I meant: May I ask what you add to intellectual assent to make it saving faith?
It's not a matter of adding anything to intellectual assent to change it into saving faith. If someone just adds works to intellectual assent, such as baptism, feeding the poor, etc., all they have is intellectual assent with works added.
Saving faith comes from the heart, not the mind. The mind needs to understand, but when the heart is touched, is when it responds with a wholesale selling out to God. A person can force themselves to change by knowing intellectually what they should do and by force of will, making themselves do it.
When the heart responds to God, the heart is changed and they do what they should because they're given a new heart and new nature.
God is about relationships, not performance. He looks on the heart and judges according to that. The heart is about relationship, while the mind is about performance.
Conviction, deep, Holy Spirit inspired, conviction, convicts the heart. When one has a broken heart over his sin and then repents of it and turns to God, saving faith has been exercised. I don't know anyone who was saved without a change of heart, not anyone that I've ever met anyway.
Psalm 51 is David's heart cry out over his sin....
Psalm 51:1-17 1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. 6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
I guess I don’t see saving faith as something that is works added to intellectual assent to transform it into saving faith, but as a differnt type of faith.