What is Sola Fide? Are we saved by our works?

[Isaac]

Are good works simply byproduct of faith? How can we possibly claim to believe in salvation by faith-alone if we affirm that even faith, without works is dead? How can we uphold the Sacrament of Baptism, Absolution, Eucharist as the means in which God distributes his grace and still claim to adhere to Sola Fide?

How can some Christians suppose that they can earn salvation through works? And how can they claim that they will lose God's grace because of sin, even though it is said in Psalm 14, Romans 3:10 that nobody is righteous?

 

[Skitarii]

Faith alone = gnosticism

Think hard about it, a pious man doesn't commit murder daily, his piety is manifest in his deeds. Failure to uphold the commandments is murder committed against one's soul

 

[Isaac]

Faith alone = gnosticism

Think hard about it, a pious man doesn't commit murder daily, his piety is manifest in his deeds. Failure to uphold the commandments is murder committed against one's soul

Yes, I am not suggesting that saved individuals fail to uphold the law; that completely contradicts James and Paul. However, I do suggest that our works are irrelevant to salvation. For we cannot ever hope to earn God's grace, and it's wrong to suggest that we gain or lose salvation because of works.

 

[Skitarii]

For we cannot ever hope to earn God's grace

we gain or lose salvation because of works.

It's a shame your tradition doesn't have a history of hesychasm or sacramentology, because these two are not mutually exclusive

 

[Anon88]

This is just one of the many issues with the false Christian faith. Join the real church of Allah and his greatest prophet Muhammad in the faith of Islam. The future of mankind is Islamic anyways so why not get a head start and join early?

 

[Isaac]

It's a shame your tradition doesn't have a history of hesychasm or sacramentology, because these two are not mutually exclusive

View attachment 3385855

My tradition upholds the Sacraments of the Eucharist, of Baptism and of Absolution. But, I do not know what you refer to by Hesychasm.

As I understand; the teaching of justification by works is completely unbiblical. And I cannot defy biblical truths in favor of apocrypha. If I am wrong, please prove me wrong by the Word of God. I will recant, but not because of Sacred Tradition or Popes or archbishops and councils.

 

[Skitarii]

not because of Sacred Tradition or Popes or archbishops and councils.

Those archbishops were apostles and the councils were their discourses, holy tradition is what is passed down from the fathers to successive generations, the bible did not spring into existence on its own. If the curators of scripture are to be trusted, then their traditions are sacred as well. Extrabiblical or not, you are recieving wisdom from the same spoon.

The first mention of hesychasm occurs at the beginning. Adam and Eve were at one with God in the garden; through disobedience, they fell from God, but through labor, they would lay the first rung of hesychastic tradition. When Abel offered his sacrifice of animal fat to God, he would lay the second rung. Through Moses, the tradition of circumcision was laid, which would later be fulfilled as the sacraments of baptism and chrismation. Through mosaic law, and from the example of the prophets, the traditions of fasting and meditation would be passed down to the Church, having been fulfilled by Christ in the desert, as well as when he drove the demon from the young boy in the Gospel of St. Mark, and continually practiced by the apostles and their successors. Hesychasm is oneness with God, and one cannot find atonement without hesychastic practice.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

What's the point of believing in something if it doesn't show in how you act and what you do?

 

[AMHOLIO]

Ah, an age old can of worms condensed into a post. Bear with me, I'm agnostic, but know enough about Christianity and respect it to try and answer.


Are good works simply byproduct of faith?

Good works do not seem to be such. Several species in the animal kingdom will do selfless acts like care for disabled (crows) and help fellow animals even if they put themselves at risk (a chimp rescued a drowning chimp out of selflessness). While we can't read their minds and see if they have faith or connection to God, we can at least see them as good with or without it. Another is men and women who do good even if they lost faith or never knew it in the first place. Love, compassion, and empathy run deep within humans - God gave us said gift even without faith as he loves even the nonbelievers, and hopes our compassion drives us to the community of the church.

