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AF: Sola Fide is a false doctrine and James makes that point.

This is a recurring theme in these debates, and it is so unnecessary. Sola Fide is a theological term of art. It does not mean, nor has it ever meant, that salvation occurs in a vacuum, as if to insult God that He would do something incomplete. When He saves He saves to the uttermost. See Hebrews 7:25. The expression "Sola Fide" evolved during the Reformation as a way of making a statement about cause versus effect. Justification, as Paul uses the term, has a unified cause, and a multifaceted effect. Paul is answering the question, what, from God's point of view, causes sinners to be adjudicated acceptable to Him, forgiven, cleared of guilt. It is crystal clear in Paul this does NOT entail our own offered righteousness, either before or after our reconciliation to God:

Romans 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

Romans 4:1-5 What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? (2) For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. (3) For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. (4) Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. (5) But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

But then, as the RC caucus loves to point out, we have James with this:

James 2:24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

These are both using the same Greek term for justification, dikaioō, but they cannot mean both that justification is based on works and justification is not based on works. That would be a violation of the law of non-contradiction. It is axiomatic that Holy Spirit inspired text will never produce a real contradiction. Therefore, while I understand fully the force of James in showing that works accompany justifying faith, it passes understanding that the converse force of Paul's declarations, cited above, can be ignored by any party to this debate, as if it hadn't even been written, or was written to no purpose.

But if we let stand the false idea that dikaioo always references forensic (judicial) justification, justification from God's perspective, then Paul and James are necessarily in contradiction, and that presents problems to either canonicity or inspiration or both. That is an impossible condition, because the Holy Spirit would NOT inspire a contradiction. Therefore it is impossible, under the doctrine of inspiration, that they both refer to the same thing. In which case, using one to disprove the other is a fool's game. There is no winner. Inspiration loses which ever "side" wins. Therefore we MUST conclude there is a reasonable harmonization, and said harmonization will NOT require us to ignore one or the other passage, but instead will edify us best when we understand how both truths work together to glorify God.

In that direction, let us first demonstrate that it is possible to use dikaioo in a manner compatible with James' use but clearly unlike Paul's, simply by being careful to identify the justifier and the audience to whom the justification is being made. Consider the following:

Luke 7:29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John.

In this passage, men are justifying God, not the other way around. Could we then use this as a proof text that it's OK for men to judge God? God forbid! It means no such thing! God is not in this case having a judicial sentence passed over Him by mere mortals. Perish the thought! What IS happening is that sinful men at the Baptism of John are recognizing that God was right all along, which is the very reason they are repenting and being baptized. In other words, here dikaioo is being used here to describe a recognition, by men, of an existing condition in God.

There is no semantic or contextual reason this sense of dikaioo could not be used in James. In Paul the audience is God, the setting is the court of God's justice, and the object of justification is our acquittal before God, being declared innocent of all our crimes. In James, the audience consists of whoever it is to whom we make public claims of having faith, which is typically our fellow travelers in this mortal life, people. By this distinction we can say that Paul is talking about how we are justified in God's view by faith, without works, and in James we are justified in our claim to faith if we have works, because works satisfy the "show me" principle in James 2:18. What are we showing by our works? Our faith. Therefore works are being used as evidence that our faith is real and not just talk. In other words, they are an effect, not a cause, of Pauline justification.

Note that James does not say, as Paul does, that this justification is in any sense "before God." Rather, recall how he says we show our faith by our works. But to whom do we show this? Who is the audience? God knows the truth of our faith claim better than we do. But men do not know, unless they see evidence of true faith in how we live, how we love one another, as Jesus said would be the very best evidence that we belong to Him. Loving God with everything we've got, and loving each other as we love ourselves, is the supreme "good deed." And James is very much concerned with how we fulfill the royal law of love amongst each other, so it makes sense in the very practical nature of his teaching he would focus on how a living faith would be the cause of all these good works he admonishes us to do. Whereas in Paul, and especially in Romans, he is presenting a primer in Christian systematic theology, in which faith is both the cause of our justification before God, as well as the motivation to serve God in the freedom of a changed heart.

So between the two of them, there is no contradiction, but instead a beautiful symmetry. Faith has its effects. It is the cause of our justification before God, and it produces both a forensic righteousness, i.e., the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, as well as a manifest change in our nature, to love good rather than evil, and so give evidence of our faith before men. But faith itself is not something we can manufacture on our own, but is itself a gift of God, and so is nothing we can take credit for, either in terms of our justification, or our good works. Thus grace is preserved, righteousness is shed abroad, both in Heaven and on earth, and all the glory goes to God.

And that's what the Reformers mean, and have always meant, when talking about "Sola Fide." The Sola is with respect to cause, not effect. Yes, the term is absent from Scripture in a formal sense, just as the Trinity is absent from the text. But the idea that only faith can produce our justification before God is soundly grounded in the whole body of New Testament teaching. What kind of faith does that? Talk-is-cheap faith, that produces no changed heart to love and obey God? No, that kind of faith is NOT the referent of Sola Fide, but only Abraham-like faith, faith willing to act, to obey God in any way in which He calls us, because of our complete love and trust of Him.

