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 think you pretty much nailed it metmom.
Saving faith is not intellectual assent alone, but it includes it. It is belief from the “heart” (Act 8:37), “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God”.
The word “heart” refers to the center of all physical and spiritual life. It includes the soul, mind, and will. It is the seat and arbiter of our thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, effort, understanding, intelligence, and emotions.
It produces trust, an assured reliance; one in which confidence is placed; a dependence on something future or contingent.
It produces hope.
Rom 10:9, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
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.
Yes, there must be a turning of the will, not just of the intellect, to God. But this is the Catholic position. From the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent (1547):
When Catholics reject the notion of Salvation by Faith Alone they understand faith as intellectual assent. If you broaden the term of faith to include the will then that matches the Catholic understanding as presented in Chapter VII above.CHAPTER VII.
What the justification of the impious is, and what are the causes thereof.This disposition, or preparation, is followed by Justification itself, which is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace, and of the gifts, whereby man of unjust becomes just, and of an enemy a friend, that so he may be an heir according to hope of life everlasting.
Of this Justification the causes are these:
For, although no one can be just, but he to whom the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet is this done in the said justification of the impious, when by the merit of that same most holy Passion, the charity of God is poured forth, by the Holy Spirit, in the hearts of those that are justified, and is inherent therein: whence, man, through Jesus Christ, in whom he is ingrafted, receives, in the said justification, together with the remission of sins, all these (gifts) infused at once, faith, hope, and charity. For faith, unless hope and charity be added thereto, neither unites man perfectly with Christ, nor makes him a living member of His body. For which reason it is most truly said, that Faith without works is dead and profitless; and, In Christ Jesus neither circumcision, availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by charity. This faith, Catechumen's beg of the Church-agreeably to a tradition of the apostles-previously to the sacrament of Baptism; when they beg for the faith which bestows life everlasting, which, without hope and charity, faith cannot bestow: whence also do they immediately hear that word of Christ; If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. Wherefore, when receiving true and Christian justice, they are bidden, immediately on being born again, to preserve it pure and spotless, as the first robe given them through Jesus Christ in lieu of that which Adam, by his disobedience, lost for himself and for us, that so they may bear it before the judgment-seat of our Lord Jesus Christ, and may have life everlasting.
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.
This reflects a common Protestant misunderstanding of the Catholic position on the importance of works. The Catholic Church does not teach that we merit our through works. Again, from the Council of Trent:
CHAPTER VIII.
In what manner it is to be understood, that the impious is justified by faith, and gratuitously.And whereas the Apostle saith, that man is justified by faith and freely, those words are to be understood in that sense which the perpetual consent of the Catholic Church hath held and expressed; to wit, that we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all Justification; without which it is impossible to please God, and to come unto the fellowship of His sons: but we are therefore said to be justified freely, because that none of those things which precede justification-whether faith or works-merit the grace itself of justification. For, if it be a grace, it is not now by works, otherwise, as the same Apostle says, grace is no more grace.