Getting caught up with the posts on this thread that started on Sunday - what the heck was I doing that I missed this???
You are quite right DB88. I would hope the writer of that little ditty would give it a second look and realize just how convoluted the thinking is. If Grace alone is the correct Catholic doctrine then I am curious how "grace" is even defined. Does it not mean "unmerited favor", undeserved mercy???
Romans 5:1-2
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
According to Wikipedia, Hinduism holds to the idea that grace was not a gift from God, but rather must be earned. This sounds alot more like what Roman Catholics believe than what Scripture clearly teaches. Maybe there will always be this divide between Catholics and other non-Catholic Christian faiths. We don't even agree on what "grace" actually is much less sola fide, yet someone is right and someone is wrong. It cannot be a relative term.
WELL PUT.
THX.
Amen. Grace is the explicit, targeted, purposeful, preordained favor of God upon a sinful man who "deserves" condemnation, but who mercifully has been declared acquitted by the fact Christ has taken his place and suffered the punishment rightly due him so that he can now stand before God clothed in the righteousness of God's beloved Son, our Savior, and receive the inheritance set aside for him from before the foundation of the world.
That's grace. And you are correct. It is not a relative term.
It is also not sanctification which is the affect of God's grace. Grace changes lives and moves mountains and saves sinners. All that is good and true is a result of God's grace, not a reason for it.
The Catohlic Church never subscribed to the foolish idea that grace must or even can, be earned.