To be clear, the classical (Lutheran, Reformed, etc) Protestant position on "faith alone" is not and never was
salvation by faith alone. The "sola fide" was shorthand for "
justification by
grace alone through
faith alone." There is a lot of philosophy behind those words, with instrumental and efficient causes and the like.
The key is that the Reformation singled out the topic of justification as an article "upon which the church stands or falls" and it became the epicenter of the whole resistance to Rome. The Reformers defined "justification" in the very narrow sense of a legal acquittal in a courtroom, a "not guilty" verdict handed down by the judge. Now, clearly works can have no place in this, because "if you O Lord should judge iniquity, who could stand?" Nobody. If we are judged (in God's courtroom) on the basis of our own works, then we're sunk, because we're sinful, plain and simple. Nobody can stand before God guilty and polluted. But wait! Christ steps in and "covers us" with his righteousness, so that God "sees" only Christ's "legal record" of sinless obedience, thus, we are justified...acquitted of any wrongdoing...on the basis of
Christ's good works. Or in another way of saying it, Christ
merits our justificaiton. Of course, as God is both just and loving, while love demands forgiveness, justice demands punishment. So Christ also bears all our punishment on the cross. So in the final analysis, we are
justified by a "double transaction" or "double imputation" wherein God "sees us" as righteous, and "sees Christ" as sinful, and he takes the beating while we get the glory. Of course, because Christ isn't really guilty, he cannot see corruption, so he was resurrected and we all will likewise be resurrected unto his glory...
if we have been justified by a double imputation.
Since we cannot merit any of this...it must be given
sola gratia, by the grace of God alone...we must lay hold of it by
faith alone. Here, further distinctions are made, in which faith is "knowledge, assent, and trust"
but not action. That's critical to Protestant theology. Faith
cannot and must not ever be confused with action. Otherwise we've worked to earn this double imputation. Obedience, they say, is the "outworking" of faith, it's fruit, and the "proof" that our faith is genuine.
"Salvation" is the umbrella term that also includes the changed life and the ultimate glorification in resurrection. Here, it is taught that if someone for all outward appearances has become a Christian...been baptized, taken communion, attended church, all that...but has not inwardly changed to live according to Christ's commands...then that person
never was justified. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing, essentially.
So...works
are still essential to salvation in the Protestant system of doctrine. And the root of all salvation is the work of Christ, both in obedience to God's commands ("active") and in submitting to God's punishment on the cross ("passive").
I immersed myself in these books for 8 years. I likely still "know" Protestant theology better than Orthodoxy. I didn't have kids then, of course, so all I did was read
I wanted to point all that out again, because when arguments begin between Orthodox and Protestants over "salvation by works," all the terms are being used in different senses. Different things are meant by "salvation," "justification," and even by "faith" and by "works." Even "grace" is understood quite differently. Discussions are doomed to go in circles unless the two sides can understand each other's meaning, which virtually never happens, because almost every key Protestant doctrine down the line was developed as a rejection of elements of medeival Catholic theology, whereas Orthodoxy never adopted those elements to begin with. Thus the "faith and works" fight makes sense in the Rome vs. Geneva world, but not in the Orthodox world. We're just in a different orbit.
Someone was quoted in Met. Kallistos' book as saying that the problem with Protestantism is that it hasn't shaken off it's Roman Catholicism. I think there's a lot of truth to that (at least to the part that says Protestantism is FAR more Roman Catholic than it would ever care to believe).
Throw in the fact that Protestantism presupposes both a canon of Scripture and a correct method of interpreting it, both of which differ fundamentally from Orthodoxy, and you have almost two parallel universes.
