@LCIII I second what Curiousdannii said. You could edit to ask for an overview of Protestant views, or an overview of Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox views, or for the view of a specific denomination (yes, Catholics, Presbyterians, and Methodists will all answer differently -- but a reformed Baptist response will likely map neatly onto a Presbyterian response, and an Arminian response from any denomination will likely map neatly onto a Methodist response).
There are of course other ways of asking that I haven't mentioned. But the point is, the ball is still in your court for improving the question before it can be reopened.
@curiousdannii Right. I commented on the question that asking for "the Protestant view" is too broad. But my point here is that asking for an overview of Protestant views would be fine.
@LCIII Even when I was a Christian, it always bothered me that it seems impossible to not sin. And considering myself elemental to, well, myself, I found it extremely difficult to believe that I'll magically be a non-sinner in heaven and still retain who I am.
Now that I no longer believe, I find the definition of sin curiously narrow on things that I believe are elemental to humanity. For example, fornication is any sex outside of marriage. But sexual interaction and taking a mate is natural, while marriage is not.
Some sins are just straight up thought-crimes. Covetousness? What? I'm not sure I even understand why thinking you'd like to have something someone else has is bad. Seeing what others have and how it improves their life is the basis of learning and imitation that has made our species so successful.
It also give you conflicting information. You're supposed to personally forgive, but rejoice in justice.
If you don't forgive, you won't be forgiven, meaning, it's a sin. Some go on to say that supporting injustice is sin too. How can these two coexist regarding any single person or action they've committed?
The answer they give is some kind of doublethink that claims that even though you punish someone for something you can still forgive them in your heart, or whatever. I don't see how action and the heart can be cleaved, which is a pretty well biblicly supported notion.
So the answer is that you "sin" because the system is designed to convict you. The cards are stacked against you in the first place.
If you weren't a sinner, then you wouldn't need Jesus, and if you don't need Jesus then you don't need Christianity.
@fredsbend To be blunt, traditional Christianity, and especially Protestantism, is hopelessly off-base on its concept of sin and salvation. It's turned the Bible's very practical teachings about human evil and sin into some abstract, legalistic fiction about being saved from the consequences of sin without the need to actually stop sinning.
Evil and sin are really not that hard to understand. Evil is anything that causes damage to oneself and other people. Sin is doing evil on purpose, knowing that it's wrong. These are the things that destroy us as human beings, and by which we destroy one another, and our society as a whole.
The Bible isn't about declaring us not guilty for our sins. It's about getting us not to sin any more. In other words, it's about getting us not to be selfish, greedy assholes who are continually wrecking one another's (and our own) lives, and instead become thoughtful, caring people whose lives are devoted to serving others and giving them happiness and joy.
Though Catholicism still has some vestige of this in its doctrine, in Protestantism it has been almost entirely banished from the official and fundamental doctrines of the church, and replaced with a totally false and non-Biblical doctrine about being saved by faith alone, and not by how we actually live, and salvation consisting in Jesus paying the penalty for our sins.
The idea that we are saved in an instant by believing Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins is pure and utter garbage, diametrically opposed to everything the Bible teaches about sin and salvation.
In fact, salvation is a lifelong process in which we gradually stop being sinners (meaning stop being selfish, greedy assholes) and start actually loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, and of course, loving God above all, as Jesus taught. This doesn't happen in an instant. It happens over an entire lifetime in which we work on ourselves, pursuant to Jesus' teachings, to stop being our old selfish self and start being a new person who actually cares about other people.
So yes, after we're "saved," we're still going to sin from time to time. That's because salvation is a process of spiritual rebirth, not a wand-waving magic trick in which we're instantly transformed from jerks into angels.
@LCIII I'm not sure. Since I'm reformed/Presbyterian, I'd be most interested in seeing how they would answer, and I'd consult the Three Forms of Unity, Westminster Standards, and some reformed commentaries to find out. I'm sure that a large piece of the answer would be the "eschatological tension" between the already and not yet. I also think you may have unwittingly conflated Jesus' fleshly incarnation with our fleshly sins.
Though the same word "flesh" (Gr "sarx") is used for both, the meaning is context-dependent.
In any case, I've now voted to reopen and am looking forward to reading a good answer.
@fredsbend That's not "covetousness". Covetousness is wanting someone else not to have something so that you can have it instead.
@LeeWoofenden As a Catholic I can't understand the idea of "being saved in an instant". I can totally understand the idea of "being opened to the grace of God in an instant". But being saved is literally a life-work.
