I suppose the writer meant faith and works, rather than grace and works?
c matt | 06.30.04 - 4:55 pm | #

As another Prod, I thought Mark's comments about how justification by faith alone is merely a verbal tics that has no influence on Prod spirituality were rather lame. Modern day Catholics can't seem to decide whether justification by faith alone is a pernicious heresy or pretty much what the magisterium taught all along.

But then considering Mark's background I figure, there's probably no argument on the topic he hasn't heard and rejected already. If you go to a site called "Jewish and Enjoying It" by a former Christian, it's pretty pointless to get peeved when he says the incarnation makes no sense. Ditto for justification by faith alone here.
Chris Atwood | 06.30.04 - 5:26 pm | #

My 2 cents: I think "justification by bereft, naked, impoverished RELIANCE" better describes the essence of the Protestant insight, than does the phrase "justification by faith".
Larry | 06.30.04 - 6:12 pm | #

It's also helpful to know what kind of sola fide Prot is speaking. What Lutherans mean by it is something quite different from what hard "irresitable grace" Calvinists mean. There's no reliance for Calvinists.
Dennis | 06.30.04 - 6:39 pm | #

Larry,

I think you are right on.

For the last 500 years it seems Catholics think Prots are just trying to be able to sin all they want and go to heaven.

What the real Evangelical is trying so hard to protect is the truth that we must come to God with empty hands. We must ultimately ask for His mercy, not His justice, for we have nothing of our own to offer.
Jack Grimes | 06.30.04 - 8:25 pm | #

If you are coming to God with faith, your hands aren't empty.

Both your faith and your works are the fruit of God's grace.
Mary | 06.30.04 - 9:31 pm | #

As an Evangelical-turned-Catholic, I must say that in my whole life I never knew a committed Evangelical who felt that "faith alone" or even "once saved always saved" gave him license to sin. A problem I did encounter among Evangelicals is that in their unrelenting focus on justification, they often forget that grace takes other forms, as well, including the grace that leads to an initial declaration of faith. The practical result is that many Evangelicals act as if the faith they exercised in once "receiving" Christ is in effect something of their own that they offered God. As such, whether they admit it or not, they are staking their salvation on a work, the act of faith.
Mark Gordon | 06.30.04 - 11:03 pm | #

This is probably the crux (NPI) of the dispute. We all agree with sola gratia. Prots believe this necessarily entails sola fide, so far as getting to the stage where you are irrevocably saved. Catholics believe that good works, if done by God working in and through you, both (1) contradicts sola fide (something Prots would agree with) but (2) does not contradict sola gratia (which Prots of course dispute, based on St Paul's words). And of course Catholics also believe one is not irrevocably saved until after death.
Tom R | 07.01.04 - 7:03 pm | #

Tom,

In your understanding of sola fide, when is one irrevocably saved? After one moment of faith? What is entailed by that act of faith?
Jack Grimes | Homepage | 07.01.04 - 10:31 pm | #