"The doctrine by which the church stands or falls."

So, give me a contemporaneous documented example.

 

1. You.
2. You claim that people were saved through the doctrine of justification by faith alone prior to 1517. I'm therefore asking you for an example of this, written down in or near to 800AD.

 

That's more like PSA than sola fide. And I wonder what ++Anselm's reaction would be to someone who "prayed the sinner's prayer" and then went round committing acts of fornication.

Who was the other person to whom you referred?

 

If faith doesn't come by hearing then throw out the Bible and call God a liar who said it in the first place, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul.

Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

 

Thanks. Checked that out and several other sources as well. VERY interesting, to say the least.

 

The first ECF to preach this in the NT was Paul.

Oh - and we can still read what he wrote.

But aside from that - what is your actual Bible objection? Have you made an actual case?

Perhaps a quote from one of my favorite ECFs will help to begin your argument --


Rom 3
27 Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.
28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.

Rom 5
1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God[/b] through our Lord Jesus Christ,
2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.

First of all even you would have to admit that as Paul read scripture and preached - his listeners HEARD him. So we START with the Christian church HEARING what Paul said.

Further -we can not argue that READING the Bible is fine but does no good until you ALSO HEAR someone reading it out loud.

So that means those in 2007 can READ the text of Romans 3 and Romans 5 above and benefit JUST as did the first century ROMAN church that READ that letter .. and this would be true EVEN of Christians in 800 provided that they had a Bible.

in Christ,

Bob

 

God was able to SAVE even when RC church leaders were teaching error.

The scripture SHOWS us that God's Gospel works by offering "justification by faith and THAT apart from the works of the law" to all lost sinners.

you keep arguing in effect "God can't continue to save the way the Bible says He does it unless the RC leadership of the 9th century let's him"

 

I'm happy with you citing the Waldensians as proto-evangelicals, although as you say they are 12th century, and I do not regard attempts to link them to earlier 'fringe movements' such as the Bogomils and Paulicians to be historically valid. I'm intrigued by your use of Aquinas though; whilst I have a lot of time for old Tom, he is arguably 'to blame' for a lot of the subsequent late medieval scholasticism in the Western Church which led to the sort of abuses like indulgences against which Luther so rightly railed.

Re ++Anselm, do you not find it strange that the Papacy which canonised him in the late 15th century was pretty much the same Papacy against which Luther rebelled?

 

You're missing the point: I'm saying that faith does come by hearing; however, no-one was preaching sola fide in 800. So, if that is the doctrine by which men are saved, how were they in 800?

 

Ah, but I have had it alleged here so many times that the people of the Dark Ages were deprived of access to Bibles by the nasty cruel Catholics, so my question stands: how was Joe Pew-Fodder saved in 800?

Furthermore, you are selective (as we all are if we're honest!) in your quoting of the NT: what about Jesus' words in Matt 25:31-46 (no mention of faith, just works there) or James 2:14-26?

 

Still no examples, then. <Whistles...>

 

RB, to return to the subject of your OP, and also with reference to ++Anselm and one or two of the ECFs, I wonder what you make of this?

[spelnig]

 

I've resisted chiming in on this post until now because I've argued about this topic many times before. Matt, Agnus_Dei, and HP have made good points about the weakness of sola Scriptura and how historically the doctine of "justification by faith alone" (sola fide) was basically unheard of in the church for about the first millenium and a half of her existence. Of course, the retort has been that the "original ECFs, the apostles" taught sola fide in the Scriptures. However, when one actually looks at the Scriptures to evaluate this doctrine by which the whole church allegedly "stands or falls", one finds this doctrine nowhere to be found. In fact, the only place where "justification" and "faith alone" are found together in the entirety of Scriptures is, of course, in the epistle of James, where the Lord's brother clearly stated:

"You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone." (James 2:24).

So much for sola fide.

And what about Paul--does he say in his epistle to the Galatians:

"For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith alone"?

Not at all. On the contrary, the apostle states:

"For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6)

Paul doesn't use "faith alone" even in the already cited passage Romans 3:28:

"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law (or 'Torah')." (Romans 3:28)

Paul states that we are indeed justified by faith apart from the works of the Torah (ie apart from the markers and practices of the Old Covenant), but he doesn't say we are justified by faith alone.

Of course, if was Martin Luther who added the word "alone" in that verse to support his new doctrine. He was also the one who declared James' Epistle to be "an epistle of straw" because it disagreed with him and this new doctrine.

So it looks like the writers of Scriptures--the original Church Fathers--were in agreement with all the other church fathers that we are not justified by faith alone. On the contrary the famous advocate of sola fide, Martin Luther, attempted to add a word ("alone") to Scripture (where it wasn't found in the text) and to subtract an entire epistle (James) in order to get Scriptures to say what he wanted it to say. However, the Apostle Peter had a sober statement regarding folks who handled Scripture in such a manner: "...which those untaught and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do also the rest of Scriptures." (2 Peter 3:16).

 

That's why Cranmer's Homily to which I linked above refers to 'dead' and 'lively' faith.

 

Indeed. Faith without works is dead and therefore can't save (or justify) anybody. :thumbs:

 

BTW, Matt. Great link---there's some really good stuff in those sermons! :applause:

 

Here's your quote:
"no-one was preaching sola-fide in 800."

That is what is called a universal negative--a logical fallacy--impossible to prove.
Your argument defeats itself for you have no way to demonstrate the veracity of it. Can you go back in time in 800 and research every preacher that ever preached in every part of the world, and observe throughout every part of their lives if they every preached along the lines of sola fide?