The Banned said:

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Hey...so.. um said:

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The Banned said:

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Faith leads to action or faith makes you act?

I'm not trying to be a pest here, but there is an important distinction that, in my experience, tends to fly under the radar. If it wasn't for the fact that this distinction leads to denominational divide, I'd let it go without comment.

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I'm not sure I understand the distinction here?

When you accept Jesus and get the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy spirit will prompt you to act. Listening, understanding and acting on those prompts comes with time and devotion to following Jesus. I have faith and sometimes I act when I get a prompt and sometimes I ignore it. My salvation doesn't come and go based on my response to a prompt from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong.

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So the Holy Spirit does the prompting. I'm more or less ok with this. Sometimes we listen, sometimes we don't. Now: what happens if we just stop listening altogether? The spirit keeps on promoting but we just decide we're not doing that anymore and we're going our own way?

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Idk, I would like to think the holy spirit will always be there prompting and eventually everyone cedes to that prompting and turns back toward God. Idk though. I pray I never have to find out.

Hey...so.. um said:

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The Banned said:

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Hey...so.. um said:

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The Banned said:

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Faith leads to action or faith makes you act?

I'm not trying to be a pest here, but there is an important distinction that, in my experience, tends to fly under the radar. If it wasn't for the fact that this distinction leads to denominational divide, I'd let it go without comment.

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I'm not sure I understand the distinction here?

When you accept Jesus and get the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy spirit will prompt you to act. Listening, understanding and acting on those prompts comes with time and devotion to following Jesus. I have faith and sometimes I act when I get a prompt and sometimes I ignore it. My salvation doesn't come and go based on my response to a prompt from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong.

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So the Holy Spirit does the prompting. I'm more or less ok with this. Sometimes we listen, sometimes we don't. Now: what happens if we just stop listening altogether? The spirit keeps on promoting but we just decide we're not doing that anymore and we're going our own way?

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Idk, I would like to think the holy spirit will always be there prompting and eventually everyone cedes to that prompting and turns back toward God. Idk though. I pray I never have to find out.

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That's fair enough. I think this is why the idea of "never truly saved" comes into play. To me that is problematic because it means that there are people out there who asked God to forgive them. They lived sometimes many decades as Christians. They said they wanted it, but they never got it. Despite their stated desire, God must have left them out because if they didn't persist in the faith, they were never given the faith. If they were given the faith, they would have persisted.

The other option is to believe that people can both choose the faith and choose to reject it after. So the question becomes: why do people later reject it? Do they wake up one day "dead again"? Or do they spend their time, energy and treasure on things that are not God, slowly growing apart from Him before leaving altogether? In other words: was their faith without works, and therefore it died?

Faith alone… once saved always saved… they all sound great on the surface, but the only way to hold to them in without tying a person up in logical knots will run them into Calvinism, some variant of cheap grace/free grace theology, or into the historical, synergistic view of salvation that the reformers themselves rejected.

The Banned said:

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I know how it is traditionally used, but view the Lutheran video above that states that grace alone means there is NOTHING we can do.

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I have seen this video many times and I highly recommend it and that channel. You have misinterpreted the video "grace alone means there is nothing we can do". Lutheran Grace alone means we are not saved by our works/ good deeds and that our salvation is dependent on God and we do not Reject the faith. I have hundreds of hours of listening to pastor Wolfmueller podcasts and youtube videos and he does not preach what you state.

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If faith is something that we DO, then it gets lumped into the category of work,

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It only gets lumped into work if you want to change the biblical meaning of work, because this meaning has no basis in scripture. Once again, work was about doing your good deeds and obedience to the Jewish laws. The work of planting seed, plowing a field, or cooking a meal does not apply either, even though you would say it is work. By your logic, are you saying any type of work saves you. Or are you arguing that certain types of works saves you (a very Jewish way of thinking). The original question implied that having faith meant you are doing work, which then implied you are saved because you "worked" for your faith, which is a fallacy.

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work was about doing your good deeds and obedience to the Jewish laws

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I'm sorry but I think this is the disconnect.

Scripturally the works of the Law are literally the works of Torah, i.e., being Jewish. Never in one place does the scripture use "works" to describe "good deeds" in general, and never does it say we are saved apart from our good works.

Very often, in support of sola fide, "works" are generalized to be "good works". But again, this requires that those scriptures be taken from their original context and re-imagined as theological doctrinal statements - which they are not!

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Or are you arguing that certain types of works saves you (a very Jewish way of thinking).

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This is also not correct. The Torah never promises salvation, no Jewish teaching says this. St Paul says as much - "we who are Jews by birth know that by no works of the Torah is a person made righteous but by faithfulness to Jesus the Messiah." St Paul's constant teaching against works saving is against being Jewish saving you, or being a necessary prerequisite for salvation.

We see this at the council of Jerusalem "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved" and again "It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses." That is the works St Paul is telling his non-Jewish converts are not salvific.

Txducker said:

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The Banned said:

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I know how it is traditionally used, but view the Lutheran video above that states that grace alone means there is NOTHING we can do.

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I have seen this video many times and I highly recommend it and that channel. You have misinterpreted the video "grace alone means there is nothing we can do". Lutheran Grace alone means we are not saved by our works/ good deeds and that our salvation is dependent on God and we do not Reject the faith. I have hundreds of hours of listening to pastor Wolfmueller podcasts and youtube videos and he does not preach what you state.

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If faith is something that we DO, then it gets lumped into the category of work,

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It only gets lumped into work if you want to change the biblical meaning of work, because this meaning has no basis in scripture. Once again, work was about doing your good deeds and obedience to the Jewish laws. The work of planting seed, plowing a field, or cooking a meal does not apply either, even though you would say it is work. By your logic, are you saying any type of work saves you. Or are you arguing that certain types of works saves you (a very Jewish way of thinking). The original question implied that having faith meant you are doing work, which then implied you are saved because you "worked" for your faith, which is a fallacy.

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At the 1:05 mark he says "we don't contribute anything to our salvation". If I am choosing to have the faith, how am I not contributing anything?