@MattGutting I have somewhat less of a bone to pick with Catholic doctrine and practice than I do with Protestant doctrine and practice. Catholics at least believe that you must do good works--i.e., live a good life--in order to be saved. So in that way, at least, Catholicism is closer to Biblical teaching than Protestantism is. And of course, I agree about salvation being a life work rather than something that happens in an instant.
@fredsbend Punishment, in the best sense, is not about revenge. It's about deterrence, correction of life, and protection of innocent people. Ideally the punishment will cause the offender to rethink his or her actions. If it accomplishes that, it is an act of kindness to the offender, because it leads to a better life for him or her. Failing that, punishment helps to protect the innocent by deterring crime and preventing criminals from perpetrating additional crimes against innocent people.
That is the best case. I recognize that in the real world, it often doesn't work that way for various reasons, most of which have to do with our human failings--both on the part of the punishers and on the part of the punished. The main point is that punishment of crime is not necessarily incompatible with forgiveness and even love for the offender.
The way I see it, "salvation by faith alone, but true faith produces good works". That is, good works don't save us, but rather more like they are a sign that we are saved. Also, Jesus' statement to the thief on the cross suggests that salvation can be (or is) near-instantaneous. I see it as believing in Jesus is taking the first step, but you can't just stop there when there's a whole journey in front of you.
Okay, when playing with a muslim/pagan, i would like to inflict significant damage to the Christian world, and conquering Rome somehow doesn't grab me as that significant(not to mention that once i saw an adventurer declare war for Latium, conquer it, and then become a Prince-Bishop of Latium and...
> The more a person wants something, the more effort they'll expend to try and get it. Someone who crosses a canyon to be with God can truly be said to have a burning passion in their hearts for Him. The same cannot be said of someone who merely walks across a bridge. - my blog post The Canyon or a Bridge
@TRiG It's great seeing SE questions that are really shocking until you see it in context.
@El'endiaStarman "salvation by faith alone, but true faith produces good works." Yes, that's the standard Protestant formula. Too bad the Bible doesn't say that.
@El'endiaStarman Clearly the thief on the cross had been reconsidering his actions before he expressed the things he said on the cross. The other thief, by contrast, had engaged in no such reconsideration of his actions. In short: one thief had repented; the other thief had not.
@El'endiaStarman I do agree with you that for Christians, believing in Jesus is the first step of a long journey. But saying that the initial belief is what saves you, and not the life pursuant to it, is like saying that digging the hole for the foundation is what builds the house.
@El'endiaStarman Right. Digging the hole is the first step. But it doesn't build the house. And a hole in the ground is not a house, nor is it salvation.
Jesus himself talked about the foolishness of not completing the work you start, in the parable of the man who set about to build a tower without counting the cost beforehand.
Is even a half-built tower salvation? I think not.
Having faith is not salvation. Having faith leads to salvation.
@LeeWoofenden I think we're talking past each other because we see salvation a little differently. So lemme put it this way to maybe make it a bit clearer. God brings a believer to Heaven upon death because they want to be with Him. (And likewise, the ones that go to Hell are the ones that don't want to be with Him, so He lets them have their choice.) That desiring to be with God is, I say, enough to be saved. It's the first step. Then, if you actually really do desire to be with God-
-you'll continue to desire God, so you'll be continually saved. Along the way, good works happen.
@LeeWoofenden This may be the fault of the metaphor you chose, but I have a problem with that concept: you can't know when the tower will be done. Suppose you're killed in your 20s (in, say, a car accident) after converting only a year before. The tower built in that time cannot compare to the one built by 80-year-old lifelong believers.
@El'endiaStarman Desire means nothing without action. I may theoretically desire to build a house, but if I don't actually build a house, do I really desire it?
@El'endiaStarman True, it's not a perfect metaphor. But if our life gets cut short early, our real faith will still be shown "by our fruits," not by some doctrine we accepted in our head about Jesus dying for us.
Faith without works is dead. "Faith alone" is meaningless. Such a thing does not exist.
If you truly desire God, you'll act on it (i.e. do good works). But it's not the works that save you, it's the desire! If it were the works that saved you, an atheist could do it.
That's why the Bible specifically says, "a person is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:24) It really couldn't get any clearer than that.
Atheists can do it: Do Atheists Go to Heaven? The Biblical definition of "atheist" is very different from present-day philosophical atheism. The Biblical definition of atheism involves living an evil life, in opposition to the commandments of God.
@El'endiaStarman He witnessed to the other thief. That is a good work.
@El'endiaStarman I believe you're making an entirely artificial distinction between faith and works. There is no such distinction in reality.
