Martin Luther: Defender of Erroneous Conscience

Trial 1: I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

Trial 2: If the number of bishops and universities should be so material as your lordship seems to think, then I see little cause, my lord, why that should make any change in my conscience. For I have no doubt that, though not in this realm, but of all those well learned bishops and virtuous men that are yet alive throughout Christendom, they are not fewer who are of my mind therein. But if I should speak of those who are already dead, of whom many are now holy saints in heaven, I am very sure it is the far greater part of them who, all the while they lived, thought in this case the way that I think now. And therefore am I not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom.

The first, from the friar Martin Luther, asserts the primacy of conscience over the universal consent of the Church and the tradition.

The second, from a laymen Thomas More, notes the agreement of conscience to the faith of Christendom, the history of the Church, and the saints of Heaven.

Why are these appeals to conscience significant? I think Belloc is fundamentally correct in his assessment of the nature of Protestantism as a denial of religious authority, resting in a visible Church:

The Protestant attack differed from the rest especially in this characteristic, that its attack did not consist in the promulgation of a new doctrine or of a new authority, that it made no concerted attempt at creating a counter-Church, but had for its principle the denial of unity. It was an effort to promote that state of mind in which a “Church” in the old sense of the word-that is, an infallible, united, teaching body, a Person speaking with Divine authority-should be denied; not the doctrines it might happen to advance, but its very claim to advance them with unique authority.

The individual quickly emerged to fill the vacuum left by the Church, as the dominant religious factor in the modern period.

Martin Luther: Revolutionary, Not Reformer In this year of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, we have to take stock of the legacy of the renegade, Catholic priest, Martin Luther. What were his intentions? It is commonly alleged, even among Catholics, that he had the noble aim of reforming abuses within the Church.

In fact, Martin Luther discovered his revolutionary, theological positions about a year before he posted his 95 theses. Probably in the year 1516, while lecturing on Romans at the seminary in Wittenburg, Luther had a pivotal experience, which shaped the way he viewed the Christian faith. Essentially, his “tower experience,” resolved his difficulty of conscience. He saw God and His commandments as a moral threat:

But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn’t be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. I said, “Isn’t it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?” This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.

Reading Romans 1, while in the tower of his monastery, Luther suddenly saw the resolution of his troubled conscience through faith: “All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light.”

As we see in Trent’s teaching on justification and the Joint Declaration of Faith, there is nothing wrong with the realization that righteousness (same word as justification) comes through faith alone, moved by the grace of God. The problem is the re-reading of Scripture and all of the Christian tradition in a different light through this realization. Luther’s troubled conscience and experience of faith led him eventually (as it took him a while to work it out) to reject many of the Sacraments, books of the Bible, and the Church’s authority all in the name of liberty of conscience. A great schism would follow from Luther’s personal experience.

The Significance of Luther’s Teaching on Conscience No doubt reforms were needed in the Catholic Church in 1517. Contrary to popular opinion however, Luther primarily sought to spread his understanding of the Gospel, not to correct abuses. Catholic practices became abuses precisely because they contradicted his tower experience of 1516.

One of Luther’s early tracts, Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), lays out the implications of his view in more detail:

Besides, if we are all priests, as was said above, and all have one faith, one Gospel, one sacrament, why should we not also have the power to test and judge what is correct or incorrect in matters of faith? What becomes of the words of Paul in I Corinthians 2:15: “He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man,” II Corinthians 4:13: “We have all the same Spirit of faith”? Why, then, should not we perceive what squares with faith and what does not, as well as does an unbelieving pope?

All these and many other texts should make us bold and free, and we should not allow the Spirit of liberty, as Paul calls Him, to be frightened off by the fabrications of the popes, but we ought to go boldly forward to test all that they do or leave undone, according to our interpretation of the Scriptures, which rests on faith, and compel them to follow not their own interpretation, but the one that is better….

Thus I hope that the false, lying terror with which the Romans have this long time made our conscience timid and stupid, has been allayed.

Luther never condoned license (though he did condone Philip of Hesse’s bigamy), as he said his conscience was captive to the Word of God, but he did separate the decision of his conscience from the authority of the Church. This proved absolutely foundational for Protestantism and modern, religious experience.

Father of the Modern World The claim that Luther stands at a crucial moment between medieval Christendom and the modern world is not contentious. This is need for care, however. His separation of faith and reason and insistence on the spiritual nature of the Church, in my opinion, did quicken the advance to secularism. However, Luther did not directly intend the creation of the modern, secular world as know it. Yet his stand on conscience and his individualistic interpretation of faith did lend itself to modern individualism, which I would even say is the heart of modern culture.

Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that Luther stood at the forefront of the modern movement, focused on the freedom of the individual. I recommend looking at this piece, “Truth and Freedom” further, but his central insight on Luther follows:

There is no doubt that from the very outset freedom has been the defining theme of that epoch which we call modern…. Luther’s polemical writing [On the Freedom of the Christian] boldly struck up this theme in resounding tones…. At issue was the freedom of conscience vis-à-vis the authority of the Church, hence the most intimate of all human freedoms…. Even if it would not be right to speak of the individualism of the Reformation, the new importance of the individual and the shift in the relation between individual conscience and authority are nonetheless among its dominant traits (Communio 23 [1996]: 20).

These traits have survived and at times predominate our contemporary religious experience. The sociologist, Christian Smith, has noted in his study of the faith life of emerging adults, Souls in Transition, that an evangelical focus on individual salvation has been carried over into a new religious autonomy. He claims that…

the places where today’s emerging adults have taken that individualism in religion basically continues the cultural trajectory launched by Martin Luther five centuries ago and propelled along the way by subsequent development of evangelical individualism, through revivalism, evangelism and pietism…. Furthermore, the strong individualistic subjectivism in the emerging adult religious outlook—that “truth” should be decided by “what seems right” to individuals, based on their personal experience and feelings—also has deep cultural-structural roots in American evangelicalism.

Luther’s legacy clearly points toward individualism in religion, setting up a conflict with religious authority and tradition. The average Western Christian probably follows his central assertion that one must follow one’s own conscience over and against the Church.

Luther’s View of Conscience in the Catholic Church The key issue in debating Luther’s legacy on conscience in the Catholic Church entails whether the teachings of the Church are subordinate to one’s own conscience or whether conscience is bound by the teaching of the Church.

I know an elderly Salesian priest who told me with all sincerity that the purpose of Vatican II was to teach us that we could decide what to believe and how to live according to our conscience. This is clearly the “Spirit of Vatican II,” as Gaudium et Spes, while upholding the dignity of conscience, enjoins couples in regards to the transmission of life: “But in their manner of acting, spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily, but must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church’s teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel” (50). Dignitatis Humanae, Vatican’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, holds together two crucial points, stating that one cannot “be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience,” (3) as well as that “in the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church” (14). The Council upheld the dignity of conscience as well as its obligation to accept the authority of the Church.

The misinterpretation of the Council’s teaching on conscience as license found its first test case just three years after the Council closed in Humanae Vitae. Theologians such as Bernard Härring and Charles Curran advocated for the legitimacy of dissent from the encyclical on the grounds of conscience. The Canadian Bishops, in their Winnipeg Statement, affirmed: “In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assure that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”

Conscience also stands at the center of the current controversy over the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. I’ve already written on how Amoris stands in relation to the Church’s efforts to inculturate the modern world in relation to conscience. Cardinal Caffarra claimed that the fifth dubium on conscience was the most important. He stated further: “Here, for me, is the decisive clash between the vision of life that belongs to the Church (because it belongs to divine Revelation) and modernity’s conception of one’s own conscience.” Recently, the German bishops, following those of Malta, have decided: “We write that—in justified individual cases and after a longer process—there can be a decision of conscience on the side of the faithful to receive the Sacraments, a decision which must be respected.”

In light of the current controversy on conscience, it is troubling that Luther is now upheld as genuine reformer. The most troubling is from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in its Resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and throughout the year 2017: “Separating that which is polemical from the theological insights of the Reformation, Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognising him as a ‘witness to the gospel’ (From Conflict to Communion 29). And so after centuries of mutual condemnations and vilification, in 2017 Lutheran and Catholic Christians will for the first time commemorate together the beginning of the Reformation.” The Vatican also announced a commemorative stamp (which to me sounds like the United States issuing a stamp commemorating the burning the White House by British troops).