Again you use a passive phrase like "we don't reject the faith". Why use that terminology if not to intentionally avoid the idea that maybe we contribute something by actively accepting?

I get that you may not arrive at the same conclusion as others, but the reality of this view of salvation is going to run smack dab into Calvin. He tweaked Luther's work precisely because of what passive reception of the faith must mean. When I say faith gets lumped in as a work, I mean that a growing number of Protestants are saying that CHOOSING faith is a human work because choosing is a contribution. I should have been more clear.

Zobel said:

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Scripturally the works of the Law are literally the works of Torah, i.e., being Jewish. Never in one place does the scripture use "works" to describe "good deeds" in general,

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I was talking about this through the Jewish lens of "works" since Paul was preaching to the Jews about the Law and works required by the law. See the Jewish definition of the word mitzvah.

• What does mitzvah mean? In common usage, a mitzvah often means "a good deed"as in "Do a mitzvah and help Mrs. Goldstein with her packages." This usage is quite oldthe Jerusalem Talmud commonly refers to any charitable act as "the mitzvah."

Two examples from scripture, Jesus and Paul.
Matthew 19:16-30 The Rich Young Man; 16 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" --- The young man was a Jew and gave an account of all the good works he was doing. Jesus tells to sell everything and follow Him. The man REJECTED Jesus's invitation and left. If that man would have had FAITH that Jesus was the Messiah, he would have submitted to Jesus authority and followed Jesus. All his good works were not as important as having FAITH in Jesus and Following Him. Which do you think Jesus would value more 1) Faith and submission to Him or 2) good works but denying Him. This is a good example of faith without works is a dead faith.

Paul's preaching to the Jews. Romans 2:17-29 (one of many examples) to show that Paul was preaching to the Jews about the laws of the Torah and good works. The Jews were breaking the law and doing "evil works". Paul is challenging the sin of the Jews and their faith because their heart/faith is not in the right with God as evident by their evil deeds.

17But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; ....
23You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24For, as it is written, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." ....
28For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly (keeping the law/doing works), nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit (which is received through faith), not by the letter (the instructions to keep in the law/Torah).

Zobel said:

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Or are you arguing that certain types of works saves you (a very Jewish way of thinking).

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This is also not correct. The Torah never promises salvation, no Jewish teaching says this. St Paul says as much - "we who are Jews by birth know that by no works of the Torah is a person made righteous but by faithfulness to Jesus the Messiah." St Paul's constant teaching against works saving is against being Jewish saving you, or being a necessary prerequisite for salvation.

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Yikes, Messiah literally means "savior" or liberator. The number of fulfilled Messianic prophecies is over 300. The Torah most definitely promises Salvation for man. Most Jews were looking for a military king/savior. Isiah, Jesus, John the Baptist, et al. revealed that Christ is our Savior came to save us from our sin that separates us from God. I think you missed one the main points of the Torah was to announce the coming of Jesus. Most Jews missed it, but

I do not want to be misunderstood and have you believe that I think works are not necessary in being a disciple of Christ. I believe faith without works is a dead faith.

"Mitzvah" as good deed misses the mark. The works of the Torah are the same as the commandments. In fact, the first time we come across this word in the scriptures is about Abraham, in Genesis 26 when God tells Isaac "in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments (the word mitzvah), my statutes, and my laws." What was given to Moses on the mountain was the Torah and the Mitzvah of the Lord (translated as law and commandments).

The Talmud came 300 years after St Paul, so I'm not really too concerned with how they defined it. We should pay attention to how St Paul uses it when we read St Paul. And it is quite clear that when St Paul talks about the works of the Torah he is talking about the commandments, which is to say, the obligations of being Jewish.

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Matthew 19:16-30 The Rich Young Man; 16 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" --- The young man was a Jew and gave an account of all the good works he was doing. Jesus tells to sell everything and follow Him. The man REJECTED Jesus's invitation and left. If that man would have had FAITH that Jesus was the Messiah, he would have submitted to Jesus authority and followed Jesus. All his good works were not as important as having FAITH in Jesus and Following Him. Which do you think Jesus would value more 1) Faith and submission to Him or 2) good works but denying Him. This is a good example of faith without works is a dead faith.

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One, I think reading back a faith/works dichotomy into this is asking a question the text isn't really answering. But two, if anything I think this hurts your case. For starters, he doesn't say good deed - deed is added for clarity of translation. He says what good shall I do? The Lord doesn't say "no dummy, there is no good you can do." He also doesn't say "just believe." He says - "If you would enter life, keep the commandments."

The Lord didn't invent new teachings. He explained and corrected their understanding of Torah, which is why here he basically quotes the Torah to the man. "Keep My statutes and My judgments, for the man who does these things will live by them."

He also correctly cuts to the quick of the matter by identifying that the man loved his wealth more than God. Or in other words, that he was more faithful to his money than to Jesus.

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Paul's preaching to the Jews. Romans 2:17-29 (one of many examples) to show that Paul was preaching to the Jews about the laws of the Torah and good works. The Jews were breaking the law and doing "evil works". Paul is challenging the sin of the Jews and their faith because their heart/faith is not in the right with God as evident by their evil deeds.

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The third time in this thread we'll have to talk about the context of Romans. Romans is not a theological treatise about salvation or justification. It is a letter written to a community struggling to re-integrate Jewish followers of Jesus with non-Jewish communities after they had been expelled from Rome for two years by the emperor Claudius.

The Jews were not rampantly breaking the law - that whole language is anachronistic baggage; the law was not a law-code that you didn't break. The word "law" is Torah - St Paul wrote as Jew, not as a Greek or Roman philosopher.

What St Paul was saying is that you cannot be saved by only keeping the Torah - because while keeping the Torah was enough to make you Jewish, being Jewish is not enough to save you. One who keeps the Torah outwardly - and is therefore outwardly Jewish - may not be pleasing to God. What matters is the heart. What saves you is faithfulness to the Messiah. A Jew who keeps the Torah but is not faithful to the Messiah will be cut off from the promises, disinherited. The example given is the Edomites, who were destroyed when they rebelled against Judah.

