BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

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Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

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Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

James 2:14-26

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?

15. If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, 16. and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? 17. So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18. Indeed someone may say, "You have faith and I have works." Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

19. You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.

20. Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? 21. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?

22. You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works.

23. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called "the friend of God."

24. See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25. And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route 26. For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

Sam Lowry said:

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The idea of different gospels for the Jews and the Gentiles isn't a historical or biblical teaching (it's literally something that some people thought up when my grandmother was a kid). There is one gospel, from Christ, which all of the Apostles preached.

Here are the verses from Hebrews in context:

Quote:

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Let us keep one another in mind, always ready with incitements to charity and to acts of piety, not abandoning, as some do, our common assembly, but encouraging one another; all the more, as you see the great day drawing nearer. If we go on sinning wilfully, when once the full knowledge of the truth has been granted to us, we have no further sacrifice for sin to look forward to; nothing but a terrible expectation of judgement, a fire that will eagerly consume the rebellious. Let a man be convicted by two or three witnesses of defying the law of Moses, and he dies, without hope of mercy. What of the man who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has reckoned the blood of the covenant, that blood which sanctified him, as a thing unclean, mocked at the Spirit that brought him grace? Will not he incur a punishment much more severe?

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The words are addressed those who have been sanctified and received grace, to believers in "Jesus...the apostle and the high priest of the faith which we profess." (Hebrews 3:1)

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There were different gospels in the sense that the first was for Israel only, as a fulfillment of God's covenant promise to them specifically. Again, read the entire discourse, especially at the beginning, "These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. At another time in his ministry, Jesus said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." It wasn't until after Israel officially rejected Jesus, that the offer then went to the rest of the world (us Gentles). It is within this context, that Jesus telling his disciples that those who weren't willing to "take up their cross", i.e. die for the cause of announcing the arrival of the promised Messiah needs to be understood.

The passage in Hebrews you've referenced is addressing the hypothetical of a believer who is sanctified by Jesus' sacrifice (which could merely mean 'set apart') who then rejects Jesus or returns to an unrepentant, sinful lifestyle (apostasy). It's given as a warning for sinners so they won't fall into sin. It's not saying that apostasy could actually happen to a true believer. Notice the hypothetical qualifiers ("IF we go on sinning.." and "how much punishment will be deserved", not how much punisment will be received). The true believer responds correctly to the warning. Note the last part of this chapter in Hebrews, where says that none of this will actually happen to those he's addressing, the true, sanctified believers. And as it stands, verse 14 in this chapter still says that those being sanctified have been perfected by Jesus' sacrifice already.

But to redirect back to the main point - you just aren't making the case that we have to "take up our cross" in order to be saved. Neither of your references above support this view at all.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Throwing discretion to the wind again, I feel I should speak about an odd thing I have noticed here. A lot of people talk about Salvation, as if it's something we receive when we die, and not God changing our very essence through His Grace and Love.

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That's really what I'm pushing against on here, because my opponents think you don't need to fight sin or you don't need to change at all.

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No one is saying this. What's being said is that fighting sin or changing is not what saves you, it's your faith in Jesus that saves you. The fighting sin and desire to change happens in true believers as a manifestation of that saving faith.

No matter how many times you're corrected on this, you keep repeating it. This seems to indicate you're really not interested in good faith discussion, you're here only to punch at your straw men.

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Your view is too broad and smuggles in assumptions. I need you to get specific.

Your current explanation only makes sense if you define faith as belief or mental assent. Faith isn't an event of "I think the gospel is true and my heart is moved by it". Faith is a covenantal trust that includes fidelity. Faithfulness to your wife isn't a separate "work" that flows from your feelings about her, it is the relationship.

When you say fighting sin is just the automatic downstream fruit, ask yourself: fruit produced how? Automatically, with no cooperation of the will? If so, then you're a puppet. If no, then there is something you must do.

Sola fide was a response to indulgences. To selling salvation. It wasn't meant to make apostasy or synergy impossible.

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I've been specific. I've given the biblical definition of faith, which involves NOT mere mental assent, but a belief that has assurance that what is being HOPED for will be received. The "hope" there, as I already explained, involves an ongoing personal investment, which involves fidelity.

And again - how the "downstream fruit" of fighting sin arises, whether it's by free will or monergism, has nothing to do with whether or not one is saved because of that fruit. You can assume either way, it has no bearing on the question. I don't know why this is so difficult for you.

Sola fide is what Scripture teaches, and it's not something that's hidden, it's pretty explicit and clear. It's amazing that there's even a debate. With regard to what the early church believed, sola fide FAR precedes indulgences. Contrary to what your church has led you to believe, it's been taught by the early church.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

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Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

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Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

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Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

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First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

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Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

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Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

---

Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

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Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

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Do you honestly not see that it IS a manifestation of fruit? The "being unfaithful" that you were just talking about?

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

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First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

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You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

You're also just factually wrong that Orthodox worship credits Mary for salvation. Go look at the Divine Liturgy itself, every single service explicitly, repeatedly confesses Christ alone as Savior. The Trisagion prayers, the pre-communion prayers ("I believe, O Lord, and confess that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first"), the anaphora: Christ is named as Savior over and over, by name, in the actual text of the prayers Orthodox Christians say every single week. If you want to claim Orthodox worship "credits Mary for salvation," you have to explain why the liturgy itself keeps saying the opposite, out loud, in the mouths of the very people you're accusing of worshipping Mary.

What Orthodox hymnody says about Mary is honor language "more honorable than the Cherubim," "Theotokos," intercessor…not savior language. Those are different categories, and conflating them is exactly the kind of imprecision you keep accusing me of. You don't get to define our worship by the caricature and then ignore the actual text of the prayers when it contradicts you.

Scripture is loaded with synergistic language your framework can't absorb without special pleading:

Matt 23:37. Christ says He wanted to gather Jerusalem "as a hen gathers her chicks," and they "were not willing." That's God's expressed will meeting genuine human refusal. If grace is irresistible, this verse describes something literally impossible: God wanting an outcome He has the power to unilaterally cause, and it not happening because of human unwillingness. You can't harmonize that with monergism, you can only explain it away.