Pope Francis has spoken of Luther several times in the past year, including in an inflight press conference returning from Armenia: “I think that the intentions of Martin Luther were not mistaken. He was a reformer. Perhaps some methods were not correct.” In response I ask, what did Luther reform? Francis pointed to two things in his journey to Sweden. The Reformation “helped give greater centrality to sacred scripture in the Church’s life,” but it did so by advocating the flawed notion of sola scriptura. Francis also pointed to Luther’s concept of sola gratia, which “reminds us that God always takes the initiative, prior to any human response, even as he seeks to awaken that response.” While the priority of God’s initiative is true and there are similarities to Catholic teaching in this teaching (that faith is a free gift that cannot be merited), Luther denied our cooperation with grace, our ability to grow in sanctification and merit, and that we fall from grace through mortal sin. Francis also noted, while speaking to an ecumenical delegation from Finland: “In this spirit, we recalled in Lund that the intention of Martin Luther 500 years ago was to renew the Church, not divide Her.” Most recently he spoke of how we now know “how to appreciate the spiritual and theological gifts that we have received from the Reformation.”

It is true that Martin Luther did not want to divide the Church. He wanted to reform the Church on his own terms, which was not genuine reform. Luther said he would follow the Pope if the Pope taught the pure Gospel of his conception: “The chief cause that I fell out with the pope was this: the pope boasted that he was the head of the Church, and condemned all that would not be under his power and authority; for he said, although Christ be the head of the Church, yet, notwithstanding, there must be a corporal head of the Church upon earth. With this I could have been content, had he but taught the gospel pure and clear, and not introduced human inventions and lies in its stead.” Further he accuses the corruption of conscience by listening to the Church as opposed to Scripture: “But the papists, against their own consciences, say, No; we must hear the Church.” This points us back to the crucial issue of authority, pointed out by Belloc.

Conclusion: More Over Luther We should not celebrate the Reformation, because we cannot celebrate the defense of erroneous conscience held up against the authority of the Church. As St. Thomas More rightly said in his “Dialogue on Conscience,” taken down by his daughter Meg: “But indeed, if on the other side a man would in a matter take away by himself upon his own mind alone, or with some few, or with never so many, against an evident truth appearing by the common faith of Christendom, this conscience is very damnable.” He may have had Luther in mind.

More did not stand on his own private interpretation of the faith, but rested firmly on the authority of Christendom and, as Chesterton put it, the democracy of the dead: “But go we now to them that are dead before, and that are I trust in heaven, I am sure that it is not the fewer part of them that all the time while they lived, thought in some of the things, the way that I think now.”

More is a crucial example of standing firm in a rightly formed conscience. We should remember why he died and not let his witness remain in vain. He stood on the ground of the Church’s timeless teaching, anchored in Scripture and the witness of the saints. If we divorce conscience from authority, we will end in moral chaos. As Cardinal Ratzinger asked in his lucid work, On Conscience: “Does God speak to men in a contradictory manner? Does He contradict Himself? Does He forbid one person, even to the point of martyrdom, to do something that He allows or even requires of another?” These are crucial questions we must face.

Rather than celebrating the defender of erroneous conscience, let’s remember and invoke the true martyr of conscience, who died upholding the unity of the faith.

It would be helpful to me to have an idea of how well you know the Bible. I’ll tell you that I’ve read the Bible more than once, including many parts of it many times, and have kept on studying it.

Respectfully, it seems to me that you’re not taking a number of things into consideration.

For one thing, given all that you’ve said, what’s the basis, then, for you to be commenting here? Anything you say is equally subject to these statements of yours. Why not, as you say, keep silent? Then again, since you’re acknowledging the Holy Spirit speaking to you and giving you direction, how about recognizing that He can speak to and direct other Christians, too?

There’s no doubt there’s going to be self in most if not all of everything we do in this world. There’s a difference, though, between it affecting us, and us being driven by it. Self affects believers, but it drives unbelievers. Jesus left the early development of His Church to His apostles, and clearly there were many times that self got the better of them, as the New Testament records. But because in their hearts they were submitted to the Lord, they were correctable. Either God Himself directly corrected them, or others did at His direction - but in both cases because the Christians involved recognized His voice and heeded it. And the result was that the Christians involved somehow matured in Christ. Paul also wrote that God entrusted the Gospel to imperfect vessels, human beings. That was His plan. The imperfect vessels will still be used for God’s purposes, despite their imperfection, because they depend on God, not themselves.

5 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. (2 Corinthians 4)

Consider also what Paul wrote in the book of Philippians, chapter 3:

12 Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

15 Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.

Self is going to be there. We’re naturally like the blind and the lost who don’t know which way to go, or our left hand from our right hand, and the natural man is part of us as long as we’re in this world. But in Christians there’s also the spiritual man, who has God to guide and correct them. That’s what Proverbs 3:5 refers to.