St Paul's argument is that salvation comes to Jews and non-Jews in precisely the same way: not by keeping the Torah, but by faithfulness to the Messiah. This is why St Paul anticipates the objection that by doing this he abolishes the Torah, but says no - in doing this we uphold the Torah.

The argument here is absolutely not a commentary on the necessity or not of good works for salvation. It is a commentary on the necessity of being Jewish for salvation. And everywhere you see "works of the Torah" you can write in "being Jewish" and it is perfectly coherent. The question we should ask then, is what does faithfulness to the Messiah look like if it is not merely keeping the Torah in an outward way?

St Paul tells us the answer - "it is not the hearers of the Torah who are righteous before God, but the doers of the Torah who will be made righteous". And what is the doing of the Torah? "The one who loves another has fulfilled the Torah....all commandments are summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself...therefore love is the fulfillment of the Torah." He says in another place "The entire Torah is fulfilled in a single word: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Which is why his letters are filled with advice - not theological arguments! - about how to live out a life pleasing to God and thus fulfill the Torah.

In short - if you live in faithfulness to Jesus as St Paul says, you will do the things the Torah requires. When you do the things that have the fruit of the Spirit you will inherently keep the Torah - "Against such things there is no law." And, as the Messiah inherits all of the promises of Abraham, as the firstborn He will include those faithful to Him in the promises as co-heirs...whether Jewish or not.

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Yikes, Messiah literally means "savior" or liberator. The number of fulfilled Messianic prophecies is over 300. The Torah most definitely promises Salvation for man. Most Jews were looking for a military king/savior. Isiah, Jesus, John the Baptist, et al. revealed that Christ is our Savior came to save us from our sin that separates us from God. I think you missed one the main points of the Torah was to announce the coming of Jesus. Most Jews missed it, but

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I'm sorry, but Messiah means anointed one, not savior.

The Torah - the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures - does not talk about the Messiah. At least not directly. It does hint at resurrection, or at least anticipates it, but it is not explicit. This is why the Sadducees used the Torah as scripture but did not believe in the Resurrection.

The Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets are all ultimately about Christ. But the Torah itself never says that keeping the Torah gives you eternal life. Feel free to prove me wrong by quoting from Genesis through Deuteronomy. Or you can trust when St Paul says it, because that is his point - he told St Peter literally that the Torah does not make you righteous. Eternal life is not part of the blessings and curses offered in the Torah.

As for saving from sins - Jews keeping the Torah had forgiveness of sins. Repentance and forgiveness of sins were part of the Torah. St John did not say merely that Christ offered forgiveness of sins, but that the Messiah would take away the sins of the world. The once-for-all atonement, not the annual one that only cleansed the Temple and the people of Israel, but to reclaim the whole world and all mankind.

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I do not want to be misunderstood and have you believe that I think works are not necessary in being a disciple of Christ. I believe faith without works is a dead faith.

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So... since the scriptures say that at the judgment we will be judged based on what we have said and done, and St Paul literally says "He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life..." what is the argument?

What is the good of creating such a thing as 'dead faith'? There is just faith and the lack thereof. I don't know what "dead faithfulness" looks like. If you are faithful to your wife, you are faithful. If you do unfaithful things you don't have dead faithfulness... you're just unfaithful. Inventing things like live and dead faith just to avoid the scriptural necessity of action in faithfulness is theological games with no benefit.

The Banned said:

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Hey...so.. um said:

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The Banned said:

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Hey...so.. um said:

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The Banned said:

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Faith leads to action or faith makes you act?

I'm not trying to be a pest here, but there is an important distinction that, in my experience, tends to fly under the radar. If it wasn't for the fact that this distinction leads to denominational divide, I'd let it go without comment.

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I'm not sure I understand the distinction here?

When you accept Jesus and get the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy spirit will prompt you to act. Listening, understanding and acting on those prompts comes with time and devotion to following Jesus. I have faith and sometimes I act when I get a prompt and sometimes I ignore it. My salvation doesn't come and go based on my response to a prompt from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong.

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So the Holy Spirit does the prompting. I'm more or less ok with this. Sometimes we listen, sometimes we don't. Now: what happens if we just stop listening altogether? The spirit keeps on promoting but we just decide we're not doing that anymore and we're going our own way?

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Idk, I would like to think the holy spirit will always be there prompting and eventually everyone cedes to that prompting and turns back toward God. Idk though. I pray I never have to find out.

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That's fair enough. I think this is why the idea of "never truly saved" comes into play. To me that is problematic because it means that there are people out there who asked God to forgive them. They lived sometimes many decades as Christians. They said they wanted it, but they never got it. Despite their stated desire, God must have left them out because if they didn't persist in the faith, they were never given the faith. If they were given the faith, they would have persisted.

The other option is to believe that people can both choose the faith and choose to reject it after. So the question becomes: why do people later reject it? Do they wake up one day "dead again"? Or do they spend their time, energy and treasure on things that are not God, slowly growing apart from Him before leaving altogether? In other words: was their faith without works, and therefore it died?

Faith alone… once saved always saved… they all sound great on the surface, but the only way to hold to them in without tying a person up in logical knots will run them into Calvinism, some variant of cheap grace/free grace theology, or into the historical, synergistic view of salvation that the reformers themselves rejected.

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I get that. No matter which side the argument you fall on, I think we should all agree that your faith should guide every decision you make and by doing so, you will stack up some pretty good works along the way still fall short of the glory of God and require His grace to make it into heaven.

Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification at the beginning of conversion.

The works/deeds/actions that are meritorious for salvation (see Matthew 25) are not the automatic byproduct of faith, but they only come from faith, as Paul says in Galatians 5:6. "For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love." Doing things that are meritorious for salvation is possible only by God's grace and only for the person who already has been justified by grace. Moreover, as Augustine says "What merit, then, does a man have before grace, by which he might receive grace, when our every good merit is produced in us only by grace and when God, crowning our merits, crowns nothing else but his own gifts to us?"