How can we possibly claim to believe in salvation by faith-alone if we affirm that even faith, without works is dead? How can we uphold the Sacrament of Baptism, Absolution, Eucharist as the means in which God distributes his grace and still claim to adhere to Sola Fide?

You know you struck a great question when entire schisms happen within Christianity over it. I'm going to take this out of the theology realm and into the origins of religion area.

So, when you start a religion, you're basically implementing a set of laws and guidelines for people to follow. It's a great way to get unruly or selfish people (attention whores who do good deeds for the wrong reasons are still being lawful) to do good for a community. However, it can be read as a currency to get into heaven, which isn't what it is meant to do: donating to charity and volunteering does not grant one the right to fuck your neighbor's wife even if you think you redeemed enough goodboy points to do so. Some abused it like a couponing system, so it's logical that another branch would rebel against it.

Granting people salvation based on faith alone is a better way to get people to actually commit themselves to the church and take that shit seriously. It places more empahsis on learning church practices and the theological thought process. It gives more leniency towards those who sinned and believed themselves irredeemable: you may stray from the path but you can always come back. It's comfort and forgiveness.

...it also is a great way to get people to come to your church. Don't feel like doing shit? Just have faith and you're good! It is slightly more accepting and lazier than the previous method. It too can be abused: what is the point of following a teaching if I am forgiven for whatever I do?

Ultimately, I think it comes down to how you view it. I like option A better, as God prefers committed followers, even if they stray from the path. He forgives, and wants people to try again by being good.


And how can they claim that they will lose God's grace because of sin, even though it is said in Psalm 14, Romans 3:10 that nobody is righteous?

Personal guilt is a bitch. So is grudges and hatred for others who commit things like senseless murder. We may have the capacity for love, but we also have the capacity for violence and hatred too.

It can be used by the church to manipulate people as well: ya dammend if you do or don't do this. What a churchman says and what the Bible or your gut say are different things.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

However, I do suggest that our works are irrelevant to salvation. For we cannot ever hope to earn God's grace

I'm 98% sure at this point that the Protestant Reformation was the product of OCD-riddled autists.

Luther literally had what we would call OCD, by all relevant accounts. Calvin isn't much better, since he orders his theology around a future he can't know. Arminius goes through all kinds of effort to contradict Calvin instead of just pointing out how insipid it is to suggest that there's worth in contemplating like he does a future we're simultaneously bound by, ignorant of, and held responsible for. Luther and Zwingli's debate on the Eucharist-- which devolves into "read the Bible, dummy"-- is the product of mutual mind-blindness. All of them were devotees of Augustine, whose particular perspectives weren't ever popular outside the Roman Church.

And every time a Reformed or Lutheran talks about faith and works, they keep erecting this strawman of someone claiming that we can "earn God's grace". Nobody claims that. It's nobody's dogma. Nobody's established church teaching. Instead, it's some weird default case they keep snapping to, presumably because the paradigm in which either theology exists and justifies itself is in fact that narrow and blind.

As I understand; the teaching of justification by works is completely unbiblical. And I cannot defy biblical truths in favor of apocrypha.

"Biblical truths" you'll probably claim you came to by "just reading the Bible and praying", but are evidently inherited from a particular established tradition. As is your sense of Scriptural canon, your sense of the purpose of said canon, the books and authorial attributions thereof-- why do you think there are so many other Christian traditions with mutually incompatible theologies on major matters (e.g. the sacraments)?

-snip-

Should probably name the rungs (katharsis, theoria, theosis), but before that talk about the more general concept of "theosis", since Peter very directly talks about it:

Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature.

