“What about those who think that God gives good works and effort through which He fits folks for heaven?”
From a very wise man,
Acts 5:38-39, “And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God”
Those verses don’t refer to Mad Dawg’s question.
Good grief.
What I'm trying to say is EVERY good gift is from the Father of lights, and efforts and works are good gifts. My right hand may have been an instrument in getting the victory, but it did not get the victory itself. Something like that.
In fact, the phrase "salvation by faith alone" has never been alien to Catholic theology.
It was in fact always Catholic teaching that we can only be saved by Christ alone, that is is only God's unmerited, unmeritable grace that lifts us out of the state of sin and death into that of divine sonship, and that even the so-called "meritorious acts" which the redeemed perform in the state of justice are only "meritorious by grace," attributable, that is, the the love of Christ working in us and through us.
Insofar as the justification of man is God's work alone, we could speak with Luther of "extrinsic" justice. It is indeed also interior and personal.
Luther too, in that same commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, affirms that this extrinsic justice "dwells in us by faith and hope," that it is "in us" though it does not belong to us (in nobis est, non nostra), that it thus, according to the Council of Trent, "inheres" in justified men (atque ipsis inhaeret, sess, 6, cap. 7, can 11).
... quoniam in saeculum misericordia ejus.