Pope Benedict XVI once said the following in a general audience: "Being just (righteous) simply means being with Christ and in Christ and this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary," Jewish observances. "For this reason, Luther's phrase, faith alone, is true if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ to his life." Also, if we do gravely evil works, if we fail to keep God's commandments in a way that destroys charity in the soul and thus destroys our friendship with God, then we must respond to the grace of God that always seeks our salvation and be reconciled to God.

But @zobel, don't you agree that having said all that, there's an obvious issue that we are all dancing around that really is the nub of all this: is righteousness imputed or infused? Do we remain unrighteous in our innermost self or do we become actually righteous by God's grace? That seems like the real fork in the road.

One camp stands solely on the proposition that Christ's righteousness is imputed or credited to the believer. And his standing before God is based solely on that legal declaration that imputes this righteousness and not on anything that actually changes in the soul of the believer, what the other camp would call infused righteousness of Christ.

So I don't deny God reckons people righteous, but I also understand God's word as effectual, so it brings about the effect God declares (Isa. 55:11). Thus, when God reckons or declares people righ- teous, they become objectively (metaphysically) righteous

It seems to me once you get past the moment in time thing and stop worrying about faith vs works the whole imputed or infused thing becomes irrelevant. You are perfected and therefore become righteous by working out your salvation in faith and fear and love and hope of the resurrection. Nothing else matters.

Zobel said:

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It seems to me once you get past the moment in time thing and stop worrying about faith vs works the whole imputed or infused thing becomes irrelevant. You are perfected and therefore become righteous by working out your salvation in faith and fear and love and hope of the resurrection. Nothing else matters.

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I agree, but I don't think our Protestant brethren do, although I don't pretend to speak for them.

Zobel said:

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It seems to me once you get past the moment in time thing and stop worrying about faith vs works the whole imputed or infused thing becomes irrelevant. You are perfected and therefore become righteous by working out your salvation in faith and fear and love and hope of the resurrection. Nothing else matters.

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Agree.

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Zobel said:

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It seems to me once you get past the moment in time thing and stop worrying about faith vs works the whole imputed or infused thing becomes irrelevant. You are perfected and therefore become righteous by working out your salvation in faith and fear and love and hope of the resurrection. Nothing else matters.

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I agree, but I don't think our Protestant brethren do, although I don't pretend to speak for them.

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Because so many Protestants believe in monergism. I know this is getting a bit circular here, but as long as we "don't contribute anything to our salvation", a moment of salvation is going to persist.

To zobel's earliest point, I don't like arguing whether or not faith is a work or anything like it, but in the context of "faith alone", it makes a world of difference.

The Banned said:

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Donut Holestein said:

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I agree, all we can do is to confess what has been given through the Word. Thought this video summarizes much of the responses given in this thread. What some have alluded to as a weakness for Luther, I see as a strength. He and other confessional Lutherans are unwilling to go beyond what is stated in Scripture. We cannot bind God by our own logic and reason.

Similarly, I cannot explain how Jesus' true body and blood is present in Communion, but I believe it in faith because I believe that is what the Bible proclaims.

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This is mind blowing. We have a theologian saying that God has created a logical fallacy. He has created a square circle. He can create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it. This is not saying the ways of God are unknowable. This is saying that He intentionally created something that does not make sense and cannot make sense.

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He did not say that it is illogical to God. He stated it illogical to us Humans (big difference). It is completely logical to God because He designed it.

1:20 - three conditions are true 1. universal grace 2. grace alone 3. hell for some.
2:54 Wolfmueller "We (human logic) can not fit the three together." Just because human knowledge does not understand God's mind, does not make it a logical fallacy for God to understand since he created it.
03:25 "Our (human) reason cannot be content with that" (referring to time 2:54). This is always a temptation and trap for man to make up things. Adam and Eve were not content with their lack of knowledge in the garden either and choose to eat the fruit of knowledge.
04:36 "There is no way to sort them out and make them make sense"

There is a difference between paradox and contradiction. I don't believe that any of the church fathers ever taught a contradiction.

Txducker said:

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The Banned said:

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Donut Holestein said:

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I agree, all we can do is to confess what has been given through the Word. Thought this video summarizes much of the responses given in this thread. What some have alluded to as a weakness for Luther, I see as a strength. He and other confessional Lutherans are unwilling to go beyond what is stated in Scripture. We cannot bind God by our own logic and reason.

Similarly, I cannot explain how Jesus' true body and blood is present in Communion, but I believe it in faith because I believe that is what the Bible proclaims.

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This is mind blowing. We have a theologian saying that God has created a logical fallacy. He has created a square circle. He can create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it. This is not saying the ways of God are unknowable. This is saying that He intentionally created something that does not make sense and cannot make sense.

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He did not say that it is illogical to God. He stated it illogical to us Humans (big difference). It is completely logical to God because He designed it.

1:20 - three conditions are true 1. universal grace 2. grace alone 3. hell for some.
2:54 Wolfmueller "We (human logic) can not fit the three together." Just because human knowledge does not understand God's mind, does not make it a logical fallacy for God to understand since he created it.
03:25 "Our (human) reason cannot be content with that" (referring to time 2:54). This is always a temptation and trap for man to make up things. Adam and Eve were not content with their lack of knowledge in the garden either and choose to eat the fruit of knowledge.
04:36 "There is no way to sort them out and make them make sense"

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A logical fallacy is a very specific problem. For example: we say God is all powerful. So can God make a square circle? Or can He make a rock so heavy that even He can't move it?

I'm not saying it's illogical to God or illogical to us. I'm saying it breaks to rules of logic that emanate from God to say that these three things can't possibly go together but they go together anyway. It's like running into a brick wall and just saying the brick wall doesn't exist. It does exist, and it's a really good reason to reconsider the presuppositions.

That's why if an atheist asks if God can make a rock so heavy that even He can't lift it, we'd have to challenge their presuppositions of who and what God is rather than trying to waive away the apparent contradiction.

The Banned said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Zobel said:

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It seems to me once you get past the moment in time thing and stop worrying about faith vs works the whole imputed or infused thing becomes irrelevant. You are perfected and therefore become righteous by working out your salvation in faith and fear and love and hope of the resurrection. Nothing else matters.