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

That certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use our own understanding at all. We simply have to, just to live. What it does mean is that our own understanding shouldn’t be our highest authority. What’s more, Proverbs 3:6 says, “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” In all things, we should acknowledge God’s authority over us as our God, as we are His creatures, and trust Him and seek His will for us. James wrote that if anyone lacks wisdom, they can ask God in faith for it and God will give it to them. “Ask, and it shall be given,” the Lord Himself said. Finally, in Hebrews as well as Proverbs were told that God will also at times chasten us, punishing us for our own good, to correct and discipline His children. These are just a few passages, while there are also many others, that tell us that God Himself is there guiding, teaching and correcting us, if we accept Him. We have to depend on Him.

What you write seems to assume that everyone takes the position of unbelievers - driven by pride of self, not listening to God and so not correctable by Him, not truly willing to go to God, and not wanting to do His will, but merely one’s own.

Now on Luther and Christians not seeing many things the same way, there are a great many things that have led to the type of individualism we see today. The Catholic Church even contributed to quite a number of them. Just to name one, the Renaissance, which is beloved by secular humanists. I’d be happy to discuss the Protestant Reformation and the rise of secular humanism in more detail with you, but my conclusion on the Reformation is that it was necessary and justified, and would have happened whether or not Luther had ever lived. You also said this:

“Whatever his good intentions may have been, he lead the rebellion against the western half of Christ’s Body.”

That’s a pretty ironic statement when your point is about the unity and wholeness of Christ’s Body.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
Proverbs 3:5. But we don’t, which is why there are so many versions of Him.”

In Acts we learn that originally the church held all things in common. How long did that last? The church grew rapidly and got very big, and there are millions of Christians now, perhaps a billion professing Christians. Have your views changed on anything during your life, that something you believed one thing about, you now believe something different, so that you’re not even united with yourself over your lifetime? Then there are the developments of two thousand years, and questions that arose over time in different places like what should baptism be? And from Jesus saying the Son of Man had nowhere to lay His head, and Paul saying we should be content with food and clothing, the Church developed a great amount of worldly power and wealth.

“Whatever was in his heart, Luther opened the doors to whatever version we each like best.”

That door was opened by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, or even earlier by Satan, and Adam and Eve followed. Satan has been luring people through it ever since, as is recorded over and over again the Old Testament and the New, and I will add that at times that has involved the Catholic Church as well. When you speak of “whatever version we each like best,” what about Christians who pick up their cross and follow Jesus, not choosing what they naturally like best but God’s will for them? As I said, I’m not sure from what you say how well you know the Bible. I’m not saying you don’t know it, but have to ask if you’re familiar with what the Bible says about the natural man versus the spiritual man. The natural man is the rebellious sinner who doesn’t know God, while the spiritual man is the man born again in Christ, who is a new creature. The natural man is proud of his sin while the spiritual man hates it.

“Personally, I think we’re all in for quite a surprise.”

I believe we are, too. Over all, with many exceptions, the church in our time and place seems to resemble Laodicea quite a bit.

“You are addressing that tagline insult to ealgeone as much as you are to everyone else.”

It’s not directed to everyone and I don’t mind if everyone takes it as directed to them.

>>>Yes, it is directed at everyone. That’s the point of you making it your tag line. It’s probably directed much more at some people - such as Protestants like ealgeone and myself - than at others, such as other Catholics, but it is most certainly directed at everyone who happens to read it, and you admit as much by saying you don’t mind if everyone takes it as directed at them.

“And ealgeone is correctly saying that you attempted to justify it through Scripture but haven’t done so.”

No, actually he is in error. I made no attempt. There was only accomplishment.

>>>No, you’re in error. You’re only trying to use Scripture to justify insulting people but that doesn’t work.

“What’s more, you’ve not only made your tagline a personal attack on everyone who reads it,”

That’s false.

>>>No, that’s true, as discussed above.

“but you’re breaking the rules by calling an individual poster an “anti-Catholic.””

If there is a rule against calling an anti-Catholic an anti-Catholic, then I have, in fact, violated it without intentionally doing so. Feel free to alert the religion forum moderator.

>>>There is a rule against calling an individual an “anti-Catholic,” (among other “antis”) and I linked to the page that mentions it so you don’t have an excuse for having done it again, except that apparently you didn’t care to check the rule or care about breaking it.

“Yes, it is directed at everyone.”

