It’s a blessing and a grace that the Cathplic Church does not teach works based salvation.Would you say it's Faith and Works?
Only if I wanted to get strung up! :-)
I REALLY like what seems too me to be the idea in Ephesians as informed by the great line at the end of everybody's favorite part of Philippians.
I mean that life in Christ involves walking in works that God has prepared for us to do and that He is at work in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
The more I read Paul the more I think the Faith v Works controversy is a snare and a delusion. And the more I live my life, the clearer it is to me experientially that if a good work (or reasonable facsimile thereof) should happen to take place in my vicinity, it sho' wasn't me -- at least not at its origin. "Every good and perfect gift is from above....," and while,on the one hand, the distinction between Paul's teaching and antinomianism needs always to be made and made clear, on the other hand, it sure would be nice if those who argue against us would not the intrinsically mysterious and challenging idea in our frequently calling merit a gift.
[At the end of the Rosary Dominicans often say the following:]I LOVE that formulation because it acknowledges concepts of will, work, choice, merit, blah, blah, while asking that Mary add her prayers to ours so that we may be GRANTED MERIT.
Leader -- Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,
Response -- that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
[And most Catholics say something similar.]
Now that there is a dynamic and unstable concept. One would THINK (well, at least this one, namely moi, would think) that merit can only be earned, that that's what the word MEANS.
But here, in what a lot of non-Catholics would consider the very nadir of Catholic Idolatry and works-based piety, is a frank plea that implies that we cannot merit anything of ourselves.
But saying this is like throwing a grain of gold dust into an ocean. No one will notice and within minutes it will be suggested or implied that the Church teaches and I think AND HAVE EVEN SAID one can earn one's way to the Beatific Vision.
Tra la.It is my part to receive the grace of obedience, and God's part to prosper my handiwork or not as seems good to Him.