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I agree, but I don't think our Protestant brethren do, although I don't pretend to speak for them.

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Because so many Protestants believe in monergism. I know this is getting a bit circular here, but as long as we "don't contribute anything to our salvation", a moment of salvation is going to persist.

To zobel's earliest point, I don't like arguing whether or not faith is a work or anything like it, but in the context of "faith alone", it makes a world of difference.

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This is an interesting statement from the Joint Declaration on Justification by Catholics and Lutherans:

"We confess together that all persons depend completely on the saving grace of God for their salvation . . . for as sinners they stand under God's judgment and are incapable of turning by themselves to God to seek deliverance, of meriting their justification before God, or of attaining salvation by their own abilities. Justification takes place solely by God's grace. . . . When Catholics say that persons 'cooperate' in preparing for and accepting justification . . . they see such personal consent as itself an effect of grace, not as an action arising from innate human abilities" (JD 19-20).

The additional explanation requested by the Holy See in the Annex to the Joint Declaration affirmed that "The working of God's grace does not exclude human action: God effects everything, the willing and the achievement, therefore we are called to strive (cf. Phil. 2:12 ff)" (Annex, 2C).

I pulled this from an article discussing the Joint Declaration. There are some nuggets in here worth noting:

Justification by Faith and through Grace

Two key Protestant slogans are "justification by grace alone" and "justification by faith alone." (These do not contradict each other since they are speaking on different levels of what causes justification.)

Catholics have never had trouble affirming the first slogan, though Protestants commonly believe they do. But both Catholics and Lutherans often have wrongly thought that Catholics must reject the second slogan.

This confusion is based on a misreading of canon 9 of Trent's Decree on Justification, which rejects the proposition that "the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will" (emphasis added).

As a careful reading of this canon shows, not every use of the formula "faith alone" is rejected, but only those that mean "nothing else is required," etc. If one acknowledges that things besides the theological virtue of faith are required, then one's use of the "faith alone" formula does not fall under the condemnation of Trent.

The classic Catholic alternative to saying that we are saved "by faith alone" is to say that we are saved by "faith, hope, and charity." It is, however, possible for these two formulas to be equivalent in meaning.

Charity-the supernatural love of God-is what ultimately unites the soul to God. It therefore is recognized as the "form" of the virtues, the thing which binds them together and gives them their fullest meaning. Catholic theologians have historically talked about virtues like faith and hope being "formed" or "unformed" based on whether they are united with charity.

St. Paul tells us that charity "believes all things, hopes all things" (1 Cor. 13:7). Thus, if you have "formed faith," you have not only faith, but hope and charity. This is why the two formulas-"faith alone" and "faith, hope, and charity"-can be equivalent. If you assert that we are justified by "faith alone"-and by that you mean formed faith-then there is no problem from the Catholic perspective. The phrase is not being used in a way that falls under Trent's condemnation.

Different Protestants mean different things when they use the "faith alone" slogan. Some (rank antinomians) really do mean that one is justified by intellectual belief alone, without hope or charity. Others (many American Evangelicals) appear to believe one is justified by faith plus hope, which is trust in God for salvation. Many others (including the Lutherans signing the Joint Declaration) believe that charity, the principle behind good works, always accompanies faith, and so believe in justification by formed faith.

This is the sense reflected in the Joint Declaration, which states that "justifying faith . . . includes hope in God and love for him. Such a faith is active in love and thus the Christian cannot and should not remain without works" (JD 25).

It is this understanding that also lies behind statements in the Joint Declaration such as: "We confess together that persons are justified by faith in the gospel 'apart from works prescribed by the law' (Rom. 3:28)" (JD, 31).

However, it should be pointed out that the "faith alone" formula is unbiblical language. The phrase "faith alone" (pisteus monon) appears in the New Testament only once-in James 2:24-where it is rejected. For those who use this language, though, it can be given an acceptable meaning.

I'll go into my thoughts on this later because it's a big document, but as far as monergism goes, that's not what Catholics are driving at. The additional comment by the Holy See helps us see how our version of justification by faith is different from this here:



This is another example of how there is a belief that we can reject saving help, but somehow the choice to leave the IV in isn't really a choice (or cooperation) at all. It's a one way choice, which is not something that can logically exist.

When the prodigal son chose to leave the family, he exercised his free will. But that does not mean that the son who never left did not make a free will choice of his own. To say otherwise makes zero sense.

Thanks.

I'm Catholic.

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Thanks.

I'm Catholic.

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I know. But reading text alone can make it very difficult to…. Interpret what you meant by that post

The Banned said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Thanks.

I'm Catholic.

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I know. But reading text alone can make it very difficult to…. Interpret what you meant by that post

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That's my way of appearing ecumenical.

In all sincerity, I feel like there's not as much daylight between the Lutherans and Catholics as some might think. There's a lot of misapprehension about what the Catholic Church actually teaches. The JD does a decent job of explaining what is actually being taught. I always try to start discussions about justification with "The Catholic Church teaches that the initial grace of justification is entirely a gift from God." I usually then try to explain that Catholics believe we are saved by faith, and even faith alone depending on how we define faith. Faith, which is a gift from God, working by, through and under charity/love is what saves us. We will be counted as goats or sheep based on our faith working by, through and under charity/love.

What about the sacraments? These are outward signs of an inner reality that we participate in by acts of faith. When I step into the confessional and I confess my mortal sins to a confessor acting in persona christi, I am firstly drawn there by the grace of God, and then I place my trust in the promises and mercy of Christ and when his priest pronounces absolution over me and I fully intend to and do my best to repent, I am really and truly washed clean and made anew as the sanctifying grace that I have destroyed is restored in my soul.

When I am drawn to participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist by God's grace and when I say yes to God's gracious beckoning and step forward at Mass and the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus is presented to me under the accidents of bread and wine and I say "amen", it is an act of faith and I believe I am really and truly receiving my Lord and savior's body and blood exactly as he commanded me to do and in so doing I am transformed by being more and more conformed to Jesus THROUGH HIS GRACE OFFERED TO ME. I am becoming what I consume.