Peace,

SR

And that's what the Reformers mean, and have always meant, when talking about "Sola Fide." The Sola is with respect to cause, not effect. Yes, the term is absent from Scripture in a formal sense, just as the Trinity is absent from the text. But the idea that only faith can produce our justification before God is soundly grounded in the whole body of New Testament teaching. What kind of faith does that? Talk-is-cheap faith, that produces no changed heart to love and obey God? No, that kind of faith is NOT the referent of Sola Fide, but only Abraham-like faith, faith willing to act, to obey God in any way in which He calls us, because of our complete love and trust of Him.

Thank you. Your comment exemplifies exactly what the term sola fide means and meant to the Reformers. We are saved by faith alone but not by a faith that is alone, is how the confession explains it and it shows that James compliments Paul - and as both were from the Holy Spirit, we know that they would.

I find it interesting how Roman Catholics constantly attack the central Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone by making their appeal to the "historical" church and what was taught from the start, as if the Roman model was how it always has been. In reading several sites, I see that this is not something that they can back up with the writings of the earliest church "fathers". In Allister McGrath's work, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, he states:

“The history of early Christian doctrine is basically the history of the emergence of the Christological and Trinitarian dogmas. Whilst the importance of soteriological considerations, both in the motivation of the development of early Christian doctrine and as a normative principle during the course of that development, is generally conceded, it is equally evident that the early Christian writers did not choose to express their soteriological convictions in terms of the concept of justification. This is not to say that the fathers avoid the term 'justification': their interest in the concept is, however, minimal, and the term generally occurs in their writings as a direct citation from, or a recognisable allusion to, the epistles of Paul, generally employed for some purpose other than a discussion of the concept of justification itself. Furthermore, the few occasions upon which a specific discussion of justification can be found generally involve no interpretation of the matter other than a mere paraphrase of a Pauline statement. Justification was simply not a theological issue in the pre-Augustinian tradition. The emerging patristic understanding of matters such as predestination, grace and free will is somewhat confused, and would remain so until controversy forced a full discussion of the issue upon the church. Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil. It is with the Latin fathers that we observe the beginnings of speculation on the nature of original sin and corruption, and the implications which this may have for man's moral faculties.

'It has always been a puzzling fact that Paul meant so relatively little for the thinking of the church during the first 350 years of its history. To be sure, he is honored and quoted, but - in the theological perspective of the west - it seems that Paul's great insight into justification by faith was forgotten.'” Source:Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 19.

In Jaraslov Pelikan’s book, Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther’s Reformation, he states:

“Existing side by side in pre-Reformation theology were several ways of interpreting the righteousness of God and the act of justification. They ranged from strongly moralistic views that seemed to equate justification with moral renewal to ultra-forensic views, which saw justification as a 'nude imputation' that seemed possible apart from Christ, by an arbitrary decree of God. Between these extremes were many combinations; and though certain views predominated in late nominalism, it is not possible even there to speak of a single doctrine of justification.”

He said in The Riddle of Roman Catholicism:

All the more tragic, therefore, was the Roman reaction on the front which was most important to the reformers, the message and teaching of the church. This had to be reformed according to the word of God; unless it was, no moral improvement would be able to alter the basic problem. Rome’s reactions were the doctrinal decrees of the Council of Trent and the Roman Catechism based upon those decrees. In these decrees, the Council of Trent selected and elevated to official status the notion of justification by faith plus works, which was only one of the doctrines of justification in the medieval theologians and ancient fathers. When the reformers attacked this notion in the name of the doctrine of justification by faith alone—a doctrine also attested to by some medieval theologians and ancient fathers—Rome reacted by canonizing one trend in preference to all the others. What had previously been permitted (justification by faith and works), now became required. What had previously been permitted also (justification by faith alone), now became forbidden. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned part of its own catholic tradition." (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959), pp. 51-52)

WRT the RC polemicists' condemnation of Luther on his translation of Roman 3:38 and the words "faith alone":

As the editors of Luther’s Works point out, “[Luther] never intended to say that true faith is, or ever could be—much less should be—without good works. His point was not that faith is ever “alone,” but that “only” faith without works—hence the term “faith alone”—is necessary for justification before God"[LW 35:195, footnote 63; See also my paper, *Did Luther Say: Be A Sinner And Sin Boldly?* ]. The justifying faith that Luther spoke of was a living faith. “Faith,” wrote Luther, “is a living, restless thing. It cannot be inoperative. We are not saved by works; but if there be no works, there must be something amiss with faith.” Luther says, “Accordingly, if good works do not follow, it is certain that this faith in Christ does not dwell in our heart, but dead faith…” http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2006/07/response-to-catholic-apologist-bob.html