Salvation by faith and works : intellectually ridiculous?

Hi Smak.OP means opening post. Post 1. Thread can go off on tangents and sometimes its worthwhile to remind a person entering the discussion as to what the main discussion is supposed to be aboutCould you deal with the questions I raised in my response to your post? I challenged some of your statements directly and wouldn't mind them being dealt with before progressing.Cheers

Would you like to try again?Biblical evidence for Ringos: "Hell the continuum" Fury, anger, rage, hatred etc? One only has to trawl around "Reasons why I won't believe" at EvC to garner the impression that many are under the impression that God is a wrathful. Whatever. Could you beef up the following notion with something other than sentimentality.

I didn't bring up this off topic and but have watched some wriggling. If you do post something biblical to give some support for your version of hell-the-continuum I'll leave it stand without comment so we can all get back on topicI've heard some others mention the idea but have never heard from whence the idea came.

Define worthy. Where is the point at which he is considered worthy or not worthy. Presumably there is a crossover point. And the OP was asking if so, doesn't that mean that the person who scrapes into heaven by just being on the right side of the the divide is separated from a person who just misses out by something as small as 0.1 second of unworthy action?We are told to share the good news. In doing so could it be that a man who would have been considered worthy without having heard might now be damned. Damned because some mission worker shared the news but he didn't accept it? I was asking how you differentiate between works in Matt 25 being casual to salvation or consequential as a result of having being saved I'm aware of the difficulty. That's why we get 300 posts to thrash it out In toto I see salvation by faith alone. Perhaps. My point was simply that you said that calling upon his name wouldn't save. Whereas it patently will - whatever calling on his name happens to involve

Just a point of note Smak. When responding to me, say, then you need to reply to the post I sent you. I won't necessarily see your response if you post to me via anothers post. Whichever way he decides it seems apparent that he will find one persons life worthy and anothers unworthy. There is a crossover point. If what we do matters (lets forgoe the term 'works' so as to rid ourselves of the notion that this is measured in hours spent doing good things) then our salvation depends (in part) on us doing them (whatever they are) sufficiently so as to cross the line. If we don't do them sufficiently then we won't.That is not to say that we know what is sufficient. We can't - we are not God. All we can do it to live out the faith and hope we've done enough to cross the line.But a line there must be for it to be possible to us to cross or fall short of it on the basis (all other things being equal)of our own doing.Do you agree?

And there I was putting my faith in you. I thought you were going to deal with the problem in the OP. But it seems that this is going to become a general discussion on salvation by f+w.Can we spend a while dealing with the OP? We can deal with general f+w later. In dealing with your post now I would for instance note that 5 of the verses you placed don't mention works in relation to salvation. I have no problem with being exhorted and being expected to live according to his will: which means that choices I make and things I do are very important. They just aren't important in relation to my final destination (greater/lesser in the kingdom of God by works?)You can see how drift occurs.

The Faith alone positon holds that works WILL be a consequence of saving faith. God takes up residence in a believer on his conversion and works in the believer to will (desire) and to act according to his (Gods good purpose). Works as a consequence of God acting from within.A person who claims to have faith but has not the works to show for it, has not God acting from within. If he hasn't then he is not a believer. His faith is dead.Salvation by faith alone > works a consequence of that faith. Separate things but umbilically (not unbiblically ) tied togetherThat would be my general approach to those passages. But could we stick to the OP?

Fine. It seems inescapable to me. As does the notion that if worthiness can differ unto salvation/damnation the worthiness can differ between people on either side of the divide. Hitler we might presume is in real trouble. He seems to have done just about everything in the book that would add to his unworthiness. I'm sure he did worthy things at times but all things added up (however they are) then then his goose is likely truly cooked. If we can't say that for sure then one would have to wonder about that wide gate that many will follow unto destruction.If you agree on that then we have grades of unworthiness and thus worthiness. Do you agree with this thinking? The ones that mention work, reward etc but don't mention salvation or justification or such thing. There are different ways to define faith depending on ones position.Faith when not a believer. Not sure what to make of this. "I believe in God and have faith I can live as I like and he will save me in the end" seems pretty useless. But there may be aspects of God given faith aimed at leading a person to ChristFaith on the point of conversion. The God given ability to be able to turn to him, believe he exists and believe one is a hopeless sinner in need of what his son did in order to recieve his salvationFaith after conversion: can be seen as a highway down which God sends belief and trust in himself to the believer. We need God to fill us up as it were and when we say I have faith in God then it means I believe in him, trust him. Strong faith = wide bandwidth as it were

