Thanks for the replies! This has given me much food for thought… I have so many more questions:
Pilgrim, thanks for the references; I’m in the process of reading them. What do you mean by co-mingling faith/trust? To use one example, a Catholic catechism says, “Taken up to heaven [Mary] did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation.” Don’t all Catholics therefore by definition trust in something other than Christ ALONE, e.g. Mary? Please also see below.
via_dolorosa: I don’t mean to attack by answering in the following way. But many serious questions come to mind, the first of which is this:
I have not been baptised, and I believe the doctrine of justification by faith alone. I trust in Christ alone for my whole salvation, and have experienced the sin-shattering power of God in my life. Am I anathema, unregenerate, and on my way to hell?
As a Catholic converted from evangelical Christianity, I've found it to be a reliable fact that nobody who has left the Catholic Church truly ever understood what the Church teaches to begin with and I have yet to be proven wrong on this.
I know of a man (
http://www.bereanbeacon.org/) who was a priest for 30 years, and attending Catholic seminary (if I am using the correct terminology), and yet opposes Catholicism so strongly that he believes Catholics must be evangelised.
It's in the patient continuance that we find the hope of salvation
Certainly only those who persevere to the end will be saved. But
(1) Doesn't Scripture point to a definite transition: darkness to light, death to life, power of Satan to power of God?
(2)To put our hope in our perserverance – is that not trusting in works? God desires us to have the “full assurance of hope until the end”, to say, “I KNOW Him whom I have believed, and am persuaded that HE is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day" 2 Timothy 1:12. It is a hope that is anchored behind the curtain, not in himself that allowed him to say this...
The point of controversy is that while the grace of God cannot be merited, salvation cannot be attained apart from good works. These juxtaposed realities, both well established by Scripture, paint a picture of salvation that is vouchsafed by the finished work of Christ and yet pursued by our own works. In Matthew 25:31-46, we see an inseparable correlation between works and salvation.
Is the work of Christ a whole bridge or half a bridge? If we must finish the bridge by works, is not grace no longer grace? If salvation (yes, not merited by us) is obtained by works, then surely it is "through the law," and "if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose"(Gal 2:21). Works are certainly the fruit of faith, but Paul makes a penetrating distinction between the two:
Gal 3:1-5, “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?”
Perhaps I am misinterpreting the passage, but the Galatians sought the Spirit, and all the effects of His grace by means of works or physical rites of the law, in the same way that sacraments are administered in the RCC Ex opera operato, “from the WORK, worked”, as a means to obtain grace.
I think the problem is threefold:
1)
It is a corrupt mixture: reverting to the flesh; it is a different gospel (thus my question, can a Catholic be saved?). In Gal 3, God affirms that it is either or. Through “works of the law
OR hearing with faith.” There is no combination of the two. Justification is by the latter, and thereby it is not by the former. Is not the claim that sacraments are only the means, not the cause, of grace, a facade giving licence to revert to the flesh? Is it not a convenient ploy to enable the church to self-regulate the dispensation of “grace,” which God alone sovereignly dispenses at His own will and in His own timing? Is not the presence of strange physical paraphernalia pervading Roman Catholic worship seeking to fill the absence of the real presence of the Holy Spirit? I know many a blasphemous, filthy mouthed, perverse, Catholic classmate, who knows nothing of the grace of God, yet has been baptised, received communion, blessings from the priest, and has been “confirmed”. Likewise, how many baptised infants grow up destitute of the grace of God!
Can a Catholics faith rest ONLY on Christ, when all these works must of necessity be performed to first obtain the grace? Doesn’t this make grace void, and empty the work of Christ of it’s intrinsic efficacy? Allow me to expand...
2)
It undermines the New Covenant. Christ not only bought, but “SECURED an eternal redemption” and then became the “mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance...” (Heb 9:15). He started, continues and completes the whole work. It is absolutely certain that all for whom Christ died must be saved, or He died and intercedes in vain. So to make the dispensation of God’s grace in salvation dependant on the outward performance of works to obtain grace is to make the securing of the redemption dependant on WORKS, not Christ's mediation. Now is the bridge complete? Isn't it relying on works of the law? (Gal 3:10) If salvation is then secured to the believer when he “hears my word and believes him who sent me”, “he does
not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Matthew 25:31-46 must then be a different sort of judgement: confirming what has happened by the evidence that was produced in the life of the saint. It is a vindication of God’s previous pronouncement, i.e. works testify to true faith, as James makes clear.
2)
It destroys the autonomous sovereign and self-regulating rule of the Holy Spirit of Christ in giving grace. Take for example baptism. The RCC holds that “Baptism…by which men and women are freed from their sins, are reborn as children of God…is validly conferred only by washing with true water together with the required form of words.” Yet Scripture describes the new birth as happening due to to the free sovereign agency of the Holy Spirit: “the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
This is why we are told in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 "Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle."
You will admit that this statement was made by an
apostle to the Thessalonians. God never promised the subsequent infallible transmission of truth through the centuries. How then can Scripture (which is always infallible) stand on equal ground with tradition?
