Here’s what I don’t understand.
The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches all agree that Scripture is infallible. So any tradition or writing that goes against Scripture has to be rejected by all three.
Yet Esphesians 2:8-9 says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
And Romans 4:2-8: For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
So why does the Catholic Church repudiate these Scriptures by adding merits and works? Does it or doesn’t it believe Scripture to be the infallible Word of God?
What never seems to occur to people who add (sacred) tradition or other sacred writings to Scripture, is that Scripture is the truth and anything that doesn’t line up with it is false teaching and can be rightly rejected.
If it does line up with Scripture, then it’s redundant and didn’t need to be added to the church teaching anyways, as it’s already addressed in Scripture.
The problem comes in where there is NO mention of something in Scripture. That seems to leave people feeling free to add to Scripture with lame attempts at validating it with weak excuses like *God can do anything He wants*, and * It COULD have happened*.
Well, no to the first one and perhaps to the second. But they then seem to see it as license to fabricate any story their imagination or wishful thinking provides and teach it as truth and then claim you have to believe it or assume it’s true unless you can disprove it.
But that’s not how logic works. Make a claim, and provide evidence to support it. Then if someone wants to challenge it, it’s on them to disprove it. But to assume something is true with no supporting evidence and put the burden on someone else is intellectually lazy.
It’s almost as if it takes a special type of mental/emotional tweaking (spiritually speaking) to confuse a victim into believing that what their Bibles say isn’t 100% true and needs more proof coming from people in a religious hierarchal system. This is how cults form.
They need a narrative to add to the doubt that is created already with their subtle suggestions about a fact not being 100% - sounds like the Garden of Eden and the serpent all over again. Did God really say?
Jesus really didn’t mean just believe in Him?
Jesus really didn’t mean His Death & Resurrection was sufficient?
Jesus only forgave you of your sins up to this present time. You sin one more time and it’s back in the hell destination line for you.
RC’s suffer from their mentally abusive system.
Catholics, officially, believe Scripture is inerrant. Communicators, not communications, are the subject of infallibility; communications, not communicators, are inerrant.
Still, that is not your point.
The Hebrew concept of faith/belief is broader than the Greek concept of faith. James gets into this with demons.
The Hebrew root is the one from which “Amen” is derived.
It the Greek term used in a Hebrew milieu might be better now translated as “living faith.” I prefer “Amening” because it gets the point across.