How can we be justified by faith alone when the Bible has justifications by grace, by works, by His blood and by the faith of Christ? Therefore, we need to work out how those other justifications are related to salvation.When I first became active in Internet discussions on Christianity (which I'm afraid is like 40 years ago), Protestants always said that we are justified by faith alone, but that we could trust God to work with us on our lives.
I very rarely hear real justification by faith any more. Everyone seems to have adopted justification by faith + works. My theory is that Protestant theology is a casualty of the culture wars. People are so intent on making certain things mortal sins that they've abandoned Paul, and Luther's major insight.
With the advent of digital Bibles; we can now search, classify, and collate teachings; basically doing data mining. We apply data mining tools and AI techniques that were not available to Luther. Also, we have forums such as CF that provides us with a means to exchange and correct ideas. In a way, Protestant theology is a casualty of modern science.
Though we are not justified by faith alone, I believe we are saved by faith alone because faith allows us to accept the gospel and faith allows us to trust God when the works seem impossible. What this mean is that Luther may have misunderstood justification. Bible scholars, like N.T. Wright, are questioning: 'What did Paul really mean by justification?'.
Protestants use to quote Ephesians 2:8-9 to support justification by faith alone, making salvation synonymous with justification. And they have to omit verse 10 to make the point stick. If you think that verse 10 is not part of the context in verse 8 - saved by grace through faith - then salvation comes by accepting the gospel, no good works involved. And Jesus says, there is only one who is good.
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