[GCFL-discuss] salvation by...

[gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net]

If we are going to discuss salvation, it would be good to remember that
our discussions include observant Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics,
Protestants, and people with no church at all. Each of these leads to
different views of salvation, and no doubt within each there are
differences also. greenBubble cannot be expected to believe that
salvation is through Jesus alone, much less through faith alone. And
Jesus himself backs this up in some parts of the Gospels.

As a Christian, along with my faith in Jesus as the Messiah, I am moved
by the inscription "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one"
which appears on some modern synagogues. I believe God had a definite
purpose in keeping some millions of humans faithful to the law of Moses
the past 2000 years.

It is rare in the history of the church for a theological dispute to
begin with, what does the Scripture tell us. More often, it begins with,
here is my point, and here is the Scripture to back it up.

The Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone was developed by
Martin Luther in response to a practice of the Roman Catholic Church,
raising funds to build St. Peter's Basilica by selling "indulgences." The
idea was, the saints have banked a great deal of excess virtue in the
church, and you can get some of it to save your grandmother from
purgatory, (go directly to heaven) by giving money to the church. The
evils of that perspective, as well as the superstition, are obvious, and
the post-Counter-Reformation Roman Catholic Church does not uphold the
practice. Luther said, you cannot buy salvation. He carried it further,
to say you cannot earn it, you cannot deserve it, you can obtain it only
by faith.

I don't have at my fingertips the Bible passages Luther relied on. He did
have some. Really, his writings on "By faith alone" became so significant
because they sparked the many, many debates that exploded in the
Reformation, and continued to create new denominations up to the early
20th century. The passages from James stand as a useful counter-weight to
getting caught up in the idea that faith is all and works are nothing.
Going back to an earlier root of the reformation, Wycliffe's first
translation of the Latin Bible into English, everyone needs to read
Scripture for themselves, and every one of these perspectives obtained
from Scripture contains one part of a truth that has more dimensions than
the human mind can contain all at once.

Siarlys


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