Further, because of Blogger's evident scholarship and sincerity, I am now coming to question the possibility of proving anything from Scripture -- that is, of providing a proof which would persuade a disinterested third party (if we could find such a person). I mean, they trot out their texts, and especially since once I read them pretty much as they read them, they just do not persuade any longer.
We trot out our texts, and if they come close to looking like a coherent and persuasive argument, suddenly we learn we have to study the Bible in its entirety to see the coherence of how it says what they say it says. And since they've been studying it much longer than we, why we might as well take their word. If we knew Scripture as they know Scripture we'd know that Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide are right. So they say.
But I think lining up excerpts like artillery, won't work. I see "works" and "merit" as further mercies and gifts God showers on me. That evidently drives them so much to distraction that they, or some of them, feel driven to rise up against even the mention of such a notion, which they hold so dreadful that any amount of mockery, cruelty, and mischaracterization or just plain stultifying repetition is justified in speaking against it.
And we fall into the same trap and yield to the same temptation.
Too bad.
No, I disagree. What is very hard is to convince an individual: to achieve conversion. This is because there is a great investment made in a particular theology. It is especially true because a typical Protestant feels like he was standing on firm ground with his "assured salvation" and now I am asking him to swim in the waves. I participated in a Baptist Bible study once, where I was dutifully giving my Catholic perspective, and one emotion that came across often was, essentially, "this is a hard teaching, who can take it?".
But the proof of the scripture is there. When St. James spends an entire chapter talking of the salvific character of works, it is proof. When the proof is ignored, that is just human nature.
We trot out our texts, and if they come close to looking like a coherent and persuasive argument, suddenly we learn we have to study the Bible in its entirety to see the coherence of how it says what they say it says. And since they've been studying it much longer than we, why we might as well take their word.
You have an inferiority complex. We have been studying the scripture for 2,000 years. They did not. The New Testament is a Catholic book. There is nothing in it that in un-Catholic. Both the silly prooftexts, when the next verse subverts the putative meaning, and the superstitious appeals to the unspecified "entirety of the scripture" are desperate chest beating, and the Protestant apologists in their hearts know it.
Here is a good apologist to learn from: Bible Christian society