Posted on 01/13/2020 6:06:12 AM PST by Gamecock
Martin Luther called it “the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls.” He called on pastors to take it back to their churches and “beat it into their heads continually.” The Reformation saw untold numbers of believers across Europe go willingly to the flames because they refused to loosen their grip on this single conviction:
Sola fide—justification by faith alone.
It’s good to remember believers who explored theology not merely as an academic exercise but as a life-and-death endeavor. It’s good for us to pause and remember the doctrines for which our forebears in the faith died. And it’s good to ask if these are the doctrines for which we are living.
Justification is the gracious act of God by which he declares a sinner righteous solely through faith in Jesus Christ. Unearned. Unmerited. Incredible.
Let’s break that down a bit.
“Justification is the gracious act of God . . .”
No one is right before God, and absolutely no one can make themselves right before God. It is God alone who can make us right before him (Ps. 143:2). No amount of penance, regret, service, or suffering can even the scales weighed down by our wanton rebellion against a holy and righteous God. We cannot achieve salvation by works. We can only receive it by faith as a free gift earned by Christ on Calvary.
“. . . by which he declares a sinner righteous . . .”
Sinful man has no case before the just Judge of the universe. We stand completely guilty before him, but he declares us righteous. Let’s not gloss over that fact—we stand utterly guilty, yet God declares us righteous in his sight. How can this be? How can God do that and still be God? “Here is a problem,” Luther said, “which needs God to solve it.”
And on the cross, the Son of God did indeed solve that problem. God loved us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to live the life we could not live and die the death we deserved to die. Christ took the wrath we rightly deserve and gave us the righteousness we cannot merit.
“. . . solely through faith in Jesus Christ.”
“Believe in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved,” Paul tells the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:31, emphasis added).
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” Paul tells the church at Rome (Rom. 10:9, emphasis added).
“Repent and believe the good news,” Jesus proclaimed (Mark 1:15, emphasis added).
Faith in Christ is the single and sufficient requirement for justification. All we can do and all we must do is trust completely in the work Christ Jesus has accomplished with his death, and we are saved.
When we turn to Christ in faith, our old, sinful selves are completely burned away by his sacrifice. We die to ourselves and to our every attempt to earn God’s favor according to our own merit. We are justified by faith alone, and we live by faith alone. Not a single corner of our lives is left untouched by this truth.
“Our every move is made in the full assurance of Christ’s power, the complete sufficiency of his sacrifice, and the overwhelming joy of his victory.”
Do not give into the subtle temptation to embrace justification by faith alone, yet try and do life and ministry in the flesh alone. Christ loved you enough to die for you two thousand years ago, and Christ loves you enough to live in you today, to enable you with his sustenance and empower you with his strength.
Every step we take away from the cross of Calvary, we take in the same faith that brought us to the feet of Christ. Our every move is made in the full assurance of Christ’s power, the complete sufficiency of his sacrifice, and the overwhelming joy of his victory.
Furthermore, if all of this is true, we cannot keep silent. If God truly justifies sinners solely through faith in Jesus Christ, then we must make this doctrine known. It is not simply a doctrine to be understood; it is an eternity shaping truth that demands to be told. We, undeserving sinners, have experienced the love of God. And when you know the depth of God’s love for sinners, you’ll lose your life that they might know his salvation.
The martyrs of the Reformation didn’t die simply because they believed the gospel. They died because they proclaimed the gospel. They didn’t just love the gospel. They loved the people who needed the gospel, and they were willing to die so others may know it. So they shared it in their homes, they taught it in their churches, they proclaimed it in their towns, and it cost them everything they had.
And it was worth it.
Salvation by faith alone is the best news we could possibly hear or deliver. If we lose that, we lose everything. So let us rejoice in that salvation, and let sola fide ring out from our lips in the church and among the lost until the day when such faith finally becomes sight.
The usual suspects; continuing to execute the method favored by all propagandists:
We have only to look back to the early Church and see the Gnostics and the reaction to them the Montanists. Reverend Monsignor, in his book titled Enthusiasm, refers to them as the first in a long line of enthusiasts who were scismatics. They were people who claimed private personal revelation through the Holy Spirit. But they were not to be trusted because they caused disunity within the Church.
Ronald Knox was the Monsignor whose book.was published in 1950.
Can you give me an example of one place where it says in the Bible that scripture alone is all we need for salvation?
Can you give me the passage that says that we are saved by Faith alone?
You misunderstand the sacraments. They are necessary aids for the journey. To imagine that you can study and reach the goal, or to say “once saved, always saved” are both presumptions that spring from the Sola scriptura error. We need to be strengthened by baptism, and all the sacraments.
When I was in catholic grade school, most, if not all of us, wore the brown scapular. It was so long ago, that I don’t remember anything about what we were told about it, and what it was supposed to do.
