In this discussion on justification by faith, we have talked a lot about faith, but not a lot about justification. In the Bible, the word translated as justification comes from the Greek word dikaioó (δικαιόω): I make righteous defend the cause of plead for the righteousness (innocence) of acquit justify; hence: …
Faith and Works Are we saved by faith alone? Are there other prerequisites? Many verses explicitly state that salvation requires belief—faith. Some explicitly state that works do not save. Some are directly out of the mouth of Jesus. Let’s imagine that faith is required, but not sufficient, for salvation. Then, every scripture that …
After we defined what faith was (and wasn’t) in Part 2, we then openly wondered about the interplay between living faith and bad (or no) works. Does the presence of bad works—disobedience—indicate that one did not have faith or salvation? Next, we noted that, while Jesus in the second gospel …
In Part 1, we discussed how faith, belief, works, obedience, justification, and salvation are all dependent on love. The Greatest Commandment is to love God. Without a person first loving God, those other things are nothing. Love has primacy. It is only through love that our incorporeal sacrifices of our …
The New Sacrifice In the midst of my series on the Eucharist, I discussed the prophecy of Malachi and concluded that what God wanted most was followers who love him: Cyril had identified the incense and pure sacrifice spoken of by Malachi as the blessings, praise, and glory that the church—congregation—offers to …
The series on faith is a collection of separated, but related, essays. Here is the index: Prelude #1: The Eucharist Prelude #2: The Living Voice Prelude #3: Changing Language Part 1: The Primacy of Love Part 2: What is Faith? What are works? Part 3: Faith and Works (Belief/Obedience; Unbelief/Disobedience) …
This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism. See this index. In “Living Voice,” I discussed the official Roman Catholic position on scripture and teased the upcoming series on justification by faith. But, before we delve into the new series, I want to continue setting up the background for …
This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism. See this index. In my series on the Eucharist, I discussed a few Roman Catholic apologists: FishEaters, Church Fathers, and Joshua Charles. One of the issues I highlighted was what is known as “quote mining,” where a quote is taken out-of-context or …
Summary The chart above summarizes what we’ve found throughout this series. First, the ancient liturgy… Dismissal Eucharist Oblation Epiclesis Lord’s Supper …is strongly attested to. Sixteen out of seventeen writers that we examined in the first 300 years affirmatively assert an ancient, non-Roman liturgy. They don’t always discuss all aspects …
Catechism of the Catholic Church One of the big problems with Roman Catholics is that they are often mistaken about what their own church teaches. Though the Magisterium and the infallible pope are supposed to provide all of the correct beliefs, Roman Catholics are largely left to their personal efforts …