2 Pet 3:9. God is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." If the elect are fixed and grace only ever applies to them, this verse describes God's will for people it doesn't actually apply to, which makes "not willing that any perish" a strange thing to write if most of "any" were never in view to begin with.

Titus 2:11. Grace "has appeared to all men," not "to the elect." If saving grace only ever targets a pre-selected subset, "all men" is doing a lot of redefining. And if grace is genuinely for all, but not all are saved, the only variable left is what the person does with grace offered, which is synergistic "remaining in faith" your view can't handle because it's trying to fill chairs at church through cheap easy believism.

There's obviously a consistent pattern here: universal offer, real possibility of refusal, real possibility of loss. Monergism has to reinterpret all four away from their plain sense to survive. Synergy just reads them as written.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

---

Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

---

Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

---

Do you honestly not see that it IS a manifestation of fruit? The "being unfaithful" that you were just talking about?

---

I would say so, but you just got through saying faithless and fruitless are "very different things." So you tell me.

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

---

Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

---

Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

---

Do you honestly not see that it IS a manifestation of fruit? The "being unfaithful" that you were just talking about?

---

I would say so, but you just got through saying faithless and fruitless are "very different things." So you tell me.

---

No one said "faithless" and "fruitless" are very different things. As what often occurs, you've lost track and ended up just confusing yourself.

What's being said is "unfaithfulness" and "fruitless" are very different things. You're welcome.

Now that you're back on track, do you have a more cogent response?

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

---

Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

---

Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

---

Do you honestly not see that it IS a manifestation of fruit? The "being unfaithful" that you were just talking about?

---

I would say so, but you just got through saying faithless and fruitless are "very different things." So you tell me.

---

No one said "faithless" and "fruitless" are very different things. As what often occurs, you've lost track and ended up just confusing yourself.

What's being said is "unfaithfulness" and "fruitless" are very different things. You're welcome.

Now that you're back on track, do you have a more cogent response?

---

Unfaithful is what I meant by "faithless." I apologize if the usage is slightly archaic.

Back to you.

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

---

First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

---

You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

---

Again - there is NO action in the biblical definition of faith. Scripture defines "faith" as a conviction of things unseen and assurance of things hoped for. Conviction and assurance are internal dispositions of the heart. They're states of being. You don't "do" conviction or assurance. Rather, you have conviction and assurance. In contrast, when you "ask God for help", it's something you are doing in the sense of it being a procedural act. It is not an internal disposition that you "have". This isn't hard.

"Keeping" or "staying" in a state of conviction and assurance are not procedural acts either. You're engaging in a bit of sophistry by first expanding the definition of "action" to include mental events like thinking and then fallaciously arguing that since the mental "act" of faith is an "action", or the mental act of "keeping" or "staying" in that faith are "actions" - then any procedural action of your choice can also be inserted into the definition of "faith". Your fallacious argument is being used a the proverbial "foot in the door" in order to shoehorn in any number of procedural acts, like the sacraments, as requirements for the validation of one's "faith". This is how you're coming to the false, completely untenable conclusions that not asking God for help is "unfaithfulness" and that not eating the Eucharist meal means you won't be saved. And I'm just wondering why you and the Roman Catholics here, when shown how untenable these views really are, simply won't place under question the reasoning that got you there and the "authority" that told you. Is tribalism that much important than truth?

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

---

Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

---

Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

---

Do you honestly not see that it IS a manifestation of fruit? The "being unfaithful" that you were just talking about?

---

I would say so, but you just got through saying faithless and fruitless are "very different things." So you tell me.

---

No one said "faithless" and "fruitless" are very different things. As what often occurs, you've lost track and ended up just confusing yourself.

What's being said is "unfaithfulness" and "fruitless" are very different things. You're welcome.

Now that you're back on track, do you have a more cogent response?

---

Unfaithful is what I meant by "faithless." I apologize if the usage is slightly archaic.

Back to you.

---

I agree with you that bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for salvation is definitely fruit - of unfaithfulness.

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

---

First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

---

You're also just factually wrong that Orthodox worship credits Mary for salvation. Go look at the Divine Liturgy itself, every single service explicitly, repeatedly confesses Christ alone as Savior. The Trisagion prayers, the pre-communion prayers ("I believe, O Lord, and confess that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first"), the anaphora: Christ is named as Savior over and over, by name, in the actual text of the prayers Orthodox Christians say every single week. If you want to claim Orthodox worship "credits Mary for salvation," you have to explain why the liturgy itself keeps saying the opposite, out loud, in the mouths of the very people you're accusing of worshipping Mary.

What Orthodox hymnody says about Mary is honor language "more honorable than the Cherubim," "Theotokos," intercessor…not savior language. Those are different categories, and conflating them is exactly the kind of imprecision you keep accusing me of. You don't get to define our worship by the caricature and then ignore the actual text of the prayers when it contradicts you.

---

Your liturgy, which you deem as infallible, says:

"Mary is the propitiation of the whole world."
"Through Mary our sin is remitted."
"She is the gate of salvation."
"She is the provider of God's mercy."
"She taketh away the filth of sin."
"She is the salvation of my soul."
"She is the acceptable sacrifice."

You're trying and trying, but you just can't explain away the 900 lb gorilla in the room.

Doc Holliday said:

---

James 2:14-26

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?

15. If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, 16. and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? 17. So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18. Indeed someone may say, "You have faith and I have works." Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

19. You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.

20. Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? 21. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?

22. You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works.

23. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called "the friend of God."

24. See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25. And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route 26. For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

---

Boom

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

---

Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

---

Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

---

Do you honestly not see that it IS a manifestation of fruit? The "being unfaithful" that you were just talking about?

---

I would say so, but you just got through saying faithless and fruitless are "very different things." So you tell me.