I can vaguely remember being told the scapular would save me from the fires of hell, if I wore it faithfully. By the time we reached catholic high school, I don’t recall any of us Catholics wearing it anymore, though I don’t remember why we stopped. Maybe we felt like we would rather put up with the fires 🔥 of hell, than wear that abrasive wool thingie next to our skin. I admit, I never knew about the green one. 😁
I remember attending a rally once, where Father (oops, there’s that word again) Patrick Peyton urged us to pray the rosary, saying the family that prays together, stays together. My dad had us pray the rosary almost every night, for many months, then it all kind of fell by the wayside. Since I got born again in 1970, and Patrick Peyton died in 1992, I often wonder where he is today? 🤔 I remember my dad asked me once, if I ever thought about being a priest. I said, no, I hadn’t considered it. I didn’t tell him that the reason was, I wanted female companionship, and probably wouldn’t get a lot of that, as a priest. 😁
Now I know, that the Virgin Mary has supposedly appeared to many people down through the centuries. I used to think it really WAS Mary, that appeared to them. Not bad, for someone who is not divine. 😆 In later years, I changed up, and I figured if the person appearing to people, wasn’t really Mary, then who was it? I have my opinion of course, but I wanted your opinion. 👍
By no means. Where did you get that idea? We need everything from a brain to the Holy Spirit, all of which Scripture provides for. However, God has always provided enough Truth and grace for salvation, from the Garden of Eden to reading a message like Acts 10:34-47. And as said, Scripture provides for everything from the light of nature to the magisterial office of the church, which the Westminster confession affirms under SS.
Can you give me the passage that says that we are saved by Faith alone?
Certainly, but first please answer this question: If any evidence shows that any official teaching of Rome is in error, can you admit that or are you compelled to deny at any cost?
And note here that Catholic typically employ a double standard when asking for proof from Scripture for what we believe, on one hand insisting that certain text teach or support such things as PTCBIH by way of extrapolative leaps while demanding of us explicit statements for what we believe.
And then of-course is ignorance or reliance on strawmen, including that sola fide (faith alone) means faith that is alone is salvific, versus not being alone in the person justified, but works by love.
Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. (Romans 3:27-28)
Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. (Romans 4:4-8)
And rather than simply "deeds of the law" being excluded as the means of justification, the Law encompasses all systems of justification on the basis of actual merit by attaining to a level of performance, and including becoming good enough to be with God thru Purgatory as in RC salvation .
For the Law represents the epitome of all systems of justification on the basis of actual merit: "for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." (Galatians 3:21)
And writing to a Gentile Paul states, '
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; (Titus 3:5)
Likewise Peter preaching to a Gentile of good works:
To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? (Acts 10:43-47)
And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:7-9)
In the latter we see that it was heart-purifying regenerating faith that saves, which faith effected the obedience of baptism but which regeneration preceded it.
But since faith=obedience, then telling a person that if the will be baptized in conversion (Acts 2:38) is the same as telling them to believe, since this requires and testifies to faith
Likewise for the Lord to tell the palsied man "Thy sins be forgiven thee," was the same as telling him to "take up thy bed and walk" for the former effected the latter. "Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?" (Mark 2:9) However, the forgiveness comes first.
And "obedience of faith" also justifies one as being a believer. Thus James 2: "Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. (James 2:21-24)
The context here is btwn dead, inert faith vs living faith but if this means what Catholic want it to mean then we have a clear contradiction in Scripture. For both Moses and Paul affirm that long before Abraham offered up Issac then "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." (Romans 4:3; cf. Gn. 15:6)
However, James points to Abraham being justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar, which happened much later (Gn. 22). Thus the question must be asked, when was Abraham first justified in the sight of God? And on what basis? Was Abraham a lost soul until Gn. 22? No, for we read:
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness. (Genesis 15:5-6)
Thus we must have a different sense in which Abraham our father justified by works, fulfilling the prior statement. Meaning like as a prophet is a prophet (by gift) before he fore-tells or forth-tells so Abraham was a believer before he most profoundly acted that out, and like a prophet is confirmed as being a prophet indeed in the light of his preaching so Abraham was confirmed, justified, as being a believer by his obedience.
Thus while it is the faith which effects obedience that justifies, and while sola fide teaches that justification is by faith alone thru grace alone, it does not mean that salvation is by a faith that is alone, but is yet it is not alone in the person justified, but that it
is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. [Westminster Confession of Faith, CHAPTER XI. Of Justification.
Also, note that many notable Catholics have used "faith alone:" Bellarmine, Origen, Hilary, Basil, Ambrosiaster ("through faith alone they have been justified by a gift of God; 4.5"); Bernard; Theophylact; Theodoret; Aquinas; Theodore of Mopsuestia; Marius Victorinus (Source: Joseph A. Fitzmyer Romans, A New Translation with introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible Series (New York: Doubleday, 1993) 360-361;http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2006/02/luther-added-word-alone-to-romans-328.html)
So give us a straight answer: Can a baptized believer have spiritual life/be born of the Spirit if one does not receive the RC "Real Presence?" And if such dies denying the RP is he damned? You seem to have made an unequivocal assertion, so provide us with unequivocal answers.
