “While your view makes for a good story, this is not what the scriptures teaches. Only His sheep hear his voice.”
Why do some use a quote from the Bible to attempt to justify their comment without understanding (or ignoring) the rest of the teachings of Jesus?
We are all created by God and He wants all of us to join Him in Heaven by accepting His teachings and following God’s will to holiness. God gave us free will to either accept or reject God and His salvation for us. God is Love and he wants us to love Him and our neighbor. Everyone is His sheep and if allowed to hear the Truth may accept the Salvation that Jesus gained for us.
While not able to judge who gains or loses salvation, it appears that Luther even if he had good intentions may have rejected salvation and led others to reject salvation.
“Within his own framework, Luther was surely right in saying that his church would stand or fall with his idea of justification by faith. So we ask: Is it standing or falling? The answer: It has fallen—and for a double reason, according to his own calculations.”
There are two key words, not just one, in the expression “justification by faith.”
First, “justification”: Luther thought that a sinner who is forgiven is still totally corrupt, unable to get away from sinning constantly.
Did Paul mean that? Not really.
He spoke of Christians as a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). They are made over from scratch— they are not at all merely the same old total corruption! And he says more than once that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us as in a temple (1 Cor. 3:17; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16). Can we imagine the Holy Spirit living in a temple that is total corruption?
Even more telling, if possible, is the idea Paul has of faith. Luther did not even make a good try at finding out what Paul meant by the word. He assumed what appealed to his scrupulous fears and said faith means confidence the merits of Christ apply to me. But there is an obvious way to find out what Paul really meant by faith: Read every place where Paul uses the word and related words. We can use a concordance to locate them, to keep notes, and to add them up.
If we do so this is what we get:”If God speaks a truth, faith requires that we believe it in our minds (cf. 1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Cor. 5:7). If God makes a promise, faith requires that we be confident he will keep it (cf. Gal. 5:5; Rom .5:1). If God tells us to do something, we must obey (cf. Rom .1:5; 6:16). All this is to be done in love (Gal. 5:6).
How does this compare with just being confident that the merits of Christ apply to you? Quite a difference. So, by his own standard, Luther’s church has fallen. What he thought was a great discovery was just a great mistake, and his whole system stands or falls on his error, as he himself admitted.”
The rest of the article: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/luthers-obituary-for-lutheranism
In that case it was necessary as a witness to the Jewish believers there what God’s will was and that it was God’s will that Gentiles could be saved without becoming Jews first. Look at the reaction to these things by first those Peter took with him and then by the Church in Jerusalem to verify this. It was not so thereafter though.
Moreover, look at the structure of the later conference presided over by James and Peter when Paul and Barnabas were there. People who have it out for Paul (and who seem to utterly neglect Barnabas) often seem to miss this but at the general meeting neither man spoke a word about theology.
It was, after they had let all those saying this or that speak their peace, Peter who stood up and presented the theology, and he explicitly references the events you are talking about, and who told the crowd what the decision will be.
THEN Paul and Barnabas stand up and recount all the miracles performed.
THEN James reiterates Peter’s statement telling the crowd what the decision is.
No vote, no more debate. They understood what Christ had meant when He said to his listeners that if they could not believe because of the words then they could believe because of the works. It was Peter and James who were orchestrating that meeting, not Paul and Barnabas.
So were Paul and Barnabas preaching receiving the Holy Spirit so that men could be baptized or were they preaching a gospel that with repentance and baptism the Holy Spirit would be given?
**by commanding for them to be baptized.**
Actually he did not COMMAND anyone. He asked those who came with him...
“Can anyone forbid water that these should not be baptized?” By their filling with the Holy Spirit they showed they were already saved. “And these signs shall follow them that believe...”
Then he had to give an account to James, back in Jerusalem as to why he went to gentiles. “Who was I to withstand GOD?”
***Believing only is a start. It’s like starting a car to go to a distant city.***
So, Jesus only gave us a start by dying for the sins of the past, it is up to us to earn the rest? and how far is enough? Not enough? too much? On the wrong road?
Even Luther told of the fear of “not doing enough” if he had to earn his salvation.
“Like everything else, our good works is a gift given to us from God.”
As I said:
“...and God’s works begun within them.”
Your view might be much closer to the Catholic view than you realize.
Well you were certainly making a lot of “noise” on this board showing off your anti-Catholic prejudice. Been there, done that, but that was before the Lord enlightened me that my Baptist upbringing was not the be-all and end-all absolute truth I thought it was.
The teaching of Jesus and His Church is that Jesus died for our sins and salvation is a gift from God.
Some keep insisting that Catholics earn their salvation through good works. That is not the truth.
We can accept salvation or reject salvation. We accept it by following God’s will and through His graces received in the Sacraments.
If we are join God in Heaven we need to live by His commandments and gain holiness by our decisions and actions.
St Paul spoke of Christians as a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). They are made over from scratch— they are not at all merely the same old total corruption! And he says more than once that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us as in a temple (1 Cor. 3:17; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16).
Luther believed we are all still corrupt even after our sins are forgiven and his own insecurities led him to believe in faith alone.
I have no idea what is the point you are trying to make.
“Faith without words is dead” was a scam to get money from rich Catholics.
All are saved who truly believe in Him.
Read the Bible and all the teachings from Jesus and you may begin to understand.
If you follow only part of the Bible, you may be led down the wrong path.
When one does not have the facts or faith it seems easy to blame someone else. Even if it was a scam to get money, then those will suffer the consequences, but it does not detract from the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles.
Did Paul mean that? Not really.
He spoke of Christians as a "new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). They are made over from scratch-- they are not at all merely the same old total corruption! And he says more than once that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us as in a temple (1 Cor. 3:17; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16). Can we imagine the Holy Spirit living in a temple that is total corruption?
The failed human logic of your religion falls flat on its face when it comes to scripture...
So you imagine then the Holy Spirit living in a body/temple that is only partially corrupt??? Or in only a Catholic who is not corrupt at all???
Christians are made over from scratch??? What utter nonsense...
Does everything HAVE to be serious?
Interesting... Cite something.
And I don't mind exchanging scripture verses until the cows come home. Thanks for your offer.
You do realize Paul struggled with the old self....right?
You have it right brother! If you show faith, you do good, despite your sinning. Catholics do not believe that you ‘earn’ salvation, if that were true, we know where we would all end up. Your statement about James is on the mark, in other words, saying you believe is just talk, you have to walk the walk the best that you can. Neither do I think most protestants believe that you can believe while ignoring the commandments without repenting and that you are still saved.
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