3:57 AM
@ThaddeusB I'm suggesting that the "denominations" tag should be dumped. I can't think of a good reason to keep it.
@ThaddeusB I've been emphasizing works to counteract the faith alone theology of Protestantism. But faith actually is necessary for salvation, even if it is ultimately secondary to love, and dead without works.
The thing is, I define "faith" much more broadly than seems to be the case in Protestantism. Faith, in Protestantism, seems to mean believing that Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins. To me, that is not only a superficial faith, but a false faith.
Real faith is believing the truth because it is true, and not for selfish or ulterior motives. And real faith is the beliefs that you live by. If it doesn't have those qualities, it simply isn't faith. Faith alone is an oxymoron.
Even non-Christians must have their own version of faith for their works to be saving. It's quite possible to live a highly moral and ethical life for totally self-centered reasons, such as to get a good reputation so as to make good profits in business or be elevated to positions of political power. That kind of a "good works" life will not save a person, because it is done entirely for the person's own benefit.
In that case, "truth" and "faith" are merely a means to an end. The truth is not believed simply because it is true, but because the person sees personal benefit in it.
At minimum, for the good works to mean something, people must do them because they believe in some good higher than themselves. Ideally, that good will be God. And for Christians, it should be Jesus Christ. But even for atheists, a believe in some principle of goodness, morality, and the good of humanity can be a stand-in for belief in God. It is a belief in the qualities that God represents (or at least, should represent).
So although I've been emphasizing the need to do good works in order to be saved, salvation also requires faith, in the sense of believing in the truth for truth's sake, believing in some good and truth higher than oneself, and having that belief be something that a person actually lives by rather than merely believing it intellectually and giving it lip service.
@ThaddeusB Of course, nobody will ever be perfect. But it is possible for a person to progressively stop sinning, first behaviorally, then in thought, and then in heart. Along those lines, please see my most recent answer:
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This answer is based on the Christian theology of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), and his spiritual mode of interpreting the Bible. It represents the view on this subject of the "New Church" or "Swedenborgian" denominations that accept Swedenborg's theology.
The question is based on Luke 3:16-17...
Just confessing that we are sinners, without doing anything to stop sinning, is worthless. The point of confessing our sins is to repent from them, meaning to stop doing them, and replace them with good and righteous actions. Just because we'll never be perfect, that doesn't mean we can't keep becoming better people. And to me, that's the whole point of religion.
@ThaddeusB Every decent religion beliefs that you shouldn't do evil, hateful, and destructive things, but should do good, loving, and constructive things instead. And any religion that says not to do evil things anymore has a concept of repentance, because that's what repentance is.
@ThaddeusB Catholicism has a lot of faulty theology, but at least it teaches its people that they must live a good life as well as believing in Jesus in order to be saved. And the practice of confessional, though it has certainly been abused at times, does get Catholics in the practice of examining themselves, seeing their own faults and sins, and (ideally) committing themselves to correcting them.
I think this is much harder for Protestants, because they believe that once they have faith, that's the most important thing, and it's not really necessary to do all that self-examination and repentance.
Yes, of course I object to the fundamental errors (as I see them) of Catholic theology. But the worst problems of Catholicism historically have not been false doctrine, but grasping for power, and making the church into a political power rather than a spiritual one. Much of that political power has now been broken. But for over a thousand years of its existence, the Catholic Church exercised ruthless political power, and became utterly venial and corrupt as a result.
So while my primary critique of Protestantism is its doctrinal error based on the erroneous and non-Biblical doctrine of salvation by faith alone, my primary critique of Catholicism is that it set itself up as a worldly power on earth when it was supposed to be using spiritual power to lead people toward God, goodness, truth, and heaven.
Not coincidentally, the fundamental doctrinal error of Catholicism, which then spread to the rest of Christianity, came into being precisely when it was becoming established as a worldly power. That all came together in 325 AD, when the Roman emperor Constantine called together the First Council of Nicaea.