I do allow for free will also. Exercise of free will will affect the level of adherance to the unmistakable style of life exhorted throughout the epistles. The standard is high. Impossible for anyone to live all day, every day, every year of their life. That much we might find agreement on.Presumably in your view the greater the adherance, the further above the worthiness cut off point you will land - again backed up by greater and lesser in the kingdom of heaven possibly. Back we shall go. But maybe you'd pop a quick clarification next post on your view on the "what Christianity objectively teaches not opinion" bit. Not for OT dicussion - just for backgroundThis message has been edited by iano, 23-Apr-2006 12:12 AM

I wouldn't say its only satan at work. Satan needs sinners to carry out his work afterall...2 peter where? I don't see any that specific.This message has been edited by iano, 23-Apr-2006 12:57 AM

Thanks Smak, I was looking for a little backgound which you kindly gave. If you head back to topic (msg 160 I believe is where we left off) perhaps we can carry out some q&a's on this as a sub-topic as we go?ps: are you familiar with the "normally distributed curve" in maths?This message has been edited by iano, 23-Apr-2006 09:58 AM

I don't know about anyones destination specifically either. It could be that, in taking everything into account as only God can, that Hitler might, on the basis of "to whom much is given" will fall on the worthy side of the line. And Mother Theresa on the unworthy side. Who knows what raw material he/she was working with?In passing: having said that however, his (for instance) possibly being considered worthy, would only underscore the logical conclusion that works-influenced salvation ensures that no one can have the slightest clue about their own position at the present time - for want of knowing (amongst other things) "how much was I given - as God sees it?". If we are not sure about hitlers destination w.r.t. works-influenced salvation then we certainly cannot be sure of our own.*************************************************************************
To move on:On the assumption that you understand the basics (which is all I do) of the bell (normally distributed) curve we might move on. Prior to that we might recap: we seem to have agreed that...1. there is a line (whichever criteria and weighting God uses to place it). On one side; those who are considered worthy enough for heaven, on the other those who aren't and go to hell.2. On either side of the line there are grades of worthiness. A person can be closer to or further away from the dividing line - irrespective of the side they fall. Hitler, although we cannot say what his actual position is, can be taken as an example (were we measuring according to our measure) of one who falls way short of the line. He would (were it our measure) be at the tail end of the unworthy queue along with Stalin, Gengis Khan, Pol Pot etcThat being the case, then I want to use the bell curve (albeit it altered it along the way) to model what I reckon must be the case in a works influences salvation situation.Step 1
First off. We draw a vertical line through the curve which represents the worthy/unworthy divide (however arrived at by God). The line must pass through the very highest point on the summit of the curve.Step 2
All to the left of the line are considered unworthy and all to the right are considered worthy. The shape of the bell curve can initially (this will be qualified at step 5) be taken as roughly representing the totality of humanities situation graphicallyImmediately to the left of the dividing line the value of a persons unworthiness is nearly that which attains heaven..but not quite. As we move further to the left, the falling slope indicates less and less worthiness. Where the slope tails right off we have fewer and fewer people who are about unworthy as one can get. According to our standard, Hitler would be down here somewhere. At the very extemity of that tail end: the most unworthy person who has ever lived - poor bastard.Step 3
When we shift to the right side of the dividing line we must simply invert the logic of step 2. Just right of the line represents the people who have just scraped into heaven (as it were). And as we move further to the right and the curve slopes downwards we find the people with ever greater worthiness. All the way to the very end of the tail off where we find the person considered the most worthy of all people: Mother Theresa or similar (according to our standards of judgement)Step 5The shape of the curve will not necessarily follow the bell form - which was just an initial get go model. We might factor in a notion such as the narrow and wide gates - which might cause us to suppose that there will be less people who are considered to fall on the worthy side than fall on the unworthy side. In this case the shape of the curve must 'deform' from the symmetrical bell shape and contain more area (people) under the curve to the left (unworthy side) than area under the curve to the right (worthy side)Neither has the shape to be the same always-sloping-down-as-we-move-left-or-right-of-the-dividing-line as we find in the bell curve. You might get horizontal sections where MANY people are contained (represented by area under the curve) at the same unworthiness value. IOW: as you move left (for instance) of the dividing line you will trace a God-knows-what-shaped-line. But the curve is always decreasing from the peak, possibly going horizontal (or nearly) in places of equal (or nearly) unworthiness. Whatever the shape of the curve the trend is a falling one. This applies on either side of the dividing line: decreasing worthiness/increasing worthiness as we move away from the dividing lineI don't know how much you agree with this model. There is a little more to say about it. I have for instance, not made any argument about the relationship between the highest point of the curve (which would represent "least unworthiness flipping over the line to least worthy" in relation to the horizontal axis (which represents zero worthiness (to the left)/maximum worthiness (to the right).But it seems like a good time to get your view thus far. Are we in agreement more or less?This message has been edited by iano, 24-Apr-2006 12:51 AM