---

No one said "faithless" and "fruitless" are very different things. As what often occurs, you've lost track and ended up just confusing yourself.

What's being said is "unfaithfulness" and "fruitless" are very different things. You're welcome.

Now that you're back on track, do you have a more cogent response?

---

Unfaithful is what I meant by "faithless." I apologize if the usage is slightly archaic.

Back to you.

---

I agree with you that bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for salvation is definitely fruit - of unfaithfulness.

---

So the two aren't very different after all.

Are there any other fruits of unfaithfulness, as you call them? Murder, rape, robbery? Worshiping money, power, sex? Or is that just "not making God happy?"

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

---

First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

---

You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

---

Again - there is NO action in the biblical definition of faith. Scripture defines "faith" as a conviction of things unseen and assurance of things hoped for. Conviction and assurance are internal dispositions of the heart. They're states of being. You don't "do" conviction or assurance. Rather, you have conviction and assurance. In contrast, when you "ask God for help", it's something you are doing in the sense of it being a procedural act. It is not an internal disposition that you "have". This isn't hard.

"Keeping" or "staying" in a state of conviction and assurance are not procedural acts either. You're engaging in a bit of sophistry by first expanding the definition of "action" to include mental events like thinking and then fallaciously arguing that since the mental "act" of faith is an "action", or the mental act of "keeping" or "staying" in that faith are "actions" - then any procedural action of your choice can also be inserted into the definition of "faith". Your fallacious argument is being used a the proverbial "foot in the door" in order to shoehorn in any number of procedural acts, like the sacraments, as requirements for the validation of one's "faith". This is how you're coming to the false, completely untenable conclusions that not asking God for help is "unfaithfulness" and that not eating the Eucharist meal means you won't be saved. And I'm just wondering why you and the Roman Catholics here, when shown how untenable these views really are, simply won't place under question the reasoning that got you there and the "authority" that told you. Is tribalism that much important than truth?

---

Just stating your opinions doesn't make other views untenable.

This is the logical error I was trying to help you see earlier, to which Doc may have alluded. All of your arguments assume that salvation is a one-time interior event, and you fault Catholics for not explaining when that event occurs. Despite all the sound and fury, that's not a flaw in our reasoning. It's simply your disagreement with Catholic teaching.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

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Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

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Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

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Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

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First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

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You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

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Again - there is NO action in the biblical definition of faith. Scripture defines "faith" as a conviction of things unseen and assurance of things hoped for. Conviction and assurance are internal dispositions of the heart. They're states of being. You don't "do" conviction or assurance. Rather, you have conviction and assurance. In contrast, when you "ask God for help", it's something you are doing in the sense of it being a procedural act. It is not an internal disposition that you "have". This isn't hard.

"Keeping" or "staying" in a state of conviction and assurance are not procedural acts either. You're engaging in a bit of sophistry by first expanding the definition of "action" to include mental events like thinking and then fallaciously arguing that since the mental "act" of faith is an "action", or the mental act of "keeping" or "staying" in that faith are "actions" - then any procedural action of your choice can also be inserted into the definition of "faith". Your fallacious argument is being used a the proverbial "foot in the door" in order to shoehorn in any number of procedural acts, like the sacraments, as requirements for the validation of one's "faith". This is how you're coming to the false, completely untenable conclusions that not asking God for help is "unfaithfulness" and that not eating the Eucharist meal means you won't be saved. And I'm just wondering why you and the Roman Catholics here, when shown how untenable these views really are, simply won't place under question the reasoning that got you there and the "authority" that told you. Is tribalism that much important than truth?

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I don't understand why you think Matthew 7:21-23 doesn't apply to your position. Christ says plainly: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father." Not "he who has internal assurance." Not "he who possesses conviction". And the people He's rejecting in that passage aren't unbelievers who never said "Lord, Lord." They're people who prophesied in His name, cast out demons in His name, did mighty works in His name; people with plenty of outward religious activity and apparently plenty of confidence about their own standing. Christ doesn't say "you never had assurance." He says "I never knew you, depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness." The disqualifier is the doing, or in this case the failure to do the will of the Father, not a deficiency in some internal disposition.

Is tribalism more important than truth? I'd ask you to sit with Matthew 7 the same way. Not what your system needs it to mean, just what it says.

Hey guys, quick PSA: you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith. Wild concept, I know.

I get there's a lot of easy believism floating around out there, "said a prayer once, so I'm covered no matter what I do for the rest of my life,". It's theology created to get butts in seats at entertainment driven churches that are all about vibes. Faith that never shows up to the fight isn't faith. You will create degenerates who have no idea how to handle sin.

And this isn't some rare edge case. There are millions of people walking around fully convinced they're heaven bound on this exact logic, no struggle, no repentance, no fight against sin, just a moment of assent they're banking everything on. That's a lot of people building their eternity on a theology that Christ Himself warned about in Matthew 7.

We've got millions of people throwing around "idolater" at Orthodox/Catholics over icons or Marian honor, while they're out here worshipping their bank accounts, their cars, their houses, chasing corporate titles to feel superior, lusting after people who aren't their spouse, and calling none of it idolatry because it doesn't have incense attached to it.

" you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. "

Straw man of the week, there. Nobody here is doing that, nor promoting it as a creed.

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

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Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

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Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

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I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Unless, you know, he's being unfaithful.

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Then we would be talking about a very different thing. Like, say, when a person who claims to believe in Jesus.... but then bows and prays to Mary and credits her for salvation. Now THAT would be unfaithfulness.

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Really? It wouldn't just be a failure to manifest fruit?

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Do you honestly not see that it IS a manifestation of fruit? The "being unfaithful" that you were just talking about?

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I would say so, but you just got through saying faithless and fruitless are "very different things." So you tell me.

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No one said "faithless" and "fruitless" are very different things. As what often occurs, you've lost track and ended up just confusing yourself.

What's being said is "unfaithfulness" and "fruitless" are very different things. You're welcome.

