Mad Dawg wrote:
“I scarcely know what I mean. But the analogy is about how motive power and route do not exclude one another. God and His grace are the, so to speak, motive power or agent. The route is good works.”
When you say “motive power” and “route” do not exclude one another, I agree. This is what made me ask you for elaboration of your analogy, because I know that the average RC misunderstands what the Lutheran position is for some of the same reasons. However, when you explain your analogy I discover that it conflicts with mine. Lutherans say, “grace alone.” This would correspond to your “motive power.” God, and God alone, is the motive power. Lutherans say, “faith alone.” This would correspond to your “route.” And it is here that we part company. Ultimately, you base your “route” on the works of each individual, however motivated. Ultimately, I find that the Bible bases the “route” on the works of one Man, Jesus Christ, His obedient life lived in our stead and His atoning death endured in our stead. The “route”s do not match. In the RC analogy, an individual will and can never know when he has done enough to be certain of salvation for the simple reason that he can find no satisfying answer to this question from God’s word. In the Lutheran analogy, an individual knows that enough has been done for salvation for the simple reason that he finds the satisfying answer to the question from God’s word. Christ has done all. It is finished.
I do not expect that you can see this, but you have confirmed what I said before, that is, that Roman Catholic theology is essentially a theology of the law. It is about what we do and have done. We must add to what Christ has done or, for us, it is not finished.
If I have mischaracterized your analogy, please point out where. Otherwise I do not see how we can be agreed. Christ alone is the Savior and no other, no other in any degree however small can or need supply any other salvific work to His complete and completed work.
Another way of saying this is to point out that for the Roman Catholic justification and sanctification are the same thing. For the Lutheran they are sharply distinguished the one from the other.
I have also often referred to Philippians 2: 12-13 and Colossians 1:24.
It is also important to understand that in our thought faith is not only a gift, but also a work. We do not make things EITHER graces OR works -- an idea which seems rarely even heard. We can see the works being gifts just as we can see the merits to be.
I was not expecting to read that we do not distinguish among salvation, justification, and sanctification. That does not make contact with what I teach or what I hear taught. I would glibly say that justification is done for one, and sanctification is done in one. But the doer is God.
You write:
In the RC analogy, an individual will and can never know when he has done enough to be certain of salvation for the simple reason that he can find no satisfying answer to this question from God’s word.
That does not make contact with what I believe and teach. An individual can always know, for my money, that he can never do enough to make himself certain of salvation. That certainty doesn't come and cannot come from doing. Jesus has done it all.
At the battling text, problem solving level, the verses I quoted seem to me that it isn't as simple as you make it out to be. It's not that you said anything importantly wrong. It's that once that is said, there is still more to say. There are good works for us to walk in, there is salvation we must work out in fear and trembling while and although God is the one working it out in us. There is SOME way that it is right to speak of something lacking in the all sufficient merit of Christ.