I love this. I oscillate back and forth between emphasizing our similarities and our differences. My hope is that we'll all be one again. Sometimes emphasizing the similarities helps. Sometimes explaining the differences helps.

Monergism is a bit of a lightbulb for me recently precisely because of how different it is from the traditional faiths. It's really hard to fathom the idea that we don't have the personal choice to accept God. The more passive example of this I have heard many times and tried to find common ground with. But when you really dive deep into what monergism truly must mean:… I think Calvin got it right, which means monergism, as define by all Protestant reformers, is wrong.

That's why I'm pushing back so hard on this idea of passive acceptance somehow not being our choice. Where before I had sought common ground here, I now don't really see any room for it. True free will is not possible.

The Banned said:

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Txducker said:

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The Banned said:

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I know how it is traditionally used, but view the Lutheran video above that states that grace alone means there is NOTHING we can do.

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I have seen this video many times and I highly recommend it and that channel. You have misinterpreted the video "grace alone means there is nothing we can do". Lutheran Grace alone means we are not saved by our works/ good deeds and that our salvation is dependent on God and we do not Reject the faith. I have hundreds of hours of listening to pastor Wolfmueller podcasts and youtube videos and he does not preach what you state.

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If faith is something that we DO, then it gets lumped into the category of work,

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It only gets lumped into work if you want to change the biblical meaning of work, because this meaning has no basis in scripture. Once again, work was about doing your good deeds and obedience to the Jewish laws. The work of planting seed, plowing a field, or cooking a meal does not apply either, even though you would say it is work. By your logic, are you saying any type of work saves you. Or are you arguing that certain types of works saves you (a very Jewish way of thinking). The original question implied that having faith meant you are doing work, which then implied you are saved because you "worked" for your faith, which is a fallacy.

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At the 1:05 mark he says "we don't contribute anything to our salvation". If I am choosing to have the faith, how am I not contributing anything?

Again you use a passive phrase like "we don't reject the faith". Why use that terminology if not to intentionally avoid the idea that maybe we contribute something by actively accepting?

I get that you may not arrive at the same conclusion as others, but the reality of this view of salvation is going to run smack dab into Calvin. He tweaked Luther's work precisely because of what passive reception of the faith must mean. When I say faith gets lumped in as a work, I mean that a growing number of Protestants are saying that CHOOSING faith is a human work because choosing is a contribution. I should have been more clear.

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The Banned said:

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I get that you may not arrive at the same conclusion as others, but the reality of this view of salvation is going to run smack dab into Calvin. He tweaked Luther's work precisely because of what passive reception of the faith must mean. When I say faith gets lumped in as a work, I mean that a growing number of Protestants are saying that CHOOSING faith is a human work because choosing is a contribution. I should have been more clear.

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Hard No on Calvin/Predestination for me. Does Calvin Predestination believe in a choosing faith?

The Banned said:

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Again you use a passive phrase like "we don't reject the faith". Why use that terminology if not to intentionally avoid the idea that maybe we contribute something by actively accepting?

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I think you have miss-characterized my belief "to intentionally avoid the idea that maybe we contribute something by actively accepting? I reject the idea of Calvinism predestination, because I did actively reject God when I was 16-17. I also don't thing it holds up to scripture. To me, Calvinism predestination is a scary rejection of God's promise to love us and reconcile us to Him. "Works" is not a four lettered word for me, and works are necessary to accurately live the life as a disciple of Christ. The word has greater utility for me in fulfilling the commandment of Christ "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

If you had a prodigal son experience of coming to the faith, this may make more sense to you. I use the terminology "don't reject the faith" because of scripture and experience. I don't entirely see it as passive in the way you characterize it. It was an active choice for me to quit resisting God. When I was rejecting God actively, I became so beat down I was desperate for change. I always believed in God, but pushed him away. I even tried to not believe while I was rejecting Him, but God kept showing up in my mind spontaneously without me working to put Him there. I heard the word of God as a child that planted the mustard seed of faith. I just quit rejecting his presence that kept showing up in my thoughts. I then actively listened to him, actively read his word, actively prayed to him. I really don't care about it being called ACTIVE or PASSIVE as long as I just quit fighting His grace. I did CHOOSE/ACTIVE to quite fighting against him, but my will to continue fighting against Him had disappeared or lessened (I don't know how to quantify it). To this day I don't know why I had the change when I did. It just happened and it doesn't matter to me how it happened. The end result is the same. All Glory should be given to Him for this, because I did so little in my Acceptance/Not-rejecting His Grace. God did the heavy lifting.

The Banned said:

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At the 1:05 mark he (Wolfmueller) says "we don't contribute anything to our salvation". If I am choosing to have the faith, how am I not contributing anything?

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He believes you can reject the faith, so their is some action in not rejecting. The power to not reject comes from the gift of faith He gives us. God provides the power/effort, so glory be to Him. "Contributing" comes from Eph 2:8 and the word contributing puts the emphasis on God doing the heavy lifting of providing faith to us so that we do not boast on our effort for faith.
Could you save yourself apart from God with 100% contribution to the faith?
What percent of your contribution is needed for faith and what percent does God contribute?
Does God say the contribution has to equal 100%?

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Zobel said:

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It seems to me once you get past the moment in time thing and stop worrying about faith vs works the whole imputed or infused thing becomes irrelevant. You are perfected and therefore become righteous by working out your salvation in faith and fear and love and hope of the resurrection. Nothing else matters.

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I agree, but I don't think our Protestant brethren do, although I don't pretend to speak for them.

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I certainly believe so and stated this above.

Zobel said:

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There is a difference between paradox and contradiction. I don't believe that any of the church fathers ever taught a contradiction.

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Something illogical just means your not smart enough to understand it. Luckily we don't have to understand this for faith or salvation. A contradiction means proving something is false. He is saying you are not smart enough to understand this. I am guessing the real issue here is the idea of someone talking about that circle with "grace alone".

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Something illogical just means your not smart enough to understand it

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I mean, this is manifestly untrue.