Now that you're back on track, do you have a more cogent response?

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Unfaithful is what I meant by "faithless." I apologize if the usage is slightly archaic.

Back to you.

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I agree with you that bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for salvation is definitely fruit - of unfaithfulness.

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So the two aren't very different after all.

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You're confusing yourself again. I'll let you figure it out this time.

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

---

First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

---

You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

---

Again - there is NO action in the biblical definition of faith. Scripture defines "faith" as a conviction of things unseen and assurance of things hoped for. Conviction and assurance are internal dispositions of the heart. They're states of being. You don't "do" conviction or assurance. Rather, you have conviction and assurance. In contrast, when you "ask God for help", it's something you are doing in the sense of it being a procedural act. It is not an internal disposition that you "have". This isn't hard.

"Keeping" or "staying" in a state of conviction and assurance are not procedural acts either. You're engaging in a bit of sophistry by first expanding the definition of "action" to include mental events like thinking and then fallaciously arguing that since the mental "act" of faith is an "action", or the mental act of "keeping" or "staying" in that faith are "actions" - then any procedural action of your choice can also be inserted into the definition of "faith". Your fallacious argument is being used a the proverbial "foot in the door" in order to shoehorn in any number of procedural acts, like the sacraments, as requirements for the validation of one's "faith". This is how you're coming to the false, completely untenable conclusions that not asking God for help is "unfaithfulness" and that not eating the Eucharist meal means you won't be saved. And I'm just wondering why you and the Roman Catholics here, when shown how untenable these views really are, simply won't place under question the reasoning that got you there and the "authority" that told you. Is tribalism that much important than truth?

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Just stating your opinions doesn't make other views untenable.

This is the logical error I was trying to help you see earlier, to which Doc may have alluded. All of your arguments assume that salvation is a one-time interior event, and you fault Catholics for not explaining when that event occurs. Despite all the sound and fury, that's not a flaw in our reasoning. It's simply your disagreement with Catholic teaching.

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You're failing to comprehend the argument. If you're saying that salvation is by our performance, then there MUST be a specific point or threshold of performance, at or above which one becomes saved, and below which one is NOT saved. Otherwise, your whole view makes no sense and is completely untenable. In your view, can one be saved with ZERO works? No. Can anyone be perfect in their works? No. Therefore, there exists a finite level of works in between. You can NOT deny this and have your view remain tenable. Doc's answer was that "only God knows" what that threshold is, so at least he's admitting there is one. Now THINK: not only would this directly contradict Scripture, that we CAN know that we are saved, and directly contradict Jesus' declaration that anyone who believes is saved, this would also require God to base salvation on completely arbitrary grounds - for example a person can go to Hell for, say, a 49.00% success rate at good works, but if they had just done ONE MORE good work and reached 50.00%, they would have gone to Heaven instead. But if 50.00% was good enough for God for heaven, why not 49.99%?? Do you honestly think this is how God is going to determine a person's eternal fate? And notice that going to heaven was completely contingent upon our works, thus directly contradicting Scripture yet again.

How does this not make sense to you guys?
(Now cue the "double talk")

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

---

Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

---

Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

---

First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

---

You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

---

Again - there is NO action in the biblical definition of faith. Scripture defines "faith" as a conviction of things unseen and assurance of things hoped for. Conviction and assurance are internal dispositions of the heart. They're states of being. You don't "do" conviction or assurance. Rather, you have conviction and assurance. In contrast, when you "ask God for help", it's something you are doing in the sense of it being a procedural act. It is not an internal disposition that you "have". This isn't hard.

"Keeping" or "staying" in a state of conviction and assurance are not procedural acts either. You're engaging in a bit of sophistry by first expanding the definition of "action" to include mental events like thinking and then fallaciously arguing that since the mental "act" of faith is an "action", or the mental act of "keeping" or "staying" in that faith are "actions" - then any procedural action of your choice can also be inserted into the definition of "faith". Your fallacious argument is being used a the proverbial "foot in the door" in order to shoehorn in any number of procedural acts, like the sacraments, as requirements for the validation of one's "faith". This is how you're coming to the false, completely untenable conclusions that not asking God for help is "unfaithfulness" and that not eating the Eucharist meal means you won't be saved. And I'm just wondering why you and the Roman Catholics here, when shown how untenable these views really are, simply won't place under question the reasoning that got you there and the "authority" that told you. Is tribalism that much important than truth?

---

I don't understand why you think Matthew 7:21-23 doesn't apply to your position. Christ says plainly: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father." Not "he who has internal assurance." Not "he who possesses conviction". And the people He's rejecting in that passage aren't unbelievers who never said "Lord, Lord." They're people who prophesied in His name, cast out demons in His name, did mighty works in His name; people with plenty of outward religious activity and apparently plenty of confidence about their own standing. Christ doesn't say "you never had assurance." He says "I never knew you, depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness." The disqualifier is the doing, or in this case the failure to do the will of the Father, not a deficiency in some internal disposition.

Is tribalism more important than truth? I'd ask you to sit with Matthew 7 the same way. Not what your system needs it to mean, just what it says.

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"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." - Jesus Christ

Doc Holliday said:

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Hey guys, quick PSA: you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith. Wild concept, I know.

I get there's a lot of easy believism floating around out there, "said a prayer once, so I'm covered no matter what I do for the rest of my life,". It's theology created to get butts in seats at entertainment driven churches that are all about vibes. Faith that never shows up to the fight isn't faith. You will create degenerates who have no idea how to handle sin.

And this isn't some rare edge case. There are millions of people walking around fully convinced they're heaven bound on this exact logic, no struggle, no repentance, no fight against sin, just a moment of assent they're banking everything on. That's a lot of people building their eternity on a theology that Christ Himself warned about in Matthew 7.