 

[Skitarii]

Should probably name the rungs (katharsis, theoria, theosis), but before that talk about the more general concept of "theosis", since Peter very directly talks about it:

He doesn't understand the purpose of the sacraments, he's not ready yet for theosis. I'm easing him in with St. Cyril, no need to blast him with the philokalia just yet

 

[David Brown]

Arguing over jewish fairy tales for 2000 years

 

[Certified_Autist]

All of them were devotees of Augustine, whose particular perspectives weren't ever popular outside the Roman Church.

Does Augustine being unpopular outside a specific group mean he is wrong? Asking honestly because I have no opinion of Augustine beyond the standard Catholic and mainline Protestant references to his works.

And every time a Reformed or Lutheran talks about faith and works, they keep erecting this strawman of someone claiming that we can "earn God's grace". Nobody claims that. It's nobody's dogma. Nobody's established church teaching. Instead, it's some weird default case they keep snapping to, presumably because the paradigm in which either theology exists and justifies itself is in fact that narrow and blind.

I am 99% sure that particular line of reasoning is not a strawman but was (and is) a response to the Catholic practice of indulgences. People would perform certain prayers, visit certain holy places, or sometimes outright pay money to the church, in exchange for various spiritual benefits like remission of sins or sometimes a promise of salvation. Indulgences were the subject of Martin Luther's 95 Theses and one of the main triggers of the Reformation.

Indulgences are still offered by the Catholic Church in modern times but money is no longer involved (at least not that I know of). Pope Francis gave one for attending the 2019 March For Life, for example.

https://genlifestl365.com/pope-francis-offers-a-plenary-indulgence/

"Biblical truths" you'll probably claim you came to by "just reading the Bible and praying", but are evidently inherited from a particular established tradition. As is your sense of Scriptural canon, your sense of the purpose of said canon, the books and authorial attributions thereof-- why do you think there are so many other Christian traditions with mutually incompatible theologies on major matters (e.g. the sacraments)?

Good point- one point I agree with critics of Protestantism on, is that they often are badly educated such that they don't even know the origins of their beliefs or why their particular church came to believe certain things, they just start from the perspective that its automatically valid. (although the same argument might apply to some Catholics). And Protestants often get so hung up on the Bible that they ignore context outside the Bible, or why certain books were included/excluded, or even ignore parts of the Bible that say to ignore other parts of the Bible. E.g. the parts where the Apostles declare the Old Testament law unneccesary.

 

[Santa Fe Swag]

Don't ask me. I'm in Indonesia and converting to Islam. Salam Alaikam brother.

 

[Shek$il]

KRISISKANG niggers are a blight on the faith and embarrassingly love to tout their faith in public forums whenever possible. I do not see these SPED assholes at even one Sunday Mass, let alone Easter. All I ever see at Mass is a bunch of 70 year olds. I don't believe a single one of these online streamer/youtuber/channer pieces of shit when they start bleating about God.

It is just me, and a bunch of old people hacking and wheezing. Also there's one Vietnamese family, they get credit too.

 

[Anon88]

Don't ask me. I'm in Indonesia and converting to Islam. Salam Alaikam brother.

Welcome brother, Allah smiles down from heaven as another one of his children convert to the true faith. Together we can raise up an army and call a Jihad to take back the Q&A board.

 

[No. 7 cat]

KRISISKANG niggers are a blight on the faith and embarrassingly love to tout their faith in public forums whenever possible. I do not see these SPED assholes at even one Sunday Mass, let alone Easter. All I ever see at Mass is a bunch of 70 year olds. I don't believe a single one of these online streamer/youtuber/channer pieces of shit when they start bleating about God.

It is just me, and a bunch of old people hacking and wheezing. Also there's one Vietnamese family, they get credit too.

A traditional chapel (perhaps diocesan TLM, dunno) will have many young people, young parents and their children too, plus old folk too. The Novus Ordo is boomers, one or two white young outliers (and often there just to earn appearance credits for a church wedding in some months), and maybe some Indians or Asians or Afro-Caribbeans as the only actual young families.