"Faith" is the beliefs you live by. If you don't live by them, you don't really believe them, and it's not faith. So it is simply not possible to have faith, in the Biblical definition of faith, without doing good works. "Faith alone" is a meaningless term, which is why the Bible specifically rejects it.
Even if it is faith expressed through works, that is not faith alone. It is faith with works. And if the faith doesn't lead to works, it is not even faith. So why make some artificial distinction that it is the faith that saves you, and not the works? In fact, you can't have one without the other.
Further, both the faith and the good works come from the Lord. We can neither have faith nor do good works without the power of the Lord working in us. Doing good works is just as much an expression of God's presence in us as having faith. And having God's presence in us, or Christ's presence in us, is salvation.
Well, that makes good sense to me. I don't see much of a distinction between that and my viewpoint - it's mainly different in the specifics but basically the same in spirit.
"I am the vine, you are the branches. . . . Apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5)
@El'endiaStarman In reality, those who believe in faith alone, but practice good works, are not actually practicing faith alone. Faith alone, if actually practiced, will not save anyone.
Personally, even though it is false doctrine, I don't really care if someone intellectually believes in faith alone, as long as they actually live a good life of love and service to their neighbor. That's what saves them, not their intellectual faith. Matthew 25:31-46.
Unfortunately, some people take the doctrine of faith alone seriously, and it distorts their entire understanding of the Bible.
I think 1 Corinthians 5 was what I was thinking of. Especially verse 11 (NLT):
> 11 I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with such people.
@El'endiaStarman Paul absolutely did not teach faith alone. He made it clear in many places that we must live out our faith, or it is not real faith. Read Romans 2. In it, Paul tells how non-Christians are saved. Then, in Romans 3, he goes on to say how Christians are saved.
When Paul said that we are saved by faith without the works of the law, he was talking about the Torah, or Mosaic law, of circumcision, ritual observance, behavioral codes, and so on. He was not talking about doing good works as we think of that today.
If Paul had believed in faith alone, he would never have said that of faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love.
And incidentally, Paul never uses the phrase "faith alone." And the phrase "grace alone" does not appear anywhere in the Bible.
So the standard Protestant formulation of "salvation by grace alone, through faith alone" is 100% non-Biblical.
I really don't see a problem with that. If there's only one thing and you want it, so what? What does it matter that it belongs to another person? There's plenty of legitimate ways to get it, and, of course, doing without is an option too. Why is the desire, the thought, a sin? That hardly makes sense.
@fredsbend There's nothing wrong with wanting something that another person has; but to be covetous of [another person's having] X is to believe that you deserve X, and the other doesn't, and that therefore the other is bad for having X because it was owed to you. It's not about the wanting, or the belonging to another, so much as it's about ...
the attachment to the object, the belief (assuming it's objectively unjustified) that you deserve something, the anger which can be engendered at the other person because "they have something they don't deserve"... that sort of thing.
The belief too (perhaps), that "God is wrong/bad/wicked because He let this other person have X when He should have given it to me."
@MattGutting I can see that as being bad and if you are thinking like that, then you need a correction. But seeing people get things they don't deserve is frustrating. For example, wicked people are sometime wealthy, or they fall into wealth. Good people are sometimes very poor, or they lose everything for some reason. See things like this and thinking that events and things should be reappropriated according to what you actually deserve is natural.
Seeing yourself as one deserving of something while the one who gets it does not deserve it is only an issue if your off-base. In which case, you just have entitlement issues.
@fredsbend Covetousness is a sin of the heart in that it leads to the other sins forbidden in the second table of the Ten Commandments. If we're covetous of another person's belongings, that may lead to our stealing them, to our lying about that person, and even to our killing that person. If we're covetous of another man's wife, that may lead to our committing adultery with her.
I believe that "covetousness" is the Ten Commandments' gloss on the inner desires that cause us to commit outward sins--i.e., sins in action. Simply admiring what someone else has and thinking we'd like to have it is not covetousness. If it causes us to work hard so that we can have those things ourselves, it is, as you say, a good thing.
The key word is that we covet what our neighbor has, meaning we want the neighbor's possessions, wife, and so on. IOW, we want our neighbor not to have them so that we can have them. We want the specific ones that our neighbor has.
@curiousdannii Well, pretty much any edit would, and the question was always off-topic, and the answers aren't that high-quality anyway. I don't see any reason to worry about that.
And I'm not sure if an overview will still work. I said that question X can't be answered because it depends on issue Y which there's division over. Issue Y has clear boundaries and would work as an overview question, but that doesn't mean that question X can be addressed as an overview. I'm not sure there are any clear groups of thought for the actual question
But we'll see what happens. Hopefully someone can write a good overview answer!
The Upper Room
The Upper Room