We've got millions of people throwing around "idolater" at Orthodox/Catholics over icons or Marian honor, while they're out here worshipping their bank accounts, their cars, their houses, chasing corporate titles to feel superior, lusting after people who aren't their spouse, and calling none of it idolatry because it doesn't have incense attached to it.

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You: "... you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith." - it means you really don't have faith to begin with. Do we need to keep repeating this?

Now a question, and seriously, please answer it: if you have to "care about" your sin, and "lift a finger and struggle against" it in order for your faith to be real... then tell us exactly what constitutes being successful at that? What level of "care"? How assiduous the "struggle" in order to have a "real" faith? How do you know? If you can't know, then how can we know that we are saved, as Scripture tells us? How can Jesus be correct in saying that anyone who believes in him will be saved, if ultimately our salvation is based on our performance, not our faith?

You're just finding another back door through which to bring works/merit into the salvation equation. That's ultimately the issue here. You believe in salvation that is ultimately contingent upon our free will to "achieve it" for ourselves. Not only is that clearly NOT the gospel, Scripture calls it ANATHEMA.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

---

Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

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Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

---

Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

---

First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

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You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

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Again - there is NO action in the biblical definition of faith. Scripture defines "faith" as a conviction of things unseen and assurance of things hoped for. Conviction and assurance are internal dispositions of the heart. They're states of being. You don't "do" conviction or assurance. Rather, you have conviction and assurance. In contrast, when you "ask God for help", it's something you are doing in the sense of it being a procedural act. It is not an internal disposition that you "have". This isn't hard.

"Keeping" or "staying" in a state of conviction and assurance are not procedural acts either. You're engaging in a bit of sophistry by first expanding the definition of "action" to include mental events like thinking and then fallaciously arguing that since the mental "act" of faith is an "action", or the mental act of "keeping" or "staying" in that faith are "actions" - then any procedural action of your choice can also be inserted into the definition of "faith". Your fallacious argument is being used a the proverbial "foot in the door" in order to shoehorn in any number of procedural acts, like the sacraments, as requirements for the validation of one's "faith". This is how you're coming to the false, completely untenable conclusions that not asking God for help is "unfaithfulness" and that not eating the Eucharist meal means you won't be saved. And I'm just wondering why you and the Roman Catholics here, when shown how untenable these views really are, simply won't place under question the reasoning that got you there and the "authority" that told you. Is tribalism that much important than truth?

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Just stating your opinions doesn't make other views untenable.

This is the logical error I was trying to help you see earlier, to which Doc may have alluded. All of your arguments assume that salvation is a one-time interior event, and you fault Catholics for not explaining when that event occurs. Despite all the sound and fury, that's not a flaw in our reasoning. It's simply your disagreement with Catholic teaching.

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You're failing to comprehend the argument. If you're saying that salvation is by our performance, then there MUST be a specific point or threshold of performance, at or above which one becomes saved, and below which one is NOT saved. Otherwise, your whole view makes no sense and is completely untenable. In your view, can one be saved with ZERO works? No. Can anyone be perfect in their works? No. Therefore, there exists a finite level of works in between. You can NOT deny this and have your view remain tenable. Doc's answer was that "only God knows" what that threshold is, so at least he's admitting there is one. Now THINK: not only would this directly contradict Scripture, that we CAN know that we are saved, and directly contradict Jesus' declaration that anyone who believes is saved, this would also require God to base salvation on completely arbitrary grounds - for example a person can go to Hell for, say, a 49.00% success rate at good works, but if they had just done ONE MORE good work and reached 50.00%, they would have gone to Heaven instead. But if 50.00% was good enough for God for heaven, why not 49.99%?? Do you honestly think this is how God is going to determine a person's eternal fate? And notice that going to heaven was completely contingent upon our works, thus directly contradicting Scripture yet again.

How does this not make sense to you guys?
(Now cue the "double talk")

---

You are failing to comprehend the argument. Salvation is by faith, or by fidelity if you prefer, not by performance.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Hey guys, quick PSA: you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith. Wild concept, I know.

I get there's a lot of easy believism floating around out there, "said a prayer once, so I'm covered no matter what I do for the rest of my life,". It's theology created to get butts in seats at entertainment driven churches that are all about vibes. Faith that never shows up to the fight isn't faith. You will create degenerates who have no idea how to handle sin.

And this isn't some rare edge case. There are millions of people walking around fully convinced they're heaven bound on this exact logic, no struggle, no repentance, no fight against sin, just a moment of assent they're banking everything on. That's a lot of people building their eternity on a theology that Christ Himself warned about in Matthew 7.

We've got millions of people throwing around "idolater" at Orthodox/Catholics over icons or Marian honor, while they're out here worshipping their bank accounts, their cars, their houses, chasing corporate titles to feel superior, lusting after people who aren't their spouse, and calling none of it idolatry because it doesn't have incense attached to it.

---

You: "... you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith." - it means you really don't have faith to begin with. Do we need to keep repeating this?

Now a question, and seriously, please answer it: if you have to "care about" your sin, and "lift a finger and struggle against" it in order for your faith to be real... then tell us exactly what constitutes being successful at that? What level of "care"? How assiduous the "struggle" in order to have a "real" faith? How do you know? If you can't know, then how can we know that we are saved, as Scripture tells us? How can Jesus be correct in saying that anyone who believes in him will be saved, if ultimately our salvation is based on our performance, not our faith?

You're just finding another back door through which to bring works/merit into the salvation equation. That's ultimately the issue here. You believe in salvation that is ultimately contingent upon our free will to "achieve it" for ourselves. Not only is that clearly NOT the gospel, Scripture calls it ANATHEMA.

---

We don't claim to know with certainty who is finally saved, that's God's judgment, not ours, which is why Scripture tells us to work out our salvation "with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12) instead of handing out certainty cards. Your system needs a moment you can point to and say "that's it, guaranteed, forever, regardless of what follows" specifically because it can't tolerate the tension of ongoing dependence on God. Assurance isn't a one-time stamp you get and then own unconditionally forever, it's tied to staying in the faith, and staying in the faith is tied to struggle and maintenance.

