Conservatives give lip service to Jesus,
and then quietly replace Jesus' teaching
about Faith expressed in one's works"
with Paul's teaching about
Faith without works :
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[3] "for Salvation"
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While claiming to be "Christians", Conservatives give lip service to Jesus, and then quietly replace Jesus' teaching about Faith expressed in one's works" with Paul's teaching about Faith without works : |
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[3] "for Salvation"
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| For Jesus, Faith or Belief in Him, wasn't an end in itself, it was the means whereby people came to trust the message of salvation that he had to offer. |
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| As the preceding texts show, faith was important to Jesus, but not in isolation from works! On the one hand, those whose deeds are good recognize Jesus and "come to the light (i.e. believe in him), so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God." And on the other, those who have faith in Jesus, do what he teaches them to do. |
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Some people claim the problem isn't so much Paul's teaching as the fairly recent Lutheran and evangelical interpretation of that teaching. But who was James arguing with, if not Paul, when he wrote his very forceful and clear repudiation of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, without works on man's part?
If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, and you say to him, "Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty," and then don't give him clothes or food, what good does that do? So you see, it isn't enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn't show itself by good works is no faith at all – it is dead and useless. But someone may well argue, "You say the way to God is by faith alone, plus nothing; well, I say that good works are important too, for without works you can't prove whether you have faith or not; but anyone can see that I have faith by the way I act." Are there still some among you who hold that "only believing" is enough? Believing in one God? Well, remember that the demons believe this too – so strongly that they tremble in terror! Fool! When will you ever learn that "believing" is useless without doing what God wants you to? Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith. Just as the body is dead when there is no spirit in it, so faith is dead if it is not the kind that results in good deeds." |
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. One of the most famous of Paul's admirers – I'm tempted to say "worshippers" – was the great reformer, Martin Luther, whose impact on Protestantism is incalculable. But Martin Luther made it clear that he would have preferred aNew Testament without the Epistle of James and that the only Gospel that he considered important was John's. In Wittenberg, 1522 and in Laws, James p.1 he wrote:
(and by this very same argument, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke "are gospels of straw, (compared to the Gospel of John and to Paul's epistles) for these have nothing of the nature of the gospel about them, and among the books or doctrines that you need "never to see or hear". ) So Luther favored the scripture authored by those furthest from Jesus over those closest to him. When Martin Luther feared losing the support of the big political players of his time for his brand new church, the reformer turned his back on the peasants, and with his inflammatory address to the German nobility unleashed wholesale carnage against the peasantry: "choke, stab and kill, and if you die, take comfort, you do the work of God." And when in 1541 he supervised in person the drowning of a five year old "devil’s child" in the Zwickauer Mulde, a river in Saxony, Luther may really have thought of it as a high point in his lifelong wrestling match with the devil. It is not, as if he didn't know what he was doing. "Yes, their blood is on me, but I put it in the hands of our Lord, who made me do it" (Martin Luther, "Table-Conversations"). Luther believed to have an excuse for rejecting even the remotest responsibility for his own actions, and he explicitly based this attitude on his "faith". In the preface to his bible translation Martin Luther placed little value on the synoptic gospels, “to know Christ's works and His life's story is not the same thing as to know the gospel, because it does not mean that you know that He conquered sin, death, and the devil.” |
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John the Baptist's message was to repent of past sins, to be cleansed through baptism, and to perform good works instead of evil ones in the future:
In reply he said to them, "whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages." As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. his winnowing fork is in his hand, (to separate those destined for reward from those destined for punishment) to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people." (also recorded in Matthew 3: 9-12 & Mark) |
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John's Book of Revelation puts these words in the mouth of the Judge of mankind :
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According to the Book of Revelation there can be no doubt that God judges people on the basis of their works:
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The idea of salvation by faith alone, with grace on god's part replacing works on man's part, may appear to make Jesus more deserving of praise, love, admiration and appreciation. But Jesus Christ didn't teach it; and for good reason. (It was either Martin Luther or John Calvin who deliberately "improved" Paul's words "the just shall live by faith" by adding the word "alone." ) This theory makes Christ out to be like the pilot of the air plane to heaven. All you have to do is "believe", i.e. trust him, and climb aboard, and he will do the rest. You might as well go to sleep and "leave the flying to Jesus"; because you are saved the minute you "believe", and you are guaranteed a seat not just for the trip but for an eternity in heaven as well. According to this theory, Jesus has paid for your ticket with his own blood. Although Jesus is the only man who has ever lived a blameless life, God has allowed this one sinless person to suffer the punishment for everybody else's sins. If