No. I wrote it so I know exactly who it is and is not directed toward. For you to say otherwise only makes you look ridiculous for you neither write nor ever saw it probably until the last day or two.

“That’s the point of you making it your tag line.”

Again, no.

“It’s probably directed much more at some people - such as Protestants like ealgeone and myself - than at others, such as other Catholics, but it is most certainly directed at everyone who happens to read it, and you admit as much by saying you don’t mind if everyone takes it as directed at them.”

No, again, it is not directed at everyone. You will be wrong every time you say that.

“No, you’re in error. You’re only trying to use Scripture to justify insulting people but that doesn’t work.”

No, I never tried to use Scripture. I used Scripture. Perhaps Yoda can help you with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5SNAluOj6U Learning from a Muppet may be more your speed.

“No, that’s true, as discussed above.”

No, it’s false, but the truth won’t stop you from repeating a falsehood multiple times apparently.

“There is a rule against calling an individual an “anti-Catholic,” (among other “antis”) and I linked to the page that mentions it so you don’t have an excuse for having done it again, except that apparently you didn’t care to check the rule or care about breaking it.”

But I violated that rule and most assuredly will do so in the future if I deem it appropriate in regard to telling the truth. I will tell the truth and properly call someone what is fitting. I need no “excuse”. An anti-Catholic should be called an anti-Catholic. If it is the truth, it is the truth and no rule will impede me from stating the truth here or anywhere else.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I acknowledge that you know the Bible better than I do, perhaps better than I ever will.

I am trying to figure things out and my default response generally is "I don't know."

My basis for commenting here is the same as anyone else's: We all have opinions and some of us also have questions and are voicing them.

I "assume" that we all have the best interests of others and ourselves at heart, but that is an assumption, as "I don't know" for sure. It's hard to tell with some people here.

I see my own self as a seeker, and I am generally honest in my seeking Him, but I am constantly struggling with my ego and my darker, more critical and extremely competitive nature's need to win.

Personally, I don't belong to any faction of Christianity, nor do I believe we are right in dividing ourselves into various groups and then fighting with each other about who is right.

I recognize my own ego in those fights/discussions and my darker, competitive nature wants to argue, too, but I think that would lead to my destruction, as I had said in previous posts.

That's my worry about my fellow humans, too, and is the reason for many of my comments on similar threads, as some appear to be very close to that edge I know so well.

There is but one Jesus, yet how many different versions of Christianity and the Bible are there?

Can you tell me which version of Christianity is correct?

Can you tell me which Bible would Jesus quote from or tell us to read and refer to?

Personally, I also don't even know what to make of the Catholic's and the Orthodox devotion to Mother Mary.

Or rather, is it the Protestant's lack of devotion to Mother Mary that is curious?

I don't know. Do you? Do you know who does?

Why don't we all celebrate Easter on the same day? I don't know, do you?

Why do some fall away from their faith and belief? Are they still saved?

What happens to the believing Pastor or Priest who by his mistakes leads his flock astray? He still believes, but...

For me, my need for Him is great, but there's so much confusion it's hard to know where to turn for answers, especially since His true believes don't agree and like to fight each other in His Name.

Ultimately, like everyone else, I pick and choose between the various options for what seems to be His stuff.

It's not easy, but I'm doing my best to let go of my guile and find instead a faith, trust and belief like that of a child.

Our ways are not His Ways, that's for sure!

I’ve mentioned this before here, but I don’t think I have to you. I grew up in a very Catholic area of the country, in a mainline Protestant household. There was a little bit of belief in my family, but God wasn’t the focus of our lives. He was closer to the very last resort, when all else failed and things got really serious.

But I came to have a relationship with the Lord, and to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior. For years I tried to understand the different churches and what they were about, and I had no prejudice whatsoever against the Catholic Church. In fact, during two different periods I attended Catholic churches for awhile and considered becoming Catholic, and even after reading the Bible and concluding that Catholicism wasn’t closest to the truth, I was still positive on it for a long time.

Which brings me to your statement about Ephesians 2:10, and how you believe it’s closer to Catholic doctrine “than the Protestant “sola” perspective.” I couldn’t disagree more.