Nobody's claiming there's a percentage threshold of effort you have to clear like a test score. The question was never "how hard did you struggle," it's "is there any actual struggle happening at all, or none." A marriage doesn't need a formula for "how many acts of love per year count as a real marriage" for us to recognize the difference between a married couple and two strangers who signed papers once and never spoke again.

Go read what Paul is actually anathematizing in Galatians. It's a different gospel, one requiring circumcision and Mosaic law-works as the entry price into the covenant apart from Christ. That's not remotely what synergy is. Nobody here is saying you achieve salvation by your own unaided effort as an alternative to grace. Synergy says grace does the saving and enables the response, the will cooperates rather than earns.

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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As soon as you bring that sin before God and ask Him to help you…oops that's works-righteousness. That's effort on your behalf and that's a big no-no.

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Here's yet another instance of you either stubbornly refusing to correct your mischaracterizations and straw men, or your complete lack of comprehension. No one is saying that asking God for help is "works righteousness". It's when you say that you performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you righteous before God. There is only one way to be righteous before God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ - NOT by any free will action on your part outside of your faith.

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Performing the act of asking God for help is what makes you faithful.

Faithfulness isn't a status that exists apart from acts of trust, its constituted by them.

A person who never turns to God, never repents, never asks for help, isn't "faithful but not yet showing works"...they simply aren't faithful. There's no faith hiding somewhere behind the absence of trust in action.

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Faithfulness simply means that you stay believing and keep your faith in Jesus. Again, the biblical concept of faith is a conviction and assurance that what is hoped for is received. There is NO "act" anywhere in the biblical definition. It's all an internal disposition of the heart. Scripture, God's infallible word, disagrees with you.

I find it difficult to conceive of a person who is a believer, who has never "turned to God" or "repented" when these are exactly what you doing when you come to faith in Jesus. But regardless, assuming that you meant AFTER this, they never turn to God or repent for anything - still, this is a believer who is not manifesting fruit, not a believer who is being unfaithful. If a husband doesn't do anything to make his wife happy, he isn't being unfaithful, he's just being a bad husband.

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Staying and keeping are things a person does, continuously, against resistance. That's not "no act anywhere", it's an ongoing act of the will, which is my point. You can't smuggle continuous verbs into your own definition and then claim the definition contains zero action.

Your husband analogy actually proves my point, not yours. "Faithful" isn't a synonym for "hasn't technically betrayed her." An employee isn't one who never sabotages the company…it's one who shows up and does the work. A husband who does nothing for his wife for twenty years, never speaks to her, never provides, never shows affection, nobody calls that man faithful just because he didn't cheat. We'd call that abandonment, which is itself a form of unfaithfulness.

You're not even adhering to sola fide. Luther and Calvin wouldn't uphold your view.

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First of all, you're WAY too loose with the definition of "act". By your definition, anything can be called an act, and therefore the whole point is moot.

Also, let me remind you that you are arguing specifically that "asking God for help" is faithfulness, which is more than just an act of the will. Thus, it is not "faith" in the way that Scripture defines it. I also remind you that you also argue that performative actions like the Eucharist are also necessary for salvation, which is clearly more than just an act of the will.

You're just wrong about what "unfaithful" means. You're artificially stretching it so that it includes what you're arguing. In very simple terms it means that exclusivity has been violated. A husband gives to another woman what his wife has exclusive rights to. Here's a textbook example of "unfaithfulness": bowing and praying to Mary and crediting her for your salvation, when this exclusively belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

---

You're the one who keeps sneaking action into your own definition, not me. You said faith means "staying" and "keeping" your belief…cool, those are verbs. Things you do. Then in the same breath you say faith has "no act anywhere" and is purely a feeling sitting in your heart doing nothing.

So which is it? Is "staying faithful" something you actively do, or does it just happen to you like digestion? Because if "staying" counts as faith but "asking God for help" doesn't, I'd love to hear the actual rule that separates them, not just "one's mine so it's fine, one's yours so it's works." Right now you're just vibes based labeling: things you like = internal disposition, things you don't = scary forbidden works.

---

Again - there is NO action in the biblical definition of faith. Scripture defines "faith" as a conviction of things unseen and assurance of things hoped for. Conviction and assurance are internal dispositions of the heart. They're states of being. You don't "do" conviction or assurance. Rather, you have conviction and assurance. In contrast, when you "ask God for help", it's something you are doing in the sense of it being a procedural act. It is not an internal disposition that you "have". This isn't hard.

"Keeping" or "staying" in a state of conviction and assurance are not procedural acts either. You're engaging in a bit of sophistry by first expanding the definition of "action" to include mental events like thinking and then fallaciously arguing that since the mental "act" of faith is an "action", or the mental act of "keeping" or "staying" in that faith are "actions" - then any procedural action of your choice can also be inserted into the definition of "faith". Your fallacious argument is being used a the proverbial "foot in the door" in order to shoehorn in any number of procedural acts, like the sacraments, as requirements for the validation of one's "faith". This is how you're coming to the false, completely untenable conclusions that not asking God for help is "unfaithfulness" and that not eating the Eucharist meal means you won't be saved. And I'm just wondering why you and the Roman Catholics here, when shown how untenable these views really are, simply won't place under question the reasoning that got you there and the "authority" that told you. Is tribalism that much important than truth?

---

Just stating your opinions doesn't make other views untenable.

This is the logical error I was trying to help you see earlier, to which Doc may have alluded. All of your arguments assume that salvation is a one-time interior event, and you fault Catholics for not explaining when that event occurs. Despite all the sound and fury, that's not a flaw in our reasoning. It's simply your disagreement with Catholic teaching.

