Is Faith Alone & Free Will Incompatible? Responding to a Catholic Critic
Some comments are given below in Response to Leighton Flowers statements about justification by faith alone and Catholic doctrine on salvation. The comments my be found on Leighton's youtube channel as of 13 May 2018, unless those comments have been removed. (The comments were removed as of 14 May, 2018).
Dr Leighton Flowers (LF) believes there is a problem when he says - Jesus merited salvation, or does your faith and your works merit it?
Response - LF thinks Jesus merited salvation and men do not merit salvation. When in fact Jesus merits grace through a sacrifice on the cross and man merits justification via the grace merited by Christ applied into man’s soul, intellect and will to cause man to freely act. Grace acts with human nature and human nature is free. Any free act is meritorious, therefore man’s salvation is always meritorious when freely done. LF's problem is to not see that both Jesus and man both act to merit in diverse manners.
LF - we are saved by faith alone that is not alone. We are not saved by works, or good deeds.
Response - James 2:24 says the opposite - You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. Works make a man righteous and not faith alone.
LF - we are saved by faith alone that is not alone. We are not saved by works, or good deeds.
Response - James 2:24 says the opposite - You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. Works make a man righteous and not faith alone.
The reformed distinction of faith alone accompanied by good deeds is only an invention promoted via a poor understanding of St Paul and James.
LF - How many good works does it take to merit your salvation?
Answer - only one initial work, the sacrament of baptism. For the sacraments are the instrumental cause of Christian grace as taught in the Council of Trent. There is no problem with the Catholic understanding of salvation. Quite the opposite. For Protestantism denies the instrumental causation of the sacraments, so faith can only ever be measured by good works. Therefore, how many good works are needed for a Protestant to know he has saving faith? One? 1 million?
The Protestant never knows for sure and therefore never has any more assurance than the value of his good works. And of course, according to Isaiah, all of Protestant good works are filthy rags anyway, so the Protestant should probably accept that all works (except faith alone?) are evil in God's eyes. No matter how many deeds done, God sees all as filthy works. There is no assurance within Protestantism other than perhaps the assurance that the exegetical carousel will never stop.
LF - How many good works does it take to merit your salvation?
Answer - only one initial work, the sacrament of baptism. For the sacraments are the instrumental cause of Christian grace as taught in the Council of Trent. There is no problem with the Catholic understanding of salvation. Quite the opposite. For Protestantism denies the instrumental causation of the sacraments, so faith can only ever be measured by good works. Therefore, how many good works are needed for a Protestant to know he has saving faith? One? 1 million?
The Protestant never knows for sure and therefore never has any more assurance than the value of his good works. And of course, according to Isaiah, all of Protestant good works are filthy rags anyway, so the Protestant should probably accept that all works (except faith alone?) are evil in God's eyes. No matter how many deeds done, God sees all as filthy works. There is no assurance within Protestantism other than perhaps the assurance that the exegetical carousel will never stop.
LF - If faith merits salvation then Christ didn't need to die.
Response - LF statement is a non sequitur. Faith is a meritorious act of man, for grace is given by God to move man to freely give ascent to the divine truths revealed. Grace is also given by God for every supernatural human act such as supernatural hope, love, prudence, justice, temperance and so on. It is the nature of man as a free agent who acts to believe and by freely believing merits justification. For any free act merits either reward or guilt as from the nature of freedom which infers imputation to the man who acts freely. LF thinks St Paul excludes works from salvation, when in fact St Paul only excludes works of the unregenerate man and covenant works of the OT, such as all of the laws of the Mosaic covenant which are no longer required within the Christian covenant.
LF probably thinks faith is an instrument of justification as the reformers taught, when in fact faith is not an instrument but rather, both an act and a habit. The reformed error concerning 1) the nature of faith, and 2) St Paul's intention behind the discussion on works leads LF to conclude man is justified by faith alone.
Faith alone theology is easily debunked by noting the phrase "faith alone" only occurs once in James 2, where justification by faith alone is denied. Furthermore, in heaven there is no faith, but all in heaven are justified. Therefore, faith alone does not justify the elect in heaven, so faith alone does not justify the Christian on earth. LF needs faith alone on Earth, but somehow excludes faith alone in heaven.
Faith alone theology is easily debunked by noting the phrase "faith alone" only occurs once in James 2, where justification by faith alone is denied. Furthermore, in heaven there is no faith, but all in heaven are justified. Therefore, faith alone does not justify the elect in heaven, so faith alone does not justify the Christian on earth. LF needs faith alone on Earth, but somehow excludes faith alone in heaven.
Another point - the Reformed five solas are 1) all mutually exclusive statements and therefore logically fallacious. To deny the mutual exclusion is to remove the meaning of alone. 2) Not biblical. Nowhere is salvation stated to be by grace alone, and/or faith alone, by Christ alone. 3) Unhistorical - the solas are a Reformed invention.
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LF makes a necessary/sufficient distinction when he comments upon several biblical passages that speak of salvation. He makes the distinction based on the doctrine of faith alone.
Response - The necessary/sufficient condition distinction is another LF error created by the false gospel of faith alone, which is not found in the bible. There are other ways to combine the passages that speak of faith as necessary for salvation and other passages that speak of faith, repentance, and baptism, and others that speak of good works. The necessary/sufficient condition distinction is only a distinction required of faith alone theology. The Faith alone is a reformed invention that mutilates St Pauls Gospel in Romans and James 2. Both passages are falsely understood. Baptism saves because faith alone does not save. Period. See James 2:24 for details.
Because the reformers misunderstood St Paul's gospel, that misunderstanding flows over into James and the gospels. Faith alone is not in Romans or Galatians. Faith alone does not exist in any passage in the bible. Faith alone is only found in the minds of Protestants who falsely believe faith alone is in the text. They then are forced to eisegete all passages in accord with one false doctrine. This one false doctrine then brings about a multitude of problems in relation to the sacraments, free will, church history, ecclesiology etc. When faith alone is removed many of the Reformed/Calvinist/Protestant distinctions imported into the scriptural texts are redundant.
Furthermore, faith alone is tied into the theory of penal substitution, with its errors concerning the Father imputing Christ with the sins of men, and the Father imputing Christ's righteousness to Christians by faith alone. Penal substitution has many problems and is yet another invention of the Reformers.
Faith alone - false
Faith as an instrument - false
Works not required to merit salvation - false
Christ imputed with the sins of men - false.
Christians imputed with Christ's righteousness by faith alone - false.
Catholics merit salvation apart from Christ's merits - false.
Catholics merit salvation as an unknown number of works - false.
LF gets most of the show wrong.
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