Your comment: “Overall, the question is, when Catholics say, “faith plus works,” are they saying works done OUTSIDE of faith?”
I disagree with your interpretation of what Catholics say.
Works is showing our love of God and neighbor and keeping His commandments. Works is living our faith.
Don’t want to argue, just asking, are works a requirement for salvation, or is Jesus sacrifice, and our acceptance of it what saves us?
Thing is, that’s the view of Lutherans and Protestants and evangelicals of all stripes too. Works show living faith.
But every time one of these threads starts, we get accused of telling people not to do good works.
And it gets very, very tiresome.
Well, but the Catholic idea of “faith and works” puts that separation between the two, making them distinct things.
As Protestants, we’re only trying to say, and to explain to Catholics, exactly what you say, that works for us is living our faith. We believe that genuine faith will produce good fruit. But we don’t say we’re saved by “faith AND works” because for us - and as you say here - they are simply not separate things in that sense. So we easily accept what’s said in James 2 as well as Ephesians 2, Titus 3, and many other verses, because we believe we’re saved by grace through faith, and if we really have true faith, we’ll live it out. Someone truly born again in Christ will not always do everything right, but he or she will continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).