---

You're failing to comprehend the argument. If you're saying that salvation is by our performance, then there MUST be a specific point or threshold of performance, at or above which one becomes saved, and below which one is NOT saved. Otherwise, your whole view makes no sense and is completely untenable. In your view, can one be saved with ZERO works? No. Can anyone be perfect in their works? No. Therefore, there exists a finite level of works in between. You can NOT deny this and have your view remain tenable. Doc's answer was that "only God knows" what that threshold is, so at least he's admitting there is one. Now THINK: not only would this directly contradict Scripture, that we CAN know that we are saved, and directly contradict Jesus' declaration that anyone who believes is saved, this would also require God to base salvation on completely arbitrary grounds - for example a person can go to Hell for, say, a 49.00% success rate at good works, but if they had just done ONE MORE good work and reached 50.00%, they would have gone to Heaven instead. But if 50.00% was good enough for God for heaven, why not 49.99%?? Do you honestly think this is how God is going to determine a person's eternal fate? And notice that going to heaven was completely contingent upon our works, thus directly contradicting Scripture yet again.

How does this not make sense to you guys?
(Now cue the "double talk")

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You are failing to comprehend the argument. Salvation is by faith, or by fidelity if you prefer, not by performance.

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Double talk!! There it is, folks, just like I said.

Sam: "You must take up your cross and follow Jesus in order to be saved."

Also Sam: "Salvation is by faith, not by performance."

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

Hey guys, quick PSA: you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith. Wild concept, I know.

I get there's a lot of easy believism floating around out there, "said a prayer once, so I'm covered no matter what I do for the rest of my life,". It's theology created to get butts in seats at entertainment driven churches that are all about vibes. Faith that never shows up to the fight isn't faith. You will create degenerates who have no idea how to handle sin.

And this isn't some rare edge case. There are millions of people walking around fully convinced they're heaven bound on this exact logic, no struggle, no repentance, no fight against sin, just a moment of assent they're banking everything on. That's a lot of people building their eternity on a theology that Christ Himself warned about in Matthew 7.

We've got millions of people throwing around "idolater" at Orthodox/Catholics over icons or Marian honor, while they're out here worshipping their bank accounts, their cars, their houses, chasing corporate titles to feel superior, lusting after people who aren't their spouse, and calling none of it idolatry because it doesn't have incense attached to it.

---

You: "... you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith." - it means you really don't have faith to begin with. Do we need to keep repeating this?

Now a question, and seriously, please answer it: if you have to "care about" your sin, and "lift a finger and struggle against" it in order for your faith to be real... then tell us exactly what constitutes being successful at that? What level of "care"? How assiduous the "struggle" in order to have a "real" faith? How do you know? If you can't know, then how can we know that we are saved, as Scripture tells us? How can Jesus be correct in saying that anyone who believes in him will be saved, if ultimately our salvation is based on our performance, not our faith?

You're just finding another back door through which to bring works/merit into the salvation equation. That's ultimately the issue here. You believe in salvation that is ultimately contingent upon our free will to "achieve it" for ourselves. Not only is that clearly NOT the gospel, Scripture calls it ANATHEMA.

---

We don't claim to know with certainty who is finally saved, that's God's judgment, not ours, which is why Scripture tells us to work out our salvation "with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12) instead of handing out certainty cards. Your system needs a moment you can point to and say "that's it, guaranteed, forever, regardless of what follows" specifically because it can't tolerate the tension of ongoing dependence on God. Assurance isn't a one-time stamp you get and then own unconditionally forever, it's tied to staying in the faith, and staying in the faith is tied to struggle and maintenance.

Nobody's claiming there's a percentage threshold of effort you have to clear like a test score. The question was never "how hard did you struggle," it's "is there any actual struggle happening at all, or none." A marriage doesn't need a formula for "how many acts of love per year count as a real marriage" for us to recognize the difference between a married couple and two strangers who signed papers once and never spoke again.

Go read what Paul is actually anathematizing in Galatians. It's a different gospel, one requiring circumcision and Mosaic law-works as the entry price into the covenant apart from Christ. That's not remotely what synergy is. Nobody here is saying you achieve salvation by your own unaided effort as an alternative to grace. Synergy says grace does the saving and enables the response, the will cooperates rather than earns.

---

This isn't about "knowing with certainty who is finally saved". This is about an individual who believes in Jesus knowing that they are saved, by the basis of their faith alone. That's what Scripture directly and explicitly tells us. If the final verdict of your salvation is contingent upon your performance as well your faith, and it is God's decision on whether your performance was good enough, then no one can ever know if they are saved until the end when it is decided, even if they believe. And that is directly contradicting God's word. Your view contradicts God's word. Shouldn't that settle it?

You seem to have retreated in your view to a more modest one, one where now "struggling" is all one needs to do. Before this, you've been crystal clear that through one's own free will "cooperation" one MUST achieve Christ-likeness (as well as performative sacraments), NOT just "struggle" with them while actually achieving NONE of them. And even in this more modest view of yours, you're STILL stuck with the problem of determining what exactly constitutes "struggle" and to what degree is satisfactory to God (what is the cutoff point). You're still in your conundrum of contradicting Scripture. You're still forcing God to act arbitrarily in determing a person's eternal fate by having him choose a cutoff point. You're view is always going to have these problems when you tie one's performance to salvation. A perfect, holy God has only a cutoff point at perfection. We've all fallen short, and it is impossible for us to achieve it. That's why the only way for us to be saved is to have Jesus' perfection imputed to us, which we receive as a free gift by our faith alone. This is the gospel. You are stuck in the mindset of works-based righteousness, which is essentially the same mindset as those who rejected Jesus and who relied upon their own Law-keeping for their righteousness.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

Hey guys, quick PSA: you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith. Wild concept, I know.

I get there's a lot of easy believism floating around out there, "said a prayer once, so I'm covered no matter what I do for the rest of my life,". It's theology created to get butts in seats at entertainment driven churches that are all about vibes. Faith that never shows up to the fight isn't faith. You will create degenerates who have no idea how to handle sin.