Anyone who thinks that anyone thinks salvation is earned is poorly formed, and as others have said above, only get their knowledge from ill trained Prot ministers. Ill educated people, like so many of them, make up these bad strawmen.

There was an ancient heresy of Pelagianism which explicitly rejected the idea of original sin, that people were born good, unaffected by the sin of Adam. God gifted them the ability to do good, but afterwards their spiritual development was their own efforts, not a result of God's grace. It could be called 'free will.' Pelagius and his follower Caelestius had moved from Britain and spread their heresy as they travelled through the Roman Empire. St Jerome (translator of the Vulgate OT from Hebrew, NT from koine Greek and reviser of the Vetus Itala where that was serviceable, and the originator of the ordering of the books of the New Testament) wrote against them in a fairly caustic way, as he did of anyone who disagreed with him (and usually they deserved his mockery as few had his Greek, Latin and Hebrew and their theories were usually born of bad translation, which prevailed before Jerome for any who lacked koine Greek, the language of the New Testament). It should be emphasised that St Augustine espoused nothing more or less the Teachings of the Church. Unfortunately Catholic Augustinians were later calumnated as 'Jansenists' by the degenerate Louis XVI who seethed at how Blaise Pascal and the nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs regularly humiliated his soft Jesuit confessors with pamphlets.

 

[Shek$il]

A traditional chapel (perhaps diocesan TLM, dunno) will have many young people, young parents and their children too, plus old folk too. The Novus Ordo is boomers, one or two white young outliers (and often there just to earn appearance credits for a church wedding in some months), and maybe some Indians or Asians or Afro-Caribbeans as the only actual young families.

The traditional chapel crowd has historically been 50-90 year olds and Mexicans, which is fine but if you're telling me I'm going to find the missing E-Crusaders at the communion/altar rail then that's gonna be dead in the water on arrival.

My point is the number of people claiming they're these devout followers of God aren't at any mass I've been to. And I've been to plenty of them.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

Does Augustine being unpopular outside a specific group mean he is wrong?

There's a great amount of consideration to unpack here, but suffice to say: there's an issue with relying so wholly on the teachings of one venerable teacher, within an entire community of venerable teachers-- especially when said venerable teacher held himself subservient to and cooperative with that community (and its history) which largely did not strongly hold some of his views and perspectives.

Augustine wasn't an unmoored hermit. He was a bishop of the Roman Church, charged with guarding the apostolic deposit of faith, and he's venerated by Catholics and Orthodox alike-- not just for his teaching acumen, but for the life he led. And yet he can be wrong, and that inaccuracy (substantial or otherwise) is determined in the context in which he spoke-- along with the words of other venerated teachers and the material evidence of church practice in which he participated.

I am 99% sure that particular line of reasoning is not a strawman but was (and is) a response to the Catholic practice of indulgences.[...]

I'm about as sure that's it's a strawman because it's not specifically aimed at the Catholic Church in the first place and doesn't point out the practice of indulgences.

It should be emphasised that St Augustine espoused nothing more or less the Teachings of the Church.

It would be more proper to say that what he espoused was compatible with church teaching, seeing as he was never brought to task about it. But the Eastern churches have never had the hamartiology that St. Augustine espoused (particularly, he believed it was semen that made Adam's sin heritable, which I'd like to believe is compatible with the concept of DNA if nothing else).

The results of this aren't insignificant, either-- both the Catholics and Orthodox believe that Mary was sinless. However, while the Eastern Christians as a whole would maintain anything from "she was sinless" to "she didn't intentionally commit any sin", the Roman Church eventually dogmatized the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to formally explain Mary's sinlessness given the issue of inherited sin guilt-- something the Orthodox Church never had to address given that they don't believe man inherits sin guilt from Adam in the first place (that isn't to say that man doesn't inherit a broken human nature from Adam, but that they don't inherit the guilt of Adam's specific sin, and certainly not because that guilt is inscribed in a man's chromosomes).