"Hard Saying" in Today's Mass Reading

The first mass reading for today is one of my favorites. Although it was not always.

The Apostle James distills the debate about faith and works  so well in his epistle, it is staggering. I remember as a Reformed Protestant having to sort of *wince* a bit at some of St. James' language. The book of James was full of what Protestants must call "hard sayings", which is another way of saying either "we dont like what it says", or "it doesn't fit in our interpretive paradigm, so let's shelve it".
Well, that's not good enough. And James calls you an "ignoramus" for doing so.

You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless?

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?

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

See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. For just as a body without a spirit is dead,

so also faith without works is dead.

Jas 2:14-24, 26

James apostolic smack down just reached out from the 1st century and slapped the Protestant cheek.

In Matthew 19 we also have a great proclamation of the gospel from Jesus. The rich young ruler asks what he must do to be saved -a question we all ask- and a question we all understand intimately. In my experience, Protestants discount or play down Jesus words here and/or disparage the rich young man for even asking what he must "do", as if he is trying to make it to heaven by his bootstraps. Or worse they relegate the passage to being a "hard saying" and flip ahead to Romans to cleanse the mental palate of such stumping statements by Jesus. But Christ is clearly telling this man that he must do certain things (works) to be saved. He is saying exactly what St. James (and St. Paul for that matter) would say: Only a living faith saves. A negative way to phrase that: "faith without works is dead". Or as St. Paul would say, a true faith is "faith working in love" (Gal. 5:6).

I think the fear of Protestants is that any talk of works *gasp!* will immediately devolve into a religion of "us seeking God" or a neglecting of God's grace. Or they may view faith and works as oil and water (respectively) in a glass: Pour more works in the glass and grace flows out. But I think the Catholic version of this analogy is that for the baptized Christian who has been washed in the Blood of Christ there is only oil (faith) in the glass and the entire glass gets miraculously bigger when we admit works into the scene. In this sense faith and works can be seen as one and the same thing.

Car and gas.
Lamp and oil.
Bread and yeast.

There is no antagonism between faith and works for Catholics. All is of grace, all is from God and for God. If I see myself doing a "good work", then praise God He has given me the grace to do that. The glory goes to Him.

And isn’t that "work" really another way of saying I have faith? According to James, Jesus and Paul it is!

The longer I am Catholic, the more I realize that the doctrine of sola fide is just dressed up antinomianism. And if you are a Protestant and don't know what that word means but you do know what legalism means, then you are probably an antinomian. As James would say, you are an ignoramus.

Doug Wilson says faithful Catholics will go to hell

Here is the short video from Doug:

Will Faithful Roman Catholics go to heaven from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Here is the comment I left on the video: I am a recent convert to the Church, (the Catholic Church) and have been steeped in Reformed theology about as much as a layman can be. So I think I understand what I am leaving behind (and what I am able to keep from it) and where I am going. Upon unbiased examination, Rome is simply not what I was told she was. The main difference (according to Protestants) seems to boil down to imputation Vs. infusion. Well, if you have a proper understanding of the primacy of grace in Catholic theology, then this distinction just does not add up to a reason to stay separated from the Church Christ founded. Grace is ALWAYS first in Catholic theology. If infused grace makes me holy, that sure looks like the work of God to me. Protestants like to focus on Eph 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." Catholics love that verse as well but have a better way of explaining verse 10: "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Infusion is a much more beautiful doctrine. God is not content that we remain in our sin. We must be perfect as Jesus said we must. And that perfection comes from Him in both Catholic and Reformed theology. If Luther's snow-covered dunghill (imputation) were not merely snow-covered but instead transformed by God into pure snow from top to bottom (infusion), which is more miraculous? Which is more monergistic? Which gives more glory to God? Infusion of course. As far as Doug thinking I will be in hell (for I certainly think I understand Catholic theology and reject the Protestant understanding of sola fide) I am OK with that. I respect his conviction. But let it be known that Catholics believe the same. Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. Unless you are invincibly ignorant of the identity Christ's Church, you will be damned for rejecting her. As the church father St. Irenaeus said in 180 AD: "It is incumbent to obey the priests who are in the Church—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the infallible charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But [it is also incumbent] to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth" (Against Heresies, 4:26:2) Why should I listen to Protestants with no authority from Christ? Your personal exegesis just is not impressive (been there done that)... sorry, but all the chest pounding and bible thumping you can muster will not make your interpretation of scripture anything more than your opinion. Who started your Church again? What year did he start it? What Bishop in the line of succession authorized it? The Reformed believe in ecclesial deism, and hold to a "conservative" religion that is merely another century's liberalism. Wake up to Mother Church. http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/