And this isn't some rare edge case. There are millions of people walking around fully convinced they're heaven bound on this exact logic, no struggle, no repentance, no fight against sin, just a moment of assent they're banking everything on. That's a lot of people building their eternity on a theology that Christ Himself warned about in Matthew 7.

We've got millions of people throwing around "idolater" at Orthodox/Catholics over icons or Marian honor, while they're out here worshipping their bank accounts, their cars, their houses, chasing corporate titles to feel superior, lusting after people who aren't their spouse, and calling none of it idolatry because it doesn't have incense attached to it.

---

You: "... you can't love your sin, not care about it, never repent, never lift a finger to struggle against it, and still claim your faith is legit. That's not "resting in grace," that's just not having faith." - it means you really don't have faith to begin with. Do we need to keep repeating this?

Now a question, and seriously, please answer it: if you have to "care about" your sin, and "lift a finger and struggle against" it in order for your faith to be real... then tell us exactly what constitutes being successful at that? What level of "care"? How assiduous the "struggle" in order to have a "real" faith? How do you know? If you can't know, then how can we know that we are saved, as Scripture tells us? How can Jesus be correct in saying that anyone who believes in him will be saved, if ultimately our salvation is based on our performance, not our faith?

You're just finding another back door through which to bring works/merit into the salvation equation. That's ultimately the issue here. You believe in salvation that is ultimately contingent upon our free will to "achieve it" for ourselves. Not only is that clearly NOT the gospel, Scripture calls it ANATHEMA.

---

We don't claim to know with certainty who is finally saved, that's God's judgment, not ours, which is why Scripture tells us to work out our salvation "with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12) instead of handing out certainty cards. Your system needs a moment you can point to and say "that's it, guaranteed, forever, regardless of what follows" specifically because it can't tolerate the tension of ongoing dependence on God. Assurance isn't a one-time stamp you get and then own unconditionally forever, it's tied to staying in the faith, and staying in the faith is tied to struggle and maintenance.

Nobody's claiming there's a percentage threshold of effort you have to clear like a test score. The question was never "how hard did you struggle," it's "is there any actual struggle happening at all, or none." A marriage doesn't need a formula for "how many acts of love per year count as a real marriage" for us to recognize the difference between a married couple and two strangers who signed papers once and never spoke again.

Go read what Paul is actually anathematizing in Galatians. It's a different gospel, one requiring circumcision and Mosaic law-works as the entry price into the covenant apart from Christ. That's not remotely what synergy is. Nobody here is saying you achieve salvation by your own unaided effort as an alternative to grace. Synergy says grace does the saving and enables the response, the will cooperates rather than earns.

---

This isn't about "knowing with certainty who is finally saved". This is about an individual who believes in Jesus knowing that they are saved, by the basis of their faith alone. That's what Scripture directly and explicitly tells us. If the final verdict of your salvation is contingent upon your performance as well your faith, and it is God's decision on whether your performance was good enough, then no one can ever know if they are saved until the end when it is decided, even if they believe. And that is directly contradicting God's word. Your view contradicts God's word. Shouldn't that settle it?

You seem to have retreated in your view to a more modest one, one where now "struggling" is all one needs to do. Before this, you've been crystal clear that through one's own free will "cooperation" one MUST achieve Christ-likeness (as well as performative sacraments), NOT just "struggle" with them while actually achieving NONE of them. And even in this more modest view of yours, you're STILL stuck with the problem of determining what exactly constitutes "struggle" and to what degree is satisfactory to God (what is the cutoff point). You're still in your conundrum of contradicting Scripture. You're still forcing God to act arbitrarily in determing a person's eternal fate by having him choose a cutoff point. Your view is always going to have these problems when you tie one's performance to salvation. A perfect, holy God has only a cutoff point at perfection. We've all fallen short, and it is impossible for us to achieve it. That's why the only way for us to be saved is to have Jesus' perfection imputed to us, which we receive as a free gift by our faith alone. This is the gospel. You are stuck in the mindset of works-based righteousness, which is essentially the same mindset as those who rejected Jesus and who relied upon their own Law-keeping for their righteousness.

---

You accuse me of retreating from "achieve Christ-likeness" to "struggle," but that's not a retreat, that's what theosis has always meant. It's a lifelong process of cooperating with grace, not a performance bar you clear before salvation counts. Nobody in Orthodoxy has ever said you must fully achieve Christlikeness in this life to be saved. You misunderstand completely what Theosis is.

Now the cutoff point. You act like this problem is unique to my position, but it's not…it's yours too, and you've just been hiding it inside your system. You need a way to distinguish real, saving faith from the kind of faith James describes in demons, who believe with total certainty and tremble. So what's your cutoff for "real" belief versus "just intellectual assent"? What's the minimum threshold of assurance, hope, or ongoing conviction someone needs to have genuinely believed rather than merely nodded along? You can't answer that with precision either. Every soteriology that distinguishes true faith from false faith has this same discernment problem, because it's not a flaw in one system, it's the nature of assessing an internal, invisible reality.

I never said assurance requires knowing you've hit a performance quota. That's your framework, not mine. Assurance rests in the trustworthiness of Christ and His promises, not in a self-audit of whether you've struggled hard enough. That's precisely why Scripture pairs assurance with ongoing trust and perseverance rather than a single backward-looking event, "he who endures to the end will be saved" (Matt 24:13), "if we hold fast the confidence… firm to the end" (Heb 3:14). Assurance and ongoing cooperation aren't in tension in Scripture, you're the one introducing the tension because your system Is transactional and extremely legal.

The Pharisees rejected grace and relied on Torah observance as a substitute for Christ. Synergy is grace enabled response to Christ, not a substitute for Him. Conflating those two is the same move as calling a marriage "transactional" because the spouse still shows up every day.

You're just not comprehending what I'm telling you. Your faith can't be dead, and we never lose free will. So there is something you need to do. That doesn't mean works-righteousness or relying on law keeping whatsoever. It means REAL faith.