You misunderstand the sacraments. They are necessary aids for the journey. To imagine that you can study and reach the goal, or to say “once saved, always saved” are both presumptions that spring from the Sola scriptura error. We need to be strengthened by baptism, and all the sacraments.
Is there a reason you do not include what you are responding to in your responses? Which I thus have provided.
You made a plain assertion as unequivocal which has dire implications, and thus were asked to provide straight unequivocal answers, but instead, as usual, you will not do so. Nor does SS mean "aids for the journey" (which it provides for) are not needed, nor do i even hold to OSAS under SS, and easy believism is implicitly conveyed in Catholicism with its Teddy K. Catholic members. Thus if you will not plainly answer plain questions, then just admit you will not.
And cease parroting "Catholic answers" type strawmen.
Indeed. However, one must be willing to go wherever the Truth will lead, based upon the weight of evidence, presuming the source of that evidence is reliable. But the faithful Catholic is not supposed to ascertain the veracity of official Catholic teaching by examination of the evidence for it, even from Scripture. For that would make him to be like a faithful evangelical.
Instead the faithful Catholic is trust what his church official teaches, with assurance of doctrine flowing from the the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome (and basically in primary cults).
"It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine."
"I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves."
"The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour." — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation,” (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.
"Still, fundamentalists ask, where is the proof from Scripture? [for the Assumption] Strictly, there is none. It was the Catholic Church that was commissioned by Christ to teach all nations and to teach them infallibly. The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.” — Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 275.
"..having discovered the authority established by God, you must submit to it at once. There is no need of further search for the doctrines contained in the Christian Gospel, for the Church brings them all with her and will teach you them all. You have sought for the Teacher sent by God, and you have secured him; what need of further speculation?"
“All that we do [as must be patent enough now] is to submit our judgment and conform our beliefs to the authority Almighty God has set up on earth to teach us; this, and nothing else.”
“He willingly submits his judgment on questions the most momentous that can occupy the mind of man-----questions of religion-----to an authority located in Rome.”
“So if God [via Rome] declares that the Blessed Virgin was conceived Immaculate, or that there is a Purgatory, or that the Holy Eucharist is the real Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, shall we say, "I am not sure about that. I must examine it for myself; I must see whether it is true, whether it is Scriptural?"
“..our act of confidence and of blind obedience is highly honoring to Almighty God,..” —“Henry G. Graham, "What Faith Really Means", (Nihil Obstat:C. SCHUT, S. T.D., Censor Deputatus, Imprimatur: EDM. CANONICUS SURMONT, D.D.,Vicarius Generalis. WESTMONASTERII, Die 30 Septembris, 1914 )]
in all cases there is a margin left for the exercise of faith in the word of the Church. He who believes the dogmas of the Church only because he has reasoned them out of History, is scarcely a Catholic.
“...there are doctrines which transcend the discoveries of reason; and, after all, whether they are more or less recommended to us by the one informant or the other, the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.” ” — John Henry Newman, “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation.” 8.
We already gave you examples of BOTH, multiple times.
Just because you refuse to read our posts doesn’t mean we didn’t make them; it just makes you look bad.
I’m trying not to be confrontational. It seems like you folks, and there are a growing number of you, are not talking to me but rather at me.
You want me to refute what you are saying by playing your legalistic game with the Bible, like it’s the 600+ laws at Jesus’s time. It’s not what I believe. Sola Scriptura and Sola Fides are not supportive of each other.
I’m using a kindle and my keyboard broke.
How early? To the night before the Crucifixion?
They were people who claimed private personal revelation through the Holy Spirit.
That doesn't make them Gnostics.
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (Jn. 14:26 AV)."These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him" (1 Jn. 2:26-27 AV).
There is a long history of people claiming that they had a private revelation. Almost all of them have fallen by the wayside. People predicting the end of the world, even today and claiming authority because they have found it in their bible. It’s nothing new. The Catholic Church is not just Rome. There are many different rites within it. And it will outlast all the confusion that has been caused throughout history.
"In the year of 1916, the three children Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto,who later witnessed the vision of The Blessed Virgin Mary, were visited by an Angel three times whilst out tending their sheep."
"Within a month of his ordination, (September 7, 1910), as Padre Pio was praying in the Piana Romana, Jesus and Mary appeared to him and gave him the wounds of Christ, the Stigmata."
"Our Lady calms the startled traveler, and assures him of who she is. She instructs Juan Diego to visit his bishop and ask that a temple be built on the site of her appearance, so that she will have a place to hear petitions and to heal the suffering of the Mexican people. "Now go and put forth your best effort," Our Lady instructs."
No; they are not.
Your chosen religion has beaten that into your head.
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