Fair enough Smak. See you around and God bless

Although we don't know that God will judge mathematically it seems that a just God would be in a position to quantify in some way each persons position in relation to the line which must be crossed in order to attain to heaven.A judge hearing non-jury criminal case uses a mixture of subjective and objective evaluation when weighing up the evidence according to a standard of law and is attmpting to quantify the actions of the accused according to that standard. Subjective only because he doesn't know every single fact that there is to be know about the caseGod being God, is in a position to quantify our actions perfectly objectively according to the his standard. Maths is the purest, least subjective way there is of quantifying that we know if. There is reason to suppose that perfect justice must use a perfect tool in order to be perfectly just. If not maths, then a tool even more perfect than maths.Works is not only action. It is also thought. One can give 50% of their hard earned cash to the poor but do so with the thought "that should score some points with God" No one would seriously suggest that such action will do anything of the sort. The contrary is probably true. Action is good in works influenced salvation - but the motivation behind it, the thought behind it is vital too. With that in mind.I don't know how many thoughts a person has a day. Anita came into my office a minute ago looking for one of the fitters to saw a foot off a plastic piece of tubing she had with her. I left it on the desk and thought " Anitas a bit of a pain in the arse - she lets work slips off her shoulders onto others - now, when she wants something its "I need it now" . I'm not strolling around to the workshop until after my coffee - let her wait"Cutting the tube for Anita is a good act. There is no onus on me to do it - in fact, given her track record, I could easily refuse to on the "eye for an eye / Anita reaps what she sows" principle. But as a works-based Christian I would be called to forgive those who trespass against me.In employing no forgiveness (I refuse her request point blank) I would presumably score a zero when this situation is judged. If I had forgiven totally and cut the tube straight away (I could have) then I would have scored a 10. As it is, I probably scored a 2.1 x thought/action situation. 1 x score given on the day of judgement. Say there are 1000 of these sitations per day: ranging from 1 second thoughts (a little idle lusting at a traffic light) to more considered ones. And say we don't worry about the relative weighting of one action over another. Then then we have a situation where a person who lives on average 40 "age of reason" years will have...15 million separate actions/thoughts to which God would assign a score.Adding in other factors such as "to whom much is given" only raises the complexity of the tool used to judge - it doesn't reduce the amount of incremental thought/action that will be judged on the way to an overall judgement being formed. Patently only God could tease it all out.Say 100 billion people will have lived and died by the time of judgement (12 billion live and die every century at current rates). It seems inescapable to conclude that if worthiness is somewhat normally distributed (few Hitlers/few Mother Theresas/many in the middle) that the dividing line between salvation and damnation is going to result in worst person in heaven/best person in hell being separated by only a few points.Now God can of course decide where to draw the line. And if one fails by 1 point then one has failed - period. That is his perogative and it will be just.But it is intellectually insulting.I don't know what my score would have been prior to my encounter with Anita. But if I died just after she walked out the door, according to works-influence salvation, that score of 2 on this issue could have resulted in me being the closest-but-no-cigar in hell. I could be the one nearest the dividing line. One moment of forgiveness, a bit of grumbling yet giving in to Anita and I could have been given score of 4 instead. Meaning I would have just scraped into and eternally blissful heaven and avoided eternally tormenting Hell.p.s.
As it was, writing this caused me to reflect on my treatment of Anita. I remembered Gods total forgiveness of me and in comparison the ugliness of my own actions. Inspired by him and his way, I went and cut the tube and delivered it up to her office. And got a surprised but happy smile in return. She didn't expect unmerited favour (for many have in the past, made it known that she doesn't merit it - including unfortunately, me). It was a lovely smile a smile of gratitude for something not deserved. It might cause her to change her ways. It might not. That is between her and God. It is not for me to judge.I'm already going to heaven, by faith alone. It is the sheer thankfulness for this gift from God that makes me care one way or the other about Anita. He loves her and that has to be good enough for me.This message has been edited by iano, 24-Apr-2006 01:11 PMThis message has been edited by iano, 24-Apr-2006 04:32 PM

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My avatar shows a thief-on-the-cross view of Jesus. One said "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom". The other (presumably) remained firmly nailed (spiritually) to the sin that had hung him (physically) there, as he entered into Judgement. Who do YOU say that Jesus is? Will you mock him and spit on him - or will you call on him.... "Lord".