This really takes some careful thinking, but “sola” only refers to our salvation, not our life in Christ. It means we owe 100% of it to God, and there is no split of say, 50/50, 25/75, 75/25, 99/1, or even 99.999 and 0.001. We, as evil offenders against a holy God - God! - having necessitated the death of His Son for us to be spared eternal damnation - owe ALL to Him and Him alone. That’s all it means. At some level, do you not admit that? As Paul explains, at this level, it’s a matter of a worker being entitled to his wages, and if we can somehow “work” for our salvation, even in part, then somehow, in part, God owes us something. But that whole idea also means blasphemously minimizing the enormity of our sin, which again, made necessary the death of God’s Son. Suppose you slice it at 99% God providing our salvation through His grace, and 1% comes from our works. In debt terms, that would be like saying God forgives 99% of our debt, and we work off 1%. But we are talking about moral things and sinning against God. There is no such thing as any sort of work that can undo an evil work. Could Adam and Eve have undone what they did somehow? Can you do an evil work and then a good work to cancel the evil one out? The point is, sin can’t be in the presence of God, period, and our salvation is 100% dependent on God choosing to be merciful to us and extend forgiveness to us. He would be entirely within His rights not to do so, and not suffer Himself for the sake of saving sinners, but He has chosen to suffer for us.

Remember, God told Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed Him, they’d die that very day, and they did die spiritually and became subject to death when they sinned. He didn’t say they could bargain with Him after that, and offer to work off their sin for so many years with charity. They had transgressed against God and couldn’t “untransgress.” They could never repair what they had done.

The idea of “Protestant faith” versus “Catholic faith and works” also needs more careful consideration. First, the Catholic Church professes to accept what the Bible says about us being saved by grace and not by works: “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; 9 it is not from works, so no one may boast.”

http://www.usccb.org/bible/ephesians/2

Is it somehow that Paul and James contradict each other, and only one is right and to be followed, or are they in agreement and addressing on the one hand how natural man (the man not regenerated in Christ) wants to rely on what he believes is his good works, and on the other, how natural man wants to take God’s forgiveness for granted and keep on in his sin. But the man who has genuinely come to Christ, heart-broken over his sin, will recognize that there is no way that he can atone for his sin - which is the whole point of Jesus needing to die in our place - but also won’t want to continue sinning against God, for sin makes him feel guilty and grief-stricken while doing right makes him feel good and close to God. Again, “faith versus faith plus works” only refers to our salvation, and Paul and James are saying complementary things that have to be both accepted. Salvation is through faith, not works. However, faith isn’t alive if it doesn’t have works. To not be alive in Christ is to be spiritually dead, and one’s faith is spiritually dead if one doesn’t also have works, which demonstrate one’s relationship with God.

Over years of studying the Bible and different churches, I came to see that the Catholic Church isn’t consistent on the question of faith and works, and it wasn’t accurately portraying the Protestant position on the question either. Too often the Protestant position is portrayed as a license to sin and “get out of jail free.” But going by the Bible, which we uphold, it says that God’s grace isn’t to be abused that way, and a great many Protestants wouldn’t think of looking at it that way anyway.

You’re welcome, and I thank you for your thoughtful reply as well.

On knowledge of the Bible, I would just say that it is ever so important to read the whole Bible, if you haven’t, if you are going to have answers to the questions you’re asking. God’s Word is what He has revealed to us. He has only revealed things in part, but what He has revealed we can be assured is sufficient for us. Between knowing and meditating on His Word and receiving His guidance, we will begin to grow in Christ and in the knowledge of the Lord. Answers come over time, and usually not completely, but they truly do come and one’s understanding grows. If you’ve read the whole Bible, then more answers will come.

I know every question you pose here I have a much better understanding of than I used to, and in many cases have come to some satisfying answers, though certainly not complete ones. For some of your questions, the ultimate answers won’t come in this world. If a pastor leads his flock astray, for example. Well, how and why did he do so? Ultimately, only God knows what’s in His heart. We certainly might be able to say that he should no longer be a minister, and perhaps that we shouldn’t have fellowship with him, but to say what will become of his soul, that’s really beyond us. And it’s also impossible for any pastor not to err in some ways. They’re human. We’re not ultimately relying on him, but on God’s grace.

And too, even over our lives our beliefs change. Suppose we believe in baptism by immersion, as we know the Lord was baptized that way, but it is a church that sprinkles with water which reaches a person living in a remote place, and that person comes to faith in Christ and is baptized into that church. Can we say that person isn’t saved because he or she wasn’t baptized in what we believe is the right way, or the best way? These questions and uncertainties might seem to cause agony, but they also refine us, and we’ve been promised fiery trials here that are for our own spiritual good. It’s not a matter of being lost in unresolvable problems, because we will come closer to the Lord as we seek the answers.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.