It could also just be wrong.

Hey...so.. um said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Zobel said:

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It seems to me once you get past the moment in time thing and stop worrying about faith vs works the whole imputed or infused thing becomes irrelevant. You are perfected and therefore become righteous by working out your salvation in faith and fear and love and hope of the resurrection. Nothing else matters.

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I agree, but I don't think our Protestant brethren do, although I don't pretend to speak for them.

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I certainly believe so and stated this above.

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Apologies. I didn't intend to mischaracterize your position.

This is deep and real. I don't want to do it a disservice by trying to respond tonight.

ETA: I think what you typed is contradictory to Lutheran doctrine. Personally I'm more than ok with that. I think you're right. I'll just have to expound upon it when I have more energy

Txducker said:

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Zobel said:

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There is a difference between paradox and contradiction. I don't believe that any of the church fathers ever taught a contradiction.

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Something illogical just means your not smart enough to understand it. Luckily we don't have to understand this for faith or salvation. A contradiction means proving something is false. He is saying you are not smart enough to understand this. I am guessing the real issue here is the idea of someone talking about that circle with "grace alone".

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This I can respond to no matter how tired I am. Something being illogical does not mean an individual is not smart enough to understand. Something illogical means it defies logic. Up cannot be down. If up is down then down must be up.

It's not a matter of being "smart enough". But it does require one to think through exactly how one can reject something without the capacity to accept it. How can one choose to go down if "up" doesn't actually exist? Moving in one direction necessitates the existence of the other direction. Actively Rejecting faith necessitates the ability to actively accept the faith. You cannot passively do one and actively do the other.

Zobel said:

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He also correctly cuts to the quick of the matter by identifying that the man loved his wealth more than God. Or in other words, that he was more faithful to his money than to Jesus.

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Sounds like you are agreeing that Jesus had a problem with the young man's lack of faith in Jesus despite all the boasting of his good works in keeping the Torah.

Zobel said:

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The Lord didn't invent new teachings. He explained and corrected their understanding of Torah, which is why here he basically quotes the Torah to the man. "Keep My statutes and My judgments, for the man who does these things will live by them."

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I also agree it found in the bible that we should live/follow/obey God's commandments.

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Paul's preaching to the Jews. Romans 2:17-29 (one of many examples) to show that Paul was preaching to the Jews about the laws of the Torah and good works. The Jews were breaking the law and doing "evil works". Paul is challenging the sin of the Jews and their faith because their heart/faith is not in the right with God as evident by their evil deeds.

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Zobel said:

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The third time in this thread we'll have to talk about the context of Romans. Romans is not a theological treatise about salvation or justification. It is a letter written to a community struggling to re-integrate Jewish followers of Jesus with non-Jewish communities after they had been expelled from Rome for two years by the emperor Claudius.

The Jews were not rampantly breaking the law - that whole language is anachronistic baggage; the law was not a law-code that you didn't break. The word "law" is Torah - St Paul wrote as Jew, not as a Greek or Roman philosopher.

What St Paul was saying is that you cannot be saved by only keeping the Torah - because while keeping the Torah was enough to make you Jewish, being Jewish is not enough to save you. One who keeps the Torah outwardly - and is therefore outwardly Jewish - may not be pleasing to God. What matters is the heart. What saves you is faithfulness to the Messiah. A Jew who keeps the Torah but is not faithful to the Messiah will be cut off from the promises, disinherited. The example given is the Edomites, who were destroyed when they rebelled against Judah.

St Paul's argument is that salvation comes to Jews and non-Jews in precisely the same way: not by keeping the Torah, but by faithfulness to the Messiah. This is why St Paul anticipates the objection that by doing this he abolishes the Torah, but says no - in doing this we uphold the Torah.

The argument here is absolutely not a commentary on the necessity or not of good works for salvation. It is a commentary on the necessity of being Jewish for salvation. And everywhere you see "works of the Torah" you can write in "being Jewish" and it is perfectly coherent. The question we should ask then, is what does faithfulness to the Messiah look like if it is not merely keeping the Torah in an outward way?

St Paul tells us the answer - "it is not the hearers of the Torah who are righteous before God, but the doers of the Torah who will be made righteous". And what is the doing of the Torah? "The one who loves another has fulfilled the Torah....all commandments are summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself...therefore love is the fulfillment of the Torah." He says in another place "The entire Torah is fulfilled in a single word: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Which is why his letters are filled with advice - not theological arguments! - about how to live out a life pleasing to God and thus fulfill the Torah.

In short - if you live in faithfulness to Jesus as St Paul says, you will do the things the Torah requires. When you do the things that have the fruit of the Spirit you will inherently keep the Torah - "Against such things there is no law." And, as the Messiah inherits all of the promises of Abraham, as the firstborn He will include those faithful to Him in the promises as co-heirs...whether Jewish or not.

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I picked the Romans passage to show that keeping the Torah through good works was not enough to save you. I did not explicitly explain this clearly enough. You did a better job explaining that. The Jews (and everyone else) still had a "sin" problem on their hands that could only be made right through Jesus.

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Yikes, Messiah literally means "savior" or liberator. The number of fulfilled Messianic prophecies is over 300. The Torah most definitely promises Salvation for man. Most Jews were looking for a military king/savior. Isiah, Jesus, John the Baptist, et al. revealed that Christ is our Savior came to save us from our sin that separates us from God. I think you missed one the main points of the Torah was to announce the coming of Jesus. Most Jews missed it, but

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Zobel said:

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I'm sorry, but Messiah means anointed one, not savior.

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I think you know the purpose of the "anointed one" was to be the savior of Israel. If this is not true, then what was the purpose of the Messiah/anointed one? What was the reason for His anointing?

Zobel said:

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The Torah - the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures - does not talk about the Messiah. At least not directly. It does hint at resurrection, or at least anticipates it, but it is not explicit. This is why the Sadducees used the Torah as scripture but did not believe in the Resurrection.

The Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets are all ultimately about Christ. But the Torah itself never says that keeping the Torah gives you eternal life. Feel free to prove me wrong by quoting from Genesis through Deuteronomy. Or you can trust when St Paul says it, because that is his point - he told St Peter literally that the Torah does not make you righteous. Eternal life is not part of the blessings and curses offered in the Torah.

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I misspoke and should have said "Old Testament" instead of "Torah".
This is the only example from the Torah that I know of that talks of an everlasting relationship with God. Gen 17:7 7And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

The Banned said:

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Txducker said:

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The Banned said:

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Donut Holestein said:

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I agree, all we can do is to confess what has been given through the Word. Thought this video summarizes much of the responses given in this thread. What some have alluded to as a weakness for Luther, I see as a strength. He and other confessional Lutherans are unwilling to go beyond what is stated in Scripture. We cannot bind God by our own logic and reason.

Similarly, I cannot explain how Jesus' true body and blood is present in Communion, but I believe it in faith because I believe that is what the Bible proclaims.

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This is mind blowing. We have a theologian saying that God has created a logical fallacy. He has created a square circle. He can create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it. This is not saying the ways of God are unknowable. This is saying that He intentionally created something that does not make sense and cannot make sense.

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He did not say that it is illogical to God. He stated it illogical to us Humans (big difference). It is completely logical to God because He designed it.

1:20 - three conditions are true 1. universal grace 2. grace alone 3. hell for some.
2:54 Wolfmueller "We (human logic) can not fit the three together." Just because human knowledge does not understand God's mind, does not make it a logical fallacy for God to understand since he created it.
03:25 "Our (human) reason cannot be content with that" (referring to time 2:54). This is always a temptation and trap for man to make up things. Adam and Eve were not content with their lack of knowledge in the garden either and choose to eat the fruit of knowledge.
04:36 "There is no way to sort them out and make them make sense"

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A logical fallacy is a very specific problem. For example: we say God is all powerful. So can God make a square circle? Or can He make a rock so heavy that even He can't move it?

I'm not saying it's illogical to God or illogical to us. I'm saying it breaks to rules of logic that emanate from God to say that these three things can't possibly go together but they go together anyway. It's like running into a brick wall and just saying the brick wall doesn't exist. It does exist, and it's a really good reason to reconsider the presuppositions.

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He is not saying explicitly that they do not go together. He states that the human mind cannot reason the three things together because of our lack of understanding. The fact that he says the three things are true 1:22, means he believes they exist. The point he makes is that we/humans don't understand how they exist together. We/humans don't understand how the fully relate and interact together.

Zobel said:

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Quote:

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Something illogical just means your not smart enough to understand it

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I mean, this is manifestly untrue.

It could also just be wrong.

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I hope no offense was taken with me using the word "your" as I am not trying to say you are not smart. I should have used I or myself.
I think both could be true at the same time. Something can be true and I don't have the knowledge to understand it. I might reject something because I don't understand it, even though it's true.
I agree with you that illogical could also just be wrong. That is probably our most common experience in the daily world.

The Banned said:

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This is deep and real. I don't want to do it a disservice by trying to respond tonight.

ETA: I think what you typed is contradictory to Lutheran doctrine. Personally I'm more than ok with that. I think you're right. I'll just have to expound upon it when I have more energy

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I am ok with being contradictory to Lutheran doctrine. I am Christian first and follow scripture before doctrine.
I am sincerely thankful for you and others sharing tonight. I have learned a lot and this post has made me search and struggle my inner beliefs. I also learned some big words tonight. Some of y'all are very intellectual .

Txducker said:

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The Banned said:

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Txducker said:

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The Banned said:

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Donut Holestein said:

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I agree, all we can do is to confess what has been given through the Word. Thought this video summarizes much of the responses given in this thread. What some have alluded to as a weakness for Luther, I see as a strength. He and other confessional Lutherans are unwilling to go beyond what is stated in Scripture. We cannot bind God by our own logic and reason.

Similarly, I cannot explain how Jesus' true body and blood is present in Communion, but I believe it in faith because I believe that is what the Bible proclaims.

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This is mind blowing. We have a theologian saying that God has created a logical fallacy. He has created a square circle. He can create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it. This is not saying the ways of God are unknowable. This is saying that He intentionally created something that does not make sense and cannot make sense.

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He did not say that it is illogical to God. He stated it illogical to us Humans (big difference). It is completely logical to God because He designed it.

1:20 - three conditions are true 1. universal grace 2. grace alone 3. hell for some.
2:54 Wolfmueller "We (human logic) can not fit the three together." Just because human knowledge does not understand God's mind, does not make it a logical fallacy for God to understand since he created it.
03:25 "Our (human) reason cannot be content with that" (referring to time 2:54). This is always a temptation and trap for man to make up things. Adam and Eve were not content with their lack of knowledge in the garden either and choose to eat the fruit of knowledge.
04:36 "There is no way to sort them out and make them make sense"

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A logical fallacy is a very specific problem. For example: we say God is all powerful. So can God make a square circle? Or can He make a rock so heavy that even He can't move it?

I'm not saying it's illogical to God or illogical to us. I'm saying it breaks to rules of logic that emanate from God to say that these three things can't possibly go together but they go together anyway. It's like running into a brick wall and just saying the brick wall doesn't exist. It does exist, and it's a really good reason to reconsider the presuppositions.

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He is not saying explicitly that they do not go together. He states that the human mind cannot reason the three things together because of our lack of understanding. The fact that he says the three things are true 1:22, means he believes they exist. The point he makes is that we/humans don't understand how they exist together. We/humans don't understand how the fully relate and interact together.

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No. He states clearly that they contradict. He circles 3 sets of two but zero sets of three precisely because the three cannot coexist. he clearly states the 3 don't fit together but somehow they are true because: "well… we believe them!" He even says there is no way to make them make sense. That's at 4:30.

It's one thing to say it makes sense to God and not us. I'm ok with that. But to say that it is logically incongruent and God makes sense of it anyway makes God the creator of the illogical.

If you're willing, please interact with the "logical fallacies" commonly given by atheists that I listed. If you can work through those, i think you and I will be much closer some sort of agreement.