A lot of times I have struggled with discussions amongst evangelicals where a certain type of evangelical vocabulary is equated with Christian faith or Christian orthodoxy. For example, the phrase "accept Christ as your Lord and Savior" isn't in the Bible at all, and while Scripture mentions being born again about three times, it never hyphenates the phrase "born-again" with Christian.
What happens is that people who don't disagree sound as though they do, but also people can appear to agree with one another because both can use evangelical terminology, while not agreeing with one another at all.
9 comments:
Where do you stand on the Faith vs Works debate? Do you believe in Faith alone, or Works & Faith, or what?
Just wondering what your take is on the issue.
Well, clearly you can't pile up enough merit to be good enough to where God will save you. So you have to throw yourself on God's mercy. But, of course, once you do that, if you really did it, deeds evidencing that would flow naturally from you. Pretty pedestrian stuff here: I suspect I don't have much of anything original to say on the matter.
"So you have to throw yourself on God's mercy. But, of course, once you do that, if you really did it, deeds evidencing that would flow naturally from you."
I haven't seen this verse/phrase in the Bible either...
I wasn't looking for anything like original on the matter. I just wondered what your thoughts were on it.
I disagree about it being pedestrian, though. Obviously the faith/works question is not as easily answered and agreed upon as you just made it out to be. I do, however, agree with your take on the matter.
It's funny that the faith/works debate presupposed laziness.
Romans 10:9 says, "That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
What do you mean by disagree? They seem to disagree but don't .. over what?
"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter." Matthew 7:21
I meant I disagree, because I've met numerous intelligent Christians who are at odds about whether Faith alone saves, or whether it is Faith or works that save. Most of the Faith & Works Christians quote the book of James to make their point.
What do you mean by "It's funny that the faith/works debate presupposed laziness." I don't understand what you're trying to say. Could you explain?
Well, the question is whether works are required for a person to be saved. But if everyone was doing good works anyways, why would anyone care? It seems in asking the question there is an implication that someone isn't working who wants to know if they need to. If everyone were doing good works anyway, why even ask the question?
If the question didn't presuppose laziness, then that would mean that people's actions and lives in the real world aren't affected by the answer to this question. In that case, it would be entirely a textual debate over linguistic meanings, etc. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Ah, OK. Thank you for clearing that up. I won't be posting anything else after this (I don't want to fill up Victor's blog with too many off-subject talks), but I will say that I don't think the matter is (in all cases, anyway) as simple as some people being lazy. I happen to know a few Christians (all of whom are more virtuous than I am) who sincerely argue this issue amongst themselves. And it's not (I think) because some people are lazy (at least not always) and want to skip out on doing good works if they don't have to, but because some Christians (I've known a few) sincerely believe that because they are saved and all people are sinners, they don't have to bother about "being good" so long as they believe that Jesus died for their sins.
If you have more to say on the matter, feel free to post a comment on my blog.
Interesting post, with Babinksy-esque garden path in the comments.
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