you believe that teaching, then you are putting your faith in Paul, not in christ. What Christ taught was that salvation is very demanding, and that – far from carrying your cross for you – Jesus requires that you pick up your own cross daily and follow him. Believing in him is not an end in itself, it's simply the step that puts one on the right road, the road of obedience to Christ, which leads to eternal life. Do you know why there were so few Christian voices raised in opposition to Hitler, not just during the Holocaust, but in the many years leading up to it? Lutheran pastor and scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought long and hard about the failure of the Christian community in Germany and then wrote the powerful book The Cost of Discipleship. His rare understanding of the teaching of Christ moved him to raise a lonely voice against the attrocities being perpetrated in a supposedly Christian nation and, like Christ, he was put to death for doing so. His insights may explain why many things go wrong in supposedly Christian communities and individuals: "Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves . . . the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship . . . Costly grace is the grace which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock . . . It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life." ( See the whole web page I dedicate to Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship" at www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/about/cheapgrace.html.) Is it merely a coincidence that the region of America where Fundamentalism reigns supreme, the region called "the Bible belt", is the region that for hundreds of years practiced and even blessed the slavery of dark skinned human beings from Africa by light skinned "Christian"human beings from Europe? Or is it connected with their feeling that "works don't matter"? If God doesn't save on the basis of good works, then can he condemn on the basis of bad works? Those who have held with Paul’s view that it is faith and not works that lead to salvation have found it necessary to denigrate the value of Jesus’ teaching. They claim that since Jesus’ teachings about moral action are impossible for anyone (other than Jesus) to comply with perfectly, that His teachings are nothing more than an example meant to show us how imperfect we all are and how salvation for such imperfect beings is impossible except through the saving grace of faith. An example of this can be found in the following quotations from the German Lutheran theologian, Carl Stange: Not even a disastrous civil war was able to move the hard hearts of so-called "Bible belt Christians" to stop persecuting their former slaves. They simply invented new ways to oppress their former victims, through the enthusiastic public practices of segregation and the only slightly less public practices of the lynch-mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, where all kinds of "respectable" gentlemen and even "clergy" hid beneath white sheets to kill, maim and terrify black people. See what passes for "Christian" theology in communities and denominations that have their roots in "the Bible belt", otherwise known as "Dixie", or "the Confederate States of America" : JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/about/christianconservatism.html. Is it merely a coincidence that when the Democratic Party turned its back on its former racism, many Bible Belt "Christians" – who had hated the Republican Party so long because it represented "the party of Lincoln" – hastened to switch their allegiance to that party as soon as it had turned itself inside out, and lapped up the racist attitudes which the Democratic Party had vomited? Is it merely a coincidence that the "Christian Conservatives" of "the Bible belt" now oppose Affirmative Action and promote school vouchers – which will restore well-financed private (and segregated) "Christian" schools for their own white children, while leaving minorities in increasingly neglected "public" schools? Is it merely a coincidence that the states where Conservatives are strongest are the ones with the most minorities in prison,the most minorities being put to death, the most incidences of prison brutality, and the most instances of minorities often being deprived of their right to vote for life, (despite Jesus' warning that when we neglect those in prison, it is him whom we are hurting)? There's some evidence that Paul himself wouldn't agree with the view that seems to be expressed in many excerpts of Paul that play down the importance of "works" and which are constantly quoted by Fundamentalists. Here's is what he wrote, for example in There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all." There are a lot more problems with Paul's teaching than just the matter of faith vs. works. While Jesus of Nazareth preached and modelled by his behavior love, understanding, respect for all kinds of people, much - though not all – of Paul's teaching is very different, as you can read in his own words at http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/PaulvsAll.html. |
According to Paul, the world has |
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*1 Scholarly Reflections on Paul vs. Jesus :
In Albert Schweitzer's view,
Bishop John S. Spong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark)
According to Will Durant (Historian of Philosophy),
Or as Thomas Jefferson himself put it,
According to the brilliant astronomer Carl Sagan,
Hyam Maccoby (Talmudic Scholar) In order to make room for his own unique teaching, in which GRACE trumps everything, Paul claims that "the Jews" were all wrong for making to big a deal of "the law". Now I have problems with this tactic of Paul's on several grounds. Keep in mind that although Paul's epistles appear in our bible AFTER the Gospels, they were written BEFORE the Gospels. So 1) Did these "Jews" with whom Paul disagree include Jesus? 2) Jesus never criticized Judaism as a whole, but only a few "right-wing" fundamentalist types who abused the Judaic faith (which he made it clear was His faith). 3) Jesus criticized these abuses of the faith for promoting their own "traditions" instead of "the law". ( R. D.) |
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Here's an interesting take on the famous verse:
{ John 3:16 }
[author unknown] |
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[3] "for Salvation" |
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